He took off before Noah could even agree to the race, but Noah still intended to beat him. Jace was huge, and he knew how to skate defensively, but Noah was fast. He flew past Jace a moment later, rolling into the current training drill as though he’d always been there, and turned to stick his tongue out at Jace.
Jace chased after him, laughing the whole time.
Chapter Eight
Every time Jace touched his sore lip at work, he had a flash of trying to goad Noah into kissing him. It had been a joke, but the moment was sticking with him, anyway. Perhaps because it had been in poor taste. Wanting to kiss other men wasn’t a joke to Noah, it was a part of who he was.
He probably didn’t want to kiss Jace specifically, but that didn’t make any difference. Jace needed to stop teasing him like that.
He’d imagined that he’d come out the other side of marrying a guy unscathed, his personal image of his masculinity and sexuality perfectly intact, but he was obviously feeling a little insecure.
That was his problem, not Noah’s. It wasn’t fair to take it out on him. And it was stupid to feel even a little threatened. Nothing about him had changed. Even if it had—even if being married to a guy automatically made him gay or bi—those weren’t bad things to be, and it was a stupid thing to worry about.
Jace had thought he was more enlightened than that, but he kept dwelling on it all the same. What if Noahhadkissed him? How would he have reacted then?
“You get in a fight or something?”
Jace crashed out of his thoughts and into the present, looking up to see who was talking to him. His eyes fell on Hannah, who’d been on the ward for a few days now. She was eight years old, and coping way better than he would have with a broken arm and leg, as well as a few internal injuries from a fall off the roof of her house.
“Fell over on my skates, got into an argument with the floor. The floor won.” He smiled, ignoring the twinge in his lip.
“Why were you on skates?” she asked, clearly trying to start a conversation. Kids did that, when they were lonely. Half his job was trying to stop them from being traumatized by hospitals forever.
“I was at roller derby training,” he explained.
“What’s roller derby?”
Jace glanced at the time. He was ahead of himself, so he had a few minutes to talk. Especially if he went about doing his checks on Hannah while he did so.
“It’s a sport you play on roller skates. It’s kinda like… actually, I’m not sure what it’s like. You skate around a track and try to stop the other team’s jammer from scoring points while trying to help your own jammer out. They get a point for every person they pass during a jam, which is when all the action happens. It’s… cooler to play than it is to explain. Anyway, you fall over a lot playing it. One of the other players crashed into me last night, and we both fell over.”
“On purpose?” Hannah asked.
“No, not on purpose.” Jace smiled wryly. Noah had apologized at least once an hour when they were home, and several times yesterday when he’d caught Jace wincing. He clearly felt bad about it.
They’d knocked each other over on purpose plenty of times, but only when that was what they were supposed to be doing for a drill. Normally, Noah didn’t have accidents. His control on skates was legendary. He probably felt as embarrassed as he did guilty.
Jace didn’t really care. He knew Noah hadn’t intended to hurt him, and he’d been hurt a lot worse on the track and off. A tiny cut that would heal in a few days barely registered on his pain radar, and he wished Noah could see that. He didn’t want Noah to be miserable about an accident. Or anything, if possible.
“Is it fun?” Hannah prodded, dragging Jace back to the present again.
“Well, I do it every week, so I think it’s pretty fun. Do you skate?”
Hannah nodded. “Sometimes. When I don’t have homework.”
Jace didn’t remembereverhaving homework at eight years old, but times changed.
“Well, maybe when you’re back on your feet, you can ask your mom to let you join the junior team. I think you’d fit right in. You’re a tough kid,” Jace said. He was complaining about a little cut on his lip, while Hannah had just been in surgery to have pins put in her arm and leg, and she hadn’t even cried. She was definitely cut out for derby.
“You think?” Hannah asked.
“Yeah, I think. I’ve never broken anything, so you’re tougher than I am.” He grinned at her. “The derby girls arewaytougher than the boys, anyway.”
“Yeah?” She seemed excited now. Jace was glad he could give her that.
“Absolutely. Girls have been doing it longer, too. You could be part of a proud tradition. But you have to promise to get better first.”
She wasn’t really in any danger of not getting better, but physical therapy could be hard on kids, and sometimes they stopped going before they were done, convincing their parents not to take them anymore. Any incentive Jace could offer would help with that.
