“He would have liked you.” Noah sighed. “I’m sorry you got the parent who doesn’t.”
“Between you and me, I don’t care whether or not your mom likes me. I care whetheryoulike me, but I get the impression that you don’t really care whether or not your mom likes me, either.”
“I do not. I actually like you a little more because she doesn’t.” Noah laughed softly. “You give amazing hugs. Can we be people who hug now? More regularly, I mean.”
“I like hugs,” Jace said. “I could definitely go for more hugs.”
“Cool.” Noah yawned. “You’re gonna make someone so happy one day. I mean, you make me happy right now, but… you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” Jace said. “Thanks. And I’m happy I make you happy.”
Noah wanted to tell Jace how much he meant that, but Jace didn’t need the burden of knowing his best friend was pining after him. It was better to be friends. There was no point in pushing the issue, even if he was feeling pathetically needy right now.
“For what it’s worth,” Jace spoke up after a few moments of silence. “I’m proud of you.”
Noah swallowed past a baseball-sized lump in his throat. “I’m proud of you, too,” he said. “And I really don’t care what my mom thinks. I am so proud of being married to you. I kinda wish it was real.”
Noah wished he could take the words back as soon as they escaped him. Jace would take it as a joke, hopefully, but for a few tense moments, Noah believed his world was about to fall down around him. What if Jace realized how serious he was? What if he couldn’t handle that and left in the middle of the night and Noah had to face his mother in the morning alone?
“Yeah,” Jace said after a handful of heart-wrenching seconds. “Me too.”
It took Noah several minutes to process that, lying in the dark with his head against Jace’s shoulder, their legs intertwined and the sound of their breathing the only thing punctuating the silence.
This was, as far as he was concerned, bliss.
Maybe Jace could feel that, too. It was only a small glimmer of hope, but it was one Noah could cling to with all of his strength. Jace, maybe, liked the idea of them really being together.
They could explore that once they got rid of Noah’s mom. It was definitely something they needed to talk out, poke at, decide on the size and shape of.
For the moment, Noah could sleep with a smile on his face, knowing that things were looking up.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jace would never have said so to Noah, but he was glad that game time was approaching so quickly so that he could escape Noah’s mom for an hour or so. Carolyn was a pain in the ass every single second he was near her, and he was starting to think it was deliberate. He’d never been so annoyed by another human being.
Thankfully, she only picked on Baltimore while they were driving to the stadium. Jace could handle that. He wasn’t from here, originally, so his attachment to it was mostly that it had become his home. It was important to him, but not as important as Noah was.
If she went back to picking on Noah instead, Jace wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop himself from saying something. Noah had asked him not to, and he intended to honor that, but Carolyn was testing him.
“It’s not much of a stadium, is it?” she asked as they walked inside. Jace twitched, but said nothing.
“Roller derby is in its early phases. There aren’t really dedicated stadiums yet. This is a community stadium for a lot of sports. It also runs youth programs,” Noah responded.
“Is that your team?” Carolyn nodded to where the rest of the team was gathered by the bench, still in their street clothes.
“That’s them,” Jace said enthusiastically. He waved at Brian, who he knew would grill him later about whether he’d said anything to Noah yet.
He had, in a way. Noah had said he kind of wished their marriage was real, and Jace had managed to summon the courage to agree. It felt like progress. He’d woken up with Noah still curled around him, and he was more sure than ever that it was what he wanted.
The right moment hadn’t come up yet, but it would. He knew it would.
“They don’t really look like athletes, do they?”
Jace took a deep breath and let it out as slowly as possible so Carolyn wouldn’t notice.
“They’re very good at what they do,” Noah said.
“I just think you could do better than all this. You had so much talent when you were younger, and now you’re wasting it on this amateur crap when you could have been an international athlete. You’ve thrown away everything I did for you.”
