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"Huh?" Marcus gave him a blank expression, then he shrugged, looking away.
"Yeah. "
Thomas dropped his hand, swallowed the hurt. "Who was on the phone? And who the hell are Toby and Owen, and why does Toby call you Dodger?" Marcus' eyes shuttered. It was a look Thomas knew. In the past it had frustrated him, annoyed him, made him angry. Now, fury just erupted. Somehow, if he'd known more about who was on the phone, Marcus wouldn't have gone outside to a place he never should have been, to hide the conversation from him.
"Not going to tell me, are you? It's okay to slap me down for leaving to take care of my family, but maybe that's because whatever happened with yours is so awful you don't want me to have anything to do with mine. "
"Get out. " Marcus' eyes went freezing cold, his face a hard mask, the cleaned but unstitched slash making him look far more dangerous. "I don't want to deal with this crap right now. "
"I've never
gotten in, so how the hell can I get out?" Thomas snarled. "You want me to be your family? You let family in. Knowing they'll hurt you, you do it anyway, because that's what love is. You let them in to hurt you, love you - "
"Leave you?"
Marcus surged up now, coming nose to nose with Thomas despite having to hold his side to do so. "Why should I pour out my guts to someone who considers me family only when it's convenient, which means he's never considered me family at all? You've got a permanent hard-on for me, but hey, join the rest of the world. You're right. Go home. Go home to North Carolina and be everything your family wants you to be. " His expression hardened further. "But you better be ready for the fact it will never be enough. Years from now, when you've done what you think they wanted you to do and you're coming home every night to sit in your recliner with your beer gut and your passive aggression drowning in cable, you'll be hating that girl you married. The family you thought you loved. And you still won't be enough, because what they want is for you to be truly happy being someone you were fucking never meant to be!" Venom was pouring off Marcus. Thomas didn't know if it was aimed at him or if it was a poison Marcus was coating his whole world with, but it was all bullshit. All defenses against what he didn't want Thomas to know.
Thomas took one step back, looked steadily at him. Took a deep breath. "Is it that bad?"
Marcus stared at him. Myriad emotions chased each other through his expression.
"Worse," he said flatly.
"Does anyone know all of it? Have you ever trusted someone more than me?" Marcus wanted Thomas to keep fighting, keep it on the level of irrational anger, but Thomas wasn't obliging. And if he couldn't ride out all of tonight's shit in fury, Marcus wasn't sure how he was going to survive it.
"No," he said, sinking back down on the table, feeling the pain in every bone and muscle.
"Okay, then. " Thomas spoke after a moment, as if that was an answer he could accept.
"See if you can get that nurse in here and get this done," Marcus said, looking down at the tile floor, a depressing checkered pattern of white and green illuminated far too much by the fluorescent lighting. "Then we'll go back to the house and get you packed.
You're supposed to go home tomorrow. "
"But I could stay. . . "
"No. " Marcus shook his head. "We said the week. You needed to go back by the weekend. Tomorrow's Saturday. You need to go. "
"You want me to go. "
The hurt was there. Marcus thought the agony of it, joining the pain in his ribs, was going to squeeze the life from him. He needed Thomas to go now. Not tomorrow, this minute.
"You've got a great start on some excellent pieces," he managed. "Take them home, finish them, let me know when you think you can estimate a completion date. I'll get them picked up and brought to New York - "
Thomas planted his feet between Marcus' braced ones and startled him by catching his face in both hands, tilting it up so Marcus was forced to look him in the eye.
The position crowded him. With his ribs throbbing, there wasn't much he could do to shake Thomas off. God, those artist's hands touching his face, Thomas' expression unsmiling, the dark eyes searching Marcus'. His thumb traced the cut, then moved down over Marcus' bottom lip. When his hip brushed the inside of Marcus' thigh, it was too tempting not to put his hands on Thomas' waist, his hips, draw him forward.
He couldn't fuck a Cabbage Patch doll right now, let alone Thomas, but that wasn't what he wanted anyway. His hands were holding onto Thomas' waist much too tightly, almost violently digging in to his shirt. Almost like Thomas had clutched him, that day Marcus had come to see him at the hardware store.
His arms were rigid bands of muscle as Thomas ran his hands down them, moved just an inch or two closer. It freed Marcus' head to go where it would and he was tired, tired enough to let it fall forward, just barely brushing Thomas. He wanted. . . but he wouldn't move forward any further. He felt as if he moved at all, he'd break. Thomas closed the gap, that one last step forward, then Marcus' forehead rested solidly in the middle of Thomas' chest. Marcus could feel Thomas' heartbeat through the throbbing of his own skull.
He drew in a breath, looking down at the slope of Thomas' abdomen, the thighs that looked so damn good in jeans, the curve of his cock beneath the zipper. Shoes with socks. Size twelve, wide. Thomas' hands stroked his hair, curled over his head.
Bending, he brushed his lips on the crown of Marcus' head.
"I don't want you to go," Marcus muttered. His hands tightened as if he could hold Thomas with just his touch.
This was the root of it. The fight, the anger, the memories of family. It was all about Thomas leaving.
