Joey swallowed and privately bid adieu to that promise of sleeping in with Gideon, watching movies, eating Gideon’s food—which was always top notch—and opening a box of something stupid and wonderful and remembering what surprises were like.The good kind.
“I think,” he said, smelling the food and feeling sick, “I need to visit my father over Christmas.”
Gideon’s eyes popped open.“Do youwantto visit your father over Christmas?”he asked carefully.
Joey shook his head and showed him the picture on his phone.“Not particularly,” he said.
Joey realized he’d never seen this expression on Gideon’s face before.But after an entire day of Gideon waging a subtle campaign of “Let’s ask Clint what he thinks,” and “Maybe the unit would prefer you stay at my place for Christmas,” he thought he might understand what it was.
This was Gideon Chadwick when he was afraid.
But the good news was that Gideon Chadwick, afraid, was just as smart as Gideon Chadwick, cool, calm, and analytical.
Joey had tried to detach himself at first.“I’ll stay at my place from now on,” he’d murmured that night as they’d headed for the garage.“You can drop me—”
“No,” Gideon replied.“No.”
Okay, then.“Gid, it’s only a matter of time before he figures out where I’m spending my nights—”
“You change your habits now, he’ll come looking for me,” Gideon said shortly.“And I’m not letting you go there alone, not tonight.”
Joey sighed.“I can’t move into your apartment—not now.”
Gideon had turned to him in the elevator, the fury on his face unmistakable.“Tonight, Joey.That’s all I’m asking for.Tonight.”He took a breath, and some of the fury relaxed.“I said I knew what I was getting into, Joey.”
“But now you want out,” Joey said with resignation, sagging against the back of the car.
Gideon’s mouth on his, brutally, was not the answer he anticipated.But he responded, the hurt, the fear, the anger roiling in his gut unable to leave any room for hiding.
Everything—everything—was in that kiss, and Joey, heart, soul,beinginvaded with Gideon’s surprising heat, clung to him in panic as he’d been afraid to cling to him with emotional need.
The kiss was over as quickly as it had begun, leaving Joey to pull his brains back inside his head as the elevator doors opened and they made their way through the lobby to hail a cab to the apartment.
Except Gideon didn’t hail a cab.Apparently still pissed, he took off along the crowded sidewalk, Joey striding beside him.
Joey wanted to protest, say something like “All forty blocks?”but he didn’t.They were both fit—Gideon was a runner, as unlikely as he looked, loping along in a ground-eating pace with those long slender legs.Forty blocks was not a hardship.
Joey kept pace, and after the first twenty blocks, Gideon’s stride slowed a notch, became less fierce, less angry, and more accepting.His chest opened up enough that—had either of them been demonstrative at all—Joey could have seized his hand.
For the first time in his life since he was a child going shopping with his grandfather in the city, Joey wanted to hold somebody’s hand.
The thought startled him, and he almost stumbled, but it burrowed in, making him yearn for something he’d never known he missed, almost consuming him as he followed Gideon up the stairs to the apartment, the corridor echoing with the voices of the other building residents as people prepared dinner or hurried out to eat.
By the time Gideon opened the door, his movements were calm, measured, thoughtful, and Joey realized that he’d needed the activity to work things out in his own head.The thought soothed Joey—he used physical activity to think too, and he often forgot how similar he and Gideon were about some things.
It meant Gideon wasn’t angry at him.
Until that moment it hadn’t occurred to him how much he relied on Gideon Chadwick’s good opinion.That the foundation of his attraction—hisneed—for Gideon’s touch was built in his rock-solid respect for Gideon’s goodness and his intelligence and the thoughtful way he approached his fellow humans.
The thought drew him up short, and as he closed the door behind them, he leaned against it and tried to think about what he could do to not make this moment any more difficult than it was.
“I don’twantto stop seeing you,” he said into the sudden silence.
The face Gideon turned to him was—oh God—hurt, and he realized why people like his father hated empathy so damned much.Because when somebody you empathized withhurt, so didyou, and thatsucked.
But Joey didn’t care—he’d feel this again and again if it meant he could keep walking through Gideon Chadwick’s door.
“Then stop using that as an option,” Gideon said, closing the distance between them.
