AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You can need somebody,” Hayden had told Luke that night in Tekapo when they’d been watching the lights of the Aurora dancing in the dark sky, “and still be a man.”
What had Luke said? Something like, “Yeh. That. Thanks.” Which wasn’t much, but he’d meant it. Hadn’t he?
He roused himself and asked, “What book would you recommend?”
Casey considered. “The Kissing Hand,” she decided. “That’s the best book for missing somebody. It’s kind of a baby book, but it’s nice. I’m seven, so I don’t need baby books now, but I still like it, even though it’s about raccoons and I’m not a raccoon. So I think a grown-up might like it, too, if they were sad.”
“Rugby players don’t read books called The Kissing Hand,” Isaiah said. “Ew.”
Rhys smiled. “Oh, I don’t know. Rugby players need kisses, too.”
“Not on their hands,” Isaiah said.
Rhys took Zora’s hand and kissed her palm, then closed her fingers around it. “There. That’s how I feel leaving. Like I want your mum to feel that kiss, just like the raccoon kid does.”
“But you’re not the one getting the kiss,” Isaiah said, “so it doesn’t count.”
Zora’s hand was still in Rhys’s. Now, she lifted his and kissed his palm. “No,” she said. “Rugby players need love, too. And so do men. When I say goodbye, I want Uncle Rhys to think that he can press his hand to his cheek and know that somebody loves him more than life.” She laughed and dabbed her eyes with her napkin. “Sorry, Hayden. We’re a bit goopy, possibly. He’s got another road trip coming up, and it’s a long one, and Casey’s right. I miss him, every time.”
How much does he care, Hayden wanted to ask, if he won’t even come out? How much can he possibly miss me if I’m still a secret, and he’s OK with keeping me that way?
Rhys and Zora had kept it secret, though, hadn’t they? Rhys had done that for Zora, Hayden was sure, because he’d known what people would say, and he hadn’t wanted her to face that.
But what if that’s not it? What if that’s not why?
Then you need to know. Harden up and find out.
He looked at his watch. Six-thirty.
This is madness. You don’t have to be desperate. Insouciant, that’s you. Easy come, easy go. It doesn’t mean you’ll never find love. Just another one that didn’t work out.
He couldn’t manage it.
CHAPTER 22
Anesthetize My Heart
Hayden had never been so tired.
Pro tip, he told himself as he sat in the hotel lobby, nursed his fourth coffee, and tried not to (A) fall asleep, and (B) bounce off the walls from all the caffeine he’d consumed over the past … however long it had been, because his brain couldn’t compute the numbers. Don’t take a thirty-hour night flight to Rome on the spur of the moment—with a three-hour layover in Dubai, and not in the kind of seat that makes into a bed—after a very bad night’s sleep, a full day of work, and a general sense of impending doom, and if you do, have somebody there to shepherd you in your daze of fatigue and incomprehension. He’d been able to find out via Rhys where the team was staying—through some sort of international rugby fraternity, apparently, because the information had taken his brother-in-law about five minutes to gather—and had taken a taxi there. So here he was. In Rome, at Luke’s hotel.
Except.
It was after five by the time he got through customs, through the mad Roman traffic—his first time here, but he was at once too blurry-eyed and too caffeinated to appreciate it—and arrived at the hotel, and when he got there, they wouldn’t tell him which was Luke’s room. Well, of course not. He should have foreseen that. The bloke at the desk was looking distinctly shirty, in fact, and Hayden had to book a room to keep him from turfing him out. There weren’t any regular ones left, so it was a suite. By the time he’d done that, the game was about to start, and he … well, he was here, and he needed to watch Luke play.
This was ridiculous, he told himself more than once on the taxi ride to the stadium. He could have just called. But it didn’t feel like it. It felt urgent. Or wildly extravagant to the point where New Zealand would be rescinding his passport for insufficient Kiwi thriftiness. Or both.
He found the ticket booth after some searching. He’d learned a bit of French—his over-hopeful heart again—but he definitely didn’t know Italian. He’d missed most of the first half of the game, but he watched the second. The score at the end was 33 to 6, and England had the 33, but Hayden didn’t care about that. Instead, he watched Luke, was thrilled by his strength and his skill and his heart, and so incredibly proud, too, and wondered yet again, Is this the stupidest romantic move in a lifetime of stupid romantic moves?
He remembered Rhys saying to Luke, though, “Good to have somebody in the stands. Is that a first?” And the way Luke’s ears had gone red, answering.
Didn’t everybody need somebody to care? Was it so wrong to want to be that for a man?
After the game, he went back to the hotel. He ended up walking, because there were no taxis, and he wasn’t able to sort out how else to get there. The walk took an hour, but he thought, He’ll be with the team for a couple of hours anyway. He knew the drill by now. Besides, he needed to move to stay awake.
By the time he made it back, it was eleven. He ate dinner in the bar, facing the lobby, and then got a coffee.
Any time now.
