Page 87 of Two for Roughing

“I didn’t think you’d be…handy.”

“Grew up on a farm, remember? My parents were into DIY everything. You’re changing the subject. Are you worried people might guess about you if you spend too much time with me?”

“No, that’s what you’re worried I’m worried about.”

Kilian got to his feet, trying to parse the sentence. “What I’m…whatever. Um, you were secretly in love with Tom, and now Jax has stolen him away from you.”

A laugh burst out of Damir. “Tom Crowler? Fuck no. I mean, knowing he’s been closeted for a million years explains a lot about him, but no.”

“So what is it?” Kilian poked at Damir’s side.

Damir sighed deeply, laid down the spatula he was using to mix whatever was in the pan that smelled ungodly delicious, then turned the stove down. “If you don’t want to keep having phone sex, you need to tell me.”

“What?” Kilian had never understood the phrase “having the rug pulled out from under his feet” as well as he did at that moment because now it felt as though he’d entered unsteady ground without noticing. Hadn’t they just agreed to keep going? “I thought you wanted to.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Damir said with an impatient gesture. “You—”

Whatever he planned on saying was interrupted by the doorbell ringing.

“Are you expecting anyone?” Kilian asked. “Are any of the other guys around for Christmas?”

“Probably,” Damir said, drying his hands on a towel and then heading for the hall. “But Lissy said he wasn’t doing a team Christmas because Rocky threw up in his hot tub last year.”

Kilian wrinkled his nose. That sounded less wholesome than ordering Chinese food at Phil’s house and drinking Jax’s homemade eggnog. It also sounded more fun.

He followed Damir to the door, curious to see whether there’d be any holiday hijinks, and a bit morbidly interested to find out whether he would still be invited to team events now that he’d admitted the truth about himself publicly.

But when Damir pulled the door open, it wasn’t Lissy with a bottle of liquor or the rookies with puppy-dog eyes and fake IDs.

“What are you doing here?” Kilian asked, his voice so far away from his brain it might as well have belonged to someone else.

“You haven’t returned our calls in a month,” his mom said. “When you didn’t show up at the airport in Vancouver when you said you would, we got on the next plane we could find.”

“I never rebooked after the trade,” Kilian admitted. “My flight info was for a plane out of San Francisco.”

“You should have told us. We’d have booked you a new flight.” Kilian’s dad stood an inch or so shorter than him. His copper hair had begun graying at the temples sometime in the last few years, and he had new frown lines on his forehead. He was still chronically unable to mind his own business.

“I can book my own flights.”

“Obviously not, or you would have.”

“Boys,” Kilian’s mother said sharply.

“Why don’t you come in,” Damir suggested and stepped aside from the door.

Kilian couldn’t inflict his parents on Damir after everything Damir had done for him. It would violate some sort of fuckbuddy code. “It’s okay,” he said. “I can get my stuff. We can find a hotel, or—”

“No, it’s a holiday, and your parents came all this way. Dinner should be enough for four anyway.”

Kilian thought longingly of the delicious smells emanating from the stove, fried onions and spices and garlic doused in crushed tomatoes. “Are you sure?”

Damir gave him a tight-lipped smile. “Positive. I’m going to go…” He gave Kilian a meaningful look.

“Sure, yeah, thanks.” Kilian hoped Damir meant “hide the lube we left in the living room” and “put on a shirt.”

Kilian’s parents came in, and he closed the door behind them. His mom wore a purple winter coat that should have clashed awfully with her hair—a few shades lighter than Kilian and his dad’s—but somehow accentuated it instead. He got the curls and the sense of style from her. She hung up the coat in the entryway and slipped off her shoes.

Divested of her winter things, she turned to him. “Baby,” she said, and then her arms wrapped around his middle, and her face pressed to his shoulder.