You’re safe here.
The door slid open. Maybe the air simply reacted to Nick’s emotion, but the atmosphere practically cheered when Adam stepped onto the patio.
Yay, Adam!
Nick couldn’t keep the smile off his face, so he didn’t turn around. He peeked over his shoulder. “Hey.”
Adam dropped onto the concrete beside him, close enough that Nick could feel the warmth from his body—but far enough that they weren’t touching.
“Hey, yourself,” said Adam. “Thanks for starting coffee.” He held out a mug.
Nick took it, wrapping his hands around the ceramic. He suddenly felt shy, but somehow more self-assured at the same time. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Yes, you were very loud sitting out here with your feet in the grass. You do realize I have chairs . . . ?”
Nick nodded. “I know.” Adam’s legs stretched out in the grass, too, one hand holding his own mug of coffee, the other resting on his thigh.
Nick hesitated. Then he reached out, threaded their fingers together, and lifted their joined hands to kiss Adam’s knuckles.
Nick’s eyes met Adam’s brown ones. He’d never felt this way before, like he’d found something precious and fragile that could be taken away. It left him giddy and anxious. Fiercely protective.
Adam smiled. “That look is worth waking up alone.”
Nick blushed and looked away. “I’m sorry. I was trying to let you sleep.”
“Sleep is overrated.” Now Adam shifted closer, eliminating any space between them. He pressed his lips to Nick’s neck, abandoning his cup of coffee to stroke his free hand up Nick’s chest.
Nick sighed and closed his eyes. He totally should have stayed in bed.
He left his own mug on the concrete to stroke his hand through Adam’s silky dark hair, tracing a finger down the length of his dusky chin.
“Where are you from?” he asked without thinking.
Adam laughed softly and straightened. He reclaimed his coffee, but he remained sitting just as close. “Annapolis.”
Nick winced and shook his head. “No—I meant—”
“I know what you meant.” He hesitated. “My father is from Morocco, and my mother is from Brazil.”
There was a lot of weight in that hesitation, and Nick proceeded carefully. “I’m thinking there’s a story there.”
“Hmm. Not really. He came here because he couldn’t find paying work as a doctor in Morocco. Their economy was crap. She was a student at Johns Hopkins. They met three weeks before her visa expired.” He gave Nick a wry look. “She tells everyone she married him for the green card.”
Nick smiled. “I have a feeling I’d like your mother.”
And as soon as he said the words, he realized he was wondering about meeting Adam’s parents, and the thought struck a bolt of nerves into his chest.
Now he understood how Michael had felt Thursday night.
“She’s very opinionated,” said Adam. “Likes to rant in Portuguese because it makes my father nuts.”
Nick’s eyebrows went up. Just when he thought Adam couldn’t get hotter. “Do you speak Portuguese?”
“More than I’ll admit. Less than I should. My father grew up speaking Berber—it’s like Arabic—but I barely know any of that. He wanted to lose his accent because he thought he’d get better work that way, so he hardly speaks it at all now. Most people can’t even tell he wasn’t born here.”
A new note, something close to bitterness, had crept into Adam’s voice. Nick frowned and wondered if he’d made a misstep by opening this line of conversation.
Adam shrugged a little. “He totally bought into the American dream of capitalism and baseball and apple pie—only to end up with a Brazilian wife and a gay dancer for a son.”
Adam’s father hid who he was. Then he’d asked Adam to hide who he was.
Nick wondered what his own father would have thought. While he felt certain his mother would have understood him—would have supported him, even—he had no idea how his father would have reacted. Michael had gotten into it with their father more than once, but never over something like this.
Nick stroked a hand across Adam’s face. “Do they ever come to watch you dance?”
“Nah. Not really anymore. Honestly, I think my dad secretly hopes I’ll outgrow it one day.”
“I think your dad should take a second look at how lucky he is.”
Adam laughed, but not like it was funny. “You know, if I wanted to do pretty much anything else with my life, I wouldn’t need a scholarship. If I called him up and said I wanted to be an accountant, he’d be drafting a check to the college of my choice.”
Nick thought of all those college letters sitting in his desk at home and felt a flash of guilt. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Adam almost gave him a smile. “It’ll mean more if I do it myself.” He pressed his face into the curve of Nick’s neck again. “Your turn.”
“My turn?”
“Tell me something uncomfortable about your family.”
“I’m pretty sure you witnessed something uncomfortable last night.” Nick paused, tracing a finger along the stretch of Adam’s forearm.
“Tell me something good then. Tell me something good about your brother.”
The words summoned too many memories. Nick couldn’t sort through them all. Setting fires on the beach, Gabriel using his power to send the flames coursing high into the air, Nick leeching oxygen from the atmosphere to help him maintain control. Hiding from Michael after putting spiders in his bed or peanut butter in his backpack or paint in his shampoo bottle. Gabriel knowing every single time Nick was worried or hurting or just plain needed him.
“We used to trade places all the time. He loves sports, and I . . . well, I really looked for any reason to stay the hell out of a locker room, so he pretended to be me so he could play more sports. The school limits you to two, so . . .” Nick shrugged.
“Hmm. And what did you do while you were pretending to be him?”
Nick snorted. “His math homework.” As soon as he said it, he realized Adam was going to misunderstand. “Not like you think. When our parents died, he couldn’t keep up. I started doing it to help him, just so he wouldn’t be held back. It became . . . like . . . a thing. He believed he couldn’t do it, and I wanted to do that for him. To be there for him. To—” He made a disgusted noise. “This is stupid.”
“No. It’s not.” Adam leaned into him again. “What does he do for you?”
“I don’t—it’s not—” Nick pressed his fingers into his eyes. “Everything.”
He kept hearing Hunter’s words on the steps. I’m not his best friend, Nick. You are.
Nick realized he didn’t even know if his brother had made it home okay.
He hated that Gabriel had monumentally fucked up, but he was still sitting here worried about him. “Can I use your phone again?”
Adam sat up and shifted to pull it out of his pocket. He held it out without a word.
Nick called the house phone. The line rang half a dozen times.
Maybe Gabriel had been hurt. Maybe they were all out looking for him. Nick remembered sensing someone in the woods near the house the other night—had he mentioned that to Michael? He couldn’t remember. He’d been stupid to go out of touch for so long. His world could be crumbling right this very second, while he was sitting on Adam’s back porch, completely out of reach.
Nick felt his heart pound against his rib cage, chastising him with each beat. He’d let his brother drive off in a fury. God only knew what he could have gotten into.