“Cooper.” I watched him drag a thumb over his bottom lip while refusing to make eye contact. “Look at me.” Waiting until he did, I placed a hand on his thigh and held his gaze. “I meant it when I told your mother I cared about you. And you were right, we did seem to flip roles somewhere along the line. But my hesitance has nothing to do with you. I’ve been in love once. I’ve tried many times since, and I fucked it up each time. I’m afraid now that you’ve made this profound decision to be with me, I’ll fuck it up with you.”
“Fuck it up how?”
I released a sarcastic laugh. “Actually, I’m giving you a sampling as we speak. I doubt. I question. I self-sabotage. I…”
“You run.”
“I run.”
He nodded before placing his hand over mine on his thigh. “Then I’ll chase you.”
“I’m pretty fast.”
“Shut up, you prick.” Removing his hand, he resumed picking at the bottle again. “I can deal with your freak-outs, with the moods, the stick up your ass—”
“I don’t have a stick up my ass,” I argued.
“Yeah, you do. But I can deal with all that…” He leaned in closer, pushing his shoulder against mine. “As long as I know I’m not in this alone.”
There were at least a dozen things I could’ve repeated right then and there. Sick of rehashing all that, sick of the push and pull, sick of the doubt constantly nagging me, I went with what I was good at… deflecting.
Closing the distance, I brought my lips a breath apart from his. “Want to get out of here?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Cooper
Since the day I’d come out to my parents, Ricky had kept his distance. He blamed it on not wanting to infringe on family time. Rebecca seemed to allow him that out, until today. My parents were leaving tomorrow, and Marco and Rebecca wanted us there for a BBQ. No excuses.
So there we were, bleary from exhaustion and feeling the effects of another sleepless night. Ready or not, it was time to face the consequences that came from having a hopeless romantic mother and sister. They seriously have become unhinged with my news and were driving me nuts to the point that each evening, once the Puglia household dialed down for the night, I headed to Ricky’s place.
All week long, the hours were split between talking and fooling around. The sex had been more of the same, mainly because Ricky claimed he didn’t want to rush us into the next level. For him, to be taken was a very personal thing, but one he wanted with me. That would come first, and then when he felt I was ready, he would take me.
Having no experience in that department whatsoever, I conceded to his schedule. It wasn’t as though he lacked in getting me off spectacularly, every time. The desire I’d always felt toward him only heightened with each encounter, and now it had grown roots, entangling my libido in a choke hold. Basically, I was at his mercy.
It wasn’t just our physical connection that continued to develop each day we spent together. Although he hadn’t voiced anything near what I had admitted to regarding love, emotionally I believed we had turned a corner. And one could argue, with such a severe personal transformation, there had been many corners thus far. But the one we’d recently navigated we’d done so together. I may have profoundly changed from the person I was even six months ago, but Ricky most definitely had changed as well… he was not as confrontational as he used to be and was more forthcoming.
Slowly, I forced him to admit he purposely sought out men who subliminally waved big-ass red flags. The more warning signs he discovered as they began dating, the more he would gravitate toward them. And when he decided it was over, most of the time because of a significant misstep on their part, it eliminated the chance that they would hurt him.
A therapist could have a field day with that kind of confession. I wasn’t a professional, but even I knew that knowingly starting a toxic relationship and being the one to end it when they screwed up was nothing more than a built-in defense mechanism.
As far as with me, because of Corey, my situation hit too close to home for him. He claimed he had no intention of setting himself up for that sort of vulnerability. Still, his deep-rooted need to help people, specifically me, superseded the need for self-preservation. And apparently being hot as fuck made it impossible for him to thwart my advances.
The private conversations Ricky claimed I needed to have with my family had actually occurred, and as he predicted, once they’d digested my news, there were a ton of questions. A common thread ran through each and every one of them—how did I not know before now?
Admitting it was Ricky that, for whatever reason, I gravitated toward seemed to confuse them. It was hard to elaborate more than that… because even when I wanted to despise him, I couldn’t shake the desire that ran deep in my veins. For obvious reasons, I kept that admission to myself. I did say something about how his heart was what drew me in, even though that was a lie.
Surprisingly, I wasn’t prepared for the overwhelming relief that came with admitting I was gay. Focusing my attention on voicing it out loud almost made the entire thing anticlimactic. Sure, I still had to come out to my other siblings, colleagues, and friends. And it was my brother Sam I was most worried about, but what I’d done this week with my parents in a way emboldened me.
At my sister’s front door, Ricky wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me closer. “Before we go in, I just wanted to apologize for not being here for you this week.”
Schooling my shock over his honesty, I gave him a warm smile. “I get it… but you were there for me in other ways,” I pardoned.
“I hope so.” He leaned in and kissed me softly, something he rarely did. With Ricky it was usually forceful, sharp… not sweet. “I hope those other ways were enough, Cooper James,” he said with that smirk of his.
“I was waiting for you to bring that up.”
“I like it.”
“What’s your middle name?”
His lips twitched before he said, “Alexander.”
“Well, Ricky Alexander, let’s get through this day so we can enjoy our night.”
“Deal.” He released me and pressed the doorbell.
The first thing Rebecca did when she answered the door was to punch Ricky’s biceps. “Ow. What was that for?”
“That damn giraffe!” Ricky had been driving her nuts with that thing… controlling all the random movements with that app on his phone, most of the time during the middle-of-the-night feedings, thus scaring the crap out of her. “It’s the spawn of the devil, and I don’t care what you paid for it; it’s going to the curb!”
“You wouldn’t dare,” he grunted with a finger in her face.
“Oh yes I would.” She turned on her heel and stomped into the house. “It’s already in the garage.”
“In a few months, your daughter is going to love that giraffe—” Ricky’s argument faded as he followed behind her into the house. The entire exchange humored me. Rebecca was always able to bring out a side of Ricky I loved seeing, and it gave me hope one day I’d have the same success. In all fairness, he had loosened up tremendously, but that shield he hid behind still popped up every now and again when I least wanted it to. And his incessant need to “top” me, as he called it, made it a game of sorts for me to knock him down a notch or two.