Home and Away (11 page)

A thought suddenly occurred to him. “Do you have a thing for Jack?”

Rupert started to laugh.

“You just—you seemed concerned about him seeing your underwear or something.” God knew Callum wasn’t going to forget the eyeful he’d gotten. “I wasn’t sure if that meant, I mean, you’ve mentioned that he’s attractive.”

“Yes, well, I’m not sure you have to be gay to notice that. In fact, I’m pretty sure the only requirement is that you be sighted.”

Callum chuckled. “That’s true.” He paused, waiting for Rupert to answer the question as he pulled up in front of the hotel. When Rupert didn’t say anything, Callum caved. “Well,
do
you have a thing for Jack?”

Rupert gave Callum a disconcertingly long, measured look. “No.”

“Oh, okay,” Callum mumbled, and hey, he’d made things awkward.
Awesome.

“Do
you
have a thing for Jack?” Rupert asked.

Callum laughed nervously. “What? No. Why would you even ask that?”

“You were at his house the other night. I was preoccupied at the time, but it occurs to me now I might have been interrupting.”

“Well, you weren’t.”

“Why not?”

“Why weren’t you interrupting?”

“Yes. Why
not
have a thing for Jack?”

“Because I don’t. I mean, I don’t have a thing for anyone. Ever. I just don’t do that kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing? Date?”

“No. I mean, yes, I don’t date.”

“Why not?”

“Look! We’re here!” Callum declared, as if he hadn’t been parked in the valet lane for several minutes. He practically fell out his door to escape.

Callum wasn’t going to explain his fucked-up life to Rupert. How the hell would he? He could barely explain it to himself.

And anyway, the man was just starting to tolerate him.

The next two weeks passed quickly, and every day, Rupert gained more confidence. He wasn’t always successful—in fact, most days he felt like he fell somewhere between mediocre and absolute crap—but he was doing it. He was a parent. Now he only
rarely
worried that he was going to accidentally maim or dismember Oliver, which was a huge improvement. And, mostly, he felt he could keep the boy alive. So, there was that.

Admittedly, his bar was low.

Rupert had no delusions. He was a parent. He was not, yet, a
single parent
. Callum made dinner, he did “tubby-time”, he knew shit like that it was
called
tubby-time. He carried Oliver around for hours every day, took him shopping, made him use his manners, and generally made Rupert look like the child-rearing amateur he was.

What Callum didn’t do was make Rupert feel stupid for not knowing half the things Callum did, or one quarter of what he should.

And what neither Rupert norCallum had been able to do, yet, was to convince Oliver to speak more than the occasional word or two. Each day they heard a little more, and it at least proved he was
capable
of all kinds of speech, but they’d only progressed enough to hear a few short sentences and not a lot else.

So there was hope. Lots of hope. But what Rupert was running out of was time. He’d managed to put off everything and anything that would take him out of town, but his time was up.

 Hanging up the phone, Rupert was simultaneously elated and terrorized. They had a chance to sign a new back-up goalie, one that Rupert had kept an eye on for the better part of the last year—long before he had assumed responsibility for the Ice Cats management, in fact.

But that meant he had to go to Montreal, right now, in order to sign him.

Flustered, he ran from his office, already in the corridor and halfway to the gym before realizing he’d forgotten to put on his suit jacket. He stalled, considering going back, dithering in the hallway until he recalled that if he’d learned nothing else these past few weeks, it was that time was now a more precious commodity than ever.

He arrived at the gym to find Alexei spotting Mike at the bench press, and Callum running on the treadmill. Oliver was happily tucked in a corner of the room with his car collection, oblivious to the smell and the absurdly hot men sweating all around him.

Rupert, sadly, was immune to neither.

Rupert was reasonably certain he would have killed any one of his ex-boyfriends within days if they’d spent
nearly
as much time together as he and Callum did. But with Callum, easily one of the most abrasive human beings Rupert had ever met, the only challenge was recalling why it was he’d disliked Callum so much to begin with.

Right now, Callum was lost to the blank stare runners fell into, silent and focused on his training regime. His dedication was admirable.

Rupert stole a few moments to admire a whole lot of things about Callum. His heavily muscled thighs flexed as they pounded out a fast pace, his biceps bulging with the pump of his arms. Sweat gleamed on his skin, his damp curls stuck to his forehead and neck.

It shouldn’t be nearly as appealing as it was. All of Rupert’s past boyfriends had been slimmer. Smaller than Rupert, mostly. At six foot two inches, he and Callum were actually the same height, but Callum carried a lot more weight in his shoulders. His neck. His chest.

Why had the scars on Callum’s eyebrow and upper lip ever put him off? Or the crook in his nose? They added character. Spoke to his history. He was a hockey player and wore it proudly, as much a part of him as his prickly social skills, and the big softy who doted on Oliver without a thought.

Rupert’s eyes tracked a drop of sweat from Callum’s temple, his hands twitching with the desire to follow that path with his finger, to touch Callum’s cheek, pink with exertion. Callum’s face would glow like that during sex. His skin hot to the touch.

Rupert dragged his gaze back up and bright green eyes locked with his, bringing his wayward thoughts to a grinding halt. Heat crawled up Rupert’s neck and he cursed his pale skin. He spun to look at Mike and Alexei, perhaps hoping to convince Callum that he was in the habit of checking out everyone in the gym. Because seeming like a pervert was somehow better than acknowledging that he was growing increasingly, intensely, attracted to Callum.

Mike and Alexei stared back. Both were trying very hard not to laugh.

“I have to go to Montreal,” he said insensibly to the room at large.

Callum had slowed his pace after catching Rupert all but drooling over him, but now he hit stop. Rupert was so busy trying to figure out the look Callum was giving him that he didn’t see Oliver coming until he slammed into Rupert’s legs, nearly toppling them both to the ground.

“You can’t go!” he cried.

Rupert quickly pulled Oliver up into his arms. “It’s okay, Ollie. I’ll be back. I’ll always come back. Remember, we talked about how I sometimes have to travel for my job. That I would have to make some trips this summer.” And then they would have to deal with him traveling for fifty percent of the hockey season, since half the team’s games were
away,
after all.

Oliver buried his face against Rupert’s neck. “You can’t go,” he pleaded.

“You’ll stay here with me,” Callum said, coming to rub Oliver’s back. “We can go on an adventure. Maybe check out Magnetic Hill.”

Oliver held on tighter. “No!” His little body shuddered and he let out a wet sob, absolutely
heartbroken
.

Rupert looked at Callum, stricken, his own breath hitching in his chest. Callum’s hand pressed over his on Oliver’s back, their fingers threading together. Rupert was so grateful, felt so utterly helpless to ease Oliver’s fears, that his own eyes began to sting. Mortified, he buried his face in Oliver’s hair.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Rupert whispered, not even sure who he was trying to convince anymore.

Mike and Alexei slipped out of the room, closing the door behind them, and Callum wound his arms around Rupert and Oliver. It didn’t seem to help Oliver, but Rupert felt like he could breathe again.

“I’m not leaving you. Not ever, Oliver,” Rupert promised again as Callum rocked them, his big hand warm on the back of Rupert’s neck. Oliver seemed incapable of hearing him, and Rupert didn’t know what to say to make him believe.

“We’ll go to Montreal,” Callum said, his voice raspy and thick. “All of us.”

Oliver let out a stuttering sigh and went limp in their arms.

Rupert looked at Callum, their noses almost brushing. “Are you sure?”

“Of course. We’ll make it work. Until Oliver is ready.”

Which would be, Rupert feared, right about the time Callum would return to Colorado. How was Rupert going to survive without him? Oliver didn’t seem to be getting any better and the summer was too short. They wouldn’t—

“Rupert,” Callum said, his hand cupping Rupert’s jaw. Steadying him.

Right. Not panicking. “Montreal. Let’s begin there.”

“Yes, let’s,” Callum said, as if Rupert was making any sense. “When do we leave?”

“As soon as possible.”

Callum looked down at his shirt plastered to his chest with sweat, and now stuck to Oliver’s back as well. He grimaced. “Ollie and I will go back to the hotel, get cleaned up, and pack. You’re on logistics.”

Rupert nodded, already making a list in his head of what needed to be done.

He could do this. He could get the three of them to Montreal. He could talk to Callum about what to do next. Make a list for that, too.

Would it be totally insane if he had to make a list of his lists?

A week ago, Callum had been ready to swear off air travel with a child for the rest of his life. Now he had to reconsider.

Oliver was a perfect angel for their mad dash to the hotel, through a quick rinse down, dressing, packing—including trying to identify what the fuck Rupert’s texts were instructing him to pack in which very particular bag—another mad dash to the airport to find Rupert, the race through security, and, finally, onto the plane.

Now, at thirty-seven thousand feet, Oliver was calmly playing on Callum’s phone, and it was
Rupert
that needed a goddamn time out.

Callum slammed his hand down on Rupert’s bouncing knee. “Knock it off.”

“Sorry,” Rupert mumbled, still madly typing on his phone.

“What are you working on?”

Rupert’s head came up at last. “A list.”

Callum rolled his eyes. At some point, Rupert was probably going to have to accept that he couldn’t manage Oliver the way he did the rest of his life. That he didn’t want to, even.

Until then, thank god and Air Canada, there was gin.

Callum plucked Rupert’s phone from his grasp, and shoved the gin and tonic he’d ordered from the flight attendant into Rupert’s hand instead.

Rupert sent him a disgruntled look, but accepted the drink with a nod. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now sit back and chill the fu-uh-uh-doodle out.”

Rupert’s lips twitched. “Fadoodle?”

“You know what I mean,” Callum said with a glare.

For once, Rupert didn’t fight him when even Callum knew he was being a highhanded prick. It was a quiet and unexpectedly pleasant journey after that.

In typical Rupert style, Hotel Le St-James was the swankiest place in town. Callum didn’t really care one way or the other, other than feeling like the proverbial bull in the china shop around all that spindly French furniture.

Rupert was checking them into the suite he’d reserved when the woman behind the counter smiled at Callum with Oliver in his arms. “Your son is adorable.”

“Thank you,” he and Rupert murmured simultaneously. Callum grinned, figuring it was easier than trying to explain their situation to a stranger.

Rupert was signing the last of the paperwork when a loud voice boomed across the hushed lobby.

“Callum Morrison!”

Every head in the massive, echoing room turned toward that voice, then toward Callum.

Callum’s heart stopped dead as Markus Jergeson strode toward him. Callum had been enjoying a certain anonymity, hoping his face was not immediately recognizable, but his fucking name clearly was. Especially when it was being shouted by Montreal’s favorite son and power forward.

Rupert stared at Callum wide-eyed, but it was nothing compared to the bug-eyed stares from the team of five people behind the counter who’d just checked him into a hotel room with another man and a boy they’d just acknowledged as
their
son.

Jergeson smiled widely, completely unaware of the shit storm he’d just unleashed. Callum and Jergeson weren’t really friends, but after ten years in the league together, they had a lot of shared history, and had even spent a season on the same team. Even with all that, Callum had noreason to trust that Jergeson, or anyone else bearing witness to this fiasco, wouldn’t be emailing Deadspin within minutes.

“Give me Oliver,” Rupert hissed and Callum practically dumped the boy into Rupert’s arms.

Then he was thrusting out his hand and shaking Jergeson’s heartily, with back slaps and shoulder bumps and all the usual manly shit. Callum was transparently awkward through it all. He wanted to run. He wanted to snatch the phones from the growing crowd’s hands and stomp them under his heel.

“And who’s this?” Jergeson asked, turning to Rupert and Oliver. Rupert looked like he was pinned to the spot, his eyes darting to Callum’s for guidance.

“Uh…” Callum stalled, trying to figure out the best way to handle this.

“I’m Rupert Smythe. And this is my brother, Oliver,” Rupert said, saving Callum from making this even more awkward.

Jergeson smiled and shook hands and tried to engage Oliver, who smiled shyly. Callum was proud of how well he was doing, which maybe was too obvious on Callum’s face, given how Jergeson was now looking back and forth between Callum and Oliver, his expression thoughtful.

“So!” Callum began, winced, then dialed his volume way down. “How have you been?”

Jergeson cocked his head. “Just fine. Enjoying the off-season. How about you?”

“Oh yeah. Me, too. Been up in Moncton. Working with the team.”

“The team?”

Oh, right. Not everyone knew everything about his life. “The Ice Cats. The Moncton Ice Cats. EHL team, I’m part owner. Doing construction. Well, I mean, I’m helping manage the project. Not actually doing the construction, of course. And Rupert here is the team’s manager.”

He glanced over at Rupert and got
exactly
the look that bout of verbal diarrhea warranted.

“How’s the season looking?” Jergeson asked Rupert politely, obviously making an effort to keep this conversation on the rails. Callum was oddly grateful and terrified at the same time.

“Good. That’s why we’re here, actually,” Rupert said smoothly. “Going to sign a new goalie.”

“That’s great. Can I ask who you’re going after?”

Rupert smiled benignly. “No.”

Jergeson threw back his head and laughed. “Okay. I get it. Well, good luck with that.”

They chatted for a few minutes about Montreal. Jergeson suggested a few places they could go for supper that Oliver might like, and Rupert complimented Jergeson on his previous season. It was easy. Rupert
made
it easy by picking up the conversational slack when Callum was too busy worrying over the pictures being taken. Wondering who the front desk clerk was talking to on the phone.

“Callum?”

“What? Oh sorry,” he said, guessing he was supposed to have contributed something to the conversation.

“I was just saying,” Jergeson said kindly, “that I have to get going. It was good to see you,” he said, shaking Callum’s hand. “And to meet both of you.” He and Rupert shook, then Jergeson held out his hand to Oliver, who studied it for a second before placing his against Jergeson’s palm.

“Nice to meet you,” Oliver said primly, sounding so much like his brother that Callum grinned.

“And you as well, Oliver,” Jergeson returned, then sent Callum one last look. “You all have a good night,” he said with a wink, then turned on his heel and left.