I don’t think I want to see his face, so I shut my eyes.
“Do you think it’s going to be bad?”
“Of course. I don’t know. I don’t care.” I put my hand over my eyes. I hate how I’m almost crying. Vance’s lips brush my jaw. He comes closer to me, wraps me up against him.
“This was missing at the hospital,” he says softly. “Drove me fucking crazy not to touch you like this.”
“Did you want to?”
“Yes. Illogically.” He sounds chagrined.
“I want to make it logically. But I don’t know if I can.”
He frowns deeply.
“Vance…sometimes people—”
“Are fucking nuts?”
That makes me smile. “It’s not funny. But yeah.”
“It’s going to be hardest for you…I would think.”
I nod. My stomach pitches.
“If I said no,” he murmurs. “That I think I can’t…be with you. What would you do? You could walk it back. Deny it. Did you know the coverage is still somewhat open ended right now? No one has a statement from you.”
“Up in Ottawa, I married my friend. To a man. It was my first gay wedding.” I shake my head slightly. “I don’t do gay weddings.” I look at him, to see if his face can tell me that he understands. “I can’t marry people like us. Or…I don’t.”
He looks sad. He nods.
“I’m not coming out for you, V. That night at the dinner in Manhattan, I lost it.” I stop to breathe. And swallow. My voice is scratchy and my throat hurts now from overuse. “Someone told me…they heard about the elders. Hoped I shut it down. But with a slur. I told him I hoped he would keep opinions to himself…on things he didn’t know about.”
Vance’s face transforms. “Did you say that?”
“Yeah.” I shut my eyes. “And then I walked out.”
“It scared you.”
“A lot.”
“Fuck, Luke. That makes so much sense.” His lips are on my hair.
“I had told them no…my friends from school. But…I said yes. Because to think about them…getting married…” I swallow as my eyes sting. “It made me think about you. And I couldn’t stand to think someone would…not marry us.”
He hugs me a little tighter. “It’s a strange hurt. Stranger for you. I didn’t know,” he adds.
“About me up in Ottawa? How would you? I was in my head about it. I needed to think.” I squeeze my eyes shut. “And I trusted you to trust me.”
“How could I?”
I open up my eyes and look at him. “I said I loved you.”
He sighs. Rubs at his face. “Yeah. I’m sorry. Maybe it was me who didn’t have enough faith in you. When I realized that you guys got home on Sunday and you hadn’t even texted…” He shakes his head. “Then I saw you with her.” His jaw tightens.
I sigh. “It was my fault. I never…gave much. I was so scared.”
His mouth brushes my hair. His hand rubs a circle on my back. “I know, dude. I gotcha.”
I run my hand down his abs. “I love you, Luke.” I move lower. He’s half hard and growing under my touch. I groan. “I’ve missed this.”
“Don’t tease me, Luke.”
I run my hands over him. “I need you. Before I have to go to the board. And go out…and deal with people…knowing…judging. I want to be with you.”
“Well shit, that’s not compelling.” He shakes his head. “You’ve got that nurse coming in fifteen minutes.” He tucks his erection back into his boxer-briefs.
I rub my own. “After.”
“If you still feel like it.” He touches his forehead to mine. “Luke. I want you to really be sure. I can’t do the back and forth stuff. Not even for you.”
“I’m sure. Of you,” I whisper. “What I’m less sure of is my work.”
“Really?” I can’t tell what he thinks, so I shut my eyes. I don’t want see his face, know his opinion right now.
I nod. “I’m just…really tired. I have a showbiz smile,” I whisper, thinking back to what Pearl says.
“You mean like your public smile, the one you do when you’re out places?”
I nod.
“I’ve got one of those, too. Yours is just a fuck lot better than the rest of ours.”
I smile a little. “I just want to live a real life. I don’t want to compromise it.”
“Yeah, but this is your work.”
“Maybe I could change it somehow.”
“Why should you have to? Because of who you love?”
I shut my eyes again. “Doesn’t matter. ‘Why should.’ It just is—or isn’t. Anyway,” I whisper. “May not get an option.”
“If they wanted to, could the elders ask you to go?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that’s likely?”
I shrug. I don’t want to speculate. It’s painful in a way I feel too tired to explain right now. “Every person on the board…knows me.”
“So they should come at it from that angle.”
I take a long, slow breath to stop my spinning head. “I don’t know.”
His lips brush my forehead. “Are you hungry? I went out into the den a little earlier, and Pearl was making pancakes.”