We were there for a long-ass time, too, since that was just how emergency rooms were these days. Fortunately, Daryl had thought to bring a charger and Scott had a spare battery, so our phones would keep going for the time being.

  At Scott’s insistence, we all went along with the story that one of the horses had hit him in the face with her head. Most of the staff seemed to buy it, and Daryl had said in the car that it was a solid alibi. I didn’t have experience with horses, but according to both of them, getting smacked in the face by a horse’s head really could do some damage, and it could absolutely look like someone had taken a punch.

  I wanted to suggest they tell the truth and get the cops involved. I didn’t give two flying fucks that the assailant was Scott’s dad. He’d practically laid Scott out, and that was assault and battery if I ever saw it. The fucker deserved whatever came to him for hitting his son like that.

  But I kept my mouth shut. After a while, a light came on in my head, and I realized the alibi wasn’t to keep Scott’s dad from going to jail. Scott didn’t want the police report—which was public record—and potential media coverage. If it surfaced that Scott Deacon’s father had been arrested for assaulting him, then sooner or later, someone was going to say why he’d hit him.

  How fucking sad was that? This man was so terrified of coming out thanks to his toxic mess of a family that he couldn’t even press charges because then he’d be outed publicly.

  Ugh. Fuck these people.

  Since there was concern about a concussion, not to mention a history of TBI, Scott did get quite a bit of attention as soon as we arrived. He was triaged pretty fast, and both a nurse and a doctor ran him through some various cognitive and other tests for people with head injuries.

  After that, they relaxed a little, which Scott took to mean they didn’t think he was seriously hurt. They still wanted to do some scans to be absolutely sure, but nobody was acting like he was seconds away from hemorrhaging or anything. Daryl seemed less worried, and so did Scott, so I tried to follow suit, but I was a worrier, so…fuck it.

  At one point, they wheeled him out for a CT scan, leaving Daryl and me in the room alone.

  As soon as Scott and the nurse were gone, Daryl said, “That took a lot of courage, you know.”

  “I know.” I sighed. “Coming out to people like that must be scary as hell.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  I turned to him.

  With a smile, he said, “I meant standing up for Scott the way you did.”

  “What else could I do? I wasn’t going to let that asshole—err, that jerk whale on him.”

  “I wasn’t either. But it still takes courage to step in front of someone like that.”

  My cheeks warmed, and I wasn’t sure why. “I think that was anger more than courage. I was just so pissed that he’d laid a hand on Scott.”

  “Me too.” Daryl’s voice hardened. “I prayed for a long time that none of Mitch’s kids or nieces or nephews were gay. He tried to hide how disgusted he was when my boy came out, but I saw it, and I hoped no kid would ever have to come out to that man. Maybe it’s a blessing that Scott was older when he told him.”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek. It was hard to see a silver lining in Scott being closeted for so long, but I couldn’t really argue with Daryl, either. Maybe Mitch wouldn’t have hit his son so hard if he’d been younger and smaller. I’d never know.

  “It just sucks,” I finally said. “I can’t even imagine ever hurting my daughter or turning her away. It makes me sick just thinking about it.”

  Daryl grunted in agreement. “Me too.” He paused. “How does your daughter get along with Scott?”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “He hasn’t spent much time with her yet—we’re still kind of easing into things—but give her a little while and she’ll have him wrapped around her finger.”

  Nodding, Daryl laughed. “Oh, I don’t doubt that. He’s always been great with kids. If she ever shows any interest in learning to skate, she’ll definitely have him wrapped around her finger.”

  I laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Sobering, I glanced toward the door Scott had gone through. As I shifted in the chair, trying to keep some muscles from getting obnoxiously stiff, I said, “I just can’t imagine her ever being afraid to approach any of us—me, her mom, her stepdad—about something like being gay. The way Scott’s dad acts, the kids must have been terrified of him growing up. Not even about coming out, but like telling him they got a bad grade or they broke a window.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “Really?”

  “Mmhmm. I’ve known Mitch Deacon for a long, long time. You saw him at his very worst, but he can be a good man and a good father. He genuinely wants to do right by God and his family.” Sighing, Daryl shook his head. “But he came from a family of people who think gay people are the worst of the worst, and I don’t think anyone short of the Lord Himself could get that poison out of him.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “You still think he’s a good person?”

  “It isn’t really my place to decide who is and who isn’t. I think he believes he is. I think he wants to be. But what I do know is that when I was faced with a choice of loving my son or rejecting him because he happens to love men, I couldn’t lose my son. Mitch? He can. And I won’t abide by that. Not in my house.” With a subtle snarl, he added, “Especially not with violence.”

  “Good,” I said. “I think that was great for Scott too, you throwing his father out instead of him. He’s been so convinced for all this time that no one would support him.”

  “I know.” Daryl smiled. “But he’s got support. And I’m so glad to see he has it at home too.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  Today had been shitty, and Scott would be dealing with the aftermath for a long time to come.

  But at least he wouldn’t be facing it alone.

  The hospital finally released Scott around midnight, after we’d been there for… Hell, I didn’t even know what time we’d gotten there, only that we’d been in this disinfectant-scented purgatory for a long, long time.

  Fortunately, all his various scans and tests came back clear. The blow hadn’t been as bad as it had looked, and this concussion was very, very mild. Beyond some minor headaches and maybe some slight vertigo (mostly thanks to his previous head injuries), he’d be fine. He was given the usual list of symptoms to watch out for and a recommendation to follow up with his regular doctor. It was also gently suggested that he let me drive home, or at least over the mountain passes, since altitude changes could make some of the mild-but-annoying symptoms worse.

  All in all, it came down to “You were smart to get checked out, but you’re good to go.”

  Daryl drove us by the hotel to pick up our things, then took us back to his house. His wife had apparently set up the guest room while we were at the hospital, and there was nothing to do now except collapse for the night.

  Despite some aches and pains I slept like the dead in Scott’s arms. The next morning, though, he looked like he hadn’t slept in a month. After we’d gotten up, showered, and dressed, he still seemed ready to keel over

  “Hey.” I put a hand on his waist. “How are you feeling?”

  Without meeting my gaze, he sighed, shoulders slouching as he sat down on the edge of the bed. “Like shit.”

  Alarm prickled my neck. I sat beside him and took his hand. “Your head? Do you need something, or should I call the—”

  “No. No. My head’s fine.” He leaned forward and rubbed his neck with both hands. “I mean, it’s my head, but like… in my head.”

  “Oh.” I rested a hand between his shoulders. He’d been through hell yesterday, and I didn’t imagine he’d processed everything that had gone down when his dad was here. “You want to talk about it?”

  Silence. I waited, gnawing on my lip because I wanted to offer words of comfort or… or something. But I was also trying to follow his lead. I didn’t know what else to do.

  After a while, he whispered, “I don’t think I can do this.”

  “You already did the hard part,” I said softly. “Coming out sucks, but coming out to them was your biggest fear, wasn’t it?”

  Scott pushed out a long, ragged breath. “That’s not what I mean.”

  I waited again, confused as hell.

  “I want to,” he said so softly I barely heard him. “God, I do. I have so many feelings for you. So goddamned many. But I don’t even know who I am anymore, or what I am, and I haven’t liked myself in so long, I don’t think I remember how.” Exhaling hard, he shook his head as he stared at the floor. “Fuck. Hunter, you’re everything I would have wanted in a man if I’d ever let myself, and the last thing you deserve is to be chained to a train wreck like me.”

  It took me a second to follow where he was going with this—what exactly he’d meant when he said he didn’t think he could do this—and when I did, my heart dropped. “Wait, what?” I stood. “Are you saying… Do you want to bail on us because of—that doesn’t make sense!”

  He looked up at me, exhaustion and hurt written all over his face and his wet eyes. “Dude, I don’t even know how to be me, or like me, or… I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. How am I supposed to know how to be what you need?”

  I blinked. “What? That’s…” I shook my head. “Scott. You’re what I want. Full stop. I didn’t come all the way out here to support you coming out to your family because you’re a good client or some shit. I did it because… I did it for you. Because I want you to be happy and have support. Not because I thought you were… I don’t know.” I threw up a hand. “Like you were just going to magically put a bow around your entire past and move on like a well-adjusted gay man who’s been out of the closet his whole life? Come on. I know you’ve got a lot to work through. But I’m here.”

  Scott sighed, dropping his gaze again. His shoulders slumped, and my heart sank. It didn’t feel like walls were going up or he was shutting me out. More like he was giving up? Resigning himself to… what, exactly?

  And then my heart hit the floor.

  Because I knew exactly what was happening. Whenever he saw his family, all that indoctrination and self-loathing tried to drag him back into the hole he’d been in for the last twenty-some-odd years. I hadn’t thought it would happen again after he’d stood his ground and told them who he was, but goddamn, there it was.

  “Scott.” I stepped closer to him. “This can work. You and me.”

  He lifted his gaze again, and there was a glimmer of tears in his eyes, but I swore there was also a glimmer of hope. An unspoken, “Please tell me there’s a way, because I don’t see how.” Or maybe I was projecting because I wanted him to want a solution.

  “There isn’t some magic answer I can give you to convince you we can do this,” I said. “All I can do is tell you that the way I feel when I’m with you—that’s worth whatever it takes to make this work. We don’t have to have it all figured out this minute.” I paused, and though I dreaded the answer, I asked anyway: “Do you want to be with me?”

  He lowered his gaze and didn’t answer.

  “For God’s sake, Scott. You almost knocked your dad the hell out because he was about to come at me. Doesn’t that tell you something about…?” I gestured at each of us.

  Scott flinched. “I get it. I mean it, I do. But I can’t do this. I have no idea how to—”

  “Stop second-guessing if you can do it.” Panic had my heart pounding harder than it had when we’d faced off with his family. “Do you want to do this?”

  He winced, wiping a hand over his face.

  “Scott. Look at me.”

  He hesitated, but faced me.

  I forced my voice to stay even. “You were into this before your dad opened his mouth. What changed? Do you actually believe the shit he was spewing? Because he was wrong. About all of it.”

  Scott leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and rubbing his hands over his face. Then he dropped his hands and looked up at me. “No, I don’t. I know he’s wrong. But talking to him… it just…” He blew out a breath. “It brings it all back, you know? All the shit I’ve felt since I was a kid.”

  “I know it does.” I sat down beside him and reached for his hand. “But hasn’t he had enough control over you? He and the rest of your family have beaten you down all this time. Do you want them to take this away too?”

  Scott stared down at our hands, and his voice was shaky as he said, “It’s not that I want to let him take it away. I just don’t think I can do it.”

  “Why not? We’ve been doing it, practically from the start. How is—”

  “How am I supposed to love you?” he threw back, meeting my gaze with tear-filled eyes. “I want to. God, I do. But how am I supposed to love you like you deserve when I hate myself this much?”

  I blinked, as startled by the confession as I was taken aback by the question. But then I shook my head. “Of course you can. You have been all along.”

  “But I—”

  “Scott, all that crap about how you have to love yourself before you love someone else is bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit.”

  He stared at me, confusion written all over his face.

  I softened my voice. “It’s just a lie to make people believe there’s something wrong with them instead of admitting that they were dating the wrong people or a way to believe that they don’t deserve to be with someone unless they’re fucking perfect. It’s just a goddamned lie.”

  “But how do—”

  “Damn it, you idiot!” I threw up my hands. “Let me love you, and you'll learn how!”

  Scott’s teeth snapped shut. He stared at me. I stared back at him.

  Then the corner of his mouth twitched, and as my words echoed in my ears, I couldn’t quite tamp down a laugh. Once I let loose, so did he, and we both shook our heads and cracked up.

  As he started to pull himself together, he slid closer and wrapped his arms around me. “’Damn it, you idiot, let me love you’.” Chuckling, he pressed his lips to my forehead. “Shakespeare would be proud of something that romantic.”

  Okay, so as romantic declarations went, it wasn’t great, but it had gotten the point across, and I’d have sung I’m a Little Teapot if the result was Scott holding me like this.

  He sighed into my hair. “I love you,” he whispered. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, and I barely know who the hell I am, but I know that much.”

  “I’m pretty sure we can work with that.” I lifted my chin and indulged in a long, gentle kiss. “And I love you too.”

  He smiled, cupped the back of my neck, and kissed me, long and sweet.

  “By the way?” I smiled up at him, running my fingers through his hair. “You’re a lot better at this than you think.”

  “What? Kissing?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I mean, yes, you’re an amazing kisser. But I meant this. Us. Everything.”

  His forehead creased, his eyes full of questions.

  I sighed, caressing his cheek. “Baby. You bought my entire family cars because you didn’t want us stressing about repairs and transportation anymore. When you realized how much floating helped with my pain, you made sure I could do it as often as I needed to.” I laughed. “You paid our rent, for God’s sake. For a year. I’m not saying you’re good at this because you buy me shit—I’m not about that at all—but you care about people. You care about me and my family, and you show it by trying to make life better for all of us.” I smiled. “And you’ll be wrapped around my little girl’s finger before much longer.”

  Scott swallowed hard. “Really?”

  “Mmhmm.” I lifted my chin and kissed him softly. “Face it—you’ve been boyfriend material from the start. You just didn’t realize it.”

  He exhaled, then gathered me in his arms, buried his face against my neck, and just held me. I let him lean, wondering if he felt the way my pulse was steadily coming down now that the danger of losing him didn’t seem so imminent. I didn’t blame him for almost bolting. Darting back into the closet was how he’d coped after every time he’d seen his family, and he’d told me after the last two visits how hard it was not to give in to that temptation. This time, he’d faced down his worst fear, which had come to fruition exactly the way he’d always expected it to. The safety of the closet had to be one hell of a siren’s song after that.

  But he was still here. Still holding me close. My flailing efforts to keep him on this side of those doors had been clumsy at best, but they’d worked, and I hadn’t lost him.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered after a while, not loosening his embrace at all. “I don’t know how this is going to work going forward, but…” He finally drew back and met my gaze with fresh tears in his eyes. “Whatever it takes. I’m in.”

  “Me too. I don’t care if you don’t know how to be a boyfriend.” I touched his face. “I’ll figure it out with you.”

  Scott’s eyebrows rose. “But you’ve done this before.”

  “Not with you.”

  He held my gaze, eyes wide with disbelief. Slowly, though, he smiled. He pulled me in closer, and my God, I would never get over how soft his lips were against mine. I sighed as I wrapped my arms around him again, letting the kiss linger and deepen and reassure me that we were still here. Scott wasn’t going back into the closet. Not this time.

  His hand curved behind my neck, and he took in a deep breath through his nose as he kissed me a little deeper. A little harder. There was heat behind it now. Hunger and need.

  And then he went for my neck, and I had to hold on to his shoulders just to keep from melting to the floor.

  “I want you so bad,” he breathed against my throat. “Right now.”

  I shivered. “Are you… Your head… Do—”

  “My head’s fine.” He came up and found my mouth again, pausing just long enough to murmur, “God, baby, I want you.”

  “Mmph. Me too.”