Grey's Awakening (25 page)

Sirus looked to Grey and found a man quietly focused, listening intently to every word Sirus shared. The intensity caused a flip-flopping in Sirus’s stomach and tied up his tongue. Grey was so attractive, smart, successful and decisive in his choices that Sirus had to wonder if his worries and fears seemed small and silly to this man. He began to sweat a little as he considered whether in his wildest dreams, even if he somehow got Grey, that he’d be an exciting enough person to hold his attention for long.

Don’t get ahead of yourself, Wilder. Not this time. You got to fuck him once, and he
has asked about your family. Neither thing amounts to a marriage proposal. Not even
close.

“Do you want to stop?” Grey asked, making Sirus realize he must have been silent for longer than he had thought. “Did you decide you don’t want to talk, after all?”

“No. Sorry.” Sirus scrubbed his face and wiped away the worry. “It wasn’t that.” He rolled the conversation back in his mind and found the place where he’d left off. “I think acknowledging my homosexuality is twisted up in my mom’s head with knowing that if she does, and is proud of me in every way, and brags about me or a partner, then she’ll have to tell her father that I’m gay. That will sever any tie they still share, for good.” It killed Sirus just thinking about cutting off communication with his mother, so his heart bled for her position, even though it affected him too. “In my grandfather’s eyes, not only will my mother have gone against his wishes and married beneath her, but then she went and had a son who turned out to be a fag… Nope, that would do it for my grandfather.

Not only would I not be welcome in his home, but I’m pretty sure he’d fully disown my mother too.” Sirus grimaced. The idea of tearing apart two families, even as he knew he couldn’t change who he was in order to keep them together, weighed heavy on his soul.

“I think my mother is hiding in this in-between place, pretending what I am doesn’t really exist. If she did, she would have to deal with it on a lot of fronts, not just with me. She’s clearly not ready to do that. I suppose I can even understand it, on some level.” Suddenly, Sirus shook his head, cleared the heaviness of family history, and put his attention back on Grey. “Of course, that’s all just a theory. If she’ll never even talk to me about it, that’s all it will ever be. I’ll never know for sure.”

Grey nodded, his cheek rubbing against his forearm as he did it. He stared at Sirus, quiet for a long moment, his eyes looking as if they tracked back through the conversation like words on a page. Eventually, the internal mapping seemed to stop, and Grey settled his focus on Sirus again, his eyes full of sympathy. “I would guess the fact that your mother so obviously loves you must make it tougher on you. I think it might be easier to deal with just being tossed out on your ass; at least you know where you stand with someone like that.” Grey’s face hardened, but in a flash the hint of emotion disappeared. “Your mother is clearly not homophobic, at least not in the sense that she’s afraid to touch you or be near you, a
gay
man. Her hug and happiness to see you looked very real to me, and I’m not half bad at reading people. There was never even the slightest cringe toward
you
. She just wouldn’t
see
me.”

“Yeah, but I’m old enough now and clear enough about what I want in my life that accepting me also means accepting a man as my partner. I need that now.” Visions of some of Sirus’s siblings and their spouses filled his head. The love and acceptance he constantly witnessed in their marriages twisted a ball of envy and
wanting
in his gut. “I don’t have the patience or energy anymore for bullshit and games. Least of all from a member of my own family.”

“Families are complicated and messy.” Grey closed his eyes, blocking Sirus’s one constant avenue to reading this man. A shudder jerked through Grey, leaving
Sirus
cold.

When Grey opened his eyes again, the bleakness living there ripped right through Sirus’s heart. “I broke mine up when I was nine years old,” Grey said, his voice agonizingly soft.

“Tore Kelsie right out of the arms of my mom and dad, and we never saw them again.”

Oh God
.
He’s giving me something personal
. Sirus held his breath and tried not to make the slightest movement, noise, or anything that would alert Grey to the fact that he was once again sharing something intimate, and as a result possibly shut him down.

“My parents were not exactly what you would call capable or functioning members of society. Even less so as caretakers of two children.” Grey looked at a place beyond Sirus, but Sirus could see his eyes clear as day. The unforgiving glint in the hazel depths did war with a film of moisture battling not to fall. “Not everything can be turned into a fun wilderness adventure, you know? Kids need a specific amount of calories in their everyday diet and certain nutrients for their bodies to grow properly. They need hot, running water to keep clean, and heat when the weather turns cold. You willfully don’t even try to give your kids those things, and they should be taken away from you.” Grey’s voice grew rougher with each statement, and, with each sentence, he successfully blinked the threat of tears away. Finally, he looked at Sirus, back in control, and said, “Even if one of their own kids is the one that makes it happen.”

“You mentioned a grandmother,” Sirus said, treading gently, “and Kelsie has in passing too. She’s the one who came and took you from your parents?”

“Yeah.” Grey lifted his head, his hands trembling just the slightest bit as he ran them through his hair. “But I found her number and I’m the one who called her. She was my mother’s mother, but they were estranged. I deliberately made that call and alerted her to the squalor Kelsie and I were living in. I told her she needed to come see it for herself and then make a decision about whether she wanted to do something about it before I took Kelsie and ran away.”

“God, Grey.” Sirus couldn’t keep the shock out of his voice. “That must have been so hard. You were just a kid. They were your parents.”

Grey frowned, and went stiff. “I had to do it. They didn’t give me any choice.” Sharp defensiveness rang in his tone. “I was already very linear, even back then. I surmised that if these two people didn’t care enough to pull their heads out of their ‘la-de-da, isn’t the natural way of living beautiful’ asses and give proper care to their two children, then they weren’t really my parents anyway. By the time my grandmother came, assessed the situation, and took us under her care, I didn’t think of that man and woman as Dad and Mom. They didn’t fight for us, at least not more than a token few words with my grandmother. I knew they wouldn’t. They were just people to me by then, and we happened to share some DNA.” His mouth thinned, his lips turning pale. “Kelsie didn’t, though.” Shadows darkened Grey’s hazel eyes to almost pure green. “Christ, she was so mad when my grandmother took us away.”

“She knew you did it?” Unable to help himself, Sirus crawled across the bed and faced Grey, wrapping his arm around the man’s bent legs. “She turned that anger on you?”

Grey nodded, the movement jerky. “I didn’t lie to her about it, but I also didn’t tell her about it beforehand, just in case my grandmother didn’t come. The situation was bad at our house. I needed to get her out of there, but for Kelsie it ended up being a blindside.

She hadn’t disconnected from our parents the way I had, and I underestimated how terrifying leaving would be for her.”

“For you too, I would imagine.”

“No.” Grey shook his head, absolute vehemence in the sharp shake. “The only thing that scared me was every day that went by where Kelsie refused to talk to me. I was so scared I’d made a choice that ended up losing me the only thing I ever wanted to make sure I had: my sister. I never cried when I made that call to my grandmother, and I never shed a tear when I walked away from my parents, but dealing with Kelsie’s anger …

that’s where I was weak. That first night away and every night afterward for two weeks where Kelsie didn’t talk to me, I cried myself to sleep, so terrified I’d done the wrong thing.” Grey turned away, giving Sirus the back of his head and the stark, naked lines of his back. “Goddamn it, though,” a hand went up and swiped at his hidden face, “I knew it was the only thing I could do.”

“Hey, hey.” His heart breaking, Sirus turned Grey back around and forced damp eyes to meet his. “She came around. From what I hear in your voice when you talk about her, I think she’s right up there with John as your best friend. I know she feels the same about you. You both look so different and you present opposing personalities to the world, but deep down I think you’re very similar in who you are at your cores.”

Grey nodded within the tight hold of Sirus’s fingers. “John says the same thing.”

“John’s a really smart man.”

A choppy burst of laughter escaped Grey, and some of the spark of amber light returned to his hazel eyes. “Ergo, you are too, huh?” He peeled Sirus’s hands off his head and pressed a kiss to the palm of each one. “I guess you are, at that.” He looked away and put his focus on the wall, holding it there. “You’re certainly a very talented artist; there’s no doubting that.”

Sirus gritted his teeth against correcting Grey’s comment. This moment wasn’t about him and his hobby.

“You did that piece on the wall.” Grey jerked his head toward the three dimensional mountain scene. “Didn’t you?”

Okay, so he wants to change the subject. All right. I can live with that. He’s given me
more than I ever thought he would, and it has clearly taken an emotional toll.

“I did,” Sirus answered, almost reluctantly. “I like to experiment, and that was my second attempt to create a textured piece that had a flat back and could be mounted on a wall, as you can do with a painting. The first attempt was truly awful, but while this one has a ton of mistakes, I ended up liking how the shades of the wood grain seemed to hit in just the right places and give the image lots of depth. If you look at it closely, you can see it’s not good enough to grace anyone else’s walls, but I didn’t want to get rid of it, so I ended up hanging it there. Lots of the stuff that ends up in my house are the first stages of trying something new, with lots of mistakes and flaws.”

Grey let go of Sirus and got up, walking right up to the carving. He started at one end and scrutinized his way right to the other, occasionally lifting a hand and running his fingers over the ridges. “I can’t see any mistakes, and I don’t think you’d have any trouble selling it.”

“Trust me, they’re there.” Reluctantly, Sirus stood and walked to the wall too, stopping at Grey’s side. “See?” He pointed to the lower left side of the piece. “Right here I miscalculated the scale of the trees to the mountain, and in the overall dimensions they’re so big they could be toothpicks for giants.”

Leaning in and then back, examining the area Sirus had pointed out, Grey finally said, “They’re not that big.” He glanced at Sirus and rolled his eyes. “You’re being overly critical. There’s so much detail over the whole piece I wouldn’t have even noticed them if you hadn’t pointed it out.”

“Doesn’t mean the mistake isn’t there. Or a half-dozen others, for that matter. And no,” Sirus held up his hand when Grey opened his mouth, uninterested in keeping the focus on his artwork, “I’m not going to point them out to you. If you stare long enough, you’ll see them for yourself. You can do that if you want. Or,” he trailed his finger down Grey’s chest, ending at his thatch of pubic hair, “you can come back to bed.”

A half-smile touched Grey’s lips, and it reached all the way up into his eyes in a way that got Sirus’s heart thudding. Grey lifted his fingers to Sirus’s chest and started to slide them down his middle too, but they abruptly stopped on the edge of his tattoo. “Do you regret getting this?”

Sirus rubbed his palm over the mustang tattoo, long ago having memorized its exact position and intricate design. “For a long time it hurt to see it,” he admitted. “But ultimately I think looking at it every day made me face the break-up with Paul faster than I might have otherwise.” Sirus made eye contact with Grey and raised a brow. “I literally could not run from a very real symbol of my relationship with him.”

“You could have had it removed,” Grey said. “I understand it hurts like hell, but it can be done.”

Sirus shook his head and took a step back, letting Grey’s hand fall away from him. “I couldn’t have done that.” He put his hand over the tattoo, almost in protection of the very idea of laser removal. “I thought about it, for about a second, then I remembered how hard Kelsie worked on getting the design just perfect to her high standards, and I couldn’t just have it removed like it was nothing.”

“Right.” Nodding, Grey’s attention drifted from the tattoo to Sirus’s piece on the wall, then moved back to Sirus. “One artist respects another’s work.”

“No.” With effort, Sirus bit his tongue and kept the irritation to correct Grey’s mistaken “artist” label out of his tone. “One friend respects the time and effort another friend took in the creation of the design on his behalf. I think of that now when I look at it. Rarely do I think of Paul.” As Sirus said those words, the truth of them settled in on him in a way they never had before.

I’m over Paul. Completely.

Wow. Sirus was momentarily stunned that the realization wasn’t even that big a deal to him. It just … was.

Sirus looked at Grey and took in the stunning beauty of the naked man before him, whose heart and mind he was getting to know very well. A deep sense of rightness—well beyond what he’d ever experienced for any other man—settled on him and sank right into his heart. It didn’t matter that Grey might not ever love him back, or that this fling might not last beyond next week, Sirus knew and accepted he was a better man right now for having known Greyson Cole.

He didn’t intend to waste a minute of the time they had together talking about a tattoo or a carving on his wall.

“Come with me.” Sirus beckoned Grey with the crook of his finger as he walked backward around the bed.

Grey followed, his eyes already filling with dark heat. “What is on your mind, Wilder?” It suddenly felt as if Grey stalked Sirus, rather than allowing himself to be led.