Neither of us moved as we stared each other down. And then he did it. He held out his fucking hand.
His touch…it was like a goddamn magnet. I didn’t understand it.
But I was also too tired to fight it. There was no logic to what I was doing. Not in going with him. Not in continuing on my own. But I kept going back to that moment the night before when I’d wrapped my arms around him and finally felt safe…and free. Would it be so wrong to have a little more of that?
I stepped forward and put my right hand in his. His grip was gentle on my injured hand as he helped me settle on the back of the bike. He reached behind my left thigh and pulled a helmet free from some kind of clip and handed it to me. I worked it over my head, mindful of my hand, and waited until he put his own helmet on. Then he was reaching behind him to grab my arms and wrap them around his waist. Logically, I’d known I’d probably have to hang onto him like this, but actually doing it was causing a maelstrom of emotions to go through me. I wanted to both jump off the bike and lean into him at the same time. I settled for in between and held myself stiff as I gripped his hips. But as soon as the bike got moving and picked up speed, I knew it wasn’t going to work, and I gave up and leaned against Vincent’s back. I tried to tell myself it was purely for safety purposes, but I was tired of lying to myself. There would be plenty of time for that later.
The ride took about an hour, and by the time we reached our destination, I found that I didn’t really care anymore where we were going. It wasn’t until Vincent turned off the bike and rubbed his hand over where mine were joined together on his abdomen that I snapped out of my daze and straightened. I’d been admiring the view during the entire drive and hadn’t realized at first that we were going higher up in elevation until we’d gotten out of a particularly heavy section of forest and I’d seen the valley below us. The place Vincent had stopped was an overlook of some kind. I climbed off the bike and set my helmet on the seat after Vincent dismounted.
I watched Vincent loop his helmet over one of the handlebars of the bike, and then he was moving towards several large rocks that were just a few feet from the edge of the overlook. There were no other people around, so I didn’t have to worry about being recognized. I followed Vincent, but when he leaned against the rocks and just studied our surroundings, I held back. It would have been easy to move to his side and pretend we were there for different reasons than we were.
“The bike belonged to my boyfriend,” he said as he glanced at me and then looked at the bike. “One of his favorite things to do was come up to these mountains when we were on leave.”
“You were in the military?” I asked, despite my promise to myself to let him do the talking.
He nodded. “I enlisted first. David joined up a year later when he graduated high school.”
“You were together in high school?”
“We grew up together. Both military brats. Our parents were friends. There were a few times our fathers were stationed at different bases, but by the time we were fifteen, they were both working for the Department of Defense, so we lived in Virginia. Went to the same high school. It was the most natural thing for us to end up together.”
I couldn’t help myself. I ended up moving closer to Vincent so I could see his expressions as he spoke. I didn’t even really care why he was telling me this.
“We weren’t out to our families back then…those times were a lot different. So we had to sneak around. I think my father knew, but it was one of those things everyone just pretended wasn’t really happening. I finally came out to my parents when I was eighteen.”
“What happened?”
Vincent shrugged. “My mother cried a lot, my father said I was ruining my life. Said I’d never amount to anything if the military found out I was a fag.”
I flinched at the word. “Why was that important?” I asked. “The military part.”
He smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile. “Because the military and the St. James family went together like peanut butter and jelly. You couldn’t have one without the other.”
I settled on the rock next to him. “I hate peanut butter,” I murmured, which earned me another smile, this one genuine. “Did you want that? To be in the military, I mean?”