Sugar and Ice - RJ Scott Page 0,58

took to handle the young pups.

Colorado arrived at dusk, guitar in hand, and flopped down on the rocks we’d been stretched out on as we dried off. The rock star gave us all a smiling assessment.

“You guys are like the rock center of my world.” He rapped knuckles with Ryker who was resting his head on Jacob’s belly. I found myself staring at Tate, who was leaning back on his arms, face to the softly darkening sky, hair knotted from water play. I’d never seen him so beautiful aside from when I was making love to him. It was now or never, I decided.

“Tate and I are lovers,” I blurted out.

All eyes swiveled from Colorado who’d been tuning his guitar to us.

“Old news,” Eli said around a fake yawn.

I gave him a look that made him snigger.

“And?” Ryker asked, his cheek pillowed on his fiancé’s stomach.

“And we would like you all to know because we feel you are all our rock centers as well.”

There. I’d done it. I’d come out. Sort of. In a microscopic way. Tate sat up straight, his eyes moving around the small circle of our teammates and friends.

“We really need you guys to keep it to yourselves though, okay? Vlad has some touchy issues with his family and his homeland and I’m totally tapped out with drama,” Tate said, his sight lingering on Apollo who was fussing with some chipped polish on his toe. Henry nudged him.

Apollo’s deep brown eyes flew from his pedicure to the group. “Oh, yes, sorry. My toes are frightful. School is killing my downtime. Yes, of course. Do you think we would ever out someone who wasn’t ready to be out?” Apollo asked. We all shook our heads.

“Thank you,” Tate replied for both of us.

“Dude, we all totally get it. I mean I know what kind of hell Stan went through. We got your backs,” Ryker said, petting Jacob’s belly as one would a pillow, then nestling back in. The small group all murmured along in agreement.

“I’m deeply touched that you two felt safe enough with us to tell us what we all already knew,” Colorado said as he began strumming, then launched into a song about friendships, rock centers, and cool desert nights. Then in front of them all I wiggled closer to Tate and put my arm around his shoulder. He let his head drop to mine. It was everything that I had ever dreamed it could be but a thousand times better.

Chapter Fifteen

Tate

Who knew I had an accent?

“You sound like a Ewing,” Alex said.

“What is a Ewing?” Vlad asked, and after that a games night at my place had deteriorated in a heated debate about eighties TV Shows, none of which we’d been alive for. Well, apart from Vlad who’d been born in eighty-six but I’m not sure how much of the US eighties had hit rural Russia, or even the nineties.

“And then he was in the shower,” Eli read out from Wikipedia, poking at his screen and snorting a laugh, “And it was all a dream.”

“A whole season?”

“Who the fuck knows.”

“That man was all hat and no cattle,” Colorado did a perfect Texan drawl. “Bit like our Tate hereabouts when ya’lls madder than a wet hen.”

I think he was messing up his abouts and his y’alls, but he’d spent ten minutes working on his ya’lls from his y’alls and that had stopped the game of poker and deteriorated into me not being able to breathe through laughter. He was a funny dude, and somehow he had us all singing Dolly Parton songs until midnight in which we all had to pretend to be from Texas. Again, messing up the accents, and mixing Tennessee with Texas, but who the hell cared at this point? We just let Colorado do his thing and enjoyed the laughter it caused.

My home was in Minnesota, and tonight was the first night of bye week, an entire five days off where Vlad and I planned on going back to stay at my parents’ place, meet up with Logan and Josie, and various nieces and nephews, and the dogs, and even though Vlad loved me, I wasn’t sure how long that was going to last after he got a good look at the rest of the Collins clan. Apollo and Henry were cat-sitting Obi, Frank was being cared for by Tom and Mona, our bags were packed, and we were flying to Minnesota early tomorrow. In fact, I wasn’t sure we’d even go to