Tex (Hell's Ankhor #5) - Aiden Bates Page 0,82

knowing it, how long had he known? When I reflected back on our friendship, before he went into San Quentin, there weren’t any moments that jumped out at me. Nothing he’d done that, in hindsight, looked like attraction or desire. It was just memories of Jazz, of our closeness and loyalty. Was I just a shitty, inattentive friend?

That was possible. But maybe…

Maybe it’d always been there, and I just couldn’t see it, even in memory, like the way I couldn’t hear Jazz’s snoring in sleep anymore. It was so present as to be invisible.

I could only hope that was it. Because if it wasn’t—if Jazz had been trying to get me to see, and I’d refused for so long—I wasn’t sure how I’d bear the weight of that knowledge.

The door to his bedroom swung open and Jazz stepped inside, looking exhausted, but as soon as he saw me, his face lit up with a smile. He shrugged off his leather jacket and tossed it carelessly over the back of a chair, toed off his boots, and then flopped face down on the bed next to me. I was under the sheets, he was on top of them, but still the muscled line of his body was a comforting line against mine.

“Hey.” He sighed with relief at being horizontal. “What’s up? How’s your face?”

“Handsome as always,” I said. I rubbed at my jaw, and then more carefully at the bruise. “Honestly, it’s not that bad. He didn’t hit me that hard.”

“Sure looked like he did,” Jazz muttered in disagreement. “What have you been doing? Just lying here?”

“Thinking,” I said.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Jazz said automatically.

I poked him in the side in retribution, before clarifying, “Thinking about us.”

“Yeah?” Jazz rolled onto his side, looking a little more focused. “What about us?”

“Just…” I paused and pressed my lips together.

Jazz didn’t push. He just waited patiently, resting one hand on my chest. It wasn’t hard to talk to Jazz—it never had been. Not even about this. The only thing that was challenging was getting my own circling thoughts in order.

“What did I miss?” I asked. That was the heart of the matter, wasn’t it? Why hadn’t I realized what Jazz wanted? “I know I can be up my own ass at times, but—did I miss something important? Were you trying to—”

“You didn’t miss anything.” Jazz looked a little surprised that I was bringing this up, but his voice was surprisingly steady. “You weren’t supposed to know how I felt.”

“Why not?” I furrowed my brow at him, but I did feel a little relieved that he hadn’t been trying to communicate this earlier, that I hadn’t fucked up in more ways than I already knew I had.

“I… Ugh.” Jazz rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “I feel like I shouldn’t tell you this.”

“You can tell me anything,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

That’d always been true. And it was even more true now. I didn’t think there was anything Jazz could do to convince me to turn my back on him now. Not after everything we've been through together, and all the ways we’d grown.

Jazz scrubbed his hands over his face and then took a steadying breath. “I got really good at hiding it,” he said. “Really, really good. I would’ve been amazed if you figured it out.”

“So little faith in me,” I said.

Jazz swatted me. “I mean, I knew I wanted you since we were teenagers.”

I started and turned, wide-eyed, to stare at him. “Really? That long?”

Jazz shrugged, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment. “I mean—the whole time I knew it was impossible. Because I knew you were straight. And I felt guilty, too, because you thought of me as a brother, and… I didn’t think of you like that. I tried to. I tried to change the way I felt. But it never took. It was like a disease.”

He sounded resigned, like he was explaining an old injury that’d never quite healed right. It made my heart clench. I didn’t know what to say—I wanted to reach back in time and shake us both hard by the shoulders.

“Jazz…”

“I’m not done,” Jazz said. I shut my mouth obediently, and Jazz rewarded me with a sideways smile. “I spent so much energy trying to erase my feelings for you. I felt like something was wrong with me, you know? Like something deep inside me was broken, that I couldn’t shake what I felt. So I looked for acceptance in other places—in other people. That’s