Page 85 of Part & Parcel

“God, you’re so fucking beautiful.” Nick’s voice was low and hungry. “Come on me, Kels. Please!”

Kelly tried to hold out just so he could hear Nick’s voice for a little longer, just so he could hear that rumble of lust and possessiveness and know that it washisfor the rest of their lives.

“Kelly!” Nick cried, his voice cracking as he bucked his hips.

Kelly squeezed every muscle in his body, and Nick’s cock pulsed inside him. Nick shouted again, but he couldn’t seem to get any sound out this time. He pushed his ass off the bed, shoving up into Kelly as he came. Kelly held on, his breaths ragged, his imagination running wild, thinking back over every video they’d ever taken of themselves fucking, trying to remember what it looked like when Nick was emptying himself inside Kelly.

“That’s it, that’s it,” Nick was saying over and over, his hands on Kelly’s body, his hips still moving, his cock almost still hard in Kelly’s ass.

Kelly was shooting cum all over his chest and belly. Neither of them had touched him yet. He watched greedily as he covered Nick’s skin, and finally Nick reached around Kelly’s thigh to swipe a hand through the mess on his chest, then gripped Kelly’s cock to pump the last spurts of cum out of him.

Kelly threw his head back, gasping, moaning, and it tossed their precarious balance off and sent them both sprawling.

Kelly sprawled on top of Nick’s legs, staring dazedly at the ceiling, gasping for breath, his cock pulsing in the aftermath of his orgasm. One leg was caught under him, and the other was draped over Nick’s shoulder beside his head. Nick was groaning, spread-eagled under him. After a few seconds of what appeared to be post-orgasmic coma, Nick turned his head and kissed the inside of Kelly’s knee.

Kelly raised up to see where Nick’s head was. “Prepare yourself,” he warned. “Only way to get out of this is my ass in your face.”

Nick chuckled darkly. “Give me about thirty minutes and I can work with that.”

Once again, Sidewinder was sitting around a table in a bar, but this time they were enjoying rounds of anything but alcohol. Zane was relieved. He’d been holding steady with tea. Coffee. Water. Soda. Some of the best onion rings he’d ever eaten. But being around a bunch of men drinking each night had sorely tested him, and he was happy to see an array of waters and sodas at the table tonight.

They had two more envelopes to open. It had been a harrowing week, and Zane couldn’t decide if he loved Elias Sanchez or hated the bastard. Only a man who knew he’d be dead when all this was going on would make the demands he’d made. They’d covered so many miles and had so many heart-to-hearts. Zane was exhausted, he couldn’t imagine how the others felt.

Ty held the second to last envelope up, offering to let anyone else open it. When no one asked for it, Ty slid his fingers under the seal and ripped it open. He cleared his throat before beginning to read.

“The team has always been something we all held sacred,” he read, Eli’s words filtering to them from the past. “Almost to a fault, we’ve been honest with each other, brutally and maliciously sometimes. But whenever I told Doc he was a fucking slob and to make his bed, it was out of love.”

Ty smiled sadly and cocked his head. At the other end of the table, Kelly lowered his head, sniffing. Nick slid a hand across the table, grasping Kelly’s fingers.

“We did something else out of love, something we had to back then. But now, so many years later, it’s time to . . . it’s time to let go, boys.” Ty’s words hitched and he had to pause, rubbing a finger over his lips.

“Want me to read it?” Zane offered quietly.

Ty’s eyes were welling, and he nodded and handed the letter over, looked away and ran his hand through his hair.

“Anyone object?” Zane asked the others as he held the paper up almost reverently. He hadn’t realized it before, but the letters were handwritten, Eli’s sweeping words coming to life in all their glory, with some crossed out and some misspelled and others squeezed onto the ends of the line to make them fit. Zane smiled fondly. He hadn’t known Eli, but after this trip, he felt like he did. The others all gave him the go-ahead to read the letter for them, and he scanned to find where Ty had left off.

“But now, so many years later, it’s time to let go, boys,” he read, glancing up at the others. “We all kept secrets, things close to our hearts that we couldn’t tell each other for so many reasons. Secrets that hurt us to keep. Secrets that kept us up at night. It’s time to take that weight off our shoulders, and share something with each other that we’ve kept to ourselves all these years. So your penultimate task is to tell the others something they’ve never known about you. I’ll go first.”

Zane paused and looked at each man in turn. They were all trying to be stoic, lips pressed tightly, eyes either glistening or closed. Nick and Kelly clutched each other’s hands, their heads bowed like they were praying.

“Y’all want me to keep going?” Zane asked.

Owen and Digger both nodded. Ty had given up on being stoic, and his eyes were welling. He swiped at one and smiled at Zane. “Go for it.”

Zane found his place again, almost as nervous as he imagined Eli had been when he’d penned this letter. He cleared his throat. “From the day I met Ty and Nick, I kept something from them. And the rest of you, when I met you. So many times I almost confessed this. When we’d go out drinking and Digger would get sad about his lost love from high school, I wanted to share it with him. When Rico and I were on patrol in the middle of the night and he talked about his dad, I wanted to confess this. You see, I told myself it wasn’t really my secret to share. But it was. I was just scared. A coward. And now, since you’re all reading this and I’m dead and buried, I know I died a coward. It will forever be my biggest failure and shame.”

From the opposite end of the table, Zane caught movement. He looked up to find that Nick had covered his face with both hands. Ty had his hand on Nick’s shoulder.

Zane pushed on, trying not to draw out the pain. “I had a son.”

There were gasps and murmurs from the others, but Zane kept reading.

“I had a son with a girl I knew in San Diego when I was stationed there. We were both still teenagers, and I didn’t know about it until I’d been given new orders and moved away. When I tried to make it right, she told me he was better off not knowing who I was, what I was, that he was better off where she had family, and it wouldn’t be fair to me or her to get married when we didn’t love each other. And I let her think I agreed, that I thought my son was better off without me in his life. I was scared and relieved not to have that responsibility. I took the out she gave me and I ran from that baby boy. And I’ve regretted it ever since. I have a son out there, and I never met him. I hope one day, you boys can find him. And maybe you can tell him how sorry I am that his daddy was afraid.”

Zane pressed his lips together, looking over the top of the letter. The Sidewinders weren’t handling this well. Zane felt how shaken they must be. It was obviously a Sidewinder trait to be hard on themselves when they judged internally, because Eli’s letter wasn’t the first time Zane had heard one of them call himself a coward. “He’s wrong, you guys know that, right?”

Ty wiped his face with his sleeve, nodding. He’d snaked his arm around Nick’s shoulders and pulled him closer on the bench they shared. Nick was still hiding his face behind his hands, leaning against Ty like he was used to being cuddled when he was upset. Digger and Kelly were both staring at the tabletop, tears tracking silently down their faces.

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