Page 41 of Passion and Payback

The shock on his face was so genuine and frank I couldn’t help but laugh, which only made him scowl. “I’m sorry! You just…looked so bug-eyed, is all. It wasn’t like I was having dirty thoughts or anything like that. I was ten. But I sometimes thought about kissing you and holding your hand.”

It was his turn to chuckle. “Christ, how did you end up having innocent thoughts like that? Even I knew what sex was at ten.”

“Well, yeah, so did I. The number of times I accidentally caught my parents in the act was way too high.”

“Oh…gross, I forgot about that.”

“But at ten, even when you know about sex, you don’t like…have those feelings. Not really. They show up like wanting to kiss the person you like, but not in the same way you learn to kiss someone when you’re older.”

“Or hold their hand.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Ten, huh?” he said with a slight smile. “Alright, that’s…kind of nice.”

I turned so I could look at him directly. “On the other hand, I never once knew you suspected you were into guys. When the fuck were you planning on telling me you were into dick?”

He looked like a little boy caught trying to steal candy from the bowl. “Well…because the only guy I was ever really into was you.”

“Seriously?” I asked, wrinkling my nose. “There’s no other guy that you were into…ever?”

“Not romantically.”

“Wait, so you wanted to fuck guys, but you didn’t want to date them.”

“Basically.”

“Yeah, I knew a few guys like that,” I said wryly. “Except they were married, had a family, and liked to get away from the family every once in a while to get their rocks off.”

“Well, I didn’t do that.”

“That didn’t seem your style.”

He frowned. “Well…there was Logan, I guess.”

“Wait,” I said, remembering that name and thinking. “Wasn’t that your squad buddy who died?”

“Yeah, we uh…had a thing. It was mostly sexual, and we kept it quiet.”

“Of course you did.”

“First of all, that was when Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was still around. I mean, I’m sure no one would have told on us. It wasn’t like we were the only ones comforting each other.”

I made sure not to snort at the use of comfort, if only because I didn’t have the humor of a fourteen-year-old, and it was becoming evident that Logan had been important to him. “So you guys just…had sex?”

“And…other things.”

“I think blowjobs are covered under sex.”

He smiled faintly. “I meant we did other things that weren’t sexual. We spent a lot of time around one another, ate together, tried to make sure we patrolled together. And whenever we could make it look normal for us to share a bunk or tent, we did that too…without the sex stuff.”

“Sounds to me like I’m not the only guy you were ever romantically interested in,” I told him softly.

“Yeah, well…I never got the chance to talk to him about that,” Kai said with a shrug. “I kept meaning to, but something always seemed to get in the way, and it was usually my head. I didn’t wanna screw up a good thing while I had it, even if I thought there could be more if I took the chance.”

“And then the chance was gone,” I said with a sigh.

“Yeah.”

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