Page 108 of Perfect Storm
“I’m . . .I’m actually good right here,” Aidan said.
“Awesome.” Levi’s uncertainty had morphed into his normal smug delight. Aidan found he could relax even more, hearing it in his voice.
“It’s just gonna be really fucking weird tomorrow.”
“Bad weird?”
Aidan hummed under his breath. “No. Having Mo around can never be bad weird. He’s a solid guy. You’ll see. Just . . .justweird. I keep thinking I wasn’t used to him being gone, but Ithink I was. I had accepted it. And now I have to go through and un-accept it.”
“You got used to not having him around, so yeah, that makes sense. It’s been three years,” Levi said.
“Doesn’t really feel like three years, but yeah.”
“Can I . . .” That hesitation was back in Levi’s voice. “Can I ask why it took you so long to tell him?”
There was no real truthful answer that made Aidan look good. Hecouldtell Levi he didn’t want to talk about it. Levi would accept that, no question. But Aidan didn’t want to lie, even if it wasn’t exactly flattering.
“I was afraid,” Aidan admitted.
“About liking guys?”
“God, that would be less embarrassing,” Aidan said.
Levi’s arm around him tightened further.
“More like, I was afraid that what would happen would happen. And guess what? It did,” Aidan continued. “And maybe I was right to be afraid. It did suck. But I can’t say it was all bad.”
“Kind of seems like it was from this angle,” Levi pointed out softly.
But then I wouldn’t be here, with you.
“Good things came out of it, though,” Aidan said firmly. He didn’t say what the good things were, but he hoped Levi realized that he was the biggest. The best.
Levi’s hand stroked his back, all the way up to his shoulder. “Glad to hear it, bro.”
“I should probably deal with all that shit on my phone,” Aidan said after a long, surprising peaceful moment. Surprisingly, because his phone was still going off.
“You could just turn it off.”
He could. But if he did, then he wouldn’t be Aidan Flynn, QB1 for the Toronto Thunder, and as much as he liked being the Aidan lying here with Levi, he was that Aidan too.
Couldn’t stop being him.
“Yeah, and I will after.”
He rolled over, catching a glimpse of Levi’s smile as he did.
It was going to be fine. Everything was going to be fine.
Levi thought if he told himself he was fine enough times, that might make it true.
He was not freaking out. He wasnotfreaking out.
Okay. He was freaking out a little. Or a lot.
He’d never imagined that Mo Jeffries might come back to Toronto. Sure, he probably hadn’t fallen miraculously in love with Aidan, back, but the fact he was going to be here, in Aidan’s face every single day, was giving Levi the kind of complex he’d never personally experienced before.
Because this was what jealousy felt like, wasn’t it?
