Page 73 of Iron

“You're doing it again.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You're thinking about something and not telling me.” He straightens up from his stance, club still in hand, studying me. “What is it?”

I relent. If he is sharp enough to ask, he gets an actual answer. “This hole.” I nod at the ground between us, at the exact spot. “We were right here months ago. First tournament. You were… what… six feet away.”

Something shifts in his expression, quick, like he's tracking back through his own memory to find it.

“I remember this hole,” he says slowly. “I challenged you. Then called you Daddy. You growled at me,” he grins.

“You did.” I close the distance between us, the six feet gone in about three steps. “I really wanted to kiss you, and I didn't.”

“Why not?”

“Wasn't the right time. Stephen and Caleb were behind us. All I could think about was that you are twenty-one, I’m forty-one, and I don’t do Daddy, and I hadn't figured out yet that I would not survive not doing something about it, eventually.”

TJ sets his club down against his bag, slow, deliberately, like he's giving both of us time to catch up to where this is going. “And now?”

“Now there's nothing stopping me.”

I kiss him right there on the fairway, one hand at his jaw, and he makes a small surprised sound against my mouth before he's kissing me back properly, one hand fisting in my shirt like he's making sure I don't go anywhere. It's not a long kiss, not indecent, just enough to say what I didn't say months ago when I had the chance.

Somewhere behind us, from the group waiting on the tee box, a voice hollers, “Get a room!” and the entire group breaks into laughter, and TJ pulls back grinning, cheeks gone pink, not really even a little embarrassed.

“That's fair,” he calls back over his shoulder, not letting go of my shirt. “We'll take that under advisement.”

“You're shameless,” I tell him.

“I learned from the best.” He picks his club back up, still grinning, color high in his face that has nothing to do with golf. “Took you long enough, by the way.”

“Took me exactly as long as it needed to.”

“Sure.” He lines back up over his ball, glancing at me over his shoulder, wiggling his butt at me, before he settles into his stance and swings. “Worth the wait, though.”

Babylon on a Friday night is loud enough that TJ has to shout, and even then I'm mostly following the crowd outside, a line wrapping halfway down the block, music already bleeding out through the walls. We leave for Oklahoma in a few days. He’s ready. Six full weeks of recovery, walking a couple of miles each day with me hovering over every step, much to his annoyance.

He really wanted to dance tonight, and I can deny him nothing.

“You said midnight,” I remind him, hand at the small of his back as we push through the door.

“I said by midnight. That's different. That's practically a promise, not a deadline.”

“That's exactly a deadline, Cinderella.”

“Gavin. Loosen up. Live a little.” He's grinning, already moving to the beat before we've even made it past the coat check, buzzing with an energy I haven't seen out of him since before he got sick. “This is Caleb and Geoff's old stomping ground. I have to represent. Been coming here for years.”

The place is packed, lights doing their thing overhead, bass heavy enough to feel in my chest before I even find a seat. TJ peels off toward the dance floor almost the moment we're inside, already pulled in by a couple of guys who clearly know him, and I let him go, because watching him have this, easy and careless and twenty-one, is worth more to me than keeping him at my side all night.

I find a stool at the bar instead, and the guy working it looks like he's been there since the place opened: black handlebar mustache, black polyester shirt unbuttoned low enough to show off a chest full of black and gray hair, forearms like he used to do manual labor for a living before he found something more fun to do with his nights.

“You must be Gavin.” He sets a napkin down in front of me without being asked.

“Depends who's asking.”

“Freddie.” He offers a hand across the bar, grip like a vice, the kind of guy who's clearly spent decades reading rooms like this one for a living. “I basically helped raise that one.” He nods toward the dance floor, toward TJ, who's laughing at something with his head thrown back, hands up over his head, moving like he doesn’t have a single worry in the world. “Watched him grow up in this club, practically. Gave him virgin daiquiris before he was old enough to drink anything stronger.”

“That so.”