Page 39 of Man Advantage

Ten minutes would turn into twenty. It always did with him.

Cole bent and found Ford’s mouth in the dark. Ford’s lips were warm and slack with sleep, and they opened under his. Cole meant to make it quick. Then Ford’s hand came up and cupped the side of his face, thumb along his cheekbone, and Cole sank into it. The heat of Ford’s mouth. The rasp of his jaw. How slow and sure he kissed, like there was no alarm and nowhere Cole had to be. Cole’s hand found Ford’s chest and felt his heart going under it. He stayed there, breathing him in, until he knew if he didn’t move now, he wouldn’t.

He pulled back an inch. Ford’s breath was on his mouth.

“I’ll see you downstairs.”

Ford let go.

He crossed the hall in his shorts with his shirt in his hand. His own door stuck in the cold. He lifted it on the hinge. Inside, he pulled the covers back on the narrow bed, lay down in it, and turned his face into the pillow.

The sheets were cold. He lay in them and missed him. Twenty feet away, and he missed him.

He’d been doing this since Charlotte came home. Every night after her light went out, every morning before her door opened. He knew Ford’s knob had to turn all the way over or the latch clicked.

At six, her door banged open. She went past his room without slowing, straight into Ford’s, and he heard her land on the bed.

Cole got up and went down to start the coffee.

Charlotte ran breakfast. He tried to not be hurt when she said she wanted something different for breakfast today. Cereal first while the toast was in, then toast, then a debate about the second piece of toast.

“I want the strawberry one.”

“We’re out of strawberry.” Ford was at the counter in a T-shirt with a pillow crease down one cheek. “Grape or nothing.”

“Big Cole can go get strawberry.”

“Nobody is going to the store at six in the morning.” Cole set her milk down in front of her. “Grape.”

She looked at Ford. Ford looked at his coffee. She ate the grape.

Ford came around behind Cole for the pot and set his hand on the back of Cole’s neck on the way past. He left it there while he poured, thumb under Cole’s ear. Cole held still under it and let himself have it. Ten seconds, maybe. It was the best part of the morning so far, and he wanted to lean back into it and couldn’t. Ford took it back when Charlotte looked up from her toast to ask whether Lily Kowalski was allowed to bring a hamster to school.

“No,” Ford said.

“She says she is.”

“Lily says a lot of things.”

Ford lifted his keys off the hook. “Pickup’s you today. I’ve got treatment with Theo after practice.”

“I know.”

He zipped Charlotte into her coat and steered her out the door. Cole loaded the dishwasher and listened to the truck back out of the driveway.

The truck was back in eighteen minutes.

Cole heard it turn in and his whole chest went light. He was in his room pulling the covers straight when Ford came up the stairs two at a time. Ford stopped in the doorway with his boots still on.

“We’ve got forty minutes before we have to leave for practice.”

Cole stood there with the blanket in his hands. It was full daylight. The blinds were up. Two weeks of listening for a six-year-old’s feet in the hall had gotten into him, and he couldn’t find the switch to turn it off.

“Ford. It’s a Tuesday morning.”

“I know what day it is.” Ford came in, took the blanket out of his hands, and dropped it on the floor. “I woke up hard with you halfway out the door. I thought about my boyfriend the whole way to the school and the whole way back. I’ve got forty minutes with him before I have to share him with twenty guys, and I’m not spending them talking about it.”

Cole heard the word. He heard it, and it went straight through him.