Free Promises [coda series] by Marie Sexton Page A

own attraction to him a year and a half earlier. A year and a half wasn’t enough to completely erase thirty-three years of straight thinking. He knew that.
    He sighed, and some of the anger left his face. He let me put my arms around him again. This time, when I pulled him close and pushed my face into his hair, he angled his head away from me so I could get to his neck.

    “You caught me off guard, Jared. That’s all.” He didn’t answer, but he finally relaxed against me. “Please don’t be mad. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I promise.”

    “It’s okay,” he said again, and this time I knew he meant it. “It’s not like your answer had to be yes. I just didn’t expect your ‘no’ to be quite so definitive.”

    I pulled back so that I could look into his eyes. “Is that what you want? If so, just name a place. Pick a place where it’s legal and I’ll book us on a flight right now.”

    He blinked at me in surprise. “Are you serious?”

    “Absolutely. We’ll go next weekend. Or we can wait until summer and make a vacation out of it. We can go alone, or we can take the whole family. Whatever you want.”
    He smiled at me then. Jared smiled at just about everything. It was one of the things that first attracted me to him. “It doesn’t matter, Matt. If we’re married or not, if the state recognizes it or not,” he shrugged, “it means nothing.” One of his hands went to the back of my neck, and he put his forehead against mine. “None of it changes the way I feel.”
    I knew what he meant. And yet, I also knew I wanted to do something for him, to prove how much he meant to me.

    “Come to bed with me?” I asked him, and he smiled again.

    “I have to finish grading these. You go ahead. I’ll be right behind you.”

    “That’s not what I want tonight,” I said jokingly, and he laughed.

    I was sound asleep when he finally joined me. I woke up to him cuddling up to my back. I leaned back against him, and he wrapped his arms around me. “This reminds me of the first night I spent in this bed with you,” I said sleepily.

    He was silent for a second or two, and then said lightly, “That was the second night. The first night you spent in my bed, I was doped to the gills on Vicodin, and you were fully clothed.”
    He was right. How had I forgotten that night? Jared had been in a bike wreck. Or, to be clear, he had been riding his bike home when he was hit by a car. I remembered how it felt, seeing him with road rash all over one side of his body, half of his face a mess of bruises, and a gash on his temple that could have been so much worse. He had been lucky. “You could have died,” I whispered, and his arms tightened around me.
    Looking back, I could almost pinpoint that night as the turning point for me. That was the night I started to realize how much he meant to me. The doctor had told me to keep an eye on him overnight, and to call right away if he started experiencing dizziness or nausea. I had slept in his bed with him, and it had been all I could do not to wrap my arms around him and hold him close. It hadn’t been a sexual urge, by any means. I just wanted to know that he was there, and that he was really okay. I wanted to reassure myself that he was alive and safe. I wanted to feel him breathing. Instead I had wrapped my hand around his wrist, so that I could feel his pulse against my fingertips. I slept like that the whole night.
    I was brought back to the present by Jared’s hand sliding down my stomach.
    “Matt?” It was only my name, almost a whisper, but that one word spoke volumes to me. I knew what he was trying to say. I heard in his voice an echo of the same tenderness I was feeling for him at that moment. I turned toward him and pulled him into my arms, and he relaxed against me with a quiet sigh that was part contentment, part arousal.
    Sex with women had always been about softness – soft skin and soft hair and soft curves. There was nothing soft about