Free When Tony Met Adam (Short Story) by Suzanne Brockmann Page A

been Dan Gillman and it was a little
too
odd and disconcerting to think that the other SEAL might be touching him like that—this hand lighter now as he pushed back and even played with Tony’s hair.
    So he opened his eyes, and God, it
was
Adam standing there, looking down at him with those incredible, luminous hazel eyes, with his very heart and soul bared for Tony to see.
    Neither of them spoke. There was nothing to say that could even come close to everything that Adam was saying by the gentleness of his touch, and that look in his eyes, and God, by the very fact that he was standing right there
—right
there.
    But then Adam laughed, just a little, and said, “I missed you.” He looked away then, as if his words embarrassed or—probably more accurately—frightened him.
    “I missed you, too,” Tony told him, then tried to lighten things. “You look delicious.”
    Adam forced a laugh, almost unbearably ill at ease. “You look like shit.”
    “I feel great.”
    “Great?”
    “Very much so. It kind of happens to me when you’re in the room.”
    Adam’s laughter was a little less forced. “You’re so full of shit.”
    “I look like shit, I’m full of shit. If this is shit, I’ll take it,” Tony said, catching Adam’s hand and interlacing their fingers. “It’s really good to see you.”
    Adam looked down at their hands but didn’t pull away. “I don’t think I’d be as forgiving as you.” He looked up. “That picture from Big Richard’s,” he started.
    “It doesn’t matter.” Tony brought his hand up to his mouth for a kiss.
    “I went there to try to, I don’t know,” Adam said, as one of the tears that were making his eyes shine slid down his cheek before he could brusquely brush it away.
    “Exorcise me,” Tony said quietly. “I
do
know. I, um, had a lot of time to think about it.”
    “I wanted to belittle what we shared,” Adam confessed, fighting hard to keep more tears from falling. “To prove it was meaningless. So I went to the club—”
    “Adam, it really doesn’t matter.” He could say that in all honesty.
    “It matters to me,” Adam told him. “It matters that you know that nothing happened. I mean, yeah, I went there. And yeah, I went into the back room with this guy and … I don’t know. He wasn’t you so I walked away. Which really freaked me out on top of everything else.”
    “I bet,” Tony said. God, he’d lost sleep over that picture that had showed up online. At first he’d been hurt, but then, in the long run, he’d realized that the picture had provided him with a gauge of just how scared Adam was of him and by him. It had made him cautious—maybe too much so—about calling or emailing, for fear Adam would run away, or again try to prove how little sex mattered.
    But now, knowing this—Adam had walked away—he had to reevaluate. But first he had to take a moment and grin his ass off.
    Adam knew why he was smiling.
“It doesn’t matter,”
he said mocking Tony. “You’re a crappy liar.”
    “I wasn’t lying,” Tony protested. “It really didn’t matter. It will matter, now, though. I’ve got three weeks and I’m going to spend them with you. And after that, I’m going to say some things that’ll really scare the hell out of you, and one of them’s going to be a demand that you don’t hook up with anyone else while I’m away.”
    “Demand?” Adam repeated.
    “I was going to say
request,”
Tony told him, “but I thought
demand
would make you get all oppositional, and up in my face. I love it when you do that, baby. It’s incredibly hot.”
    Adam laughed, but then his smile faded. “God, you really do scare me. I care, way too much.”
    Tony’s heart actually leapt. “No such thing.”
    “Yeah, there is,” Adam argued. “I’m standing here, and I’m trying not to say it, but here it comes, because I am such a needy little fuck and … You really believe me, don’t you? About the picture? God, it’s stupid that it