Everything for You (Bergman Brothers #5)(58)
“Fine,” I concede, popping open the trunk. “I’ll just have to deal with those unresolved feelings myself, then. I mean I already dealt with one of those unresolved feelings pretty thoroughly last night in the shower.”
His head falls back. He rubs his eyes beneath his sunglasses. “You can’t say shit like that.”
“Why not? It’s a fact. Just reporting information. Yesterday was a high of sixty-six degrees. Last night, the moon was a waxing gibbous. Before bed, I rubbed one out in the shower.”
A low growl rumbles in his throat. “Fuck off.”
“I just told you I already did. And given the state of your pants last night, Hayes, I sincerely hope for your mental and physical well-being, you did, too.”
Shaking his head, he slowly pushes off the car, then walks toward the trunk. “You’re an utter pain in the ass,” he mutters.
I watch him chuck his bag into my trunk, then round the car to the passenger side. “Given you feel that way, may I ask why I have the honor of driving your grumpy butt to practice? I know I strong-armed you into carpooling, but given how not-pleased-to-see-me you seem, I would have bet a lot of money on you driving yourself today.”
“My knee,” he says, easing into the passenger seat as I open my door and join him in the car. “It’s still fucked. I can’t put enough pressure on it to use the gas and brake pedals to drive.”
Sympathy rushes through me, the impulse to offer him comfort and reassurance, but I tamp it down. That’s not what’s going on with us. He’s made sure of it, with that gruff, I don’t want to know nonsense when I tried to explain last night and clear the air like a rational adult.
Focusing instead on turning on the car and adjusting my mirrors, I ask, “And you plan on practicing today how, then?”
“I don’t,” he says, backing up his seat and extending his leg as much as possible. “I plan on getting sorted out by Dan and Maria, then standing on the sidelines and giving you hell while you run around all day.”
“Sounds delightful.” I pull out onto the road and make the turn for Deja Brew instead of the direct route to the sports complex.
Gavin notices. “Oh fuck, no. Not this again. I cannot endure another coffee-for-the-cast-of-thousands run.”
I flash him a smile, a real one. “Don’t worry, sötis. This run is just for us.”
18
GAVIN
Playlist: “Wait for It,” Usher
“What did you just call me?” I stare at Oliver as he hums to himself, changing lanes in preparation for his right turn into Deja Brew.
He’s either ignoring me or he can’t hear me past his infuriating humming of “One Last Time.”
“Bergman,” I snap.
He glances my way. “What?”
“What did you just call me?”
Slowing, he makes the turn for the coffee drive-through. “I’m not sure I understand.”
Jesus Christ. I’m going to wring his gorgeous neck. “Have you lost your command of the English language? What isn’t there to understand?”
He grins, and fuck, I can’t look. It’s a real grin, soft and crooked, not that megawatt shit he shows the world. It feels intimate and personal and so impossibly lovely I want to wrap my hands around that smile and slip it inside my pocket, and fucking hell, I really, really need to stop reading poetry.
Oliver hits a pothole in the road. I grab the oh-shit bar and suck in a breath as a bolt of white-hot pain wracks my lower back. My stomach knots. I’m being hit on every front, this nightmare of a paved road, today’s excruciating level of pain, once again being stuck in Oliver’s car, bathed in his scent, the sight of him, flooded with memories of last night, touching him, wanting him, being words away from humiliating myself, confessing what I’d give for him, do for him—
Anything. Everything.
Shifting in my seat, I grunt out of the sheer agony that is moving. Today is a day colored by pain, stamped by pain, cut out by pain; there isn’t a motion or movement or thought that isn’t imprinted, shaded, or shaped by it. Blinking, breathing, turning, shifting—all of it hurts. It’s consuming. And I wish for just a moment I could shut my eyes and escape it, float out of my body and into a space devoid of sensation, where I could exist without knowing where every fucking nerve ending is in my back and hips and knees and neck, where breathing didn’t feel like knives in my spine and shifting didn’t make my back send a dagger of pain through my leg until my molars clacked and bile crawled up my throat.
Mercifully oblivious to my misery, Oliver finally says, “I’ll clarify. I understand the question. I just don’t understand why you expect me to answer it, seeing as you went all grunting Neanderthal back there and shut me down when I was trying to communicate with you.” He glances my way, a flash of genuine annoyance evident, even with those sharp pale eyes hidden by his sunglasses. “What if my explanation made you feel better about what happened last night?”
That’s exactly my concern. I don’t want to feel better about last night. I want to bury it and never revisit how raw and real and imperfect and hungry it was. How much I wanted not only to peel off his clothes and unwrap him like a fucking present, but to lay Oliver on my bed and learn every part of him—his pleasure, his pain, his wants, his fears.