Who could replace fucking Jax Mason?
My life, after I ended what was between us, had shown me – there was no one who could replace him.
No one.
3
JAX
Ihave tried to forget – well, move on, at least, from a lot of my past. Dad died when I was in middle school, and right at that moment, I had to grow up quickly. It was an accident at his work, and when the principal came in to pull me out of science class, I knew that something bad had happened.
Principal Jarvis cried as he sat me down in his office and told me that my father had passed away. All I could do was nod in acceptance of what he was saying. I was in shock and couldn’t feel anything. It wasn’t until much later that I dealt with his loss. I may have only been thirteen, but I learned to deal with the harsh reality of what his loss meant way too quickly. Mom had to get a job waiting tables, and I worked during the summer at whatever odd job I could find. People came out of the woodwork to have me mow their grass.
It was a weird feeling to be grateful for their charity. Life in a small town had its perks, and without the town’s gossip about the need Mom and I were in, we may not have made it. But in the end, we were able to pay our bills and keep the house. The plant even gave us a settlement for Dad’s death, but that took almost two years as they investigated what had happened.
My friends were all hanging out and going to the movies. They attended parties and worried about tests or finding a date for the next school dance, which there were way too many of. I worried about helping to pay the utilities or if our food stamps would last throughout the month. I worried that something would happen to my mother and that I would be left alone. I worried by myself for way too long, and then something happened that changed everything.
One day, I glanced at my best friend and new without a doubt that the feelings I had for him weren’t the same feelings that I felt for my other friends. They were not the same that the boys in my school felt about other boys.
No, it was different, and it was much more powerful.
He became my life raft.
His family became my life raft.
Kenny and I had been in school together since kindergarten, and we became fast friends. We started out in boy scouts and little league together. Spent sleepovers at each other’s houses until we felt at home in both. His father had been my first real coach, and by the time I was in middle school, Coach Criss had started grooming me for the high school team. He invited me to some of their practices, and I would show up feeling like I was on top of the world.
Kenny would hang out in the stands, and I knew it made him happy as I struck out some of his dad’s high school players. We would laugh about it when we were alone, and it filled me with a pride I had never had before.
Coach Criss became like a second father to me – and Kenny… Well, Kenny became my world.
That first kiss sent ripples of fire through me. His hands on my shoulders as we stared into each other’s eyes one night in his basement – the way his body pressed to mine… It changed everything between us. He was still my best friend, but at that moment, he became so much more. We were inseparable, and by the time we began our freshman year of high school, our parents knew.
The rest of the school, though, did not. I was a jock in a small Kentucky town, and I knew that if I came out, few of my peers would accept the love I felt for Kenny. He hadn’t wanted to step out of the proverbial closet either. It felt like too much at the time. We were young and making all the mistakes that would one day end us. If we had just been brave enough back then…
But we weren’t.
I knew in my heart that it was the right choice for us at the time. The rednecks that we went to school with would have never understood. We saw the way that little Timmy was treated in middle school when he told everyone that he was gay. We didn’t want to suffer the same way that he did. We were cowards, but sometimes hiding who you are is all you can do.
I’ve been hiding ever since.
I hid my first year of college before I was drafted to the major leagues, and I’ve stayed hidden ever since.
If Kenny would have just… Fuck… He broke my heart out of some noble desire he had for my success. He was wrong, and I tried to tell him that he was much more important to me than anything else, but I let him walk away. I let him break us in two, and I have stayed broken ever since.
Kenny…
Seeing him again would be too much. But it was his father, the man who took me under his wing and became this godlike father figure to me, too, that I was coming back for.
I wasn’t ready. I still had too much pain from the last time I ever saw him. What would we say to each other? The fear of seeing him again was palpable. But there was also excitement. I had never stopped thinking about him. I was scared that he had.
I drove my rented jeep past the sign that told me I was now entering the township of Hardin, Kentucky – population of less than five thousand. My stomach flipped a bit as the enormity of coming back home washed over me once again. It didn’t help that at the bottom of the sign was a new edition I had never seen – Home to Jax Mason.
It was official – I was now a celebrity. A short-lived celebrity since I got the news that my injury would sideline me for the rest of my life.
It had been a little over three years since I came home to move my mother into a new home that I bought for her. I wanted to get her a mansion that would make everyone else in town jealous, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She got a house on Main Street that she had always admired. A small Victorian with tons of gingerbread shingles was now the Mason family home, and I knew that she was excited that I would be here for the holidays with her. I had flown her out to Los Angeles the last couple of years, and to be honest, I preferred that.
In Los Angeles, I didn’t drown in the past. Here, back in Hardin, the past was everywhere.
