“No!” Jos looked up fast, then bit his lip. “I mean, Callum doesn’t want to be home with his uncle. And I don’t blame him. That guy’s a creep.”
“He’s what?” I straightened. “What did he do to you?” If Wayne Fitzpatrick had touched Jos, he was going to find his teeth in another province.
“I was riding my bike, and he backed Mr. Roy’s truck out without looking, almost hit me. So I slapped the truck to let him know I was right there. He, like, squealed his brakes, and then he got out and he started yelling. Calling me a stupid little shit. Stuff like that. Said it was my fault and if I didn’t watch where Iwas going, next time he’d drive right over me. But he was the one who didn’t look.”
“Are you okay? Was this today?” I wasn’t usually the guy who punched people, but I was more than ready to take that asshole apart.
“I’m fine. It was a couple of days ago.” Jos shrugged. “But I get why Callum doesn’t want to sleep in the same house as him.”
“Okay.” I took a deep breath, willing the red mist out of my eyes.Two days. He’s fine.“Stay away from him, though.”
“No shit.”
We eyed each other in silence for a moment. I couldn’t read what Jos was thinking, so I bit the bullet. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you. Callum says you know he and I are…”
“Fucking? Yeah.”
I wasn’t enough of a hypocrite to police his language, so I just asked, “Does that bother you?”
He shrugged again. “It’s weird. Are you, like, boyfriends now?”
“It’s complicated.”
Jos huffed a laugh. “You mean I’m too young to understand.”
“No, I don’t. I mean it’s complicated. Callum isn’t out as gay to anyone.”
“He said his grandfather knows. But not his uncle. Or his team. Not even Sully.”
“Right. So it’s all a big secret. But I’m out. I even did a magazine interview about being gay on the police force.” I’d almost forgotten, but Jay hadn’t. He’d recognized me. “I can’t go back in the closet. So if we try to be together… there’s risks for him.”
“Do you want to be, though?”
Yes.I hedged, “What would you think?”
“You could do worse. He’s okay. He can cook, kind of. Sully’s cool, and he likes Callum.”
That was as positive as I was likely to get out of Jos. “So we’re not boyfriends yet, but we’re something. All we can do now is go one day at a time. Like we’ve been doing.”
“As long as you don’t do it around me, I don’t care.”
“You’ll be careful what you say about Callum, right?” I reminded him. “Don’t out him, even a little bit.”
“Iknow!” He bounced to his feet. “It’s like you don’t trust me.”
“I trust you a lot.”
“Not to stay on my own at night, though.”
“That’s not about me not trusting you, that’s about me not trusting the world.”Power failures, lightning strikes, burglars, stove fires.“Anyhow, do you really want to?”
That question was a mistake, because the answer was probably no, but he couldn’t say so. He glared at me and yanked my door open. “Your face looks stupid.” Then he ducked out and I heard his steps clatter down the stairs, although he skipped the bad one.
I sighed. My nose hurt and my lip stung and my head ached. I was beyond exhausted, and not about to chase after Jos. That was how life with him seemed to be going— one step forwards, one step back. But he was okay with Isabelle, he liked Callum if I was reading the subtext right, and he wasn’t going to out anybody. I took that for a win, at the end of this crappy night, and put my aching face to bed.
CHAPTER 15
CALLUM
