Level Hands: Bend or Break, Book 4 (16 page)

“Wha— Jesus.” Denny blushed. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant like, my dad.” Now Rafi was blushing too, and hard enough it might even be visible. His face felt like it was on fire. God, this was getting worse. “Not that I think you’re like my dad.”

“Less money, more melanin?” He’d surprised a grin out of Denny at least.

“Shut up. You know what I mean.” Denny’s ears were pink now.

Rafi cleared his throat. Time to fix this. “And you know I don’t think you need me to be, um, parental, right?” Because that wasn’t at all the way he felt about Denny either.

“I’m not even sure what you just said, but no. I don’t need you to be parental. Or think that you think I need you to be…oh, fuck it.” Denny stood up and stripped off his shorts. Rafi ignored the way his own gaze plunged to Denny’s groin. His stomach tightened, muscles flexing until it felt like his skin might crack. “I’m gonna go for a run. My head isn’t gonna be in the game for this shit now.” Denny snapped a wave at his textbook and laptop. “You coming?”

“I’m not really dressed…” But the look on Denny’s face said
I want you to
and there wasn’t much Rafi wouldn’t do to make up for his own dick move.

“You can borrow my stuff if you want. It should fit. Bottom drawer.” Denny pulled on a pair of shorts and headed to his closet, rummaging through his jumble of shoes.

Pulling open Denny’s dresser drawer and picking through his clothes felt weirdly intimate. Especially when Rafi realized he was avoiding certain shirts and shorts because he knew they were Denny’s favorites, looking for items he wouldn’t miss. It was strange to realize how well he knew him.

Borrowed clothes on the dresser top in front of him, Rafi started to change. The sound of his jeans coming off was way too audible in the quiet room, Rafi’s pulse thumping so loudly it felt as if Denny must be able to hear it. Denny was facing into his closet as he shoved his feet into his shoes, obviously taking as long as possible before he turned around.

He pulled off his shirt, hyperconscious of standing in Denny’s room mostly naked. As in Rafi’s room, there was a mirror over the dresser. He stared at himself. This was what Denny would see if he turned around right now. His chest was smooth, almost hairless. He wondered if Denny liked that. His muscles were well-defined, his nipples dark.

A thunk startled him into motion. He grabbed the T-shirt and tugged it on. Denny stood with his head tipped against the closet door.

“Ow.”

“You okay?” He pulled the shorts up in a hurry.

“You dressed?”

“What?”

“The whole point of me hiding in the closet was to avoid having to run with a hard-on, so just let me know when it’s safe to, you know, turn around.”

Ouch.

“Oh. Um, it’s safe.”

Denny turned around. And sighed like a sad little balloon with a leak in it when he looked at Rafi, who was feeling self-conscious with Denny’s slightly smaller T-shirt tight across his chest.

“Goddamn it.” Denny frowned at him.

Shit. Had he picked Denny’s favorite or something? He’d chosen an old Carlisle T-shirt he was pretty sure he’d never seen Denny wear. “What?”

“Do you have any idea how many hours I spent at the gym after I got home from Chicago, trying to bulk up to look like you?” Denny flexed one of his arms and Rafi’s eyes locked on the bulging muscle. Pulling his own sweatshirt back on sucked, because he had to close his eyes. “I got close, but you’re still more cut than me, you bastard.”

“Sorry?”

Denny sighed, grabbing his own hoodie. “And after we’re done, you’re going back to your own room to change. You can give me those back whenever.”

“Okay.” He didn’t get it, but Denny was frowning again.

“You naked in my room twice in one day is not a temptation I’m prepared to deal with.”

Rafi stared at the ceiling and the floor and any damn place except Denny’s face. All he could think was that Denny had sure as shit seen him up close and naked the night before. “Shut up.”

As if he knew it flustered Rafi—as if he liked that it flustered him—Denny kept needling him. “Not like it’s any big secret. I’ve made a fucking fool of myself over you, what, three times now?”

“No, you haven’t. Not a fool.” Rafi was the fool, and the longer Denny spoke, making fun of himself, the worse Rafi felt. Because Denny definitely needed to know this thing that Rafi had only just realized, when that asshole who lived on his floor had started trash-talking Denny and Rafi had wanted to kill him.

“Oh, please. I blew you at a party. You make my dick hard and we both know it.” Denny was leaning against the closet door now, his hands behind him, which thrust his hips forward.

Shit. Just hearing those words out loud right now was making Rafi’s dick, which had been expressing interest ever since Denny turned around and started devouring him with his eyes, wake up and join the party. He didn’t know if it was the adrenaline of the anxiety attack he was ignoring about the potential gossip, or the thrill of knowing he was about to say shit out loud that he normally kept in his own head, but suddenly Rafi just didn’t care anymore.

“If you’re gonna cockblock me at parties, we can just deal with that right out in the open,” Denny insisted. Boy was on a roll now. “And if you don’t like it—”

“I like it.”

For a second, he wasn’t sure Denny had even heard him. The way the other man’s voice trailed off, the narrowing of his eyes, cleared that up. Denny opened his mouth, but Rafi had a question he needed to ask first. “If I, um, cockblocked you, does that mean you didn’t…?”

Denny squared up, standing with his hands on his hips. “You understand there’s no scenario in which that is any of your business, right?”

He nodded. That was the problem. “What if I wanted to make it my business?”

“I’m gonna need you to be pretty fucking clear here about what you’re saying.” Denny’s gaze was steady. “I’m not up for being wrong about this again.”

Rafi shifted his weight. Fuck, this was hard. “What if I wanted to, you know, date?” He bit his lip. Was that clear? Better to make sure. “You.”

The pause that followed was Grand Canyon-esque.

“You wanna be my boyfriend, Rafi?” Denny’s voice was skeptical.

He swallowed. “Pretty sure. Yeah.”

“Pretty sure?” Denny’s eyebrows and his voice both rose. “I swear to God, if you’re jerking me around right now, I will fucking kill you. You understand? Death. Dismemberment. Dismemberment before death, even.”

“I’m not jerking you around.” Rafi didn’t mean for his voice to be so soft, but that was how honesty was working for him right now. “I’m not actually ready, you know? I still feel like I’m all…messy. But I can’t keep doing this.”

“You can’t.” Denny said it like a statement, but Rafi knew it was a question.

“Watching you with that guy last night almost killed me. I’ve never been jealous before like that. Like I couldn’t stand it. And then you… So, if I have to do it now… Shit.” This wasn’t coming out right at all. Like being with Denny was some kind of hardship he’d suffer through, when Rafi knew it was the thing he’d had to stop himself from running after all this time. “I want you more than I ever wanted anything, that’s all.”

Denny stared at him, then let out a groan that made Rafi take a step back. “You. Make. Me. Crazy, Rafael Castro. You make my dick hard, and my head stupid.” He shook his head and then glared at Rafi, but in a cute way. Rafi tucked his lips between his teeth and tried not to smile. “Fine. I can do it.”

“You can do it?” He wasn’t sure what that meant. He was definitely certain Denny Winslow was fucking awesome, though.

“Wait.” Denny threw his hands in the air, blowing a puff of air that fluttered his bangs. “I can wait for you.” The most awesome guy in the world muttered something under his breath about a nineteenth-century virgin.

“Really?” Because waiting didn’t sound like a thing Denny did a lot.

“Yes, really,” Denny said, even as he was shaking his head, and Rafi’s heart fucking launched itself right out of his chest at the realization that he was getting everything he wanted and the time to figure it all out.

“I’m gonna be in love with you so hard in about half a minute. You know that, right?” he asked, because look at that. Turned out everything got easier when you weren’t stuffing thoughts and feelings and shit under your mental furniture, trying to hide it from sight.

“Fuuuuuuck.” Denny groaned again, this time grabbing his crotch as he turned his back on Rafi. “Get out.”

“What?”

Denny waved a hand at the door. “Out. Wait in the hall. I gotta punch myself in the dick or something so I can get rid of this hard-on.”

Rafi flinched. “Don’t do that.”

“Seriously. Get out. I’m trying to be virtuous here.”

“Okay.”

As he passed though, Denny stopped him with a hand on his arm. “And no. I didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” Denny was staring down at his hand on Rafi’s arm, his fingers pale against Rafi’s dark skin. He wondered if Denny liked how they looked against each other. An image of Denny’s naked body sprawled across his own erupted in his brain. Rafi was going to need his own hard-on elimination strategy.

“Go home with that guy last night. Or anyone else.”

Rafi hadn’t thought he could smile any harder. “My business now? Even if you’re waiting.”

Denny grinned right back at him. “Yeah. I think so.”

“Think so?” He mimicked Denny teasing him about his own “pretty much”.

“Shut up.”

He leaned in and pressed a kiss to Denny’s mouth. Soft. Easy. “I’ll be in the hall.”

He pulled the door closed behind him. Seconds later, he heard another loud thunk from Denny’s room, and then a muttered curse.

“Ow.”

Rafi smiled until his face hurt.

Rafi’s first race at Carlisle was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him.

Up until the race started, he would have said admitting to Denny that he was halfway to being in love with him already topped the list of great things, but even that momentous event took a temporary backseat to his triumph on the water.

Two days before the weekend regatta with three local schools, an unofficial event that didn’t count for anything other than annual bragging rights, Coach Lawson pulled him aside after practice to tell him she wanted him in the stroke seat of the JV boat for Saturday’s race. The rower in that seat was responsible for setting the stroke pace for the rest of the boat, the most critical job.

Rafi spent three days trying not to throw up.

Denny hadn’t even given him shit about it, although Rafi knew he wanted to impress Lawson as much, if not more than, Rafi did. Because Denny was a pure competitor through and through. Wanting to get naked didn’t make him lose focus on his athletic goals. Not like Rafi, who enjoyed competing, but was mostly operating at a high level of panic when it came to rowing at Carlisle because he worried constantly about being good enough. Denny competed because he loved racing, loved pushing his body to the edge with seven other rowers and a cox in a heart-busting effort to beat back anyone who wanted to challenge them on the water.

Rafi didn’t know if it was because Denny had been racing so much longer than him, but Denny got pumped at the idea of racing. Rafi got sick to his stomach. Although he was proud that their coach wanted to see what he could do at stroke—this was what he was working for, every day—the idea of being in the spotlight during an actual regatta was nauseating.

The morning of the race, he stuffed a banana in his mouth while he pulled on his tight, Lycra racing unitard before dawn and hoped he wouldn’t puke.

He kept his earbuds in for the entire trip to the nearby lake where the local regattas were held. Denny waved off any teammates who wanted to talk to him, and Rafi was grateful. Grateful too for the occasional subtle hand on his back or shoulder that grounded him in the middle of the swirling nerves that threatened to unman him.

Unloading the boats kept Rafi distracted long enough before they dry-launched from the dock that he thought he might actually make it through the morning without passing out.

From the moment they’d sat in their boats—the bow pair of rowers sculling intermittently to keep them in line with the other novice boats—waiting for the command to
Attention!
until the moment Austin’s
Way ’nuff!
command to stop rowing finally penetrated his oxygen-deprived brain, the entire race was a blur.

All he knew was that they’d won.

The adrenaline hangover was going to be a killer. His legs were shaking so hard he didn’t know if he’d be able to get out of the boat when they got back to the docks. He’d collapsed on his back, head practically ramming Vinnie’s feet. Maybe Austin would haul on his hands to help him sit up again.

He’d known rowing stroke would be harder than anything. He’d done it in practice, for crying out loud, even if that had only been once. But the stress of knowing that seven guys behind him were counting on him to keep the pace Austin set was a killer.

What the hell had Coach been thinking, giving him that seat?

Maybe it was some kind of “mess with the new guy” strategy to see what he could do? He could almost believe that, except for Coach’s whole
I’m here to win
speech on the first day of practice. Either she was the best bullshitter he’d ever seen, or she really had thought he might be the man for the anchor seat.

When they docked, Austin was up and out of the boat so fast Rafi didn’t have a chance to ask him for a hand. That boy could move when he wanted.

“What the hell?” he wondered out loud.

Vinnie’s laugh behind him was little-kid delighted. “Get your ass back over here, Schreiner!” His suitemate steadied the shell with a hand on the dock while Rafi and the other port rowers climbed out first. “Got it?”

“Yeah.” He dropped to his stomach and grabbed the edge of the shell with a hand to stabilize it. “What’s he running from?”

“The dunking he knows he’s gonna get,” Denny grunted out as he clambered onto the dock, along with Vinnie and the rest of the eight-man team. He called to Austin. “Don’t you jinx us, you little shit.”