Off Campus (25 page)

“Bi,” Tom interrupted as if it were crucial he retain some kind of toehold on heterosexuality, then flinched. Jesus. Couldn't he go two minutes without denying Reese in some way? “Fuck. Sorry.”

“S'okay. It's what you are.” But Tom could hear it in Reese's voice and feel it in the tension in his body pressed up behind him. He'd managed to draw one more line in the sand and place himself on the opposite side of it from Reese. “I just wish you could believe the world wouldn't end if you kissed me in the campus center.”

Tom rolled over, squirming in place and trying not to shove Reese off the mattress and to the floor, until they faced each other, knees and foreheads touching as they curled up on the bed like a pair of ampersands.

“It's not just people finding out, Reese.” He tried to find the words. Strange, how hard it was to describe something for the first time. “I held it together this past year. But barely. You don't know—” Tom trailed off. There were too many things that Reese didn't know. Time was running out for explaining those things without his having hid them from Reese being a real problem. Truth was, that time might already be past. “If something goes wrong now? If I have to leave school again? I don't know that I'll ever make it back.”

Reese smelled like dance sweat and his hair was damp against his forehead. Tom wanted to stick his face in the curve of Reese's neck and lick his skin, taste the salt on his tongue and breathe deep.

“It feels like the end of the world waiting for me. Know it sounds over the top, but that's what it feels like. The shit that's just waiting for me to fuck up.” He felt like Peter, crying wolf, only he could
see
the wolf, lurking around the corner, hot drool leaking from the corner of black lips, but all anyone else saw was a clear, empty road in front of him.

He wanted to touch Reese but didn't know if he had regained the right to do that yet. So he settled for trying to make out the line of his cheekbone in the inky dark. The sharp slash of his eyebrow. And he waited.

“I get it. Or, at least, I get that you see it like that. But Tom—” Reese touched him, one hand on his face, but it made touching okay and Tom reached out like a blind man in the dark until he found Reese's thigh. Slid a hand down it and pulled Reese's knee forward until his leg hooked over Tom's hip. He brought that hand back to Reese's bare chest and laid it flat against his sternum. Everything was better with touching. He heard Reese sigh and felt the breath roll over his face. “Being with you tonight made me feel shitty.”

Pressure was building in his eyes and nose, a hot tightness that squeezed his voice down to microscopic proportions. “I know.”

“And my plate of things that make me feel shitty is kinda full already, you know?”

“I know.”

Reese was stroking his face. Not as if he was trying to turn Tom on. Just touching. Reminding himself, hopefully, that this was a guy who didn't mean to hurt him. Even if he was.

Reese's heartbeat under his fingertips was slow and heavy. He wished they could be silent and still in the dark, feeling that strong thud under his hand. His face was tight and hot and he let each breath an inch into his lungs before freezing and pushing it out again. Dizziness was creeping in.

“I'm trying, Tom.” Reese's hand slid to the back of his head and held him still as Tom shook his head.
Not yet. Please, not yet.
“I'm a little too good at this already, though. Making myself feel this bad.”

He could hear the words that Reese didn't say, as clear as if they rang out like a bell.
I don't know how much longer…
And there wasn't much he wouldn't do to stop those words from coming out.

Except the one thing that would make them unnecessary.

Tom fell asleep with Reese's hand holding him and no good answers on his tongue.

Reese flung an arm over his face to block the morning light, sheets tangled around his waist in Tom's bed.

“What are you doing?”

Tom bent over in his desk chair and tightened the laces on his Adidas.

“Going for a run. I'm not in good enough shape to compete, but if I don't wanna look like an asshole at practice, I need to get some runs in.”

Reese's arm dropped. He pushed himself up on his elbows.

“Why?”

He double-knotted the laces and yanked on them hard. Admitting that he wasn't going to do the thing that he knew would stop hurting Reese was hard.

“I'm gonna make you feel bad. And that plate is full.” He looked up and met Reese's eyes. Wished he could smile. But he didn't know if this was going to be enough. The cold knot in his gut kept twisting. “So I gotta help you get something else off that plate. Or there won't be room for me, right?”

Reese watched him, saying nothing.

“I did a crappy job asking you about it last night, Reese, but that doesn't mean it's not important. So if I have to go to practice to guilt you into trying therapy, then I better run.” He stood up and ran damp palms down his thighs. He'd hoped he could get this one run in under the radar. In case it turned out to be a terrible idea and he chickened out and didn't go again. But if he had to make the call right now, then fuck it. He was committed. It was the least, really the absolutely fucking least, he could do. “If I run far enough, and you talk long enough, maybe that makes room for me around the edges.”

Reese flopped back down onto the mattress with a huff, smacking both of his hands over his eyes and groaning out loud.

“Ah, fuck. What do you have, some kind of script of awesome things to say that make me want to be nice to you? Shit.”

The knot in his gut melted a little.

Tom's running shoes were soaked with the heavy layer of dew from the grass on the infield by the time they crossed to the far side of the track where the staggered lane starts were painted. He dropped his backpack at the grass's edge next to lane one.

Reese was already on the track, bouncing on the balls of his feet, throwing fake punches in the clear air of the early morning light.

“You know we're not here for a boxing match, right?”

The smile Reese threw him was brilliant, making him stagger with its pure shine of happiness. If he'd had moments of questioning the wisdom of this plan, that smile alone made it worthwhile.

“I don't know what it is. Something about being up this early and outside, makes me feel uber sporty. Maybe it's the shorts.” He winked at Tom. As soon as he'd understood that Tom was serious about running, he'd insisted on coming along.

They'd had to use a half dozen safety pins to take in the sides of one of Tom's pairs of loose silky basketball shorts. Reese had been ready to go in jeans or cut-off cargo pants—“Shorts are not my thing, dude”—but there was only so much ridiculousness Tom could stand. He'd pulled out an old pair of shorts that had promptly fallen off Reese's hips and then sat there, breathing deep and trying not to pay attention to his face being inches from that bare waist, pale skin glowing with its lack of sun. He wanted to put his mouth on the sharp bone of Reese's pelvis and bite, but he resisted valiantly and pinned a section of the shorts together as Reese held them in place.

He'd looked up once, when Reese had swayed forward as if on accident and brushed his silk-covered dick against Tom's forearm while he pinned. A suspicious gleam shone in his eyes as he looked down at Tom, trying not to smile.

“Knock it off, unless you wanna get thrown down on this bed and not let up until tomorrow,” he growled and tried to keep his hands away from the soft skin of Reese's hip. Fucking pins.

When Reese nudged him again with his dick, the length of him starting to swell under the navy blue nylon, his control snapped. He fisted his hand in the loose fabric below the neat column of pins he'd already set and yanked Reese bodily forward. Laid his mouth on the hot, smooth skin of Reese's waist and sucked, scraping the flat of his tongue over the skin. Captured Reese between his teeth and let him know how hard he was
thinking
about biting him by the nip of his teeth on Reese's skin. Delicate fingertips rested on the back of his neck, scraping through the short shaved hairs there, touching him so lightly he could barely feel it and yet every ounce of his focus zoomed in on those fingertips. His arm was pressed like a bar behind Reese's thighs, locking him in place so he couldn't get away, Reese's back arching him away from Tom's mouth.

He let go and dropped his forehead against Reese's hip. The hands in his hair stayed.

“Sorry.” He kept his head down for a moment and felt like an asshole for hiding. He looked up, fearing to see that white, drawn look on Reese's face that meant he was trying hard not to react to something that terrified him.

Reese had pulled half of his hair into a samurai top knot and anchored it with a bright green elastic, so for once his whole face was visible.

It was flushed pink.

Not white. Not pale and looking shaky around the edges. Pinking up with the glow of a guy whose dick was getting hard because he was turned on by their play.

Tom didn't realize how hard he'd braced himself to see fear until all the adrenaline flushed from his muscles, leaving him weak and a little shaky himself.

Holy shit.

He was so not the right guy to be doing this.

He didn't realize he'd let go of Reese entirely, his own hands cradling his head as he braced his elbows on his knees. Reese's fingertips danced again on his nape, the tiniest connection between them.

“You gotta find some other guy for this, Reese.” The hand on his neck stilled. “I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing and one of these times I'm gonna get it wrong.” He tilted his head back to look Reese in the eyes, trying not to flinch at how vulnerable it felt. “I'm so fucking terrified that one of these times I'm going to touch you in the wrong way. I don't know if I can do this.”

“Hey.” Reese pulled his hands away from his face and brushed over his hair, smoothing it down. “It's okay.”

“Yeah, but it won't be if—”

“Then I'll deal. We'll deal,” he promised at the look Tom shot him. “I'm not a child. And I'm
not
broken. This is hard sometimes. Don't you think I wish you could throw me down on the bed and fuck me 'til I see stars?” Tom's dick went from half asleep to all the way awake in an instant, the zing of
hell, yes
shooting up his spine. A matching heat lit in Reese's eyes as he kept talking. “Not yet, big boy. Someday. Maybe. But I'm a fully grown human being. You are not responsible for making sure nothing bad ever happens to me, especially when the bad things are only in my fucked up brain. One, good luck with that.” He smiled down at Tom. Always over him. Tom never forgot to make himself smaller, pull himself in so as not to threaten. He wondered if Reese understood how Tom measured his actions, his posture, his very location in a room, in order to make sure Reese felt in control. “Two,
I'm
the only one who can fix me. Though I appreciate that you're willing to try.”

That was the coin on the scale tipping the balance into guilt all over again. He'd already lost count of the number of times Reese had given him another chance, had kept his heart open out of generosity and a bravery that Tom knew he fell short on matching. He dropped his gaze again and shook his head.

“You should kick me to the curb now, before you get attached. I am not what you need.” He knew he was talking about so much more than just his fear of making a wrong move and triggering bad memories.

“I'm not worried.” Reese's voice was low, his fingers more sure than ever as he ran his hand down Tom's neck. “Besides, it's too late anyways.”

Tom looked up at Reese's lopsided grin.

“Already attached. Sorry.”

He shouldn't get a rush of warmth from that grin, those words. This was a man who was working his way back to whole and who was going to get there. Who'd be happy and healthy and a part of the world in a way Tom was afraid he might never be again.

He grabbed Reese's hand from the back of his head and pulled it down to his mouth. Pressed his lips to the back of Reese's wrist, then held his hand in two fists while he laid his forehead against their clasp.

“Okay. Yeah. Too late.”

So he ran, legs pumping beneath him, the ache of lactic acid building faster than it used to as he leaned into the curve and flew back onto the straightaway, Reese whooping and hollering from the far side of the track. He ran until the sweat poured off him and his muscles burned and he hoped it would be enough.

Because he wasn't going to do that thing, the one thing that would stop hurting Reese. And that was going to break them, sooner or later.

If he could run fast enough and far enough, maybe later wouldn't come.

He locked his eyes on the finish line and tried to outrun the knowing that it would.

Chapter Fourteen

When Reese told Tom he better plan on spending part of his Christmas holiday at the Anders' house, he knew better than to argue. He was stressed out enough about the holiday, though Reese had been the one to suggest that they skip gifts. Tom's laptop froze and couldn't be brought back to the land of the living during the mad, no-sleep rush to finish research papers and projects in the last week of the semester. He knew Reese assumed it was more a matter of not having time to go buy a new one than a money problem, because he
still
hadn't gotten around the explaining exactly how bad things were. Reese thought he was charmingly anti-materialistic for someone who'd grown up with obscene wealth. He thought Tom hadn't noticed the sole of his running shoes separating from the body of the shoe, peeling dangerously farther with every early morning run he logged on the track or on the trails, avoiding the rest of the team.

He knew his shoes were in dire need of replacement. Could feel the cushion in his insole had worn out completely by the ache of tendonitis in his knees. He took to timing his runs so he could ice his knees afterward while Reese was gone, wanting to avoid questions about that too.

He'd told Reese he'd rejoin practice in the spring, when training officially began for the outdoor track and field season. He would train by himself through the winter, trying to pick up some of the ground he'd lost. They argued over whether this meant Reese got to postpone asking the campus health center about a therapist or if he should have faith in Tom's intentions and start now.

Tom had a hard time vouching for his own side on that one.

In the meantime, arguing politely about therapy kept everyone off the subject of why Tom hadn't pried away an hour or two to go buy a new laptop as he moved into one of the many campus computer centers on a semi-permanent basis. He kept his earbuds screwed in tight and his eyes on the screen, ignoring anyone else in the room unless it was Reese, bringing him another travel mug of coffee with three shots of espresso and urging Tom to come back to the room and share Reese's laptop.

No way. He took enough from Reese already without leaching computer time from him in the busiest week of the semester.

But logging round-the-clock hours on the opposite end of campus, where he'd discovered the least populated computer center was on the top floor of the science building—yellowing lights, limited heat, and no vending machine in the building kept all but the most desperate or delirious of souls away—meant he'd run out of markers to call in when it came to resisting Reese's demands for the holiday.

“Tell you what I want, okay? I want a meal with you and my dad and me all at the same table. I want you to sleep over when you can, even if it's only for a few hours. I want to fall asleep on the couch watching old movies and let my dad make us
pannkaker
for breakfast.”

At Tom's blank look, he explained. “It's Swedish for pancakes.”

Tom tried to picture it and felt the kneejerk denial rising up in him. He wanted to get his own shit done during the break. Christmas was over for him as a holiday, its nostalgic pull gone. Pretty much the opposite. He'd prefer to never think again of the excess and careless waste of years past. Thinking of everything he'd had and trashed or tossed away made him sick to his stomach. How poorly his father had prepared him for anything other than inheriting wealth.

Reese looked him in the eye. “We make a lot of compromises for each other, you and I. This one isn't mine.”

He had a moment of shouting
Fuck you!
inside his head, raging at this man giving him ultimatums and drawing another fucking line in the sand and telling him to jump. His hands tightened on the back of the chair and the spasm shot up his arms until his shoulders locked and he glared at Reese.

Who didn't flinch.

“Fine.” He could taste the blood in the word as he bit it off. He didn't even know why he was so angry. The dread had been building in his gut at the idea of going weeks without sleeping next to Reese or sitting next to him, wracking his brains over tax law or watching
The Bourne Identity
for the twentieth time. He'd grown used to being tethered to the world again, of having someone who would notice his absence if he didn't show up. Returning to the way he'd lived for the year before re-enrolling at Carlisle this past September seemed impossibly hard.

He didn't know if he had it in him any more to hold the walls up that allowed him to function in his own isolated bubble, impervious to any arrows slung his way by the world. The thought that he might not be able to hold it together terrified him.

Tom withdrew their last week on campus and didn't know how to stop it. The battles raging inside his head were making him crazy. Between his need to never do anything to hurt Reese and the only way he knew to keep himself functioning—total and stoic isolation—he was wracked with worry that he'd fuck up on both ends.

Because he was okay with everything that had happened to him. Okay with what he would do in order to survive, to hold it together, to stay at his top-tier college long enough to get a degree that would open doors for him. He might even admit to some pride at how well he'd managed to take control, to nail down each and every detail and master every rule and regulation. For someone who hadn't known where to find his own Social Security card, much less how to fill out W-4 for a job, he'd done good. He knew that.

But in public it still burned. The first time he'd told a friend he was going to have to get a job, flushing as he'd asked for a place to stay while he looked for one, the friend had eyed him strangely.

“Stay in the pool house. We'll go to Mallorca for the summer and by the time we get back, I'm sure your lawyers will have it all cleared up, okay?”

Tom, who knew this mess was his life now, had nodded and stopped calling that friend. Or any friend. They didn't understand and the humiliation of trying to explain it was a blow to the face that he couldn't put himself through again. Not after the first half dozen times at least.

Thinking back, he knew that if he'd called Cash, his friend would have tried, although no doubt he too would have been unable to believe, deep down, that it was all gone. All of the money, the properties, the casual ease with which Tom moved through the world. Gone. Tom could hardly believe it himself for months at first. How could anyone else understand?

He'd stopped expecting them to. He didn't ask for help anymore. For a while, he'd hung around occasionally with his old crowd, desperate for some human connection with people who knew him, pretending that nothing had changed. But it was too hard to spend time around people who didn't understand why he couldn't join a last-minute trip to the slopes in Vermont for the weekend or head to Manhattan for some clubbing. His friends thought him melodramatic and showed their irritation when he backed out of every jaunt.

He hadn't spoken the words out loud, “I have nothing,” to anyone other than his father's lawyer and the bankers who'd explained to him that everything,
everything
, was frozen and would most likely be lost when the final judgment was made and the civil suits started rolling in.

Which meant Reese had no way to understand why Tom froze and all of the color drained from his face when Reese handed him a battered laptop with a red bow stuck off-center on the lid on Christmas morning.

He'd shown up before midnight on Christmas Eve, parking on the street outside the Anders' house and sending Reese a text message to come and wake him in the morning. He felt awkward waking up Reese's dad in the middle of the night and knew from experience that it wasn't cold enough yet to make sleeping in his car unsafe. But it hadn't been sixty seconds later that Reese was banging on his window, his smile fierce in the cold as he hopped with bare feet on the frozen ground. Tom had already fallen asleep, exhausted after three days straight of driving.

“Tom! What the hell? Get inside, you lunatic.”

He'd stopped first to wrap his arms around Reese's slender torso, burying his face in his neck and holding on tight for what felt like ages, until he jerked back in alarm. Shit. He'd practically been smothering Reese.

“Sorry,” was all he got out before Reese tugged him back in close and wrapped his hands around Tom's waist.

“S'okay. Really.” Reese pressed his forehead against Tom's sternum before pulling back to look up at him and smile. “It's okay.”

Tom kept his arms around Reese loose and easy. Holding him but easing up on the death grip.

Inside, he'd insisted on sleeping on the couch in the living room, since there wasn't a guest room. Only the master bedroom and Reese's old room, which Reese swore his dad would be fine with Tom sharing. Tom refused.

Reese had narrowed his eyes at that and handed him a pile of bedding. Tom, who couldn't have said if it was manners or another public declaration of gayness that he ducked out of fear, kissed him goodnight at the bottom of a darkened staircase and stumbled his way through the living room to collapse on the couch. He punched up the pillow under his head, wrapped the scratchy homemade afghan Reese had given him around his shoulders, and decided he'd figure it out when he could think straight.

In the morning, Reese knocked him flat again with the laptop.

“It's not a gift! I know we said we weren't doing that.” Words spilled out of Reese as Tom sat there, in his boxers with a blanket wrapped around his lap, for Christ's sake. The sunrise had barely started graying the sky outside the big plate glass window when Reese had snuck down the stairs and squeezed in next to him on the couch. They'd settled in to some serious making out, Tom rolling under Reese until his boy stretched out and covered the length of him, when Reese had jumped up and run over to the Christmas tree looming in the corner. He came bouncing back gleefully, laptop in hand, to a shell-shocked Tom. “I stuck a bow on it because, you know, festive. But it's nothing. Just a loan, my old laptop from high school. And it'll probably make you nuts because the S key gets stuck and you have to bang at it. But it's better than my running coffee across campus to that horrible science building with all the fetuses in formaldehyde because, seriously? Those jars creep me out.”

Reese ran out of words, but Tom's hadn't come back to him yet. He stared at the scratched gray plastic and swallowed hard. Reese's fingers crept over his.

“It's no big deal, okay, Tom?”

He cleared his throat. Blinked several times. “No, I know.”

“It's really not. Don't be upset.”

“I'm not.”

Reese scoffed politely and grabbed his face. He rubbed a thumb under Tom's eye and then popped his thumb in his mouth. Tom knew he tasted salt.

“I'm not upset. This is a really nice loan.” Damn. He had to clear his throat again. “I feel kinda bad that I didn't get you anything.” Trying hard, he dug deep for a wobbly smile. “Could have given you my old high school track shorts. They might even have fit you.”

“Yeah? You were a skinny ass punk back then?” Reese's eyes were soft as he leaned forward and wrapped a hand around Tom's neck, pulling him in for a kiss. “Like me?”

“You're not skinny. You're…slim. Strong.” He sighed and set the laptop on the floor next to the couch, sinking back on the deep cushions and tangling his fingers with Reese. Maybe Reese would lie down too so Tom wouldn't have to look in his eyes for this part. He got his wish when Reese scooched down and stretched out next to him, head on Tom's chest.

Tom kept one hand curled behind his head and played with the waistband of Reese's sweatpants with the other.

“So how much have you figured out then?” At Reese's demurral, he groaned and pulled the arm behind his head to cover his eyes. “You can say it.”

A short sigh warmed the cotton of his T-shirt on his chest.

“You're not working for money for books, are you?” Reese picked his words carefully. “Or, not just for books.”

“No.” He waited, eyes closed.

“You don't have anyplace to go when we're not at Perkins. You'll be glad to shower here today.”

He blushed and didn't say anything, figuring silence was as good as a confirmation. He knew he didn't smell so great, although he'd done a handful of bathroom pit stop washes with wet paper towels.

“There isn't enough money to pay for school, is there?”

“There isn't any.”

“Any…money?”

He shook his head and hoped Reese could feel it.

“Nothing at all?”

“Nope.”

“It's fifty grand for a year at Carlisle. How much financial aid are you getting?”

“None.”

Reese sprang up like a jack in the box. “What? Why not? It's based on need. I should know. We're hardly paying anything.” He pried Tom's arm off his face and shook his chin until he opened his eyes.

Open eyes didn't mean he had to look at anyone. There was a nice big window over Reese's shoulder and he could almost make out the hulking curves of ornamental bushes in the front yard now that the sun was up.

“You file the FAFSA form in the spring and it covers—”

“The previous year. Fuck. When your dad—”

“Wasn't short on cash, no.”

“But they have to make exceptions…”

“Getting myself declared financially independent is actually harder than it sounds. And I waited until too late.”

He didn't mention the override exception for parental imprisonment. He could barely explain his reasoning for refusing to accept that advantage to himself. The idea of trying to explain it to Reese, of Reese not understanding why Tom couldn't do it, made him shudder with anxiety and nausea.

Reese slumped against his hip. “Shit. I knew something was wrong. I kept leaving those apples on my desk because you always eat like you aren't getting enough food. How are you managing?”