Page 80 of Hard Check
Jonesy was already gone, weaving toward the bar. Ski shook his head. Ford took a slow drink and caught Leo's eye across the table with the smallest smile. Leo sat there with the laugh still on his face. The text to Dawson was still in his pocket, unsent.
He wasn't okay. He was a long way from it. But Jonesy was loud at the bar, making good on his threat to embarrass him, and Ski was still grinning into his drink. The team had closed in around Leo without him asking for it. The friendships he was forming were enough to get him through the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Justin didn't get up when Dawson walked in. He'd taken the corner booth and ordered two beers. He watched Dawson cross the room like he'd been timing how long it took him to show.
"Thought you weren't coming," Justin said.
Dawson dropped onto the bench across from him. "Got held up at the shop."
"You've been getting held up at the shop every day for a week and a half." Justin pushed one of the beers across the table. "Drink."
Dawson wrapped his hand around the glass. The condensation was cold against his palm. He didn’t drink. If he started, he might not stop.
Justin leaned back in the booth and crossed his arms. He had a way of going still when he was done being patient, his whole body settling into a kind of quiet that was harder to sit across from than any raised voice. He’d done it at the barn two weeks ago. He was doing it now.
“So,” Justin said. “You going to talk to me, or are we going to sit here and pretend everything’s hunky-dory until I get bored and leave?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You canceled on me twice last week. You came to the barn the week before and couldn’t pick up a wrench.” Justin uncrossed his arms and put both hands flat on the table. “I gave you space, but now we’re gonna talk. I’m not going to watch you circle the drain.”
Dawson stared at the beer. The foam had settled. Somewhere behind the bar, a glass clinked against the wash station.
“It’s Leo,” Dawson said. “The guy from the tractor pull. Plays for the Stags.”
He said it to the table. He couldn’t look at Justin while the words were still in the air.
Justin didn’t react. No surprise, no adjustment. He just sat there, and the steadiness of it told Dawson that Justin had known for a long time and had been waiting for Dawson to catch up.
“Okay,” Justin said. “Tell me what happened.”
So Dawson told him. Not all of it—not the nights, not how Leo’s hands felt or the sound of his laugh when nobody else was around. But the outline. How it started. How it grew to the point that just talking to Leo felt like a huge part of his day. How Dawson had kept them invisible, and how that had worked right up until the night Ethan came home early and Dawson shoved Leo out of his bedroom and into the hallway like he was a dirty little secret.
He told Justin about Leo’s face. Not anger or hurt, but resignation. The steady look of a man who’d just learned where he stood.
When he was done, the beer was still untouched and Justin’s expression had gone flat and hard.
“That’s fucked up,” Justin said.
Dawson’s hand tightened on the glass.
“I’m not going to dress it up for you. You shoved him out of your room. You treated him like nothing more than a meaningless fuck you were ashamed of.” Justin’s voice was even, direct, the same tone he used when he told Dawson a weld was bad or a fuel line was cracked. No heat. Just the diagnosis.
“I didn’t ask him to?—”
“Don’t give me that shit. From where I’m sitting, you had the guy in your bed and you threw him out the second your brother’s headlights hit the window. That’s not protecting him. That’s protecting yourself. That’s you being too chicken-shit to own who you are.”
Dawson looked at the table. The wood was scarred and dark with years of spills. He could feel the truth of Justin’s words catching, the same way a bolt seats when it finally finds the thread.
“I know,” he said.
“Good. Because if you didn’t know that, I’d be more worried than I am.” Justin picked up his beer and drank. Set it down. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“He won’t talk to me.”
“Can you blame him?”
