Page 52 of Jackrabbit

He'd really tossed him in the goddamn pool.

Another body slid up beside him, and Beau's sleep shirt floated up around his ribs, showing dark hair trailing down his stomach to the hem of his soaking basketball shorts. Then those hands slipped into the water, hooked beneath Colt’s arms, and dragged him to the surface.

When his head broke the top of the water, Colt gasped, taking in a long, damp breath. The fight drained out of him as his skin kicked up goosebumps from the breeze hitting the moisture on it. He looked down at his legs, distorted in the water, then up to Beau’s chest, but couldn't bring himself to look in Beau in the eyes.

Beau hooked his arm around Colt’s waist and kicked his feet, and they treaded water while a chorus of crickets screeched somewhere behind them. A pack of coyotes yipped and howled, Beau’s chest rising and falling against his side.

“Let's get you dry,” Beau rumbled.

As much as Colt wanted to say he could swim himself to the steps, he kind of couldn't. His legs were jelly, his head was spinning, and there was a tired so deepit was in his goddamn bones. He allowed himself to be towed, clinging to Beau’s arm as they hit the steps and climbed out. Toast ran at them as they walked into the house, but he stopped in his tracks when he saw them dripping and hopped backward with an annoyed meow.

“The water,” Colt protested as the puddle formed under them. “I can—”

“It's just water.” Beau put his hand on the back of Colt’s neck and urged him forward. “Robot vacuum mops at five anyway.”

“Okay,” Colt mumbled as he followed Beau's urging through the living room and down the hallway.

They stopped in front of a door that had always been shut, and Beau pushed it open and guided Colt inside. The room was huge, the same wood floors as the rest of the house, a king size bed covered with a plush, dark green comforter and a bunch of pillows.

A towel dropped onto his head, and Beau scrubbed at his hair with it before letting it go. Colt finished, rubbing his face and neck. He wrapped it around his shoulders and shivered in the freezing AC. Beau's bedroom fan was on just like every other person's here in the summer, and Colt’s toes felt like they were being frozen.

“Here.” Beau handed him a stack of clothes and pointed toward another door at the side of the room. “Bathroom's over there.”

Colt held the clothes away from his body as Beau turned his back. Colt’s throat tightened. “Beau, I—”

“Go get changed.” His voice wasn't unkind, but it was definitely tired as Beau dug in his dresser, dripping all over his bedroom floor. “Then we'll talk.”

Beau started peeling off his soaking shirt, and Colt turned around to head into the bathroom so he didn’t stare. He stripped and hung the wet clothes over the edge of the—enormous, wow—soaking tub. Once he'd dried himself off, he pulled on the shorts he'd been given and cinched them as tight as they'd go. He had to, or else they’d slip right off.

The shirt smelled like Beau, kind of. Clean, warm like whatever fancy laundry detergent Beau used. Colt brought the collar to his nose for one second before feeling like a huge creep and letting it drop.

Beau was dressed in sweats and a clean shirt, just finishing up running a towel along the wet spots on the floor, but he looked up when the floorboards creaked under Colt’s feet. Colt stared at his own stomach and twisted his hand in the hem of his shirt. Which made him look ridiculous—God. He crossed his arms instead.

“Look at me,” Beau said.

Colt didn't. He looked at Beau's feet instead, big and brown with the second toe just slightly longer than the big toe. “Beau. I'm really sorry.”

Shame was pressing down between his shoulder blades now that he'd come down from whatever-the-fuck spiral he'd woken up at two-thirty in the morning already in. He'd just acted like a fucking psycho in front of the one person he was constantly trying to prove himself to. In front of the man whose praise made him melt into a Colt-shaped puddle, made him feel alive and good and—

“Colt.” A hand slid onto his shoulder and squeezed. “Look at me.”

He couldn't resist that tone. It was Pavlovian at this point, like he'd trained it into himself. Beau watched him raise his eyes, and held his gaze, and Colt chewed his inner lip.

“You lost yesterday,” Beau said without a hint of accusation. Just a fact. The sky is blue, the cicadas scream in summer, and Colt had lost.

“I know,” Colt whispered.

“But that's not what’s got you like this, is it?” Beau’s hand squeezed Colt’s shoulder, his fingers spreading across his trap. “The loss. It's not about the loss itself. It's not about you thinking I'm disappointed. Is it?”

“Of course it is.” Colt's eyes flicked toward the wall behind Beau, and he scowled. “I dragged you out of a peaceful retirement, made you spend all your time training me, and then fucked up my first race. You're disappointed. And I feel shitty about it.”

The hand on his shoulder squeezed again, and Colt chanced a glance back at Beau, who was watching him with steady eyes. “Already told you that you were wrong about what I was thinking, didn't I?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Colt, come on now.”

“Beau, I just—”