There went my jaw clenching, nearly snapping and unhinging the bone. I seriously did not need to be having this conversation with her again. “Maybe I just have a problem with commitment.”
“Or maybe you just need to stop denying who you are,” she countered.
My teeth gnashed but I remained outwardly calm. Outside, I was composed. Inside, mass hysteria and panic. “Fine, I’ll go camping with you and your whipped puppy,” I snapped. Anything to escape this.
A victorious smile bloomed on Molly’s deceptively angelic face. “Goody. We depart at dawn, my lovely friend.”
I watched her flounce off, teeth still attempting to grind themselves into nubs. Damn manipulator. She played me again, plucking my strings like a fucking violin. I seriously needed to start reevaluating my choice of friends.
Because of my bad taste in friends, I was now on all fours on the forest floor, heaving the remainder of the dirt and leaf stew I’d ingested. I stumbled to my feet, swaying, and stomped after Molly and Rick with the baby tree — sapling? — Molly had thrust to me at the beginning of our hike dragging behind me. The burlap protecting its roots snagged at twigs and other things littering the ground but I couldn’t scrounge up enough energy to lift it any higher.
Lest you think I was a puny weakling, let me assure you that I was in perfectly good shape. I might have been huffing and puffing as if I was about to blow a house down, sweat might have been running off me in rivulets and saturating my t-shirt so it clung uncomfortably to my skin, but when you subsisted primarily on caffeine and not much else like I did, you found it did wonders keeping you high-strung and jittery but it did absolutely nothing for your stamina. My only saving grace was that I wasn’t forced to climb the mountains I saw jutting in the distance. That incline would’ve killed me. Or else I would’ve plummeted to my premature demise.
Lagging behind Molly and Rick, I allowed my gaze to rove, watchful for any of nature’s hellish minions. Squirrels and birds and skunks, oh, my. If Dorothy had been within reach, I would’ve throttled the bitch for her damn ruby slippers, chanting all that there’s no place like home bullshit. I was way out of my comfort zone here.
Better than the alternative, Sharp, I thought. Yeah, way better than having Molly pick at my brain, dissecting my troubled little psyche.
Maybe you’re wondering why I capitulated to Molly so easily, considering my feud with the outdoors. Maybe you’re a Smarty McSmartpants and you’ve already guessed. According to Molly, it was so obvious. I, of course, thought differently.
The reluctant homo. Now, where hadn’t I heard that sad sob story before?
Before you start making snap judgments, know this: I wasn’t gay. The locker room was never a feast for my eyes. At most, the other dudes only earned cursory glances from me, and that was strictly for comparison’s sake. Every guy did it, no matter if they claimed otherwise. I was proud to say that, even at a modest 5’8”, with a lithe, wiry frame, I was packing some impressive wood in my boxers. No ego check required; it was simple fact.
The truth was I’d never had any reason to question my sexual orientation. Since puberty and my first glimpse at one of my older brother’s skin flicks, I’d been all about the ladies. Short ones, tall ones, skinny ones, fat ones, freckled and bespectacled, it didn’t matter. I loved women, all of them.
Until Kieran O’Brien.
Who was he? Glad you asked. Molly’s cousin was the first and only glitch in my womanizing endeavors. Without saying a word, removed and detached in a way that stupidly intrigued me, he had captivated me. Stole my breath. Seized my heart. And caused a horrifying and instant boner to tent my pants.
For a straight guy to suddenly be panting after another guy was… disturbing, to say the least. I consoled myself with the thought that most guys had their confused moments, where they wondered… right?
Right?
The man was an enigma wrapped inside a mystery and cloaked in inscrutability. He had a way of seeming apart from the crowd, there physically but still removed. Emotionally, that is. Like he couldn’t deign to grace us peons with his full attention, the spoiled, egotistical bastard. His aquamarine eyes, so bright, were always flat and vacant. I’d suspect he was hopped up on drugs if not for the fact that his body was a temple, undiluted by any harmful substances. It was a temple I would’ve gladly worshipped at. You know, despite being one hundred percent hetero.
I didn’t need to be a psychology major to know I was all insane in the membrane.
My… attraction to him was a demon I’d been attempting to exorcise. But it was a tenacious little shit, clinging stubbornly, invading my every waking moment, insidiously creeping into my (wet) dreams. It had reached the point where just the thought of him had me salivating, a raging hard-on springing to disgustingly eager attention.
For eight months, I was constantly confronted by his too sexy presence, and by an unflattering reflection of myself, someone I didn’t even know. Someone I didn’t like. The first inklings of doubt had sprouted in my mind and I fucking hated it, hated him for making me doubt.
When Molly and I broke up — amicably, of course — I’d been relieved, a huge weight lifting off my shoulders. Not only would I stop feeling guilty about my lusty and abnormal thoughts but, because I wasn’t her boyfriend anymore, I wasn’t obligated to attend those family functions with her. I didn’t have to see him anymore. Surely everything would snap back to normal.
Um, no.
Nothing and no one I did quenched this… this… obsession.
I was beginning to think I had a problem here.
I cursed under my breath. “Molly, are we there yet?” I called, not quite managing to quell the whine in my voice.
Molly grinned at me over her shoulder. “Just a few more minutes, pouty.”
“Pouty?” I muttered indignantly. How dare she? She was the one who dragged me out here, blackmailing my ass into motion with her threat of delving into my innermost fantasies and exposing them. Exposing me. She was such a—
Jesus, I was pouting.
A sudden squawk had me glancing up and I caught sight of some bird that looked like a sparrow but it had a black-capped head and two white tail feathers. It was the briefest of glimpses as it soared up, up and away. I supposed I should’ve considered myself lucky that the thing hadn’t shit on me.
Unfortunately, it had happened before.
Quickly on the sparrow-looking bird’s white tail feathers was a bird I did recognize, and not just by its red-feathered tail. A red-tail hawk. A freaking bird of prey. Its hooked raptor beak was great for gouging out eyes, its thick, chunky wings outspread as it soared high above. I resisted the impulse to shield my eyes and hunch my shoulders, kicking up my pace and quickly catching up to Molly and Rick. Yes, I was using Rick as a human shield now; his hulking mass would be pecked before mine was.
I hiked interminably — actually, probably just ten minutes, but it felt interminable — and finally a break in the trees was ahead of us. We shouldered through and I got my first glimpse of where we would be staying for the weekend.