I Had No Idea It Would Hurt This Bad （18）

"Yo, he's so hot, omigod," JT heard the young girl whisper to her friend as they skated away after taking a picture with him.

"Alright. That's the fifth ‘he's so hot', Carter. How many you up to?"

"Shit. I've only had two."

"Chump," JT teased, as he signed some autographs for a group of boys, maybe 12 years old or so, who'd skated up to where he and Carter were hanging out by the penalty box.

"So, why don't you play in the games, anyway?" one of the kids asked JT.

"I, um, so I'll be able to play next year. This year, I really have to work on my classes, make sure I study hard and keep my grades up. That's why it's so important to make sure you pay intention…I mean, pay attention in school and do your best."

"Well, I hate school. I'm kinda dumb," the kid said sadly, as JT finished signing his Penn State puck and handed it back to him.

"Nah, don't talk like that about yourself. Hey, did you know that I actually, um, have a learning disability?"

The kid shook his head.

"Well, I do. It's something called dyslexia, and it makes it hard for me to read and write. It doesn't mean I'm dumb, though. It just means I learn differently. The world is cruel enough, bud. Best thing you can do is be kind to yourself." JT extended his hand to shake the kid's. "And you are very smart. Don't let anyone tell you different. You understand?"

The boy nodded, then pulled his hand away from JT's. "Thanks."

"Thank you," the boy's mother mouthed to JT before skating away after him.

Carter immediately threw his arms around JT and kissed him on the cheek. "How the fuck are you even a real human being, Red?" he asked, letting go of him. "Seriously, you always know exactly what to say. It's unbelievable."

"It's a gift," he said, scanning the rink to see where his girlfriend and boyfriend were.

That evening's game had been a complete barn burner, with Penn State ultimately pulling off the 3-2 W in the shootout. Macklin had been stellar in net, and Carter had been a force on defense, even having scored the goal that knotted the game at 2.

Since it was Family Weekend, JT had been permitted to sit in the audience with Ryan, Hayes, Audrey, and Jess, and all of them were shocked at how animated and into the action Audrey was for the duration of the game.

"Pressure, boys. Where's the pressure?"

"Oh, bullshit! Open your eyes, ref!"

"Get on the forecheck! Come on!"

"Close that five hole, Macklin!"

Hayes had turned to JT at one point. "You got a fuckin' live one here, eh?"

"Apparently ," JT'd responded, amazed at the fact that she actually knew the game, something that JT wasn't used to.

She'd blushed when she caught him staring at her. "I, uh, sorry. I really do like hockey."

"That is not something you have to apologize for, gorgeous. In fact," he'd leaned into her ear and whispered, "it's kinda got me hard as fuck, if I'm being honest."

"Well, good," she'd turned her head and whispered into his ear. "Because I fully intend to wear your jersey and sit on your face while I suck your cock tonight."

Pulling himself back to the present, JT continued to search the ice just as Jess and Audrey slid over to him along the boards, both of them hardly able to move on their figure skates, clutching onto each other for dear life and giggling.

"There she is," JT said, grabbing onto Audrey's hand and pulling her into his chest. "You look…awesome out there."

"You're a terrible liar."

"Alright, fine. You look like a newborn deer. Seriously, have you ever even skated before?"

"Many years ago…uh oh, down she goes!" She turned just in time to see Jess fall flat on her ass, cackle, then lie down and sprawl her arms and legs out like she was making a snow angel.

"Yo, Carter!" JT called, and he immediately skated over to him. "This," he said, pointing to the ice, "is Jess. She needs some help skating. You wanna, um, maybe show her how it's done?"

Carter reached a hand down to pull her to her feet, steadying her as she lost her balance and collapsed forward onto him. "Definitely. Hey, I'm Colton."

"And Colton," JT began, "just went through a terrible breakup and has some wounds that, um, need licking. I figured, I don't know, if anyone was right for the job…"

"Say no more. Let's go." Jess bit her bottom lip and stared at Carter, the two quickly making their way around the rink, Carter cozying up to her from behind and pushing her.

Audrey watched them skate away, then turned back to JT, who she knew was busy searching for Ryker. "He's, um, over on one of the benches. He's been…talking to some guy for a bit."

"Who is it?" JT immediately asked. "Do you know who it is? Is it someone from school, or…"

"I don't know. What I do know is that I need to get these skates off my feet before they fall off. I'm gonna go sit. I'll meet up with you afterward, OK? Where are Ryan and Ty, anyway?"

"Headed back to the hotel a little while ago. Probably to fuck. They fuck a lot. "

"Can't say I blame them," Audrey said under her breath.

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, nothing."

"No, seriously. What?"

"Jesus, JT. Ryan's, like, the hottest man in the world. Don't act like you don't know that."

"Alright, cool. So, my girlfriend wants to fuck my hot, gay, adopted dad. Got it," he teased, messing up her hair as she skated away toward the tunnel.

"Hey."

Ryker appeared alongside JT, snowing him, then bumping him with his shoulder.

"There you are. Been looking for your sexy ass."

"JT, can we talk for a sec?"

Unsure why, those seven words caused JT's heart to sink into his stomach and his face to immediately flush.

They skated over to the penalty box and sat down. "What's going on?" JT asked, placing his hand on Ryker's thigh.

"So, here's the thing. I don't know if you saw that guy I've been talking to, but he's…I went to high school with him. Turns out, his sister goes here and he's in town for Family Weekend."

"OK," JT said, removing his hand from Ryker's leg, but Ryker quickly reached for it and held it.

"JT, I…had such a crush on him in high school. And, well, he asked if I maybe wanted to hang out with him…tonight."

Everything seemed to come to a halt at that moment.

There were no sounds, there was no movement.

It was as if someone pressed "pause" and JT was staring at a frozen screen, unable to make sense of what was happening and fumbling for the "rewind" button.

"JT?"

"And you wanna go with him?" JT asked sadly, his voice cracking a little.

Ryker nodded. "I feel like I kinda owe it to 15-year-old closeted Ryker, you know?

Hey," he said, squeezing JT's hand. "This doesn't change us . I'm in love with you, baby. You know that. This is just…something I feel like I need to do for me. Do you understand that?"

JT thought for sure he'd answered, but apparently he hadn't.

"JT? Can you talk to me, baby? Please?"

"Um, yeah," JT said, standing up, removing his backwards cap and running a hand through his hair before replacing it. "I'll, um, stay at Aud's tonight so you guys can have your privacy. Have…a good time, OK?" He swung the door to the box open and exited quickly.

Ryker stood up and called after him. "JT, wait…"

"We'll talk later," JT replied without turning around as he headed toward the tunnel and exited the ice. He passed by Audrey, who was sitting on a folding chair removing her skates and putting her shoes back on, but didn't even notice her.

"Jacob!" she yelled, and he spun around to face her. She stood up and approached him, running her hand across his cheek. "I called your name three times. What's…are you OK? You don't look so good."

JT nodded, his stomach in knots. "I'm…can we just go home now?"

"Jacob, you're freaking me out. What's wrong?"

He felt the familiar feeling of his anger beginning to rise in him like a boiling pot of water, the bubbles nearing the surface as he tried desperately to turn down the heat to avoid a spillover. "I just…need to leave. Now. OK?"

"Yeah, OK. Let's go then," she said, grabbing his hand with both of hers. "Do you wanna breathe with me, baby?"

"No!" he snapped, his eye beginning to twitch. "I just wanna fucking go home ."

???

"Fuck, Jacob. I'm so close. Just like that, baby."

Audrey moaned, tugging JT's hair, her heels pressing firmly against the front of his shoulders. He kneeled on the floor, face buried between her legs as he ate her out on the side of her bed, swirling his tongue rapidly against her clit. He simultaneously removed his hands from her tits, then slathered his fingers with lube so he'd be ready to slide one inside her pussy and one inside her ass right at the moment she came, just the way she liked.

"This is just…something I feel like I need to do for me…"

"Jacob, shit. I'm gonna cum. I'm gonna…"

"Do you understand that?"

"...Jacob, fuck." He fingered both her holes hard, a little harder than usual, feeling her muscles tightening around each of them as she whimpered and bucked her hips off the bed. "Oh, yes…yes."

"JT? Can you talk to me, baby? Please?"

As she finished the last few pulses of her orgasm, she sat up, clad in his jersey and panting, and pulled him to his feet. "Now get inside me, College Boy, and let me cum again all over that beautiful cock of yours."

He reached for the condom and tore it open with his teeth, but noticed that when he went to put it on, he wasn't quite ready. "Shit," he mumbled.

"What's wrong, baby?" she asked, sliding off the bed and onto the floor, positioning herself in front of him.

"I'm…just suck it for a few, get it nice and hard for me."

"Of course," she said, taking his semi-hard dick by the base and guiding it into her mouth.

"Fuck, just like that," he moaned, closing his eyes and leaning his head back.

This never happened.

Eating her out was usually sexual napalm for him; yet here he was with a pathetic half-chub as she attempted to suck him hard, even pressing her fingers up into his taint and massaging his prostate.

But all efforts proved futile.

She pulled her mouth away and looked up at him. "Do you want me to get the strap-on, or…what about that vibrating plug you just bought?"

"This doesn't change us. I'm in love with you, baby…"

"Shit," he groaned, backing away from her and frustratedly flinging the condom onto her bed before reaching down to the ground to retrieve his briefs and joggers. "It's…not happening tonight, gorgeous. I'm sorry."

"Um, OK," she said tentatively, standing up and searching for her underwear, which he picked up and tossed to her, then took hold of her hand.

"Hey? It's not you. I promise. You know I think you're absolutely perfect, especially in my jersey. It's me. I'm…kinda in my own head right now. Maybe, I don't know, give me a few minutes or something, OK?"

She nodded, trying her best not to look disappointed, as she pulled on her black lace boy shorts and went to the kitchen to snag a drink of water.

Immediately, JT reached over to her nightstand and grabbed his phone to see if there were any messages, and his heart leapt when he saw he had two text notifications, though neither were from the person on whom he was anxiously waiting.

The first one was from Ryan.

R: We need to head out early tomorrow. Breakfast with us at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow or we'll see you at Thanksgiving. Lmk

"Yeah, that's not happening. See you for the turkey, my guy," JT said aloud, scrolling to and clicking on the next message, which was from Carter.

C: Jess? Dude, my dick's gonna fall. the. fuck. off.

"Well, at least someone's dick works," he mumbled, tossing his phone aside, then picking it back up, waking it up, and staring at his lock screen.

It was a picture of Ryker in a tight, black, long-sleeved shirt with his glasses on, staring off into the distance. JT had snapped it one day when they'd had lunch together between classes, right after the first time Ryker had really kissed JT in public. It was his favorite picture of his boyfriend, and he'd set it as his lock screen because of the calming effect it usually had on him.

Right now , though?

It filled him with an all but intolerable sadness.

He tossed the phone aside again, rolling away from it and covering his head with his hands, wondering what Ryker McCreery was doing right now.

What if the other guy is fucking him better than you do?

What if he doesn't prep the right way and he gets hurt?

What if he's falling in love with the other guy?

What if he's falling out of love with you?

What if…

"Ugh, fuck!" JT yelled, tears rolling down his cheeks as he curled up into the fetal position and wept, and before long, he felt Audrey's hand running up and down his back. She let him cry for a bit, then forced him to sit up and take a drink of water from the glass she'd brought him.

"Jacob, talk to me. What's wrong?" she asked, wiping his tears away with her thumb, taking the glass from him, and setting it on the nightstand. "You're not OK, baby. Tell me what's going on."

"I don't…think I can…do this," he choked out between sobs, as he collapsed forward onto her and she wrapped him in her arms.

"You can't do what , Jacob?"

"It's not fair. It's not…I know it's not fair." He wiggled out of her grasp, got up off the bed, and began pacing, unsure of what to do with his hands. "I'm here with you, and it should be OK that he's…but it's not. It's not…I didn't…know it would hurt this bad. Aud," he whimpered pathetically, staring at her. "I had no idea it would hurt this bad."

"I'm…not picking up what you're putting down, stud."

He proceeded to tell her, through tears, about the conversation he'd had with Ryker at Pegula and that he was currently in their dorm with another man. "And I know I told him that I would be fine with it, but Aud? I'm the opposite of fine. I don't know if he's OK, I don't know if he's…"

"Hey." She reached for his hand and pulled him over to her, where she wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head on his stomach as she hugged him, his arms falling onto her shoulders. "What you're feeling right now is normal, JT. It's 100 percent normal, I promise you. But," she said, gently pushing him away from her and patting the bed next to her, "you need to take this as an opportunity to understand Ryker's predicament, and maybe that will help you see this differently."

JT sat next to her, letting his head slump over onto her shoulder. "And what predicament would that be, exactly?"

"Ryk is gay, and you're the only guy he's ever been with. He never got the chance to experiment, he never got the opportunity to have a crush on a guy and act on it. Ryker spent the entirety of his high school years in the closet, pretending to be someone he wasn't. I…can only imagine how awful that must've been for him, how every moment was agonizing, knowing he was living a lie and feeling absolutely powerless to do anything about it. Ryker's teenage years weren't his to live, baby. "

"I didn't think of that," JT responded quietly.

"Yeah. Well, he's able to finally be who he is now, and JT? A lot of that is because of you. You showed him that it's OK to be himself, that everything he fought to keep hidden for most of his life is exactly what you love him for. But, he's still just a kid, JT, a kid who never got to live his truth. You gotta…you gotta let him live it a little bit, baby."

"I wanna be enough for him. And, yes," he said, agitated, shaking his head, "I understand that I'm dating someone else, too. But it's…different. Like, if he was with another girl right now? No problem. But, like, I don't even look at other guys, Aud. There's no other man who is even remotely in the same fucking class as him."

"Because you're bisexual, JT. Ryker is gay."

"I didn't realize how complicated this all… fuuuck ," he moaned, letting his head fall into his hands. "He was right again. That son of a bitch was right again."

"Who?"

Tyler motherfucking Hayes.

"Never mind. Alright, so I'm overreacting. How do I fix this?"

Audrey sighed. "Compersion."

JT shot her a confused look. "OK, so I know I'm not, like, the best with words, but I'm pretty sure that isn't one."

She snorted.

And instantly regretted it.

"Did you…did you just snort? " he asked, laughing.

"Yes. Anyway, moving on. It's called compersion. It's…so I've been researching poly relationships because, well, here we are. It's basically where you take your jealousy and try to subdue it by retraining your brain. You allow it to experience joy from Ryker's joy, to find happiness in his happiness with other people. You have to learn to understand that the happiness he experiences when spending time with other people has no negative effect on the happiness he experiences when he spends time with you, JT."

He got up from the bed and began pacing again. Audrey tossed a throw pillow to him and encouraged him to throw it back, and the two flung it back and forth to each other while they talked so he could better concentrate.

"Take you and me, for example. We have fun together, right?"

"Of course. I mean, when my dick decides to work."

"Stop it. That was one time. And I don't just mean sex, JT. We…we have a good relationship. We talk, we open up to each other, comfort each other, all that, right?"

"Absolutely. You're the first person I come to with anything. You understand me better than anyone else ever has."

"OK, good. Now, does having that dynamic between us change anything about the dynamic between you and Ryk?"

JT raised an eyebrow. "No?"

"Exactly. What you and Ryker have doesn't take anything away from what you and I have. And that's the key to this whole…relationship thing we have going on here. I'm not saying it's easy, baby. It requires an entire paradigm shift. We've been taught our whole life what ‘normal' relationships look like, so it's no surprise that our feelings naturally try to adhere to that pattern."

Alright, he could deal with that.

He just had to train his very ADHD, dyslexic, angry, broken brain with a crippling fear of abandonment to not experience insecurity and jealousy.

Right .

"You think he still loves me?" JT asked sadly.

She leaned over and kissed the top of his head. "No, I don't think so, JT. I know so. That boy would die for you without a second thought."