28. 28

28

J ack hadn’t been completely honest when he said he never did anything to Sean when they were younger. But then, Jack hadn’t been completely honest about a lot of things. It wasn’t malicious, he didn’t think. His sisters, if he ever told them about it, would call it stupidity. “Not stupid,” Annie would say, “that’s too harsh.”

“But you are kind of dense about some things,” Amy would add, “not like in a bad way, but like, the way some dogs are. Earnest, but not clever enough to figure out they’re getting played. It’s kind of cute.” She would shrug, sip her wine like drawing a comparison between him and a dog was perfectly logical.

“No,” Helen would intone with the gravity of the eldest, “your problem is you keep everything in your head and you think you know what everyone else is thinking up there, except you twist it around and try to make everyone happy, which just makes everyone unhappy.”

Jack would retort that he hadn’t asked for a deep analysis of his personality, which would make them all laugh. They’d had some variation of this conversation since he’d agonised over asking for the trade home, since he’d taken the offer from Fremantle when West Coast had offered him more money and a longer-term contract, since George had stonewalled him. They said he made everything worse in his own mind and then, in trying to make it better for everyone else, he made it worse again.

“Stop telling everyone what they want to hear and just be yourself,” Sarah said like it was easy.

But it wasn’t easy. And Jack had said he’d never done anything to Sean for so many years, he almost believed it. The truth was, he hadn’t known the extent of what’d happened—he had no idea the repercussions of that hit, that was true—but he had covered for his mate and made the situation with Sean so much worse by telling him about it. It’s just, in his mind, that’d all been taken care of when he apologised, when Tony explained. Sean’s ongoing anger baffled him at first. And he told the other guys when they asked if he’d pissed in Hiller’s cornflakes that he’d never done anything, that it was something from high school. He wasn’t lying, but he always felt like he wasn’t being entirely truthful either. But how did he explain he was a chicken shit asshole who’d pretended a kiss when they were seventeen which meant everything had meant nothing? How did he tell people he’d seen the disappointment and flicker of hurt in Sean’s eyes and resolutely ignored it, pretended it wasn’t there?

So when Sean fucked him like it was the last time the night of his birthday, Jack clung to him after and tried to find the words to tell him the truth. If he could make himself say the words, then Sean would stay.

Jack slipped his fingers between Sean’s, clung so tightly it must’ve hurt. Sean gripped him back, his breaths harsh on Jack’s nape.

“You good?” Sean asked against his skin, his breath wet.

It felt like he wanted to say something else.

And when Jack replied, “Yeah, perfect,” it wasn’t what he wanted to say either.

“Jack,” Sean said carefully and Jack knew it was coming then.

“Don’t,” Jack said, and turned in his arms. Sean let him go, but Jack pressed in against his chest.

Sean searched his eyes. “Okay.”

If Jack could pretend for just a little longer, he could hope for a little longer too.