Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

Xavier

LSU’s campus was huge.

With a sprawling greenery that was the size of a small town, surrounded by dozens of buildings that made up the rest of the property, it made it easy to get lost once you were past the front entrance gates.

There were a couple of signs here and there pointing toward different directions, but outside of that, you were on your own.

Dexter and I had left early this morning and grabbed a bite to eat before coming over here, giving us the time to wake up and recharge before we took on the massive undertaking of exploring this entire place before we were due back to Gage’s house for lunch at one.

With it being winter break, almost the entire campus was deserted aside from us wandering around. Which was kind of nice. Not many people got this kind of an unfettered tour of a potential school without being hassled by a second year tour guide trying to upsell you on the meal package.

As much as it’d kill me to have Dexter living so far away from me, I could see him walking across these soon-to-be-busy sidewalks getting to class with his backpack stuffed to the brim with textbooks and notes. I could see him proudly repping the purple and yellow colors of LSU and excitedly telling anyone who asked him where he was going for his four-year degree.

All of this could be the dad in me being proud of my kid even before he actually agreed on committing to a college before we could even tour one fully. I never had any doubts in me that he’d get into a great school, regardless. He had the drive to go far in life in whatever he wanted to do. Anyone could see that.

“They’ve got a huge sports program here,” Dexter told me while passing by the gates heading toward the stadium. From here, I could spot the familiar yellow goal posts rising up over the buildings blocking the field from view. “They’ve put a lot of money into their football team.”

I raised my brow. “You interested in something like that?”

His head snapped to me while a small snort escaped him. “No offense, dad. But do I look like the type to do sports?”

Ironically, he had my build, just without all of the muscle attached to it. He was still a growing kid, though, young enough that his second bout of puberty hadn’t yet hit. So, there was still time.

Mentally, though?

No, I couldn’t see Dexter running around a football field and getting slammed to the ground while trying to wrestle around for a pigskin.

“Hey, I’m not here to judge your interests,” I teased.

If anything, I wanted to encourage whatever it was he typically occupied his time with. Reading, exercising, lounging around playing video games. None of that mattered to me as long as he was happy and still kept up his grades.

Back in the day with my own dad, I’d never had the luxury of sitting around doing nothing. He was of the old school mindset that moving equaled productivity and relaxing was born out of laziness. I’d had a lot of pent up energy when I was younger, which translated to keeping myself busy whenever I had any kind of downtime.

Hence the military.

After a while, though, it weighed on me. I’d had a hard time transitioning into civilian life—my whole adolescence having been molded into creating anxiety anytime I didn’t at least keep my hands busy. Sometimes, I wondered if that was the reason I’d ever picked up the bottle in the first place.

Alcohol quieted my racing mind like no other. Once my PTSD took control, abusing it was just another step on my already growing totem pole of vices that would eventually kill me one day.

These days, forcing myself to relax was like learning an entirely new language. I was clunky at it, bad at practicing when I should be, and had a habit of wanting to rely on my old ways in order to make myself feel better.

My therapist had said that, as a form of perfectionism, trying once and failing had resulted in me giving up. Hearing that for the first time spun me around for days. I’d never considered myself to be a perfectionist. And yet the more internal work I’d done, and the more I uncovered who I really was, the more accurate that damn statement was.

Haunting me, to this day.

I’m proud that I never went back to the bottle. It’d been tempting as all hell, don’t get me wrong. Falling back into my old habits, as my therapist had said, would be taking the easy way out. But I’d be damned if I became a quitter.

I hadn’t been raised that way and I certainly wasn’t going to start.

Dexter nudged me with his elbow, reaching for the door to the main academic building and holding it open for me. “Football’s not really my cup of tea.”

“So what is?” I asked, stepping inside and waiting for him to follow me before we began strolling leisurely down the long hallway.

The place was three stories, large glass panes stretched up to the ceiling that had round tables on the other side of it, facing out toward the main lobby. The staircase leading up to the first floor was more grand than I’d ever seen a college have.

Twin banners were hanging from the ceiling over the staircase in that familiar purple.

Down on the main floor were a couple of tables with the chairs put up on top of them. A lone janitor was buffing out a part of the floor a few feet away from us with headphones covering his ears. He barely glanced up at us as we walked toward the stairs and took them up to the next level.

“I know it’s going to sound lame, but I actually do like to study,” he said, clutching the railing as we stepped. “I like learning. A lot of people think that’s a nerdy thing to say, but it’s genuinely true.”

“Nothing wrong with that, kid. We need more booksmart people in this world.”

He blew out a breath. “Yeah, I guess. It kind of makes me feel like an outcast, though. People my age care about social media and followers. That sort of thing. There’s nothing wrong with that, I just don’t... care.”

“Can’t say I do, either. Gage was trying to get me to join this online platform a few weeks back so that we could share pictures and videos back and forth like our own camera roll. I’m clearly getting old, because I had no idea what the hell I was doing on it.”

Dexter was quiet when we reached the top step. I waited for him to pick a direction, but when he didn’t, I grew a little worried.

“You okay?”

“You kind of talk about him a lot,” he blurted out.

That had me blinking in surprise.

Shit, did I really?

Jesus, this whole time I was trying not to be obvious with my relationship by keeping my hands to myself and this whole time it was my mouth that got me in trouble.

“Uh.”

What did I even say to him?

Yeah, it’s just because we’re best friends?

Calling Gage anything like my best friend or whatever felt too small on the scale of what I felt for him. He was so much more than that. He was my confidant, my heart, my rock. Our relationship extended past the boundaries of mere labels at this point.

How could I hope to convey that, though, without sounding like an absolutely lunatic?

Especially to my seventeen year old.

“Are... you guys...” Dexter was struggling to get the words out.

A pit in my stomach formed. “We’re... uh.”

Fuck.

This was like trying to have the damn birds and the bees talk.

Why was this so fucking awkward?

I wanted my son to get to know me, just as I did him. I’d never considered that this would be torturously cringy to speak my true feelings for the man that I was in love with.

He watched me with a pinched expression.

Sighing, I said, “We’re dating, Dex.”

He nodded slowly. “How long?”

“A year... just about.”

He blinked a few times. “Oh.”

I slapped my hand to the side of my face to rub at it, scratching a finger through my beard. Hopefully, my cheeks weren’t too red. “Yeah.”

His expression was morphing into more of a curious one while he watched me carefully. Whatever was going on inside of his head had to be a million questions. He knew I was gay, but he hadn’t said what he felt about it outside of him expressing how much it’d hurt Kate, and him by proxy.

Coming face to face with the reality of something like that was different than hearing it and never having to witness it. It wouldn’t surprise me if he asked me to get him on a plane tonight and let him go back home to the safety of heteronormativity. That was more comfortable, even if I had my suspicions about him yesterday.

He made a small humming sound before pivoting on his heel and heading down the hallway behind him. I followed after him, my stomach tight with knots. He shoved a hand into his pocket and pulled out a neatly folded up bundle of papers, un-creasing them with his hand a few times.

“Up ahead is the tech wing. It’s supposed to be state of the art.” He was talking while his head was buried in the papers—maps, I realized when I got close enough.

“Dex...”

He continued to talk like he hadn’t even heard me. “I’m not that well-versed in technology. But I’d like to learn a thing or two. They even have a robotics team.”

“Dexter.”

He stopped short, turning to look at me. “What?”

I sighed. “Talk to me.”

Please.

The answering frown was the least of what I was expecting. “I’m kind of hurt you didn’t tell me.”

“Hurt?” I repeated.

“Yeah, I—” His gaze darted away from mine, focusing on the hallway we’d stopped right in front of. “I know mom doesn’t really care to know... or you didn’t want to tell her. I understand that. But...”

My heart softened. “I didn’t think you wanted to know, either.”

Thankfully, he looked at me again. “I’m not like her, dad.”

That hit me hard. I hadn’t meant to treat him the same way I did his mom—at arm’s length. I wanted our bond to be so much different and here I was, doing what I did to Kate without even trying to meet him halfway and see if he was at all interested.

“Yeah, I go to church. Or, well, I did,” he flinched but went on. “But that doesn’t mean I hate gay people. I told you I didn’t care about it when you told me.”

“I know,” I said softly. “But hearing about it and seeing it are two different things. I didn’t want to freak you out.”

Dexter rolled his eyes at me. “You really think you kissing someone is going to freak me out? Trust me, you’re not as bad as mom and Dan.”

Okay, we’ll unpack that later.

“I’m sorry, Dex.”

“Were you seriously never going to tell me?” The hurt in his eyes was killing me.

“I was... waiting for the right time.” A total lie. Even as I said it, I knew that it was.

Keeping things from my son, even out of paternal instinct, was what got us here in the first place. We’d had a rift between us because I’d kept my distance from him after everything with his mother, believing that I was protecting him while hurting us both in the process.

How was any of that fair?

Yet, I was still doing it.

“Okay, so when was the right time going to be? When we got back on the plane? You know you guys are, like, really obvious, right?”

That made me wince. “Sorry...”

He rolled his eyes again. “I’m not trying to be an asshole. I... okay, I know that this is hard to talk to me about. I get that. But aren’t we supposed to be trying the honesty thing?”

“Yeah, of course we are.”

“So then talk to me? A year is kind of a big deal, dad.”

This time I slapped both of my hands over my face and I groaned into them. “I know...”

“That’s kind of a marriage time limit.”

“What?”

He shrugged at me when I peeked at him through my hands.

“Isn’t the saying, if it’s been a year, you should know if you want to marry the person you’re dating?”

Marriage?

I hadn’t thought about that since Kate and I divorced.

Was that true?

Was Gage expecting that?

Neither of us had talked about tying the knot, mostly due to us being long distance for the time being.

That was currently our biggest hurdle to overcome, which wouldn’t be getting resolved until I knew where Dexter was going. If he decided on LSU, great. I’d most likely move down here to be with Gage.

If not?

We’d figure something else out.

We’d come this damn far—even if the distance was killing us both.

“Uh...” I dropped my hands to my side. “We haven’t really talked about it.”

His lips parted at the same time that his brows pulled together. “Seriously?”

“What?” Now I was feeling a little defensive.

Why the hell was I trying to defend myself to my damn seventeen year old?

“Enough talking about my relationship. Don’t we have a school to tour?”

Marching around him, I planted both of my hands on his shoulder blades to guide him down the hallway we were facing. This was a good excuse to get my bearings back, anyway. Coming on this school tour with him hadn’t prepared me for the onslaught of fucking questions he’d needle me with about me and Gage.

“Dad.” He craned his neck back to look at me.

“How about this,” I offered. “I’ll tell you about Gage and I while we walk. Sound good?”

For the first time since yesterday, he smiled. “All right, deal.”