They were all staring at him, agog. “Are you shitting me? "Cause that"s not funny,” Nick blurted.
Ty swallowed hard and his jaw tightened. A cold dread began to settle in his chest. If Nick didn"t handle this well, Ty didn"t know what he would do. The others would follow Nick"s lead. He shook his head minutely. “Dead serious,” he murmured, voice going just a little cooler.
“What"re you… are you saying you"re gay?” Digger asked slowly, as if trying to come to terms with information he didn"t quite understand.
Ty swallowed with difficulty and wet his lips. His gut was churning as if he truly were in free-fall. He leaned forward. He couldn"t read any of them, and that alone made Ty more than a little worried. He nodded anyway. “Yeah. That"s what I"m saying.”
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He held his breath as he waited for any of them to react, and they took their sweet time.
Nick watched Ty for a full minute before he finally looked away.
“Well,” he said slowly, obviously still thinking about how to respond.
“I"m a little surprised,” he finally decided with an uncomfortable laugh.
He jerked his hand over his shoulder, pointing his thumb in the vague direction of Ty"s row house. “And he"s the best you can do?” he asked with a growing smirk as he looked sideways at Ty.
Ty stared at him, shocked by the relatively easy acceptance.
“Bullshit,” Owen said suddenly. He didn"t look surprised at all, merely angry.
Ty lowered his chin and looked across the table at him, waiting for the reaction he"d dreaded and known at least one of them would have.
“Owen,” Nick said with a slight laugh. He held his hand out across the table. “What"s it matter, man?” he asked good-naturedly.
“It"s bullshit,” Owen repeated with a shake of his head.
“No,” Ty said quietly.
“All those years in the field and you knew this?” Owen asked angrily.
Ty cocked his head, narrowing his eyes at Owen without saying a word. Nothing he said or did would make it better if Owen was pissed.
He was surprised it was only Owen, in fact.
“Owen, man, it"s not like it"s catching or anything,” Kelly said quietly as he sat back in his chair. Ty glanced at him in mild surprise, then back at Owen as the man stood up suddenly.
“You telling us all those fucking years you were supposed to have our backs you knew you were queer and didn"t tell us?” Owen growled.
Heads began to turn.
“Jesus Christ,” Digger said angrily as he stood and grabbed at Owen"s collar. “What"s your problem, jackass? This is Grady you"re talking to!”
210 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
Ty merely sighed and began rubbing at a spot of tension in the back of his neck. It had been there for a solid week now.
“Let him go,” Nick told Digger calmly. Digger turned to look at him, scowling mutinously, but he released Owen"s shirt, giving him a small shove just to make himself feel better.
“I"m outta here, man,” Owen snarled as he grabbed his coat off the back of the chair, tipping the chair backward. It crashed to the floor as Owen turned on his heel and stalked out of the bar.
They watched him go in stunned silence.
“What a fucking prick,” Kelly finally said in a shocked voice.
“Don"t worry about him,” Nick said to Ty softly.
Ty gave him a weak smile and nodded. “Handled it better than I thought he would,” he admitted.
“Fucking asshole,” Digger muttered as he picked up the chair and righted it, then sat back down heavily, still watching the door where Owen had disappeared.
“Forget it,” Nick said with authority. Ty glanced at him, and Nick actually smiled at him and leaned toward him. “Grady, nothing you can tell us after all this time will truly surprise me,” he whispered seriously, though he was still smiling. He held out his hand to Ty, palm facing his chest in the same manner he had thousands of times before. Ty reached out and pressed his palm to Nick"s, grasping his hand and crossing their wrists. It pulled their faces closer together, a position they"d been in many times over the years as they"d reminded each other not to get shot during a mission.
Nick"s voice was low and warm when he spoke. “I can see the fear in your eyes. But I don"t give a damn if you"re queer, man. And you owe me an apology for thinking I would.”
Ty felt like crying in relief, but he managed to just smile and shake his head at the audacity. “You"re right,” he conceded in a whisper. “I"m sorry for thinking you might be a prick.”
Nick patted him on the shoulder with his beer bottle, then let go of his hand and leaned back. He propped one foot up on the chair Owen Divide & Conquer | 211
had vacated and tossed back the bottle, taking a long gulp. “So. I mean, really, is he the best you can do?” he asked again, teasing.
Ty rolled his eyes and took his time drinking a few swigs of beer.
“I love him,” he finally answered, giving it to him straight. He looked at Nick and nodded, lips pressed tightly together.
“Seriously?” Nick asked in honest surprise. “Like, with-the-heart love or with-the-dick love?”
Ty snorted. “To be honest, it"s a little of both.”
“He knows, right? You said you"re fucking, so I assume it"s a relationship?” Kelly asked.
“Yeah. He knows.” His chest tightened. It was a relief to be able to talk about Zane with someone besides Deuce. He bit his lip and finally looked up to meet Kelly"s eyes.
“But?” Kelly prompted.
“I told him I loved him after the last UC case we worked,” Ty admitted with a slight flush.
“Wow,” Nick offered.
“Couldn"t help it.”
“But?” Kelly repeated with a deeper frown.
“When I told him, he didn"t really say anything.”
His three friends gave him a chorus of pained noises in response.
“Shit, man,” Digger practically shouted. “Go pick that waitress up and make yourself feel better!”
Ty laughed out loud and closed his eyes, rubbing at his forehead with the heel of his hand.
“Jackass,” Digger grumbled disconsolately.
“At least he didn"t say thank you,” Kelly pointed out wryly.
Ty laughed before putting his bottle to his lips and taking a long, relieved gulp of his beer. This had gone better than he"d ever imagined it would.
“So, he doesn"t feel the same?” Nick asked, confused.
212 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
“No,” Ty answered, shaking his head. “No, he
does
. I"m just not sure he knows it yet.”
“You can"t do anything easy, can you?” Kelly asked, laughing.
“Bet that waitress would be,” Digger grumbled.
The others began laughing and talking once more, drowning the silence.
But Nick watched him, still frowning in confusion. Ty waited for him to comment, unconsciously holding his breath. “You love him.
You think he loves you, but he hasn"t said it,” Nick finally laid out.
Ty shrugged and nodded.
“What if you"re wrong?”
“Then I"ll get to throw his shit off my balcony. Should be fun.”
Nick snorted, staring at him in wonder. “How do you live life without looking back or forward? God, I envy that.”
Ty merely smiled enigmatically at him. It wasn"t the first time he"d heard that. Not many people—not even Nick, who"d lived through his past with him, or Zane, who woke up to his nightmares—knew just how hard it was for Ty to shake off the past and the future and just live in the here and now.
“So it"s been like two months, and he still hasn"t manned up and decided if he loves you, right? But you"re still fucking.”
Ty just stared at him, trying to decide if that was an accurate statement. They didn"t know Zane like he did. Ty knew his partner had to take the issue from every angle, analyze it to death, resurrect it, and then study its dead, rotting body to see the results. Yeah, it might take Zane four months to decide if he loved someone, and then more to decide if that was a
good idea
.
Ty didn"t mind waiting.
“What a prick,” Nick muttered as he put his bottle to his lips and looked out over the barroom with a disturbed frown.
Ty didn"t comment. He leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the chair beside Nick"s, crossing them at the ankles. One foot rocked slowly as they drank in silence.
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“So are you the guy or the girl?” Digger asked abruptly.
Ty barked another laugh, almost snorting beer up his nose. “It doesn"t really work that way,” he managed to answer.
“So how does it work?” Kelly asked in his typical soft, amused voice.
Ty stared at them for a moment, surprised that not only had they accepted the news fairly easily but seemed to be showing genuine interest.
He shrugged. “We"re still dealing with the dynamics,” he said vaguely. He had never been a kiss-and-tell type of guy, regardless of who he"d been with. They knew that. They weren"t asking about sex.
They were asking about the relationship itself in the only way they knew how, and Ty had no answers for them.
“He seems like the „get on your knees, bitch" type of guy,”
Digger grumbled under his breath.
Ty nearly snorted beer up his nose again. He coughed and sputtered as Nick smacked his back repeatedly, laughing heartily. Ty closed his eyes and felt himself blushing as they continued on with the conversation. Did it bother him that they now knew he liked to get on his knees and be fucked until he screamed? A little. He had always been their go-to guy, the brawn on point, the guy they knew they could throw at anything and he"d go in swinging. Why did his being gay have to mar that tough-guy personality?
Ty didn"t know. But in his mind, it did, to an extent. He supposed that was his own problem, though. Or society"s problem. He shook his head, concentrating instead on the flood of relief. Not only was it a relief that his closest friends had, for the most part, accepted the news with grace and ease, it was also a relief simply to have told them. To this point, the only people who"d known he was bisexual and leaned toward favoring men were his brother and any man he happened to be fucking. It was an intense relief to just say the words. Come out, as it were.
Nick"s hand stayed on Ty"s shoulder, as if silently offering support. Ty glanced at him, meeting his eyes briefly and nodding in 214 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
thanks. How Nick knew it was difficult for him to do, Ty couldn"t guess.
The conversation soon turned back to darts, beer, and the pretty little waitress they were intent on
someone
banging before the night was over. But despite the easy acceptance of three of his oldest buddies, Ty couldn"t shake the ache of betrayal he"d felt when Owen had stormed out the door. It had hurt, as Ty had known it would. That pain and the unreasonable embarrassment were two reasons he"d kept it under wraps for so long even after being discharged from the Corps.
Digger and Kelly got up to go for one more round of darts, and Nick scooted his chair closer to Ty, leaning toward him to speak in low tones. “Tell me about Garrett,” he requested as he leaned his arms on the table.
Ty shrugged uncomfortably. “You met him,” he responded defensively.
“Yeah. And I gotta say, Ty, I thought you had better taste,” Nick whispered disapprovingly. “He better be a phenomenal lay.”
Ty snorted and shook his head. Zane hadn"t made much of an impression on these boys, mostly because he"d been sedate and blind and having a spectacularly shitty week. But then, they hadn"t been looking at him as a man, plain and simple. They had been judging him as someone who had to watch Ty"s back. They were judging him from the eyes of Recon. Man versus Recon—the two were entirely different categories. Just because Ty trusted Zane implicitly didn"t mean they did or ever would.
“He"s a good guy,” Ty found himself saying. “He"s having a rough month.”
“Yeah, the blind thing,” Nick said dubiously.
Ty looked at him and tried to tell himself not to get defensive. He was not responsible for Zane"s behavior, nor was he responsible for how other people thought of him.
He found himself fiddling with the USMC signet ring on his finger.
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“So let me get this straight. You told the guy you loved him, and he didn"t say
anything
in response?” Nick asked, offended, as he saw that Ty was growing twitchy. “He just… blew it off?”
“Pretty much,” Ty said under his breath. He took a gulp of his beer to cover his gut reaction to the memory. He couldn"t help but blush and wince. He"d made such a damn fool of himself. He"d been sure Zane wasn"t in love with him when he said it. He"d been sure he wouldn"t get a response in kind. At the time he"d have preferred Zane laugh in his face than just let it slide. It wasn"t until weeks later that Ty had realized that Zane was still just processing and analyzing, his brain churning to catch up with his heart and what his actions were already saying loud and clear.
“So is he just fucking around with you?” Nick asked curiously.
“In it "cause you"re a well-practiced screw?”
Ty glanced at him and shook his head. Zane had never made any secret of the fact that he was in it at least partially for the sex. At first they both had been. “Quit being nosy, O"Flaherty,” he chastised, hating that the questions made him uncomfortable. He muttered under his breath. “Irish bastard.”
“That"s a yes,” Nick huffed as he sat back. “Is it monogamous on his part?”
Ty licked his lips and glanced at Nick again, wondering just how much his friend really wanted to know. “Yeah. At least I hope it is, because we"ve been going without condoms for months.”