Real World: Bend or Break, Book 5 by Amy Jo Cousins

Author:Amy Jo Cousins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Off Campus sequel;Contemporary;relationship in trouble;proposal;family and friends;Christmas;New England;holiday;anxiety
Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
Published: 2015-11-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Reese went in to work with Tom on Monday morning. Tom watched without saying a word as Reese emailed Niall—found out last night my entire trivia team is down with the flu, made an emergency appointment to get my shot this morning, be in before lunch & will stay late to make up the hours!—then got dressed and followed Tom to the T.

They stood next to each other on the crowded morning train, silent the entire way. Tom was pretty sure he was the one who needed to do the talking this time around, but he didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t as if their conversation had magically given him the ability to get out the right words at the right time.

Although that would have been awesome.

Maybe Reese was right to try to fuck him into communicating. Maybe Tom’s body was smarter than his brain, because when he gave up on the hamster wheel spinning like mad in his head and just leaned into Reese, he got a smile like the morning sun.

Between their clothes and winter coats, even imagining he could feel Reese’s body heat was too much of a stretch. But he dipped his head and rested his chin on Reese’s shoulder in front of him, sliding his arm around Reese’s waist. When they’d first met, this entire situation, packed in a crowded T car with Tom wrapping an arm around him from behind, would have been intolerable to Reese. He would have felt trapped and threatened, and the pulse of panic would have stiffened his spine and frozen his muscles until he finally gave in and bolted.

Tom had never realized what a gift reflexive snuggling was until he’d gotten involved with someone who absolutely couldn’t do that.

Five years, and a whole lotta trust, had made a pretty big difference, though.

A whole lotta trust. Ain’t that the truth.

When they squeezed off the train at his stop, Tom stumbled onto the platform, wrapped up in a realization he supposed he should have had long before now.

All this effort, all the work he had to put into forcing himself to open up verbally to Reese about his fears and worries—all the neediness that he worried made their relationship so unbalanced—Reese went through the exact same thing every time he and Tom touched.

Reese pushed, gently, against his own discomfort zones. Reese had to articulate, very clearly, his own needs and anxieties and limits about things he might have preferred to leave unspoken, but Reese put in constant effort on that end to make their relationship as strong and secure as possible on a physical level, both for himself and for Tom.

It was something they’d grown to take for granted, maybe, but that didn’t mean the effort ever ended. And it was a gift to them both.

He stopped with Reese in front of the law firm skyscraper across the street from his office. Staring at the square, red-brick building with the clock tower, he let his stomach settle and his nerves mellow.

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