Chapter Thirteen
Adam had called Ru after dinner, gotten his voice mail, and begged him to call back as soon as he could. Two hours later and no return call, Adam texted him. It wasn’t until after he’d crawled in bed and dozed off that the phone finally rang. He answered it without looking at the screen. No one else would call this late.
“Sorry,” Ru said right away.
“S’okay. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just tired. I feel like I’m trying to cram so much into every day just to get back to you sooner.”
And just like that Adam felt guilty. “Don’t overwork yourself for me. I’ll still be here when you get back.”
“I keep having nightmares of you meeting someone else. Or that big football jock I saw you running with pushing me away and claiming you’re his.”
“Nate? No way. You have nothing to worry about.” Adam smiled into the phone. “Can I see you? Where are you? Can you take a picture?”
“Ha! I look awful.”
“Please.”
“Okay. Hold on a sec.” Ru disappeared from the phone for a moment and then came back, “Just sent it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. And you need to return the favor. I can only imagine how heavenly you look all sleepy and warm in bed.”
Adam opened the image and smiled at his guy. Ru did look tired, eyes a little red, but his hair was spiked and he had dark eyeliner on. It was different. He still looked good. He just didn’t look like Ru, more like some celebrity from the cover of a glamour magazine.
Adam’s own picture back was of him smiling, propped up against the pillows in almost complete darkness. If not for the flash, it would have been a worthless picture. As it was, Ru laughed. “You could have turned a light on.”
“It’s almost 2:00 a.m. My parents would have a fit.”
“Sorry. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“You won’t.”
“Hmm,” Ru grunted.
“So hey, listen, um, I talked to my mom and dad, and they are okay with you coming and staying overnight on Saturday. I thought maybe if you want to you could come here instead of going to that condo, and then we can do something on Sunday. I mean, only if you want to.”Way to take over his life, dumbass, Adam reprimanded himself. Not like the guy had asked to stay with you. Maybe Ru liked the condo and having people drive him everywhere.
“You sure that’s okay with your parents?”
“Yeah, you just have to stay in the spare bedroom. No sharing.”
“So much for that talk about condoms?” He sounded amused.
Adam’s face burned again. “Yeah, so much. I think it will be different when they meet you. I think they’ll like you.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Ru...”
“It’s okay, baby. I’d love to stay with you. My flight comes in pretty late. I think sometime around eleven. I don’t know if I can catch an earlier one.”
“You just going to have your driver bring you here?”
“Yeah. You’ll wait up?”
“I’ll wait forever,” Adam told him honestly. He could almost hear Ru’s smile over the line.
Before he left for Minnesota, Ru spent a good part of the day doing interviews for magazines and appearing on a few radio shows, where he performed his new song “Start Something” acoustically. On his way out for lunch, Tommy picked him up, and they headed to the best sandwich shop in town. By “in town,” it really meant an out of the way place where people rarely recognized him.
They had one bodyguard with them, which Ru’s label had hired before his first performance that week. The man was big, built like a linebacker but dressed casual, undercover. Ru hadn’t said more than a handful of words to the man, and the guard had shown a great deal of discretion and watchfulness of the people who surrounded them. Carefully keeping everyone away from them and becoming a barrier on the rare occasion someone pushed.
