“It really bothers you when people curse, huh?”
Turning red, Zach shrugged.
“I’ll try to remember.”
“I know it’s strange; it’s the way my parents raised me, and it’s always stuck with me.” Zach slanted a smile at him. “On you it can be kind of cute, but yeah, I’d prefer it if you didn’t.” He took a sip of his beer and closed his eyes.
Sam settled back into the sofa, wondering if it was too early to go to bed. It had been a long-ass day, and he wanted to spend a good part of the night exploring Zach’s body. He smoothed his hand up Zach’s leg, enjoying the play of muscle.
“When did you break up?”
His hand stilled for a moment, then continued its exploratory trail toward Zach’s knee. “A little over six months ago.”
“That also when you retired, right?”
“Yeah.” The conversation was treading on dangerous ground. The only person he’d ever told about that night was Henry. He’d have to trust in his faith in Zach that he wouldn’t make a snap judgment and instead listen to the mess Sam made of his life.
He drew in a deep breath. “I retired because I fucked up at work and couldn’t come back from it. And yeah, fucked up is the only way to explain it, so sorry, but I’ll have to offend you. I let my personal life interfere with my job, and it almost got my partner killed.”
Henry had always been on his side, but he wasn’t so sure Zach would understand. Sam glanced over at him and discovered he needn’t have worried. The look on Zach’s face—a combination of sorrow and heartbreak—broke down Sam’s barriers for good, and the words he’d held to his heart came tumbling out.
“It hadn’t been good between me and Andy for a while. Like I said, he’d gotten into partying and was out more often than home. Actually,”—Sam rubbed his chin and shifted his gaze over to Zach, hoping he wouldn’t take what he was about to say the wrong way—“Andy reminds me of your friend, Marcus.”
“No.” Zach’s tone was very definite. “For all his insanity, Marcus would never cheat; he hates people who do. He has a strong moral ethic for couples, he just doesn’t believe in settling down himself.”
Sam shrugged. “Anyway, it had been too many nights of Andy coming home drunk or high, smelling like sex, sweat, and unfamiliar aftershave.” He couldn’t forget that last night when Andy thought sucking Sam’s cock like it was a dripping ice cream cone on a hot summer day would be enough to offset the cheating.
It wasn’t. Sam had had enough.
“I got tired of the excuses, the attempts to use sex as avoidance for the real problem, which was simply that we didn’t love each other anymore.”
That was the saddest part of all. Someone he’d once said I love you to and meant it had carelessly thrown it all away for the excitement of a fresh, hot mouth and a willing ass. But he’d also been to blame, not seeing the warning signs or ignoring them, if he was being honest with himself.
“I’ve never been in a real relationship, so I’m not the right person to talk to about this, but it seems like you wanted to create a home, maybe a family, and he wasn’t ready to settle down.”
Sam faced Zach. “You’re right, but how can anyone be sure that it’s going to last, that the person they love won’t change?”
“I don’t know.” Zach leaned his head on Sam’s shoulder, and Sam tightened his arm around him. “I don’t think you can; life is all about change. Growth, maturity, discovering things about yourself you never knew.” He sighed, a quiet expulsion of breath Sam barely felt drift along his arm. “But what did this have to do with your retirement and your partner?”
“Andy disappeared after our fight, and I didn’t hear from him in over a week. Even though I knew we were finished, I still worried about him. He didn’t answer his phone and no one had seen him.”
It had been a horrible week. Sam knew Andy was so melodramatic he was prone to grand gestures, and he’d feared he’d try something stupid or outlandish to get attention or prove a point and wind up hurting himself.
“One night we were covering some undercover detectives on a buy and bust. My partner was near our detectives, and I was across the street, when I got the first phone call from Andy in over a week.”
Zach’s brow furrowed. “I’m surprised you were allowed to have your cell phones on.”
Humiliation burned through Sam. “You’re not. It’s a violation of command discipline. My first mistake, one of many that night.”
Shifting around on the sofa so they sat face-to-face, Zach took both his hands. “You answered it, didn’t you?”
Sam nodded. “I was afraid he was doing something stupid, and the suspect was already twenty minutes late for the buy. I took my eye off my partner to answer the call. It was only for a second, but that’s when the shots started.”
“Oh, Sam.”
He barely heard Zach; his mind was fixated on a replay of that night. “I started shooting back, and all I could hear were sirens and screams. When I searched for my partner he was on the ground, gushing blood. A bullet had lodged in his thigh, and they weren’t sure if it had nicked the femoral artery.”
He found himself in Zach’s arms. It was the first time in forever he’d been held, and Sam allowed himself a moment to sink into that almost forgotten comfort.
