“I live my life in a manner that ensures I won’t need to be one.”
Evan held his gaze, lips curling into the sort of smile that made Heath wonder if he had something on his face. Contemplative, but gentle and warm. Almost unsettling in its softness. What was he thinking about? He didn’t dare ask because, good or bad, his foolish heart couldn’t take it.
Dinner was a gorgeous selection of sushi on a bed of fresh greens. They placed it on the table, and the sound Evan made brought Heath back to earlier in the day, which was a dangerous place to be when they’d promised to behave.
“Fuck, this is gorgeous.”
So are you,he started to say, but swallowed it back. There was no sense in getting mushy romantic over a situation that had no clarity. He’d promised to live in the moment, and that meant watching Evan wrap his lips around a roll and swallow it down with a moan of unbridled ecstasy. He would now add sushi to the list of things he never expected to be jealous of.
“So, what made your upbringing unusual? Was it the caviar baby food or tea with the queen at polo matches?” Joking about Evan’s obvious financial stability had become a comfortable pastime, but this time it landed on the table like a bag of rocks.
Evan sighed, his gaze panning out over the railing to the horizon slowly igniting into brilliant gold and magenta. “I know you think my life’s been this joyride. It’s okay. I let everyone think that. There’s no one in my life now who knew me in the years before, so I let the assumption carry.”
“But it isn’t correct?”
He shook his head, eyes returning to capture Heath in their glimmering snare. “The actual story is both mundane and hard to swallow.”
“I think we’ve established that I’m capable of swallowing quite a bit.”
Evan choked on his drink, and Heath again found himself without a way to capture the glowing flush across his cheeks. Such a travesty.
His elegant fingers brushed the back of Heath’s hand, thumb curling around his wrist to trace light circles against the thrumming pulse. “Is that a challenge?”
Lord, yes.“If you want to share your story, I’d like to hear it.”
An understatement. He wanted to devour every aspect of Evan, absorb his fine details and carefully catalogue them in his database of fascinating things. He wanted the cover-to-cover experience.
“I don’t. No, I do, it’s just…” He rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. “Y’know, it’s weird. I haven’t given a shit about anyone’s opinion of me in years, but from the moment we met, yours has mattered. I don’t know why.”
Heath shifted in his seat. “I do that to people. It’s a teacher thing.”
It was no such thing. Even his students tempered their respect for him with teasing. Whatever compelled Evan to open up was alien, and further proof he was up to his eyebrows in trouble.
Another contemplative stare filled him with the antsy sensation of being scrutinized. It made his leg bounce beneath the table. Was Evan on the run? In witness protection? Oh God, was he in trouble with the mob? Was heinthe mob?
“What would you say if I told you I was born poor as shit in Southie and lived there until my mom died? And not today’s Southie, with the stupidly expensive gentrification, but Southie Southie. Irish pubs and Whitey Bulger.”
While that hadn’t ruled out the mob portion of his hysteria, Heath overlooked it in favor of embracing his giddiness that the man across from him in head-to-toe Tom Ford casualwear had just dropped his Rs like they were ticking and on fire.
“Are you aware of how Boston you just got when you said that?”
Evan grinned, and Heath could see it. A little ginger boy with cheeks covered in freckles running through the streets in dirty ripped jeans and a superhero t-shirt.
“It feels like stolen valor, because I didn’t live there long enough, but I can hear my mom and grandparents in my head. It’s second nature to mimic them.”
“Tell me more.”
“So you believe me?”
“Of course I do. I have zero desire to walk back to the villa in the dark.”
Evan’s laugh boomed across the patio, and all heads turned in their direction.
Heath worried his face might crack from the size of his smile, and he hoped everyone was still watching when Evan lifted his fingers to his lips and kissed them softly. Romantic and suggestive, as newlyweds were.
Eat it, Lucy.
“Most of my memories are fuzzy, flashes of scenes here and there. Sounds and smells. Most of what I know is from other people’s stories.”
