Fallon was silent for a long moment, and then he sat halfway up. “Your face.”
Gage frowned, which made the pain in his eye worse, which then made him realize what Fallon was talking about. “It doesn’t hurt,” he lied.
Fallon made a soft scoff in the back of his throat and didn’t need to call him a liar with words. “Are you sneaking out?”
“No.” Gage walked back to the bed and set his knee on it, reaching over to ease Fallon back down. “I have to run a coupleof errands. Do you need anything while I’m out? You know, since you just moved in?”
Fallon shook his head. “I’m okay. You, um…you don’t have to come back here if you don’t want to.”
“Is that what you want?”
“I say what I want,” Fallon reminded him.
Gage bowed his head and laughed. “Yeah, I guess you do. Well, I’ll trust you to tell me if you need space. And I’ll try to do the same.”
Fallon smiled as he settled back into his nest of pillows. “I’m going to sleep more. I’ve been so damn tired.”
Gage nodded and fought the urge to lean over and kiss him. But that wasn’t his right. That wasn’t their thing. Not anymore. Not past that one glorious night. He curled his fingers into his palm and squeezed his fists until the desire eased.
“Call or text me if you need anything. My number hasn’t changed.”
Fallon nodded, his eyes drooping back down and eventually closing. When his breathing evened out, Gage backed up, then slipped into the living room to grab his keys, and he headed back to his place and shut the door with a loud, firm click.
Sagging against the wood, he closed his eyes and focused on his heartbeat. It was steady, but a little fast from the adrenaline that had been firing since yesterday. He needed to get out. To go for a run. A hike. Maybe he could sneak into the firefighter training session and run some of the courses.
If he worked out until he puked, that would take the edge off…right?
Swapping his sleeping sweats for his running ones, he headed out of his apartment and paused in the hallway, his ear trained toward Fallon’s apartment. But there were no sounds. Fallon was probably still sleeping, and Gage half regretted getting out of the bed at all.
It was his day off. He had every right to curl up and take fifteen naps like a damn house cat. And what better way to do that than in the arms of the one man who had made him feel like his heart could heal?
He took to the street instead and began running until he found himself standing outside the station. Like a kid, he’d run to his dad, and he felt like a complete fucking tool.
“Fuck, Gage. Get it together. Get it?—”
“Whose ass am I kicking?”
Gage turned and frowned at his dad. “What?” Adele gestured at him, and it took Gage a second to remember. “Oh. Uh…I fell out of a tree?”
“The fact that you’ve done that before means I won’t call you a liar, but your tone says different.” Adele walked up and grabbed Gage by the chin, turning his head up until Gage wrenched away and shoved him back. There was a tense pause, and then Adele said, “Coffee?”
“Blue Gatorade unless someone—Carlos—fucking drank it all again,” Gage said.
Adele rolled his eyes but put his hand in the center of Gage’s back and urged him through the tall glass door.
He felt like a total jackass for being there on his day off, but the station was always quiet on a Thursday morning. He could hear the TV blaring from the upstairs lounge, and someone down one of the halls was snoring like a fucking grizzly.
It was his home away from home, and while it wasn’t as comforting as the childhood bedroom that no longer existed after the fire, it was where his dad was, and that made a difference.
He followed Adele up the stairs and into his office, not surprised when his dad shut the door, then walked to his hidden closet fridge and pulled out a bottle from Gage’s stash.He cracked the top, and Gage gulped down several mouthfuls because he hadn’t bothered to hydrate before he started his run.
“So. A tree,” Adele said.
Gage sank onto his dad’s couch and kicked his feet up on the armrest. “It was seriously nothing.”
“And yet you look…” Adele was clearly choosing his words carefully. He sat behind his desk and leaned on his elbows, staring at Gage. “Upset.”
“It’s been a weird twenty-four hours. Well, twelve hours. Well…” He lost track of the math and trailed off with a shrug. “Night.”
