KnotMyProblem: well, fuck me. Guess I can’t wait to meet steel-dicked Raoul.
The conversation continued. Jayne was ready to keep reading when the nearby scuff of a rubber sole on pavement distracted him. More likely than not, it was one of the stuffy old doctors he was tasked with supervising. The nature of Jayne’s profession meant that he never worked with the same group of doctors for long. He’d only been with his current study for a few months while they administered Phase I testing of human plasma-derived fibrinogen in patients suffering from congenital afibrinogenemia, but a few months was all it took to tell exactly what kind of men he was working with—crotchety, grumpy, patronizing asswipes who seemed to believe that they could do no wrong while Jayne could do no right. Today, his peers had spent most of the morning wrinkling their noses every time Jayne passed by, and on more than one occasion, he’d been asked if he was in any condition to make levelheaded assessments.
“I’m sure,” one of the doctors had said when he’d caught Jayne in the hall on the way to the examination room, “if you called your superior, he would understand the delicate nature of your condition, and SEAG would be more than happy to send a temporary replacement.”
It wouldn’t have surprised Jayne if one of those same assholes who’d given him trouble this morning had made it his mission to track Jayne down outside work hours so he could do something unsavory—maybe sniff around a little in the hopes he might catch one last whiff of Jayne’s heat before he left the premises.
In anticipation of an unpleasant conversation, Jayne sucked in a breath and opened his mouth to greet whoever was on his way with the driest, “Yes?” he could muster, but as he looked up from his phone and spotted the man in the sweat-stained taupe t-shirt approaching, the word turned to sand in his throat, and he found he couldn’t speak.
Like a specter snatched from the midst of a nightmare, Bastian strolled toward Jayne from the parking lot, his hands tucked into the pockets of his carpenter pants.
47
Jayne
“Look at you.” Bastian clicked his tongue, then chuckled. While he spoke without audible malice, Jayne noticed the deliberate way he elongated each word, turning what should have been a simple statement into something darkly accusatory. “I don’t know why you never showed me where you worked. It’s a nice place. High end, reputable… how many dicks did you have to suck to get a job here?”
Jayne’s cheeks burned with shame. He hadn’t slept with anyone to earn his position with SEAG, but damn if Bastian didn’t make him feel like he had. It had been months since Jayne had come to his senses and left their toxic relationship, but with just a few words and a tilt of his head, Bastian found all the same old cracks in Jayne’s defenses and tore his armor off piece by piece. Jayne, who felt it happening as clearly as he felt his own hands tremble, did his best to fight back—he chose not to engage. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“It’s a public street, isn’t it?” Bastian gestured at an arbitrary spot behind him. “A public parking lot? I’m a US citizen, Jayne. I can walk where I damn well want.”
“You’re supposed to stay the hell away from me.” A tremor ran through Jayne’s voice, and in his haste to do away with it, he ended up locking himself up too tightly. Anger charred each new word, an overcompensation to mask his panic. “We’re done. We’re broken up. I don’t owe you anything, and I don’t want to see you. You need to leave.”
Bastian cocked his head to the side, feigning innocence—it was the same psychological warfare as concluding an inflammatory text with a smiley face, or threatening someone with a 9mm decorated with floral patterns. “You’re not so good at listening, are you? I just said that this is a public space and I can go wherever the hell I want.”
“Not here.” An immovable force snagged the back of Jayne’s shirt, and he realized too late that as Bastian had approached, Jayne had been backing up. The conversation had been meant as a distraction—Bastian had cornered him, making escape difficult. “Go wherever the hell you want, but leave me out of it. There’s no reason for you to be here except to cause trouble.”
“Trouble?” Bastian came to a stop an arm’s length away from Jayne, a Cheshire grin exposing his teeth. There’d been a time when Jayne had found his smile charming—when the sight of it hadn’t made his stomach clench and pushed bile up his throat—but like it was wont to do, time changed all things it touched, and Jayne found nothing redeeming about Bastian’s honeyed act. “I was never the one who caused trouble, babe—I was the one who stepped in to end it. You’re confused again, aren’t you? That’s okay.”
Bastian’s smile wasn’t the only part of him that had changed. Since Jayne had left, Bastian’s appearance had begun to decay. The hair he’d styled each morning was now messy and uneven, and patchy stubble stretched from his neck, over the underside of his chin, to the dip of his Cupid’s bow. The clothes he’d once worn—expensive and classic pieces that suggested Bastian had money to spare—had been replaced by t-shirts and workmen’s pants. The old Bastian would have rather stayed at home than leave the house with stains on his shirt, but there he was in broad daylight boasting clothing that did nothing for his figure.
Which was the real Bastian? Even now, Jayne didn’t know.
“I’ve done a lot of thinking recently,” Bastian continued. He took a few more steps forward, but all Jayne could do was slink to the side, following the wall. Bastian had the upper hand. Every step Jayne took put more distance between himself and the public parking lot. Employee parking in the back would be deserted—once Bastian herded him back there, no one would be around to help. “I know that things haven’t been good between us and that I’ve been coming on a little strong, but it’s only because you make me crazy, baby. The thought that you’d go to bed with someone else makes me so mad, I couldn’t help but do the things I did.”
“Are you…” The sand that had stolen Jayne’s voice moments before tried to choke him. He swallowed nervously and tucked his phone into his pocket, knowing that if Bastian came at him, he’d need both hands to try to fend him off. “Are you trying to get back together with me?”
“The way I see it, we weren’t ever broken up.” Bastian took another step forward, and Jayne sidled another step along the wall. “You got confused. You made me angry, and I pushed you away. It was my fault for loving you so goddamn much.”
“You tried to break into my apartment!” Jayne choked. Fear and panic pulsed within him like a second heartbeat. “You tried to come through my bedroom window after having scaled the fire escape in the middle of the night. You spent months blowing up my phone from unknown numbers, then screamed at me through my front door after I disconnected the line. I’m not going to let you spin this to fit your twisted narrative. You accused me of cheating on you after you knocked me up, you stalked and harassed me, and you put my family at risk. I’m not going to forgive that. Ever.”
“All of that is in the past.”
Bastian reached out to grab Jayne’s shoulder, but Jayne was quicker. He stepped to the side. “Don’t touch me.”
“Baby…”
“Don’t ‘baby’ me, either.” While fear and panic continued their assault on Jayne’s rational mind, anger fortified them, weaving them together in a way that made Jayne feel strong. Was he at a disadvantage? Yes. Could Bastian hurt him? Without a doubt. But Parker was back home with Everett and Shep, and Bastian had no idea how to get to them. No matter what happened to Jayne, his baby and his brother would be safe. What happened to him didn’t matter as much in comparison.
Not willing to let Bastian warp his mind, Jayne continued his train of thought. He needed to make the situation crystal clear. “I thought my silence spoke for itself, but I guess I need to spell it out for you:I. Don’t. Want. You.I don’t now, and I won’t ever. You used me like an emotional punching bag, and I’m not going to put up with it anymore. Nothing you do or say will change how I feel.”
Bastian picked up his head, and as he did, the look in his eyes cloyed. “I could have used you as a real punching bag, you know—could have wrung that pretty neck of yours any time I wanted. I didn’t, though, did I? I let you share my bed, and I treated you right. We could do it again. We could go back to how things used to be. You don’t have to sell your body to those two bastards anymore. You could come home with me just like you were supposed to.”
Just like you were supposed to.
The words plummeted into the depths of Jayne’s mind, each new instance rippling like a stone cast into still water.
“Supposed to?” Jayne whispered. Bastian reached for his shoulder again, but Jayne swatted his hand away. “What the hell do you mean by ‘supposed to’?”
