“Someone’s accepted our request,” Caleb said, stirring Everett from his thoughts. “It’ll be about five minutes until they arrive—just enough time to get there if we hustle. You ready to go?”
Everett nodded. “I’m ready.”
“Then let’s go.” Caleb pocketed his phone, then squatted beside Everett and slid an arm beneath Jayne’s shoulder, helping Everett lift Jayne from the street. “You got him?”
“Yeah. I’m good.” A couple blows to the back of the head weren’t enough to keep Everett down. He’d suffered through worse—largely because of Caleb’s big mouth. “If you need me to stop, or if you need to readjust his position, just let me know.”
“I got it. I’ll have you know it’s not the first time I’ve more or less carried a drunken mess of a hot guy home.” Caleb wiggled an eyebrow at Everett, who rolled his eyes.
“I was twenty-one, Caleb. It was eight years ago. And it only happened once.”
“Once is all it takes, babe.” Caleb laughed. “I’ll stop fucking around. Let’s go, okay?”
“You’re so full of shit,” Everett muttered, but he couldn’t keep the smile off his face.
What an insane disaster of a night.
Propositioned by a stranger, cockblocked by a total maniac… one day, years from now, they’d look back at all that had happened and laugh. Life with Caleb was an adventure, and despite the trouble they always seemed to find along the way, Everett couldn’t imagine wanting anything else.
4
Jayne
Sunlight turned the insides of Jayne’s eyelids red. He grumbled and turned over, wrenching covers that had been tucked under the mattress along with him, and buried his head into a pillow far too soft and plush to be his own. The reality of the situation hit him slowly. Jayne opened his eyes.
Where was he?
Wherever the hell it was, it definitely wasn’t home.
For a long while, Jayne lay still and silent. It was far from the first time he’d woken up in a stranger’s bed with no recollection of what had happened the night before, but there was something about this room in particular that was off. Was it the sheer curtains flecked with gold? The spotless cantilever windows behind them? The reclaimed hardwood floor?
Jayne squinted.
Not only was the floor made of bright and cheerful hardwood, but it was polished to a shine.
The last time he’d woken up in a strange bedroom, its windows had been covered up with butcher’s paper, and it had smelled earthy and musky with mold. On his way out, Jayne had opened the wrong door and ended up in a boiler room inhabited by a dead mouse and decorated with disturbing charcoal drawings of faces that may or may not have been crude representations of Jesus of Nazareth.
Gold flecks and hardwood weren’t par for the course.
While Jayne wondered what untold horrors waited for him beyond the relative safety of the bedroom, he took in the rest of the room. The apartment—he assumed it was one based on the white walls—was upscale. There were no sloppily executed plaster patches to be found, no water stains on the ceiling, and no scuffs on the floor. Upscale was good. Guys who lived in upscale apartments generally weren’t interested in making his life miserable. The rare times Jayne had gone home with a guy who had money to spare, he’d had a decent experience. Sometimes, they even offered to pay for his taxi home.
A taxi would be nice.
Apart from the decent shape of the walls, windows, and floor, the furniture in the room was nice, too. An antique dresser sat against the far wall, its brass handles finely crafted. A matching bedside table occupied the headspace by the bed, close enough that if Jayne had wanted to, he could have reached out to touch it. From where he lay, he couldn’t see much else, but he was sure the rest of the room had to look equally nice. Whoever lived here kept the place neat, that was for sure.
And, likely, was also a vampire—there seemed no other feasible explanation for the lack of breathing from the other side of the bed.
“Good morning,” Jayne murmured, wondering why a vampire would invest in sheer curtains.
Nothing.
Jayne paused, then spoke more loudly. “Good morning.”
Nothing.
Jayne counted to five, then sucked in a breath and rolled over. The other side of the bed wasn’t only empty—it was still made. Either he’d gone home with a butler, or he hadn’t gone home with anyone at all.
“Are you a ghost?” Jayne asked the empty spot on the bed.
