And even if he had, who the hell was he to judge anyone when he’d been so bloody reckless? Damn, he’d had Zac’s cock in his mouth, rimmed him, swallowed his cum—
Stop it. Zac’s risked himself just as much as you have.
“Liam?” Mike laid his hand over Liam’s. “You know I’d never cheat on Rosa. I might’ve taken a pissed-up glance at a pretty girl, but that’s nothing I’d hide from her. She’s not beyond having a glance herself.”
Of course she wasn’t. Rosa liked a hot girl as much as Mike did. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, just tell me what’s really going on. Have you got feelings for this bloke? Is that what’s fucking you up? How does he feel about you?”
If only Liam knew, though it had been hard to doubt the intensity of Zac’s kiss. He’d pulled Zac from the van with little consideration of what would come next, just a wild notion that if he didn’t say something—do something—he’d fucking combust. It had never crossed his mind that Zac would kiss him. “I need beer.”
Liam got up and went to the bar. He bought two more beers and a couple of whiskey chasers, trying not to think about how much time he’d spent buying or drinking booze that day. A heart-to-heart with Mike was always the same. Liam would be lucky if he didn’t wind up sleeping in the van, too tanked to make it home. He’d already had too much to drive any time soon.
He went back to the table and pushed Dave out of his seat. “I can’t have feelings for him. I hardly know him. Christ, I’ve only met him three times.”
“So? Me and Rosa got engaged after a month.”
“I don’t want to marry him, Mike.” Liam suppressed a shudder and rubbed the blank space on his finger where he’d yet to put Cory’s ring back on.
“Then what do you want? An expensive fuck buddy? Or something more?”
“I just want to know him, I guess. He intrigues me and he’s beautiful.”
Mike knocked his whiskey back. “I’ll have to take your word for that, mate. I suppose you have to figure out if what you’re feeling, whatever it is, is real, or you’re trying to replace what you’ve lost. I know you’ve always been a bit of a lone ranger, but it’s not hard to see you’re lonely as fuck now.”
Liam had no answer to that, and Mike didn’t seem to want one. He shuffled off to take a piss and when he came back, he launched into his usual rant about the woes of Hull City Football Club, who were languishing at the bottom of the Premier League. The conversation seemed to be over, but much—much—later, as they stumbled to Mike and Rosa’s cottage, dogs in tow, Mike put his hand on Liam’s shoulder.
“I can’t make sense of this shit for you, but not understanding it isn’t a reason for you to be alone for the rest of your life. If you really see something with this . . . bloke, take it, roll with it. Don’t rent your heart out for nothing when I reckon you’ve both been through enough to deserve a hell of a lot more.”
It was moments like these that reminded Liam how lucky he was to have his family. It would’ve been easy for Mike to take Liam’s odd friendship with Zac at face value and write Zac off as the whore he believed himself to be, but Mike hadn’t questioned Zac’s motives, or Liam’s. He’d seen beyond the word “hooker” and applied his own very human way of thinking to the clusterfuck Liam’s life had become.
Shame he didn’t stick around when they reached the cottage for Liam to tell him he loved him like the brother he’d never had.
Liam heard the front door slam and winced. Rosa would kill Mike if he woke the boys. He listened for any sign of her opening the bathroom window and giving him what for too, but none came. With a sigh of relief, he rummaged in his pocket for the van keys. There was a bed for him in Rosa’s house, but he’d always preferred roughing it, kicking back under the stars with the dogs for company. Only the weather, like tonight’s drizzle, forced him into the rock-and-roll bed in the back of Hettie.
Yawning, he settled down in the van, leaning on the pillows with his favourite sleeping bag, and his phone in his hand. He purposely hadn’t looked at it all night, but with Mike’s beer-fuelled words of wisdom echoing in his head, the time to call Zac seemed to be now or never.
Squinting through his drunken haze, he swiped the screen, expecting to see nothing more than the usual barrage of work emails. The text message delivered ten minutes ago made his breath catch.
Call me. I’ll be waiting. – Z
Liam’s thumb hit redial. He put the phone to his ear and Zac answered on the second ring.
“Liam?”
“I’m here.”
“Where’s here?”
Liam chuckled. “Half-pissed in the back of the van on my sister’s driveway. Not gonna make it home tonight.”
Zac laughed too. “Where does your sister live?”
“A mile away from me. I could walk home, but I don’t want to leave Hettie, so . . .”
“So you’re sleeping in the van by yourself?”
“Not quite.” Liam eyed Jazz and Dave, who’d settled in their customary place at the foot of the bed. “I’ve got the dogs with me. Besides, it’s no different to being alone in bed.”
