His cousins released him. Angelo’s arms dropped to his sides, and pain throbbed in his ribs, spreading fast to the renegade nerves in his back. Nausea roared in his gut. He swallowed it down and looked at Theresa?—at hismother.
She turned her back on him and crouched at Gino’s side, leaving Angelo to stagger to his garage bedroomalone.
He locked the door behind him and sank to his knees by the tiny basin. His stomach heaved, and he threw up. When he was done and had cleaned himself up, he fell back in a heap, clutching his injured ribs. Past experience told him they weren’t broken, but his weakened muscles didn’t support his body as well as it used to, and he knew he was in for some fuck-awfulbruising.
Brilliant.Angelo sucked in painful breaths and crawled to his makeshift bed on the couch. Lying down was worse than sitting up, but Angelo wastired, and the buzz he’d left Dylan’s place with that morning was longgone.
He didn’t remember falling asleep, and the darkness he woke to some time later unnerved the distant part of his brain that was aware that it had been early afternoon when he’d last been awake. The prickling sensation that something had woken him bothered him too. He sat up, wincing as the bruises forming on his ribs made themselves known. The garage was quiet and still, anddark, the only light coming from the strip of light below the shutter door that was rarelyopened.
Sometimes it rattled in the wind, treating Angelo to a chilling breeze that he’d never noticed when he’d slept in the garage as a child. He shivered now and the nausea he’d passed out with lingered, and his chest burned too. Perhaps that had woken him. But then the garage door shook again, far harder than any wind had ever shuddered throughit.
What thefuck?
Angelo stood and shuffled to the door. There was a tiny rust hole in the top corner. Stretching to peer through it hurt like the devil, and he didn’t relish the prospect of brawling with Gino again. Angelo’s anger had long faded and he simply didn’t care enough to fightanymore.
But it wasn’t Gino shaking the door and calling hisname.
Angelo lunged for the handle that raised the door. It seemed to take a lifetime for enough space to appear for him to duck beneath the door, and by the time he stumbled out, Dylan was already walkingaway.
“Hey!” Angelo limped after him. “Dylan!Wait!”
Dylan stopped walking but didn’t turn round. Angelo caught up with him and grabbed his arm, but Dylan wrenched it away. “So you’re not fucking deadthen?”
Angelo flinched, like the fury in Dylan’s voice had hit him. “What?”
“I was worried,” Dylan said. “You didn’t respond to any of my messages, and when I stopped by the deli, it was closed and the shutters were down. I tried calling, but you didn’t answer me that wayeither.”
Shit. In the shambles Angelo’s day had become, he hadn’t given his phone a second thought. Through the ever-present fog in his brain, he pictured it clearly on the prep counter where he’d left it when the bailiffs had told him to wait outside. When they’d handed him the keys to the empty deli twenty minutes later, he’d forgotten all about it, too intent on getting home and throwing the keys in Theresa’sface.
It hadn’t occurred to him that Dylan would be worried. Guilt burned hard in Angelo’s gut, matching the inexplicable fire in his lungs. He fumbled for Dylan’s hand, the words to explain himself jumbling in his mind as he tried to form them into a coherent sentence, but Dylan evaded Angelo’stouch.
“Look,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on between us?—even though we’ve had a gazillion conversations about it?—but I thought we were at leastfriends.”
“Weare?—?”
“Bullshit!” Dylan snapped. “If we were friends, then you’d have picked up your phone or at least sent me a message to tell me to mind my own business. You wouldn’t have me running across town in my pyjamas to check you weren’tdead.”
Angelo looked at Dylan’s Spiderman clad legs. With his hi-top Pumas, he was so adorable that a smile escaped Angelo before he could stop it, and for the second time that day, he was sent stumbling by someone else’shand.
Dylan shoved him hard. “Don’t fucking laugh atme.”
“I’mnot?—?”
“You are. And you know what? That makes you a bit of adick.”
Angelo regained his footing, acid dancing in his chest as pain lanced his ribs. “I’ve never claimed not to be a bit of a dick, but I’m sorry I dragged you out here, okay? I had a shit day, and I left my phone in thedeli.”
It was the vaguest explanation in the world and Dylan clearly knew it. He shook his head and stepped back, and when he spoke again, the rage was gone, replaced by flat despondency. “I can’t do this with you. Maybe it’s my fault because I keep falling for blokes who have a million other things to worry about before they get to me, but I just can’t do itanymore.”
Angelo’s heart scraped a dull summersault in the pit of his stomach. “What do youmean?”
“I mean this.” Dylan gestured between them. “I’m tired, Angelo?—tired of losing my shit every time someone I care about doesn’t answer the phone or goes dark on me?—?” Dylan held up his hand to keep Angelo quiet. “The reasons don’t matter anymore, mate. It’s my fault; you never promised me anything. I just?—I can’t do this with you again. I feel like I’m stuck on aloop.”
“Dylan?—?”
“Nah.” Dylan shook his head. “Ican’t, okay? I need some space. Maybe I’ll see you at the club sometime.”
The thought of only seeing Dylan in the club?—of those snatched and wonderfully sordid encounters being their only interaction?—nearly sent Angelo to his knees. He reached out for Dylan, but Dylan was already walking away. In his mind, Angelo called out to him?—called him back and promised to be a better man, but when he took a breath, there was nothingthere.
