Ollie’s flat was small and compact, and the last owners had kitted it out to look like an IKEA showroom. It made the place a little soulless, but the upside was it didn’t take Ollie long to find everything Shay needed. “You going to be all right in there by yourself?”
Shay raised an eyebrow. “What if I wasn’t? Would you get in with me?”
Yes. No. Maybe.Ollie rolled his eyes. “Just don’t pass out in there, okay?”
Shay said nothing. He drifted into the bathroom and shut the door. Ollie winced at the harsh sound in the silent flat, then retreated to the kitchen to check the fridge. The shelves were pretty bare, but there were cheese, eggs, and milk. Bacon too. The housekeeper had left a loaf of bread on the counter, and Ollie had a squirrel stash of hot dinners in the freezer. They wouldn’t starve, and more importantly, much of it was food Shay could actually eat.
Ollie pulled a Tupperware container out and dropped it in the sink to defrost for…fuck, I don’t even know what day it is anymore.Not that it mattered. Corina had ordered him to deliver Shay back to her on Friday morning, preferably in one piece, and until Thursday night rolled around, Ollie didn’t give a fuck what day of the week it was.
The shower shut off. Ollie leaned on the counter and closed his eyes, willing himself to stay put and give Shay some privacy even as he pictured how Shay would look fresh out of the shower—damp hair, water still dripping down his alabaster skin.
“You have a guitar.”
Ollie jumped and opened his eyes. Shay was leaning on the counter by the oven, an exact replica of the scene Ollie had just witnessed in his imagination, right down to theGame of Thronespyjama bottoms he must’ve found in the bathroom. “Um. Yeah. I do.”
“Do you play it?”
“No.”
“But you did once?”
“Yes.”
Shay sighed and folded his arms across his bare chest. “You know this is totally unbalanced, don’t you?”
“What is?”
“That you’ve seen me at my absolute worst a hundred fucking times and you won’t even tell me why you don’t play your guitar anymore.”
Dread bloomed in Ollie’s veins, fresh and new and yet horribly familiar. “Why does it matter? I was never much good at it anyway.”
“It’s not about the fucking guitar!”
Shay’s shout seemed to bounce off the kitchen cabinets and ricochet around Ollie’s brain. It was too loud, and he searched for enough anger to defend himself with. To keep Shay out, if only for a little bit longer. “What do you want from me? A fucking striptease and a blow by blow account? What difference would it make? I’d still be me, and you’d still be you, and—”
“And what? You might be fucked in your own special way, but I have to do a damn equation every time I eat a sandwich, and do you know what happens when I don’t?”
“I—”
“It was a rhetorical question, Ollie. Youdoknow what happens to me when it all goes wrong, because you’ve seen it—you’re looking at it right now. How would you feel if you couldn’t? If you knew there was something about me that affected my whole life but I didn’t trust you enough to let you see it?”
“Shay—”
“Don’t.” Shay cut Ollie off again. “I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say, I just can’t handle the bullshit you throw up every time I ask the wrong fucking question. It hurts me, but it’s gotta hurt you more, and I can’t handle that. I don’t want to make your life harder—”
Ollie pressed his lips to Shay’s, silencing him, but for once not to shut him up. Each word dug into his hard-won shields, and finally they were starting to penetrate. He kissed Shay hard, and then softer, buying time as his entire axis seemed to shift.
He slid his palms down Shay’s smooth torso, catching the lingering droplets of water, focusing on sensation, nothing more. Tunnel vision had always been his friend—as a child, as an adult, before and after the accident that had robbed him of the man he’d once been. He dropped his head on Shay’s shoulder, counting Shay’s breaths until it seemed that neither one of them was breathing anymore.
I can do this.
More than that. He wanted to, and the fear that had been his constant companion for so long was suddenly a dull roar he could face up to.
Maybe.
Perhaps.
Fuck it.
