But fuck if I wasn’t wondering about them now. I scanned the messages again, searching for any detail I’d missed that would let me know I was being a paranoid, possessive piece of shit, but all I saw was the stomach-churning possibility that Gus had hooked up on Grindr, then come home and fucked me too.
No. He wouldn’t do that. My gut told me it wasn’t true, and common sense that it wasn’t even possible if he really had rescued Jessie, but logical thought had never been my strong suit, and my gut had let me down before.
I tossed the phone without reading the hundred million other messages he had stored in his inbox, and backed away from the counter, nausea creeping up my throat with every step I took. I bashed into the shelf by the kitchen door. The ashtray Gus kept his keys in fell to the floor. It didn’t break, and the urge to pick it up and hurl it against the wall was so strong it choked me. I needed to get out before I smashed the whole place up, but before I could make my escape, the front door opened.
Gus was home.
There’d been moments in my life when I’d felt in control of myself, and most of those moments I’d spent with him, but as his footsteps approached the kitchen, a bolt came loose in my brain. The switch flipped from the Billy that Gus probably believed me to be, to who I actually was.
I grabbed his phone and whizzed it along the counter. It flew off the edge as he stepped into the kitchen and hit him square in the gut.
He caught it on the rebound, on instinct rather than reflex. “Hey—”
“Fuck off. Your Grindr messages are waiting for you. Have a nice life.”
“What?” Gus blinked as if he was half asleep, but I was already pushing past him, and I was out the door before he called my name.
