“How long were you together?” asked Max.
“A year. We were living together and everything. The first six months were amazing, but it’s when I moved into his place that things went wrong. He worked in sales, and traveled a lot for work, but he seemed to go on more trips once we were living together. I was in love with him, so I was being a ‘bit needy’ as he put it. He said being apart would do us some good.
“I was working in finance then, which I hated, but he said it was a respectable job so I should stick with it. Then when I was asked to go to a conference in New York, he insisted on coming with me.”
“Did you ever join him on his business trips?” asked Deacon.
“No. He said I’d be too much of a distraction.”
They both snorted. Ryder couldn’t help but chuckle. A “distraction” is something he’d been called many times, and all for different reasons.
“Part of me thought it was kind of sweet that he was jealous of me being in New York on my own. I know that sounds stupid, but I had a lot of self-doubt with him. The trip was only two nights, and on the second day of the conference the speaker I was supposed to watch canceled. I could have gone to one of the other sessions, but it was right after lunch, so I thought it’d be nice to pop back to the hotel for a bit. I was in my twenties and he was a greedy power bottom.”
“There he is,” said Max. “I was worried that we hadn’t had a mention of Ryder’s cock in this story yet.”
“Get fucked. I’ve got you all beat.”
They both shrugged, knowing it was true.
“Anyway, I walked into the hotel room, and he was being fucked by some other guy.”
“Asshole,” snarled Deacon.
“I know. The man I loved was bouncing up and down on this guy’s cock. They were startled when I walked in, but Brian must have been close because they didn’t even stop. I had to watch him jizz all over this guy’s chest. It was only after I’d picked my jaw up off the floor that I realized he was in bed with his ex-boyfriend, who’d dumped him to take a job in New York.”
“What the fuck?” said Max, looking furious.
“Yeah. It had been going on for months. All those ‘business trips’ had been him working from his New York office, trying to arrange a transfer.”
“What did the ex-boyfriend think of Brian being with you?” asked Deacon.
“He didn’t care because he knew Brian was going to leave me once he got the transfer.”
“I assume that was the end of it?”
“Pretty much. I had to move back in with Mom. I quit the job I hated and trained as a personal trainer. It was going well, until I saw them both in the gym I worked at. They’d apparently decided the ex would move back to Atlanta instead. There was no way I could see them together all the time, so I moved here, worked in a gym for a couple of years, Sebastian became a client, and you know the rest.”
“Why have you never told us this?” asked Max.
“It’s embarrassing. You know, if he’d said in that moment he was sorry and fucked the other guy off, I would have taken him back. I swore I would never let anybody own my feelings like that again.”
“So you became a man whore,” said Max.
“Fuck you!” replied Ryder, but there was no heat in it. Ryder and Max always chirped at each other.
“You think Felix could do the same as Brian?” asked Deacon.
“No. He’s not the cheating kind, but that doesn’t mean he can’t hurt me some other way.”
“That’s true, but if we went round being fearful of getting hurt, we’d all be single forever. Take the risk. When was the last time you felt such a connection with anyone other than Brian?”
“This is more than what I felt with Brian, so the answer is never.”
“Then you have to trust your instinct on this one.”
“And if it all goes to shit, we’ll be here to give you a hard time,” said Max with a grin.
Ryder couldn’t help but laugh. He was glad he’d spoken to them. Now he had to go back to his apartment and tell Felix about what was going down on social media. That wasn’t a conversation he was looking forward to.
