I stood up.
“Where are you going?” Grey asked. “I thought we might all share a drink to toast a new era.”
“You can have mine,” I said. Why not? Let Grey test his resolve right out of the gate. Let him see how easy it was to avoid having sex if he got drunk. “There’s something I have to do.”
“Get your man,” Kit said, quietly but approvingly.
I looked at his twinkling eyes and knowing grin. “Shut up,” I said and walked for the door.
Because he was right.
I needed to go find my man.
Drake
Someone was hammering at the door of my apartment.
I groaned and rolled to look at the clock by the side of the bed. It was early in the morning. Way too early. Like, bakers getting up early. Not chefs. Chefs could sleep in.
Unemployed bums who were recovering from major surgery could sleep in even longer.
The hammering came again. Someone was out there, and they weren’t going away.
I tried to ignore it, but my eyes cracked open wider at the thought that it could be some kind of criminal. This wasn’t the best neighborhood in town, and it was possible that someone was out there with a gun looking for a drug dealer or seeing if I was home before they robbed the place. Maybe I needed to call the police.
I got up and went to the door, looking through the peephole into the corridor.
And recoiled, my heart suddenly pounding in my chest.
This was much worse than a thug with a gun intending to burglarize my apartment.
It washim.
He lifted his fist to hammer again and I swallowed hard, knowing that I’d be getting an earful from my neighbors if I didn’t stop him from making so much noise. I grabbed the doorhandle and opened it before I could think again, not giving myself the opportunity to wimp out.
“What?” I asked, glaring as best as I could when the sight in front of my eyes made me want to fall to my knees in gratitude.
I had gone two weeks and three days without seeing him. Now he was standing there in my hallway, it was like the sun coming out. It was an emotional sucker punch to the gut that I didn’t know how to take.
“You’re a hard man to track down,” Rafael said, stepping forward. I had to move to the side to let him in, or it looked like he was just going to bulldoze straight through me. He stalked into my apartment and glanced around; I wasn’t sure what he saw, but it couldn’t have been much, because most of the place was just full of boxes I hadn’t unpacked yet.
“What do you mean?” I asked, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. I had no hope of stopping him, apparently, so I just sat down in the one free rickety chair I had that matched my rickety kitchen table. It was at that moment that I realized I was still in only a pair of boxers, my version of pajamas. If Rafael minded, he hadn’t said anything, but I still found myself swinging my legs under the table to feel a little less vulnerable.
“You haven’t been answering my calls,” Rafael said. Apparently, he was satisfied with his look around, because now he turned back to address me directly. “And the address you put down on your employee intake forms turned out to be a dud.”
I took a breath, remembering. “Right. I was only staying there for three months. I figured at the end of it, I would either have to get something permanent or go back where I came from.”
“Based on whether or not you got the job?” Rafael asked.
I nodded and yawned. “Obviously.”
He gestured around before leaning on the back of the other chair, the one that was still covered in boxes, his hands gripping the top of the wood tightly. “Then what do you call this?”
I was still sleep-deprived; it took me a minute to figure out what he was saying.
The logic hit me slowly. Right. Because I hadn’t gotten the job, so I should have gone home instead of finding somewhere more ‘permanent’. Not that this really counted. The shitty apartment had been the only thing I could find on short notice, and now I was stuck with it.
“I knew I was ahead,” I said at last. There was no point in hiding it now. “Kit told me. So, I put down a deposit on this place and moved in before Grey did… well, what Grey did.”
