And I want to avoid pushing and prodding, only Harry told me he gave me his pen for a reason—that he believed I wouldn’t give up, especially not on this ex-soldier who stopped me from drowning in red wine the night I hit my own rock bottom.
He helped me. I’ve got to help him.
I make a start by doing my best to channel our real leader. “When did you two last talk?”
Blake fires back, “When did you last talk to Flynn?”
Touché.
“I wasn’t everwithFlynn.”
“And I’m not with Adey.” Blake huffs. “We aren’t together. Never have been. I’m years older and too boring now that I’m not…” He swallows. “I used to take him riding. Can’t do that now, so if he finds serving coffee more interesting than spending his time off with me, I can’t force him, can I?”
I’m stumped for how to answer. All I can offer is a weak-sauce suggestion. “Emotional support kebab?”
“Maybe.” Blake scrubs a hand through regulation short hair. “Actually, I might just head home.”
That’s the opposite of what I all but promised. “Don’t make your mind up yet.” I can’t think of a reason to keep him here. “Let me go shower. Then I’ll walk out with you.”
I escape before he can argue. The pounding of the water doesn’t help me come up with a solution. It does mask the sound of the doorbell—I come out of the bathroom to find Blake waiting in the same spot Dair did last week. At least this time my towel is bigger. I cinch it around my waist as Blake relays a message.
“You’ve had a delivery from the teacup fairy. He said to tell you welcome home. Or maybe furniture fairy fits him better.”
“Furniture fairy? What do you mean?”
I find out for myself in the living room, where a pair of mismatched dining chairs almost surprise me into losing my grip on my new towel. Blake laughs again then, which is better than that bleakness. And if me sprinting for the front door means he laughs at me for even longer, I’ll live with it. My short sprint means I get to yell before Dair can reach the end of the street.
“Oi, oi!”
Dair stops dead. He swings around to face me.
“Come ’ere.”
He does, and so what if my yelling lowers the tone of this high-class district or if I’m half naked on my doorstep. It’s worth freezing my tits off to see his smile for real instead of on a phone screen, even if it flickers the moment I say, “Stop giving me your stuff.”
“The chairs? I can take them back. It’s just… It’s just that I couldn’t stop thinking about…” His soft lips press together. He can’t hold this in. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you, Vincent.”
I’ve been thinking about him too. Haven’t stopped, if I’m honest, and honest is exactly how I hope this comes out sounding. “You already gave away a lot.” Fuck it. I go all in.“Too much, in my opinion, and no, I didn’t go to no law school.” Unlike some of the other Exes, who I wish to fuck he’d met sooner. They could have advised him so much better than I try to. “But I do know right from wrong when I see it. What happened to you in court ain’t it. Not even a little. I can’t be yet another fucker taking from you.”
My bare chest is damp. Dair doesn’t seem to care. He hugs me, if only for a moment. For once, he’s the hoarser of us. “Thanks. But you aren’t taking anything. You’d actually be helping me out. I really can’t take it all home with me, and I’m running out of time.”
He follows me into the hallway of a home I’ll have to leave soon as well. Dair shuts the door behind him and stands in shadows. “Call it a temporary loan while we’re both still almost-neighbours.” He’s back to smiling, even if this version is smaller, and he hesitates on the doormat instead of following me further inside. “I don’t want to interrupt your time with your friend. I’m going to work, and your place was on the way to the Tube, so I left early to drop the chairs off.”
“How early?”
“Just a little.” He shrugs. There’s enough light to see his smile turn bashful. “Okay. A lot. I don’t have to be in Holborn until after seven.” He meets my eyes, his chin lifted, the brave bastard. “Hoped I’d get to see you.”
It’s a good thing Blake is still in the living room. That intense stare of his misses nothing, and there’s no hiding my reaction. My chest prickles for happier reasons than usual. I also prickle with nerves, which makes no sense when I’ve spoken to Dair every single evening while I’ve been away from London.
But not about what happened between us in his bathroom.
Some rule-maker I am—all I want to do is pick up from where we left off.And I don’t mean by bending him over his bathroom sink to get my dick inside him. I want to sit on the side of hisbath and kiss him for fucking ever. Then talk, like we’ve done each evening, about everything and nothing.
So much for being Mr. One-And-Done.Today, I run a hand through my wet hair, wishing Marilyn had already cut it. If this is what a second date feels like, I want to look smart instead of shaggy, but that’s okay because Dair does the exact same thing. He sweeps a hand through his own hair like he wants to look his best for me as well. And like he needs to keep his hands busy to keep from reaching out to touch me.
He loses that battle. “No hives.” His knuckles brush over a pec, which I swear I don’t twitch on purpose, but he yelps, then laughs, and here we are, grinning at each other like we’re both a sight for sore eyes.
That has to be what Blake sees after flicking on the hallway light switch.
