Chapter 25

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FIVE

Cillian padded over to the door and unlocked it for Anthony. He’d woken up half an hour ago, and he spent the time lying in bed, doom-scrolling with Snap on his chest. Which was how he spent most mornings. The only reason he’d gotten out of bed was because Anthony had buzzed the intercom. So now he was still in his pajamas, and he hadn’t had his first cup of coffee.

He got the machine going while he waited, brain moving slowly. He was out of the habit of doing a run of late nights, and it didn’t help when some of the other musicians and dancers wanted to grab a snack after the show. The dancers didn’t drink during a performance run, but many of the musicians did. Cillian had found out the hard way that too many late nights and drinking were not a solid plan.

Anthony knocked on the door before opening it, which made Cillian smile. He ran his fingers through his hair and leaned against the kitchen counter, hoping he looked sexy-just-rolled-out-of-bed. Not I-stayed-out-too-late-and-feel-like-trash.

It was a fine line between the two.

Anthony’s gaze dropped from Cillian’s face, drifted over his bare chest to his pajama pants… which had seen better days. He should’ve thought this through a little better.

“I thought you’d be dressed… I didn’t mean to wake you up.” From the way Anthony looked him up and down, as if he were on the lunch menu, he was pulling the sexy vibe, not the trash vibe.

“I’ve been awake for about half an hour, but you got me out of bed.” His voice was rough. No doubt Snap was sitting in the warm spot, annoyed that he no longer had Cillian to sleep next to.

Anthony stepped in, sliding his arm around Cillian’s waist, and dropping a chaste kiss on his lips. “You could’ve stayed in bed.”

Cillian laughed. “I had to unlock the door, and I need coffee. Do you want one?”

“I won’t say no.”

Cillian debated about handing Anthony the first cup because that was polite, but didn’t. Cillian was sure Anthony didn’t mind by the way he kept an arm around him and kissed the back of his neck. Which sent a thread of heat down his spine to his balls. The worn-out flannel of his pajama pants didn’t hide the way he liked the attention. Cillian drew in a breath. As much as he wanted Anthony there, he also really needed to finish waking up, and to do that, he needed the milk.

“I’m not trying to push you away, but I need to make my coffee drinkable, or I’m going to become antisocial very quickly.”

Anthony released him with a chuckle. “Not a morning person?”

Cillian grunted as he grabbed the milk. “Most of the time I am, but not when I’m doing a run of performances.”

“I thought you could do it in your sleep?”

“Oh, the music I can, but there are rehearsals and then there’s the performance, and it’s always late by the time it ends and even later by the time I get home. Once I’m back, it takes me an hour or so to wind down when I get to bed. By the time the run ends, I’ll be into the routine of going to bed late and getting up late.”

“Just in time to go back to normal.”

“Exactly.” He didn’t know how shift workers dealt with the changing of shifts. “Growing up on the farm, I got used to getting up at sunrise, so I find early starts much easier to deal with.” He took a couple of swallows of coffee, having added plenty of milk to bring it down to sculling temperature. “Enough about my first world problems…” He put the back of his hand on his forehead and fake-wilted against the fridge. “And the hard life of being an in-demand pianist. How has your week been?”

The coffee machine finished making Anthony’s, and he didn’t wait for an invitation to pick it up. “Uneventful.”

Cillian stared at him, waiting for him to elaborate.

From the way Anthony stared at the coffee instead of meeting his gaze, there had been something eventful, and he didn’t want to discuss it. Which was fine. It wasn’t as though Anthony owed him an explanation. They weren’t dating. He didn’t know what the fuck they were doing. It wasn’t as impersonal as hooking up—for a start, they’d gone out twice.

Oh my God, they were dating.

How the fuck had that happened?

Anthony glanced up as though Cillian had spoken aloud. “Margot let me be her plus one, so I heard you play the other night.”

Cillian snorted. “The night before last? There was a little fuckup with one of the cellists.”

“I didn’t notice. I’m not sure anyone did.”

“We all did,” he said with a lift of his eyebrows.

“That’s because it’s your job.”

Fair. Cillian took a drink of his now too cold coffee.

“While I was there, someone from my past handed me his card, offering me a job.”

That should be a good thing… but the way Anthony said it suggested it was anything but. Then Cillian got it. If the man was from his past, the job might involve finance or drugs, both of which were bad. “You haven’t called him.”

Cillian hoped Anthony hadn’t. Not that it was his place to say anything. That didn’t stop him from holding his breath and hoping that he hadn’t misjudged the man before him. He was enjoying their time together too much to not miss it if he walked away.

Anthony took a sip and winced. “I forgot you drink rocket fuel.”

Cillian grinned. “I’ll buy you some low strength coffee. Though there’s no point in drinking it.”

“It should be about the flavor, not the punch to the face.”

“I like both.” Cillian shrugged and finished his, setting it beneath the machine, ready to make another. This time, he’d have some toast with it.

“I called him. He wanted me to work as a researcher , looking for good deals.”

“That’s seems very close?—”

Anthony nodded. “I told him no. I know how it’ll go from ‘find me the deals’ to ‘do them for me.’ The money would have been so good.” He slumped against the counter.

Cillian didn’t miss the wistful tone in Anthony’s voice. The temptation to take the job must have been strong. “Why do you think he’d move the goalposts?”

He grimaced. “He was a friend of Rafe’s.”

“The one still in prison with most of the drug charges?” Cillian had made it his business to look up more about the case, and Anthony’s friends. So he understood what he was getting into, which is exactly what one did when casually hooking up. Not. “Did he expect you to pick up where Rafe left off?”

“Possibly?” Anthony pressed his lips together. “I called him because I wanted to be sure that it didn’t feel right, and the more he talked, the more I realized I was going to end up where I don’t want to be.”

“Was it a set up? To test you?”

Anthony laughed. “I hadn’t even considered that. Maybe. It’s not as though I knew all of Rafe’s contacts.”

“So what are you going to do?” Because if Anthony changed his mind and took the job, it might land him in trouble and end with more jail time. In which case, Cillian would walk away before he got any more involved and made the break more painful than it needed to be.

“Keep applying. What else can I do? I can’t even work in a bar; they won’t trust me with the till.” Anthony scrubbed his hand over his face. “I didn’t realize how much the charges would fuck everything up. The worst thing is, if I had known, I’m not sure I would have stopped because I thought I was too fucking clever to be caught. No different than anyone else inside. You only need to be unlucky once.”

Luck—good or bad—was fickle, and both could burn. “I’ve put a few feelers out to see if anybody has anything going. I can’t guarantee the pay will be any good, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Thank you. You didn’t need to. I’m not sure how many musicians or artists need a librarian.”

Cillian laughed. “A lot of the people I know work a lot of odd jobs which means they meet a lot of people. If we hear of something going, we spread the word. Even though I’m not looking for a regular job, if I hear of something, I tell my friends.”

“You aren’t worried that I’ll fuck up and make you look bad?”

“You only do it once, then no one will touch you again.”

“So, people who do a bad job don’t find out when there’s work going.”

Cillian lifted his eyebrows. “No one wants to be recommending people who don’t do a good job, because it means the next time we recommend someone they’re not trusted.”

Anthony wouldn’t do a bad job. He wanted to work and move on with his life, which was quite different from a twenty-something musician who really just wanted to write music and not do manual labor or bar work or shelf stacking or any of the other random jobs they’d all done at the start. The situations were different, plus Anthony was a qualified librarian.

“Brutal but effective. I’m going to reach out to some of my contacts, but I’m not expecting much more than a door to the face for daring to ask.”

Cillian buttered his toast. “On the subject of brutal, heard anything from your brother?” Do you have any ideas about what to do? is what he really wanted to ask.

“No, he’s been quiet.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Maybe Hayden had fucked off to some dark corner and vanished, but Cillian doubted he’d ever get that lucky.

“It means he’s up to something. It’s not like him to step back when he can take easy shots at me.”

“He needs a bigger bully to teach him a lesson.” Though how Anthony asked one of his criminal friends to do something without getting into trouble himself, Cillian had no idea. That was the kind of thing where everybody ended up covered in splatter. Including him. Which he definitely didn’t want.

“Then he plays the victim, claiming he did nothing wrong. Ask me how I know. Actually, I’ll tell you… I paid a bigger bully once at school. It didn’t work, and I haven’t found a solution for your situation, either. I wish I had some better news.”

Cillian shrugged as though it didn’t matter, even though it was killing him. He’d lived with it for years, while Anthony had only known for days. “I know I said we’d go out for lunch, but would you like to watch a movie, mess around on the sofa, and order in some sushi?”

“Are you going to put some proper clothes on or stay like that?” Anthony didn’t hide the heat in his eyes.

“You like my scruffy pajama pants?” Cillian jutted out his hip in a suitably provocative pose.

“I like the way the elastic seems to be giving up, and they’re about to slide off your hips. I’ve been so tempted to give them a tug and see what happens.”

Cillian licked his lower lip. “They’ll get caught on my hard-on.”

Anthony reached out and hooked a finger through the waistband, tugging him closer. “I noticed that. And I’m sure there’s something I can do about it.”

His semi went to full mast with those words. “Is that right?”

Anthony licked his lips as he slid his hand lower, brushing the head of Cillian’s cock through the pajama pants. “To answer your question… I’d love to stay in and watch a movie.”