15 Austin

Austin

I feel the need to put this out there…

I was a liar.

Yep. Some of the things I told people were… well, stretching the truth, to put it in a better light.

I’d once told Jameson that I had an older sister who came out when she was like thirty or something. I didn’t have an older sister. And if I did, she sure as hell wouldn’t have been accepted by my family if she had come out.

At the time, Jameson had been in love with someone who wasn’t ready to come out. I’d only been trying to help, which was funny since we butted heads most of the time back then. I just didn’t want him to feel like he was alone. I had been trying to get him to see that there wasn’t really a time limit on coming out. I wasn’t even sure if my lie helped in the way I’d meant for it to.

But the best lies were never far from the truth. She wasn’t my sister, but she was the sister of someone who was once close to me. My best friend throughout grade school. I’d all but forgotten about him until I’d told that story. His sister was nearly twice his age, and she’d come out to their family when we were in high school. I remembered how everyone reacted because I’d been there like I was part of their family. Sometimes, I wished I was.

So, yeah, I lied constantly. Most of the time it was stupid shit to deflect others from who I really was. You know, anything to run from my past and my actual family. It was never to hurt anyone. But… a lie was still a lie.

Remy and Reed were the only two people on the team who knew the truth. Reed never pushed me to talk about it after he recruited me, but I knew he was always there if I ever wanted to. Not something that was likely to happen, and he knew it. But I still appreciated… you know, having someone there for me.

Remy knew more. When he’d first come to me, confessing that he knew who I was— or more importantly, who my dad was— I was on high alert and ready to shut down. But then he followed it up by saying that he didn’t want me to talk about it, just simply that he wanted me to know so there wasn’t this weird secret hanging between us. I respected it, even if I wasn’t happy about it. And, in a moment or two of weakness, I had broken down and told Remy more about what was going on with my family after… the fall, as my mother saw it. He checked in with me about my family situation often enough that I felt a closer connection to him than anyone else on the team.

The lies allowed me to be someone else. I could have a completely different family. I could… feel normal and happy.

Pretty sad, yeah, I knew it.

I never lied to be spiteful. The only harm I was really doing with my tall tales was hurting myself.

Sometimes it could get lonely when you kept people at a distance.

But there was someone I was having a hard time even tossing the smallest of lies at.

Agent Ford Priestley.

I couldn’t say why. Maybe it was the man himself. Maybe it was the title he wore. Or maybe it had everything to do with where we were.

While I didn’t think the ghosts of my grandparents hung around this house, the pressure of not disappointing them felt thicker here.

And maybe, there was a part of me that didn’t want to taint this place. I didn’t want to look back at the things that happened here while I protected a man who made my insides shaky, and hate the things I’d done to him. The lies I would have given him.

So what did one do when they didn’t want to lie but also couldn’t talk about certain shit?

That was how things became “off limits”. It was a matter of time before Ford stopped letting me get away with using those two words to shut down and keep him at a distance.

And if I was being honest, I was starting to hate myself every time I shot those stupid words at him. It always sat bitter on my tongue.

Not that I was eagerly jumping at the chance to change that. I sure as fuck wasn’t going to open up to Ford. I couldn’t. I had trained myself to deny and ignore all the things I didn’t want to deal with. It was so much easier to live in a world where it wasn’t my life. It wasn’t my trauma. It didn’t happen to me.

Even if there was a small— so small you’d need a microscope to see it— part of me that thought about opening up, I had no clue where to even start. How did one break that cycle? How did I go from being closed off to… open slightly? A door ajar. A small truth allowed to slip out. An honest moment where I didn’t hate myself in the end.

Was that too much? Could I really be okay with a start like that? Could I do it?

The thought was nice, but putting it into action seemed so out of this world that I clammed up just thinking about it.

Why him? What was it about Ford Priestley that got under my skin?

He was… older than me. By over ten years. So maybe that was it. He felt secure. Felt wise. Felt…

A heavy sigh rolled out of me and I just barely resisted the urge to bang my head on the tiled wall of the shower.

I wiped the water out of my eyes and wondered why the spray felt colder. Had I really been in here that long? Had I really let myself get completely lost in my thoughts?

To be fair, they were deep thoughts.

They were confusing and all over the place. Practically exhausting. That was probably why I had a huge urge to take a nap.

As much as I tried not to think about Ford, I couldn’t seem to stop.

I didn’t understand why.

We had been breathing the same air for days now, so of course things had shifted. We went from being strangers to practically being roommates.

But it wasn’t like I’d opened up to him.

Not like he had to me, giving me little blips into his life here and there, with no real pressure behind it.

Think of something else, I begged myself as I roughly scrubbed shampoo into my hair as quickly as possible.

Milo.

And the plan that he’d come up with to get into the FBI systems using our new inside guy.

That was something else.

Except, I didn’t want to think about Milo while I was in the shower. Pretty sure Remy wouldn’t be happy with that either, even if I wasn’t thinking of Milo in a perverted way.

I cringed, then shook my head as I slammed my hand down on the knob, cutting the water off.

Showers were for cleaning, not for thinking. Or anything else.

They certainly weren’t for working out whatever fucking issues brought more confusion and panic to my life.

I wrapped the towel around my waist and dashed down the hall to my room, shutting the door once I was inside.

A nasty sound of aggravation tore up my throat as I flopped back on the bed.

I needed this job… favor… whatever the hell it was, I needed it over. As soon as Ford got his life fixed and I went back to Atlanta and the team where I belonged, all of this would go away.

The fluttering in my stomach at the thought made me realize it might not be that simple.

What did it mean?

Why was my body reacting strangely to the thoughts I was having? To the idea of leaving Ford?

Why the fuck was this happening to me now?

The knock on my door rang out in my room like a shotgun blast.

I knifed up, eyes wide as I looked at the door.

“Yeah?” I called out, my voice cracked like I was guilty of something.

The door swung open and there stood Ford in the white tank top I let him borrow and black pants. His face and arms were glistening. His hair a little damp as it flopped in his eye. Had he been working out? I didn’t imagine there was much he could do here. Some running if he went outside. Some push-ups and sit-ups if he stayed in.

I hadn’t expected his arms to be so… sculpted. His shoulders were defined, biceps bulging with prominent veins snaking down. His waist was trim, and the little hint of skin peeking out where the tank had ridden up was obscenely taunting me.

His mouth parted as he looked down at me. I fought against the urge to swallow.

The way he was looking at me… I wasn’t sure I understood it, but I think a long-lost part of me might have. Or was it more like this sleeping part of me, a part that had been dormant my whole life, had been shocked to life now?

I knew I should have reached for a shirt or at the very least, tossed myself under the covers. But I sat there frozen, staring at him while he stared at me.

It took everything in me to move my gaze away from his face. Though, I quickly realized that was a mistake because I couldn’t stop my eyes from zeroing in on his strong arms again. The lines of tight muscle. The dark hair covering his forearm. The way his big hands looked both rough and comforting.

Fuck!

I understood the general idea of what attraction was, despite what some of my team members liked to think. Yeah, I was very much aware of how they thought I was clueless because I had never been good at picking up when someone was flirting with me. Little did my non-blood-related brothers know, I hadn’t ever really cared if anyone was flirting with me because I hadn’t wanted anyone to be interested in me that way. Men, women, nonbinary… it didn’t matter, I was never interested.

I never gave it much thought before, mostly because I figured it was a part of me that I’d pushed away due to the shit that had happened in my past.

But, what if it had been something else? What if I’d been using that as an excuse for years?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I hadn’t wanted anyone to be attracted to me because attraction had always been such a strange concept to me.

Sitting here on my bed, eyes unable to look away from Ford, I fully understood the meaning of attraction.

What I didn’t understand was why the hell I was feeling it now, and why was I feeling it when I was looking at Ford.

“Um,” he said, then cleared his throat and dropped his gaze to the floor. “I wanted to make sure you’re done in the bathroom before I jump in the shower.”

“Uh-huh,” was all I managed to get out. My lids blinked rapidly as I swallowed hard, forcing myself to find my voice again. “I mean, yeah, I’m done.”

“Great. Thanks,” he said, then quickly turned around to leave.

“The water might be cold. Sorry,” I called out.

“Might not be a bad thing,” I barely heard him say.

My mouth parted, ready for some witty comeback to toss at him, but I found myself lost for words.

This might have been the first time anyone had ever left me speechless.

I flopped back on the bed, giving myself over to this strange unknown territory that I had stumbled into. Because whatever the hell was going on here, it was not something I could fight. The only thing left to do was to figure out what it meant.