11. Eleven

I sighed and let my forehead rest against the cool glass pane of my window. Rain raced down it, blurring the outside world. Thunder growled, blocking out the sound of the vacuum cleaner going downstairs. It'd been two days since I'd sat in Church's lap and jerked him off through his clothes, and he'd been avoiding me ever since. I didn't know if he was still pissed about the hickey—which wasn't even that noticeable—or if I'd done something wrong. I knew he'd wanted it, so that wasn't it. I had given him every opportunity to back out, and he said yes every time. Maybe he was still in the closet. That'd explain why he refused to tell me if he was bi, pan, or gay. Maybe he didn't even know.

Since that afternoon, he hadn't even had dinner with me. Church had been leaving me a plate in the microwave to heat up and spent a lot more time walking around outside. I'd popped out to ask him if he needed anything a few times. He'd just politely declined. It was like we'd gone back to being strangers, exactly the opposite of what I'd been hoping for .

I missed something, or fucked up somewhere, but where? I blew on the glass and drew a smiley face in the fog my breath left behind, but even he started to melt.

I gave up trying to entertain myself with my own thoughts and went downstairs to find something to eat. Church was probably outside on the porch with his tea, watching the rain. I thought about joining him, but decided against it. He'd been flighty ever since we'd messed around, and I didn't want to scare him off.

Oscar, the cleaning guy, was around somewhere, but I didn't spot him as I plopped down on the sofa with a Tupperware container of last night's leftovers. I switched on the TV, but there was no cable, and no streaming out there, so I quickly turned it back off in favor of finishing the shepherd's pie leftovers.

Once I was finished, I set the container on the coffee table and stretched out on the sofa to wait for Church to come inside. If I was lying right there, it'd be harder for him to avoid me. Maybe I just needed to give him an excuse to talk to me.

Unfortunately for me, the rain and the quiet were just relaxing enough, and the couch was just comfortable enough that I must've fallen asleep. When my eyes opened, there was a scuffling sound coming from the loft. I frowned and rolled my head toward the ladder. What the hell was that sound? God, if there were mice in the cabin…

I cringed and sat up. My eyes drifted toward the front door. Maybe I should get Church to check. That's what he'd want to do. For all I knew, there was an intruder upstairs going through my things. But if it was just a mouse or a bird or something that'd gotten in, I'd feel stupid calling in my bodyguard to deal with it.

I rose from the couch and climbed the ladder as quickly and quietly as I could. When my head popped up over the edge, I frowned as I spotted Oscar kneeling next to my bed, peering under it .

"What are you doing?" I demanded, pulling myself up.

He jerked his head up so quickly that he smacked it on the bottom of the bed. "Oh, shit! You scared the hell out of me!" he muttered, rubbing his sore head.

"Sorry, but what are you doing up here?" I asked a second time.

He stood. "I was just cleaning."

"Under the bed?"

Oscar gave a sheepish smile and adjusted his glasses. "I bent over to pick something up and my glasses fell off. Had to pick them back up."

I wasn't sure if I should believe him. His story seemed plausible, but he also wasn't supposed to be up in the loft. Church had me bring my trash and laundry downstairs so Oscar didn't have to go up there. It was my private space, and it felt awkward to have him there.

Oh, relax, Dante. It's not like the guy is some mustache twirling villain. I mean, what could he possibly be up to? Stealing your dust bunnies and sniffing your underwear? He wasn't exactly giving off creepy vibes. He was just a curious guy who probably wanted me to sign something for him.

"I just thought that since you were asleep downstairs, I shouldn't disturb you, and Church wasn't around, so I came up here and…" His face fell. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be up here. I won't disturb you again, Mr. Deluca." He rushed past me for the ladder, head down, shoulders slumped in defeat.

I immediately felt bad. This poor guy was a fan, and he probably thought I didn't like him. "Oscar, wait."

He paused with one hand on the ladder.

I twisted my fingers together. "You can call me Dante. And I don't mind if you come up here. But if Church finds you…"

"I know, but I thought…" He trailed off, shoulders falling with a deep sigh. "Never mind." He turned to go back downstairs .

"Wait!" I jumped up and Oscar paused on the stairs. Great, now I have to decide what to say to him . I picked at my fingernails a second before offering, "I'm sorry about Church. He can be a little…"

"Overprotective?"

"He's just doing his job."

Oscar turned back around with a wince. "I'm not going to get fired, am I?"

"Oh, fuck him." I sat on the edge of my bed and patted the chair near my desk. "I'm not going to let him fire you for being a fan. Sit down. Let's chat."

Oscar smiled the biggest smile and practically floated to the chair, sitting on the edge of it with his hands folded between his knees. "I can't tell you what an honor this is. I can't believe I'm even here. I really am your biggest fan."

I bit the inside of my cheek. "Yeah, um… Well, Oscar, can I tell you a secret?"

He nodded excitedly and leaned forward even more.

"I'm just a guy," I said. "I put my pants on one leg at a time."

Oscar chuckled. "See, that's what I like about you. So modest. All those other guys, it's like they forget where they came from. Not you."

"Yeah." I looked away and rubbed the back of my neck. "So, um, enough about me. What about you? Are you from around here?"

"Not originally. I grew up in Iowa. Some small town nobody's ever heard of."

"Oh. I've never been to Iowa. Is it…nice?"

He snorted. "Are you kidding? Iowa is boring. There's nothing out there except corn, farmers, and more corn."

"Sounds kind of like Ohio," I said. "How'd you wind up here?"

Oscar shrugged. "Oh, you know. I just go where the work takes me. "

I frowned. Housekeeping didn't seem like the sort of job people traveled across state lines for, but what did I know about it? I'd been a musician all my life, and that was all I knew. While my friends were flipping burgers and working as lifeguards, I was out on the streets with my guitar case open, playing for change.

I realized I'd been quiet for an awkwardly long amount of time and had no idea how to come back from it, so I reached for my guitar, swinging it over my lap. It'd always been easier to fill silence with music than words. "So, music," I started, strumming the strings. "What do you like? Aside from After Atom, I mean."

"Hmm." He pressed his lips into a thin line and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. "I guess I like a little of everything."

I'd always felt like that was a cop-out answer, the sort people gave when they thought their real answer was too controversial, so I pressed him harder. "C'mon. Give me a song. An artist. Anything."

He thought for a minute before saying, "How about Nirvana?"

I made some quick adjustments before playing the first few bars to "Smells Like Teen Spirit", a song I must've played a thousand times just like every other guitarist teenage boy living in a post-grunge world. I worked my way through the first verse and the chorus once before ending the song to applause from Oscar.

"That was amazing!" he said, still clapping.

I gave an awkward smile. "I'm no Kurt Cobain, that's for sure."

"Not to speak ill of the dead, but I think you're better than he ever was," Oscar said.

I shifted in my seat, not sure what to say to that. It always felt weird to be compared to other singers who'd come before me, especially genre-defying and barrier-shattering greats like Kobain. Whatever his personal faults were, there was nobody alive that could argue the guy hadn't changed the rock scene forever. If I was any good at all, it was only because I'd learned to walk in the shadow of greater musicians than myself.

But explaining all that to someone like Oscar felt like too much, so I just waved him on. "C'mon. Another song."

Over the next half hour, we worked our way through a catalogue of nearly every early 2000s rock band he could think of and a few he didn't know. We turned it into a game where I'd play a few bars and try to stump him. It was a game I'd played often with Jake and Gabe after practice, except whenever we guessed wrong, we had to drink. Playing it now with Oscar left me with a strange mix of homesickness and sadness. I'd never be able to play that game with them again if I wanted to stay sober. We'd bonded over dozens of such drinking games, but I'd never be able to play them again. What would we do instead?

When I really thought about it, so much of my life revolved around drinking and drugs that I wasn't sure what I'd do with myself when I was sober. Every after party was going to have both alcohol and pills just lying around. Everybody else would be doing it. Did people really expect me to turn into a buzzkill overnight? How was I supposed to have fun if I couldn't indulge just a little?

Maybe I could. Everyone else did and nobody got on their case for being a fucking addict. Just a couple of drinks, a little pot, a couple pills to bring me back up after the booze made me hit rock bottom.

I just had to learn to control myself and then I could do whatever I wanted. That was the difference between a casual user and an addict. Control.

"Dante?" Oscar frowned. "You okay?"

I realized I'd stopped playing, too consumed by my thoughts. I'd been wondering how many shots I could handle before it was too many. Was it three? Four? Nobody did just one. I'd look like a lightweight if I stopped after just one .

I shook my head. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just…tired." I turned my head to look at the clock. Three forty-five. Wait a minute . I set the guitar aside with a frown. It can't be three forty-five. The kettle hasn't gone off yet, which means Church hasn't made his afternoon tea . He never misses his tea. The sky could be on fire and Christ himself could be outside declaring tea a sin and Church would be defiantly putting that kettle on to go off at three-thirty sharp.

Something was wrong.

"What's wrong?" Oscar asked as I stood.

"Church hasn't made his afternoon tea."

He shrugged. "So?"

"So he always makes his afternoon tea at three thirty. You can set your watch to it."

"Oh, shit." Oscar glanced down at his phone and shot to his feet. "My shift was over fifteen minutes ago. I'd better get off the clock or the cleaning company is going to fire me. I can still hang out, though. If you want."

"I think it's best if you didn't today," I said and walked him to the ladder. I didn't want to be rude, but if something was wrong, it would be better if Oscar were out of harm's way. "We'll chat tomorrow, okay?"

"Oh. Okay. See you then?"

"Yeah, later, Oscar."

I followed him to the door, half expecting to find Church on the porch with his tea and a book, but he wasn't there. He wasn't in the kitchen either. I checked the porch, but it was empty too, and there was no sign of him in the trees walking the perimeter.

Maybe he's in his room . I approached the closed door and pressed my ear to it, stomach fluttering with nerves. It was silent on the other side, so I knocked. " Church?"

No answer.

What if something bad had happened to him? Suddenly, all I could picture was my big, strong hulk of a man lying in a pool of blood.

Not on my watch.

I took a step back and kicked open the door. Church shot up upright in bed, clutching the blanket to his bare chest like a scandalized maiden. "Christ! Did you ever hear of knocking?"

"I tried that! You didn't answer. But if I'm interrupting your alone time…" I trailed off and let go of the door. He was pale and sweaty with dark circles under his eyes, which left me doubting he'd been in there jerking off. "Are you sick?"

"I'm fine," he lied, his voice scratchy. He didn't even pull away when I put the back of my hand against his forehead.

"You're hot! And not in the sexy way."

"It's nothing! Just a little sniffle," he protested, but I was already halfway out the bedroom door.

I went straight to the bathroom and started searching through the cabinet. What did people take for a fever? Was it the same thing as a headache? That was Tylenol, right? Ibuprofen? Not that it mattered because neither were in the cabinet. Some cheapskate had stocked the place with off brand medicine, and to add insult to injury, the strongest decongestant in the house was off-brand Benadryl. Church deserved the best non-prescription pain relief on the market, not some markdown pill, but I supposed that would have to do for now.

I grabbed two bottles from the cabinet and a water bottle from the fridge on my way back to his room. When I returned, Church was bleary-eyed, but halfway out of bed.

"Oh, no you don't, Mister." I marched into the room and pointed. "You get back in bed this instant!"

He blinked up at me. "But… "

"The only butt I want to see is yours scooting back up on this mattress where it belongs. Don't make me make you."

He stared at me blankly for a moment before slowly sliding back into bed.

"That's better." I set the pills and the water aside long enough to pull the blanket up over him, but quickly took them up again. "Take these and drink this."

He frowned at the pills. "What are those?"

"Generic aspirin and Benadryl. It's not the best, but it's what we've got."

Watery blue eyes locked on mine, making my heart beat harder than an industrial bass line. "I'll be fine," he assured me, but he took the pills and the water, anyway.

I shook my head when he tried to hand the water back to me. "All of it. Down the hatch."

He sighed, but did as he was told. I watched the muscles of his throat move as he chugged the water, imagining him swallowing something entirely different. When he was finished, he crushed the bottle into a tiny cylinder and held it out to me. "Recycling is under the sink."

"I know where it is." I seized the bottle. "You rest. I'll be right back with your afternoon tea."

He winced and grabbed the blanket like he was going to pull it off. "I'll make my own tea."

I narrowed my eyes. "Christian Pope, if you step one foot out of that bed, so help me God, I will tie you to it."

His already flushed cheeks flushed a little redder at the threat. He sank back against the headboard and tucked his chin.

"Good boy," I said, and went back out to the kitchen .

While I waited for the kettle to heat, I found the grocery list Church had been working on all week and added Sudafed and Tylenol to it, underlining both to make sure Bowie got the right thing.

Then I threw open the cabinet in search of his tea. Unlike the tea I grew up drinking, his didn't come in a cute little cardboard box with a teddy bear on it. Church's tea came in a fancy looking black and gold tin. I lifted the lid and inhaled the pleasant familiar scent of Earl Gray tea. God, I hadn't had that in forever .

I pulled down the cup and saucer combination I'd seen him using before—an adorable white porcelain duo with pink roses—and dropped the tea bag in. I didn't know if he took cream and sugar in his tea, but he wasn't getting either, not with his congestion. Black tea was better for him. In the back of the cabinet, I found some weird-looking cookies called digestives and put two on the saucer next to the cup. Digestives was about the least appetizing name for a cookie I'd ever heard of, but I'd seen him have them with his tea all the time. He'd complain if he didn't get them for sure.

When the kettle went off, I brought it straight over to fill the teacup, dropping the little metal ball full of loose leaf tea in before moving it all onto a tray to take to Church.

"You know," I said, setting the tray on the bedside table, "you could've told me you were feeling sick. I'd have been down here earlier to take care of you."

"I don't…" He paused to clear his throat. "I don't need to be taken care of. It's just a little sniffle, Dante."

"Fever, runny nose, scratchy voice, exhaustion…" I handed him the cup and saucer with the two boring-looking cookies on it. "Don't downplay it. If you're sick, you're sick, and you should get to rest like anybody else. "

He took the tea, frowning at it for a few moments, before begrudgingly taking a sip. His eyes went wide.

I folded my arms. "Problem with the tea now, Princess?"

"No, not at all! It's perfect." He looked over at me, slightly slack-jawed. "Where did you learn how to make tea like this?"

"My mother." I folded my hands and sank into the armchair next to the window. "She um…" I smiled and laughed, rubbing the back of my neck. "Well, she was the only girl in the house with five wild boys, you know? Between that, waitressing, cleaning houses, and her singing gigs, she didn't get a lot of time to herself. But no matter how busy she got, she always made time for tea. It was the one thing she kept for herself."

"Your mother was a singer, too?" Church brought the teacup back to his lips. It was almost comical how small it looked in his giant fingers, but he handled it so delicately.

I shrugged. "She was no Madonna, but she did a mean Stevie Nicks impression." I gave him a few bars from "Edge of Seventeen".

He laughed, but the laugh morphed into a cough, and I had to take the tea from him so he didn't spill it on himself.

"Anyway," I said, "She gave up on her dream to raise us boys, but I wouldn't be here without her in more ways than one. We didn't have much growing up, but we always had music."

"She must be very proud of you."

The words felt like a dagger twisting in my chest. "To tell you the truth, I don't know. I haven't seen her in over a year. We talk on the phone sometimes, but…" I looked down at my hands and shook my head. "She worked so hard her whole life. She deserves to get to retire and not be hounded by the press because of me, so I stay away."

"That must be difficult." He took a bite of one of the cookies.

I forced a smile. "Hey, that's show business, right? "

His hand closed around my wrist and I looked up. "It shouldn't be like that. You know you deserve to be happy, too."

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "That's easier said than done when you're me."

"I think that's the case with everyone."

He must've realized he was still holding my hand because he suddenly let me go. I wanted to reach for his hand and put it back where it was because it'd felt right, but I also didn't want to make him any more uncomfortable than he already was. It was one thing to tease him when he was well, but not cool when he was sick.

I patted my hands on my thighs and stood. "Well, I'd better go figure out what I'm cooking you for dinner. You stay here and rest."

He shook his head and started to get up, but I put a hand on his chest to hold him in place. Church froze, muscles bunching tight. For a moment, his eyes went out of focus, but he came back quickly and gripped my hand, shaking his head. "I have to check the perimeter, Dante. I can't lie in bed all day, no matter how sick I am."

I stared at my palm resting against his bare chest. His heart drummed out a steady disco beat beneath my fingers. All I wanted to do was curl my fingers, dig them into that deliciously dark patch of hair and mark him where only I would see.

Instead, I pulled my hand away. "What if I make you a deal?"

He frowned. "What kind of deal?"

"If I stay with you, then you stay in bed. The only reason you have to do all this patrolling is to keep me safe, right? So, if I'm with you, I'm safe."

"Dante…"

"This isn't up for negotiation." I reached to tie my hair into a loose knot on top of my head. "You're going to lie there like a good boy and let me take care of you until you get better, and if you don't, I'll spike your next tea with something that'll ensure you will."

"You wouldn't."

I rolled my eyes and sighed. "Fine, I would never roofie you. But I would give you a very stern talking to and tell you how disappointed I am, and that is way worse."

He pressed his lips together in a perfect pout. "Fine, but no mucking about. And no complaining that you're bored."

I pressed my fingers to my chest. "I'll be a perfect angel just for you, kitten." I winked at him and held out my hand. "Now, I'm going to need a phone."

He stared at my hand and then back up at me. "Why?"

"The list of emergency contacts on the fridge has a doctor Wilson or Waverson or…something, on it."

"Wattson."

I snapped my fingers. "That's it. I'm going to call him to come down here and have a look at you."

"Dante, it's just a little cough and sniffle. I'll be right as rain tomorrow."

I crossed my arms. "Don't make me give you a stern reprimand. You're seeing a doctor if I have to tear this room apart to find my phone. But I don't want to do that. Don't make me."

Church squinted at me before snorting once and lying back against the headboard. "Top drawer of the dresser. Not a word about anything else in there or I'm tossing your phone in the hot tub."

I arched an eyebrow, but inside, I was all butterflies. Church was letting me go digging around in his underwear drawer for treasure. I hope there's some booty in there , I thought and went over to the dresser.

When I pulled it open, I almost had to clutch my chest in surprise. I'd expected the dildo. That wasn't a surprise. I mean, who doesn't have one or two of those in their underwear drawer? Sitting between the impressively large purple dildo and my phone was the Rolls Royce of wand vibrators, the kind you had to plug into the wall.

Be still my horny little heart. Can this man get any more perfect? I shot a curious look over my shoulder, picturing a whole new scene in my head: him tied up and blindfolded with that vibrator tied up against his cock. How many times could I make him come before he was a sobbing mess begging for mercy?

"Not one fucking word," Church growled, his face bright red.

"I didn't say anything." I grabbed my phone and shut the drawer. I smirked and leaned against the dresser. "But since we aren't going to talk about it, I can't tell you that you've got good taste."

He warred with himself for a minute, blushing even harder before he turned away. "Thank you," he said and finished off his tea.

I chuckled and went off to call the doctor.