10. Alex

CHAPTER 10

ALEX

Ford and I had been in my back yard for hours, feet bare and legs stretched out across the bricks, bottle of gin half-empty between us. If I closed my eyes, I was almost myself again. Almost the man I’d been before Dylan ruined my life, before Carter ruined my life…before I ruined my life.

“Is Boston going to be waiting up for you?” I asked, dropping my head back and opening my eyes. The lights were off, but New York was nothing except light pollution. There wasn’t a star in sight, even though it was well after midnight.

Ford hummed, pouring himself another drink. “I’d rather talk about you.”

I huffed. “I’m sure you would.”

“I’m boring,” he said with a sloppy shrug. “I’m in love with my best friend’s brother. I just bought him a farm. My other best friend bought a goddamn motorcycle and is turning into a recluse. There’s absolutely no chaos in my life at all.”

“Me, on the other hand?” I prompted.

“You.” He clinked his glass against mine and I closed my eyes on a weary exhale. “You are pretending you’re not in love and hoping none of us notice.”

“I don’t love Beamer,” I said simply.

Ford sniffed. “I didn’t mean him.”

There was no practical way Ford could have known about Dylan, known anything that had been going on with me besides the things I’d told him, which were few and far between. And I definitely hadn’t given enough away with Brooks for him to have pieced anything together. Ford was doing what he did best, I guessed. He was fishing, which was the same way he’d talked Kale’s younger brother into bed and gotten him into the very un-chaotic mess he’d just been referencing.

“I’m not in love,” I said.

“Lust.”

“A stretch.”

Ford took a swallow of gin. “I know the look of a man who’s had a taste of the one thing in life he never even realized he needed.”

“You’re drunk, Ford.”

“I’m drunk and you’re in love.”

I was not in love with Dylan Rivers.

I enjoyed the time we’d spent together, enjoyed the way he let me play, the way he sucked and fucked, but that didn’t mean I had feelings for him. Avoiding an emotional attachment was the exact reason I’d sent him home the last time he’d come over. It was a dick move—I knew that when it was happening—but Dylan…he was broken in ways I wasn’t ready to fix. Wasn’t able to fix. It was too easy for me to still see Carter tied down in my playroom when it was Dylan’s body before mine, and that was reason enough to keep my hands off of him. He was young, attractive, and great in bed. He wouldn’t have a hard time finding someone better than me to scratch all of his itches and then some.

“I slept with someone a couple of times,” I finally admitted, knowing Ford well enough to know he wouldn’t leave it alone without at least some morsel of information. “After Beamer moved away.”

“Recently.”

“Very.”

“And then you fell in love with him?” he asked, chuckling under his breath. “That’s how Boston got me too.”

“I’m not in love with him,” I snapped. “It’s over. It…it didn’t even start. He was just a body.”

“Okay, Alex.” The sarcasm in Ford’s tone was thick enough to cut with a dull butter knife.

“I can’t believe you came over here, drank my best gin, and then had the audacity to talk to me this way.”

“Brooks called me out about Boston, and I’m repaying the favor to you.” Ford shrugged, head lolling to the side so I could see the smug and shit-eating grin on his face. “What’s his name?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What’s his name?” Ford asked again.

“Dylan.”

Stressing his name was near enough to a spell, dangerously close to willing the scent of him back into existence. Thankfully, the wind kicked up, whipping through the green shrubs that lined the perimeter of my back yard. Every time of year the garden was one of my favorite luxuries at the house. Most places in the city didn’t have much outdoor space, let alone the manicured slice of heaven that had been in my family for generations.

“Dylan,” Ford repeated. “Tell me about him.”

“Nothing to tell. I told you it’s over.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“You’re such a prick.”

Ford grinned at me, expression full of that deviant charm that had always made him so irresistible to everyone else.

“I met him at Tryst?—”

“I like that place,” Ford interrupted.

“Met him there, brought him home, spanked him, fucked him, made him kneel, a lot of the usual.”

“That’s hardly usual for you,” he said softly, squinting one eye at me while he sipped at his drink some more.

“What is usual for me?”

“Meeting a man at The Black Door and pretending you’re getting enough satisfaction from throwing him over your lap and making him come before his ass even turns pink, for starters.”

I licked my lips, cheeks burning. “I’m apparently just too good with my hands.”

“That’s the rumor.” Ford set his glass down. “Tell me more about the kneeling?”

I cleared my throat, pushing out of my chair and onto my feet. “I don’t want to talk about that part.”

“Because it has to do with Beamer?” he asked.

“I liked you better when you were drunker.” I gestured to the bottle on the table beside him. “Have some more gin.”

“There’s no harm in learning you like a man at your feet, Alex.”

“I’ve always known what I like.” I walked across the yard, putting as much space between us as I could. Resting my back against the cool bricks, I folded my arms in front of my chest. “Beamer was just the thing that made all of you find out about it.”

“Rough enough to leave marks?” he asked, knowing damn well that was true. It was bruises around Carter’s wrists that had given us away in the first place. Well, bruises around his wrists and an eagle-eyed Kale Sheffield.

“Yes,” I said.

“And Beamer liked that.”

I didn’t say anything because he knew the answer.

“Your Dylan,” he half slurred, licking his lips, “he likes it?”

“He liked it.”

“Past tense?”

“That’s what I told you.” I pushed off the wall and headed back to my chair, throwing myself down in it with a sigh. There was no escaping Ford. “Things didn’t work out and that’s the end of it.”

Ford finished the last of my gin and made a show of smacking his lips in satisfaction. “You should call him.”

“You should call Kale,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Clear the air over all the brother fucking you’re doing.”

“You’re comparing apples and potatoes,” he said, fishing his phone out of his pocket and stabbing a bleary finger at the screen. “I’m going to tell Boston I’m staying here tonight.”

“I’ll call you a car, Ford,” I offered, hauling him up to his feet. He was a tall son of a bitch, and his weight knocked us both sideways into the door.

“I don’t want a car,” he pouted, pushing his phone back into his pocket. “I want to stay here.”

Something barbed and hot twisted in the middle of my chest, making it far too hard to breathe.

“I already told Boston,” he went on, unfazed by my unease. “He knows I’m safe here.”

I clenched my jaw together so tight, I wondered if it would crack my molars. As I walked Ford into the house, his words bouncing around all the places in my brain I’d tried to evict Dylan from, I found myself feeling like more of an asshole than Kale ever had. I knew Dylan had some serious shit going on, but I’d brushed it aside to make it easier for me. Paying him for sex was nothing for me and everything for him, and maybe I’d taken advantage by how I’d let things play out the last time he’d come over.

The abrupt cutoff had been an act of self-preservation because I’d done so much work to heal from the way my heart ached after things with Carter went away, and I didn’t want to slide right back into the same headspace all over again. I didn’t want to have to pretend or lie to my friends anymore. I wanted my life back, and Dylan could have been enough to sweep more than just the rug out from under me.

Whether he felt safe underfoot was another story entirely, but I had a sneaking suspicion he did. If not, there would have been no reason—short of a quick fix—for him to answer any of my messages and come back to me. Money made some people do crazy things. I’d seen it enough with the men my friends had made habits of bringing home in the past.

With all those distractions in mind, I walked Ford into the guest room and gave him a little harder of a push than he deserved down onto the bed. He landed with a dramatic oomph noise, which turned into a laugh.

“You’re in love with Dylan,” he said.

I yanked the blankets down and shoved Ford’s legs beneath the sheets.

“I’m not undressing you for bed,” I said, turning on the bedside lamp and heading for the door.

“But you’ll get me water.” Ford rolled onto his side and tucked his hands together under his head, arms aligned from his fingers down to his elbows. “And something for my head.”

I’d already been planning on doing just that, but the awareness he knew that was almost enough to make me take it all back.

“Anything else?” I asked, hand braced on the door frame.

“No, Alex. I have everything I need.”

I turned off the overhead light and stalked down to my kitchen, where I angrily filled a glass with water. Slamming the faucet off with a rough slap, I detoured to the bathroom for the Advil and found Ford dead to the world by the time I returned to the guest room.

“I hate you,” I told his sleeping body, leaving both the water and the pills on the nightstand.

He’d fallen asleep with that cocky grin on his face, so I turned off the bedside lamp and closed the door behind me on the way out.

I didn’t know if an easy slumber was in the cards for me. It so rarely was, but I went to my room anyway, willing to try.

The gin must have done the trick because I slept through Ford making himself a continental breakfast in my kitchen. There were dirty pans everywhere, a dried coffee ring beside the stove where he’d set his mug down, and the mug itself in the sink, half finished. He’d brought my paper in, at least, scrawling a thank you note across the top of the crossword page because he knew it would be my first stop after sitting down in the morning. Even with the glaring headache that came from too much gin, I set to work with coffee, hoping the caffeine would be enough to kick start my brain. I had no idea where my cell phone ended up after I’d gotten Ford into bed, and judging by the incessant knocking at my door, I wasn’t anywhere closer to finding out.

I set the pen on top of the folded newspaper then went to the door, less than pleased for find Brooks on my stoop, dressed for work and primed for an argument.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Brooks?” I sighed, leaning against the door frame.

“That’s what Kale said when I called him this morning. I’m starting to feel like none of my friends like my company anymore.”

“I enjoy sleeping,” I told him, stepping out of the way to let him in. Brooks followed me into the kitchen, back to my crossword and my coffee and the leftover breakfast Ford had left behind.

When I didn’t offer, Brooks asked, “Can I have some coffee?”

“You know where to get it.”

I turned my attention back to the crossword puzzle, but the heat of Brooks’ stare was searing against the top of my head. I finished two more clues and returned my pen to the table. “What do you want, Brooks?”

“I want to talk to you about Dylan Rivers,” he said.

I swallowed down bile, heart exploding in the middle of my chest. “What about him?”

“I just want to know your history with him. He’s not just a bartender.”

“I know he’s not.”

“You hired him?” Brooks prompted. “For sex?”

My cheeks flamed, somehow hot and cold all at the same time. Was this embarrassment? Shame? Guilt?

“It’s not a secret, Brooks.”

“I know it’s not. I’m not here to accuse you of anything. I just…”

“What, Brooks?” I picked up a half-eaten slice of toast and bit into it, trying to wait for Brooks to explain what he wanted with Dylan instead of jumping to conclusions.

“He needs…help. I picked him and Tate up from Tryst last night.”

“Drinking on a Sunday isn’t a red flag.”

I should know. I’d done more than my fair share.

Brooks narrowed his eyes at me, lips pursed. “Is it a red flag to have to pull him up from his knees on the bathroom floor and make sure he doesn’t choke on the cum a stranger just shot down his throat?”

I couldn’t look up from the plate in front of me, form the unfinished crossword, the unfinished business . If Dylan wanted to get drunk and suck a stranger off in a bar bathroom, I wasn’t anyone to stop him. He wasn’t anything to me. We weren’t…anything

“He’s not anything to me.”

“I didn’t say he was.”

“He can suck whoever’s cock he wants,” I bit out.

“I asked if I could touch him last night and he thought I meant sexually.”

“Is that what you meant?” I’d never wanted to hit any of my friends before, save for Kale, but with the question out of Brooks’ mouth, he was very close to making the top of the list. It shouldn’t have bothered me at all. If Brooks wanted to fuck Dylan, he could. Dylan wasn’t my property. He didn’t belong to me.

“I’m in love with Tate, Alex. I assure you it was the last thing I meant. I wanted to console him, rub his back so he didn’t throw up all over my stairs.” Brooks paused. “He needs someone to be easy with him.”

“That’s the last thing he wanted when we were together.”

“Be that as it may, Alex, I think it’s what he needs now.”

“I’m not the one for that.” I recognized a crossword clue I knew the answer to. Synonym for unharmed, starts with a P. Protected. “That’s never been me, and it won’t ever be me.”

“You can do both, you know,” Brooks said gently. “I do.”

“That’s not…Dylan, he…Have you ever ran the Boston marathon?” It wasn’t that I wasn’t paying attention, wasn’t that Dylan didn’t deserve it even though he wasn’t here. I just wasn’t ready to face the weight of what Brooks was asking of me.

What Dylan was in such a desperate need of.

“Twice.”

“What is the town at the eighth mile of the marathon? Six letters, second to last one is a C.”

“It’s Natick.” Brooks took a swallow of coffee, then set the empty mug in the sink beside all of Ford’s soiled pans. “Thanks for the coffee. We’re taking a trip to Ford and Boston’s farm in two weeks, don’t think you’re getting out of it.”

I didn’t want to ask why Ford hadn’t bothered to bring it up while he was half-conscious in my guest room the night before, but like all things, I was sure there had to be a reason for it.

“Is Kale going?” I asked.

Brooks was already at my front door when he said, “All of us.”

I spelled Natick out into the small boxes and closed my eyes with a weary sigh. It was time to face the things I wanted, the truth I’d been hiding from. Before Brooks could close the door, I hollered after him, “I’ll call Dylan.”

He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t have to.

The silence was loud enough.