12. Alex

CHAPTER 12

ALEX

Dylan was so close and so nervous I could hear his heart beat. Or maybe that was mine, battering a terrified rhythm against my sternum. I knew exactly what to do with Dylan, but I hadn’t expected it. I’d spent the past two weeks making peace with walking away from him entirely, then Brooks had thrown me back into his life without even understanding. Ever the philanthropist at heart, and now he trusted me to make the right decisions not just for Dylan or myself, but also for Tate, and by connection—him.

“What do you want me to play?” Dylan asked softly, strumming his fingers up the strings. He winced a bit when he hit the deep reverberation of the E, and I imagined his head was killing him after the night he’d had.

I didn’t care, though.

Dylan needed to learn to live with the repercussions of his decisions, good and bad.

“Your choice.”

He cleared his throat and opened his mouth like he was either about to speak or sing, then he snapped it closed just as quick.

“This one doesn’t have words,” he said.

He lied.

“I don’t care,” I responded.

“I just wrote the music for it recently.”

“And no words?”

He glanced at me from the corner of his eye, confirming we both knew there were lyrics. He just didn’t want me to hear them.

“They’re not finished.”

“And the chords are?” I asked.

He nodded.

“No lyrics then,” I agreed.

Dylan sniffed and strummed a couple chords before tapping out a one-two-three-four for himself and launching into one of the saddest melodies I’d ever heard in my life. To call Dylan a talented musician wouldn’t have been fair. He was nearer a prodigy, the way his fingers moved up the board, the combination of chords…the song was beautiful. Haunting.

Heartbreaking.

“And you just wrote this?” I asked after he finished.

Dylan tucked the pick behind the strings on the trop fret of his guitar. “A couple weeks ago.”

“It’s really good.”

He shrugged and leaned forward, setting the guitar down on the table. “What now?”

“Did it make you uncomfortable to play it for me?”

He scrunched his nose and gave another shrug. I hated the indecision and weariness every time he raised his shoulders up instead of giving me a real and honest answer.

“Use words,” I said, tone more severe than before.

“I’m used to playing in front of people. It’s the compliments.”

“What about them?”

“I don’t believe them.” Dylan folded his arms in front of his chest and sank down against the back of the couch. I wondered if he hoped it would swallow him whole.

“Why not?”

“You’re only here because Brooks called you.”

He wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. I was here because I wanted to be. Brooks had kicked me in the ass, and that was what had physically brought me to Chelsea, but in my heart, I did want to be here. Even if that was horrible news for all of us in the long run.

“Do I look like the kind of man who does things he doesn’t want to do?” I asked.

Dylan exhaled half a laugh out of his nose and turned toward me, moving so fast at me I didn’t realize he was coming for my glasses until he had them off my face. I wasn’t blind, but the shape of him was blurred around the edges the closer he sat to me.

“That’s bold, Dylan,” I warned, and he ignored me, folding my glasses and tucking them into the palm of his hand.

His fingertips grazed over my cheek, down over the two days of stubble that had sprouted along my jawline. He came dangerously close to my mouth, tracing over my cupid’s bow before he returned my glasses to their perch on my face.

“No,” he said after dropping both hands into his lap. “You don’t.”

I was so hard for him it took every ounce of willpower I’d ever had in my entire life to not throw him onto his back and make a home for myself between his legs.

“Why did you send me away last time?” he asked.

“The way I am, Dylan, the things I like…” I trailed off, searching for words to explain a part of myself I’d never had to before. “It doesn’t always end happily.”

He let out a miserable-sounding snort that died halfway out of his throat. “Sounds like life.”

“Happy eventually,” I corrected. “But sometimes scenes will leave you unfulfilled.”

“Like life,” he repeated, rolling his eyes.

“I didn’t want you to expect a certain thing from me.” I closed my eyes and rubbed the bridge of my nose, Ford’s drunken slurs about knowing he was safe, knowing I’d take care of him bouncing around my head like a pinball machine.

“This didn’t even hurt,” Dylan said next, tapping his fingers against the bruising around his throat.

“Who did that to you?”

I didn’t want to talk about the marks because they made me feel too close to unhinged. Balling my hands into fists, I tried to ask the question casually, but I knew the marks had come from carelessness, not informed consent.

“It doesn’t matter.” Another one of those goddamn shrugs.

I surged forward and grabbed him by the throat, covering the bruises with my hand and using my body to shove him against the wall. His nostrils flared, eyes falling half closed like he had an erection between his legs. I didn’t need to check to know he did. I had one too.

“Who?” I asked again.

“I don’t even know his name.” Dylan let his head fall back against the exposed brick, and I flexed my hand against the sides of his neck, his rapid heartbeat fluttering beneath my fingertips. “It didn’t even count.”

“How does it not count ?”

He lifted his hips off the couch. “It didn’t hurt. I didn’t even feel it.”

I had to let go of him, reel back, thread my fingers together so I didn’t reach for him in a different way entirely.

“Is that what you were looking for?”

“No, I just…the money. I didn’t expect that part of it.”

“That was assault, Dylan,” I told him.

He scrambled up into a more upright position, eyes narrowed and angry. “No, it wasn’t.”

“Almost by definition.”

“You’re wrong,” he protested.

“And whatever happened in the bathroom?—”

“I was drunk!”

“Exactly.” I unfurled my fingers, nails having gouged eight perfect crescent moons into my palms. “You can’t consent if you’re drunk.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Dylan jumped up from the couch, red-faced and trembling. He pointed to the door. “You can go, Alex. Thanks for coming.”

I stood, tucking my half-hard cock down so it wasn’t evident how turned on he made me. “Is that really what you want?”

“I don’t want you to come in here acting like you know more about my life than I do,” he snapped, arm falling to his side. “You don’t know what happened.”

God, this man was twice as stubborn as Kale, but with half the common sense. He was going to be the death of me and all of my friends would laugh me right into my grave.

“Do you need a demonstration, Dylan? Do you want me to show you what consent looks like?”

“You already have.”

“And still.” I held up a hand to stave off any other protest that he thought about trying to throw into the conversation. “And still you try to tell me otherwise.”

Dylan cleared his throat, turning his attention toward the floor, voice soft when he asked, “Why are you here, Alex?”

I almost told him I didn’t know, but at this point, it would have been a lie. I sucked in a breath, studying the slope of his shoulders and the sorrowful hang of his head, the way he tapped his fingers against his thigh while he waited for my answer. I took stock of him, then myself. The unsteady pulse that strummed in my neck, the sweaty palms, the tightness at the base of my spine. Dylan pushed all of my buttons, and I liked it. My whole adult life I’d wanted someone obedient, someone unquestioning, someone like Carter, but then…

“I’m here because I want to be,” I finally told him.

He frowned.

“I’m not an easy man, Dylan.”

“I don’t think I am either,” he mumbled.

“Why am I here?” I turned his question back on him, raising a brow when he blinked up at me with confused eyes. “What do you want?”

He answered with another one of those miserable shrugs. There had to be some sort of predicament bondage I could put him in where his shoulders couldn’t answer for him.

“Think harder,” I told him.

I had to know if we were on the same page before going any further. My damned emotions were pushing too hard at the edges of my common sense, and I was too wounded from Carter to risk another fall.

“I don’t know how to pay my rent,” he finally said, and all the hope that had begun to bloom in my chest wilted.

“So you want my money?”

“I don’t want your money. I want my money.” Dylan shifted his weight, his hands on his hips in the weakest show of defiance I’d ever seen. It was enough to soften some of the ice that had blanketed my own emotions with his original answer.

“Do you only bartend?” I asked.

“I play gigs when I can, but they don’t pay well.”

“So you need better gigs,” I said.

“Easier said than done.”

There had to be a string I could pull for this one, a call I could make. I made a mental note and moved on.

“What else do you want?”

“I want Tate to not worry about me.” His bottom lip quivered, a stray tear racing out from the corner of his left eye. He swiped it quickly, but there was no hiding it from me.

“You love him.”

“He’s my best friend. My only friend.”

“Music and money,” I summarized. “Your friend. What else?”

“I want you to stop looking at me like you feel sorry for me.” Dylan snatched his guitar off the coffee table and stalked past me into his bedroom. He kicked the door behind him, but not hard enough to close it and that was as much of an invitation as the situation called for.

I followed after him, leaning against the door frame while he settled his guitar onto a stand in the corner of his room. He turned toward me when he was finished, not surprised in the slightest that I’d come after him.

“I don’t feel sorry for you.”

“What then?”

“I want you, Dylan. That’s how I look at you.”

Ignoring my answer, he threw himself down onto the foot of his bed. There was a full length mirror propped up in the corner, and even though Dylan’s back was to me, I could see half of the tired melancholy on his face.

“Why did Tate’s boyfriend call you?” he asked.

“Brooks called me because he knew we have a history.”

“We had sex,” he bit off. “Which you paid for.”

I ignored the sting he’d intended for his comments to land with. It was enough of a response to my earlier answer about wanting him. He either didn’t care, or he didn’t believe me. “He called because he knows who I am. He knows my tastes.”

Dylan licked his lips. “He thinks you could get my act together for me.”

It wasn’t a question.

“He thinks you could do it yourself,” I countered, “with some help.”

“And he thinks you can help me?”

I turned the question around on him. “What do you think?”

Dylan covered his face with his hands, letting out a desperate sound that might have been a cry for help. He dug his elbows into his knees, fingertips gripping his hair. I ventured into the room, sitting down beside him and peeling his fingers loose, one by one. Eventually, he sagged against me, half in my lap and half in my arms. I held him, stroking my fingers down the top of his arm and across his ribs.

“I don’t want a handout,” he mumbled into my chest. “That’s why I didn’t tell Tate.”

I had a split-second to make the right decision.

Help myself or help him.

Time slowed. It stopped. I buried my nose into his hair, breathed him in, and relished the way he shivered in my arms. I wanted him so much that I’d break my own heart in the process of having him.

I took too long to answer, a breath, a beat, the words were still on my tongue when Dylan worked his arms around my shoulders, when he flung his leg over my lap.

“What are you doing?” I asked, bracketing my hands against his hips.

He felt so fucking good on top of me like this. Even with the weight of his unhappiness bearing down on us both, I wanted to carry it for him.

I wanted .

“You said you want me,” he whispered.

At least my answer hadn’t gone ignored. “I do.”

“Then have me.”

And he tilted his head to the side, slanted our mouths together, and he kissed me.