Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
Nash
I’ve been out here, leaning against my car for fifteen minutes.
I know that he saw me, his blinds are wide-fucking-open and he looked right at me while he cracked the window.
I wait five more minutes, until a third cloud of thick smoke is pulled outside, before I approach the window, stepping past the lush green shrubbery sitting beneath it.
“You’re being a brat,” I scold him. “Open the door.”
“Yeah, see, unfortunately the line went dead before you told me you were coming over,” he muses, pursing his lips. “So I wasn’t expecting company. Sorry.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose with a laugh and brace a hand against the wall next to me.
“Quit pouting. I’ll start calling you petty boy if you don’t get your ass up off of that couch and let me in,” I tell him, and I watch through the window as he bites his lip to stifle his laughter.
I can’t help myself from being so incredibly fucking charmed by him.
He holds out for another thirty seconds before finally climbing off of the couch and pulling the front door open, poking his head outside. “You hung up on me, dick,” he glowers – at least, he tries to.
“And aren’t you just so glad that I did, because it gave you an excuse to put on this little display?” I flick at the bracelet wrapped around his wrist. “I knew the white would suit you. Are you still pouting, or are you going to invite me inside and give me the tour?”
Finally letting me past the threshold, he walks me around to show me his home.
It’s a comfortable space, thoughtfully decorated with plants of varying shape and size, a few well-placed rugs, and a few art pieces which must have been hung in the hallway before, because they now sit stacked in front of each other on the floor instead of hanging on the freshly-painted walls.
A candle sits on his coffee table, filling the house with the smell of leather and bergamot.
A bluetooth speaker is placed in every room, and the roses that I sent him sit in the center of the kitchen island; I have to bite back a grin when I catch sight of them.
Despite how well he’s done with the space, he talks about it as if he has something to be embarrassed by – or as if he expects me to poke fun at it, picking at the skin of his thumb and making remarks like ‘it’s not much,’ and ‘I know it’s kind of small.
’ Comments that completely discredit the accomplishment.
My hands find his hips, snaking around to trail over the hardened muscles of his stomach, and I kiss the crook of his neck to make him laugh. I inhale the smell of him, musk and cedar blended with the bitter scent of the smoke clinging to his skin, and my heart hammers.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
With my arms around him, I push him down the hall toward his bedroom, using my foot to push the door open as we step inside. I keep moving until we near the bed, draped with a grey and brown tartan duvet, then climb onto it and take a look around the room.
“Tell me something,” I say. “Something that no one else knows about you.”
Dropping his elbow onto the bed, he rests his chin on his palm and tells me, “He’s in my bed right now.”
“Other than me.”
“I don’t really have anything,” he thinks, the wheels visibly turning in his mind.
“I mean, I snuck out once. Dad was making enough money not to notice that I used his card to buy a too-expensive ticket to a concert I was definitely not allowed to go to. I climbed out the window and had the time of my life, stayed out all night and made it back before school the next day so I wouldn’t miss art history club. ”
I fiddle with the drawstring of his sweatpants, laughing at the image of him actually defying his father; stealing from him and sneaking out. “So this ‘breaking the rules’ thing isn’t new for you.”
“I was better at being sneaky about it back then,” he answers.
This is so easy; too fucking easy to fall into.
I’ve gotten so used to using fear as a motivator, centering every conversation and interaction around using it to control others, that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to enjoy someone’s presence and have a real conversation with them.
I’ve worn my masks for so long that taking them off has become such a foreign concept to me that it almost makes me uncomfortable.
“I find your newfound boldness refreshing,” I tell him. “Too many people are afraid to do whatever they want. They’re all too afraid of getting into trouble.”
“Like those short dudes who follow you around.”
I throw my head back, cackling. “Yes, like them,” I tell him. “They’re afraid of me, so they’re happy to do whatever I tell them to.”
“Why are people so afraid of you?”
A valid question; one that I should have expected, I suppose. “Because I have a past,” I answer. “Like we all do. Mine just had me dressed in orange.”
I expect him to flinch or falter, but he just presses his lips together with a thoughtful nod.
I’m not sure if that means he absolutely thinks that I’m capable of whatever he may think that I did, or if he assumes that it must not have been too terrible for me to be sitting here in front of him instead of locked in a cage or strapped to an electric chair.
“How long?”
“I went in at eighteen and was out by twenty-one,” I tell him.
When was the last time that I was able to lay next to someone and talk to them like this? It has to have been ten years or more by now. Too fucking long, that’s all I know.
Staring into his honey eyes that reflect the last light of the day as the sun dips in the sky, I trace my thumb over the edge of his jaw and pull him into me for a kiss.
There’s a very distant part of me that feels guilty that I’m his first. Who I’ve become with him is not who I am with the rest of the world, and I can’t make him any promises that it will change, even if I prefer the version of myself that he seems to bring out.
The part of me that is not so distant still enjoys toying with people and playing into their fears. That part of me has built a life and held an empire by being cold and calculating in every move, and it’s become the core of who I am.
And I think - though he would never admit it - that Emmett is intrigued by that not-so-distant part of me. He certainly likes to push the buttons to bring it out.
“What did you do?” He asks.
“Would you believe me if I told you that I had done something good?”
A brow arches in response, challenging my statement.
“I was at a gas station,” I sigh, “and a man who had to have been thirty, maybe older, had a younger kid cornered in the back of the store.
The kid was terrified, he looked like he was going to shit himself.
The man was screaming at the kid, things that I had never heard someone actually say about a gay person before.
“So in came this pissed off teenager who had already been in enough fights to get kicked out of school twice, and I told the man to back off and leave the kid alone. He didn’t, so I reached for a fire extinguisher and I beat him with it.
“My grandparents had a fucking empire in their hands and enough money to make anything in the world disappear, but I needed to learn a lesson, so when they were satisfied that I’d learned that violence wasn’t the answer to conflict,” I chuckle, “they got me out and had my history wiped. There are a couple of photos that recirculate ‘anonymously’ every few years with a different story so no one knows what I was actually in for.”
“They seriously put you away for that?” He sounds genuinely surprised. Horrified, even. “Isn’t that self defense or something?”
“The state didn’t think so,” I tell him with a shrug. “Take an eighteen year old kid with a history of unprovoked violence and an adult with a face full of broken bones who says that he was attacked for no reason. If you’re the judge, who are you siding with?”
“I’m asking the other kid,” he says. “The one the guy was yelling at.” A long moment of thick silence passes between us before he asks, “Does it piss you off that I don’t want to tell anyone?”
I climb over top of him, stroking his hair with my thumb. “About this? Or about yourself?”
“Would your answer be different one way or the other?”
I consider his question for a few moments; how either thing could effect his life, how they have and would still effect mine.
I’ve done all of the necessary coming out; that ship has long sailed for me.
There are people who still assume that I’m straight, or at the very least bisexual, but it’s of no interest to me to correct them.
My female employees assume that if I had the opportunity, I would do whatever I wanted to them, and I don’t bother correcting them because it benefits me.
They’re motivated to do what I ask of them, and in turn, what my more particular clients ask of them.
My other employees and associates believe me to be capable of doing to them exactly what they believe had me held up for three years.
I’ve been out since he was learning how to read and write, but the only person that Emmett is out to is me – I’m not entirely sure that he’s even completely out to himself, yet.
“No,” I answer truthfully. “And it doesn’t piss me off. I understand your hesitation. But…”
“But?”
“I don’t want you fucking anyone else.” I grip his chin and turn his face to the side, kissing just below his jaw. “Anyone. You belong to me, and to me alone.”
“How long did you wait?” He asks, his hands pressed against my chest. “I mean, did it take you a while to tell people you were gay?”
I nod my head. “Maybe six months, which for me, felt like years because I was scared of it.” I drop onto the bed and rest my head on my arm. “I didn’t want to be gay. It was— There is nothing easy about coming out,” I say, leaning forward to kiss his forehead. “So take your time with it.”
Something crosses over his features – concern, quickly followed by understanding.
Typically when I see that face on someone, obnoxious fucking pity follows soon after.
That little sideways head tilt that people do when they pull their lips downward; the expression that can be used as an umbrella for any unfortunate circumstance one may be facing.
Your favorite shoes broke? Sure. You’ve had a migraine for three days? Why not. Your dog died? Makes sense.
But the pity never comes.
Instead, he just says, “Like calls to like. I get it now.”
·
I wake to the rich scent of cinnamon and vanilla filling the house, accompanied by the clanging of metal and the sound of Emmett cursing. What the fuck is he doing out there?
Yawning, I get out of his bed and stretch out my back, cracking my joints before heading through the hallway and into the kitchen. Fuck, I’m getting old.
Emmett stands at the stove with a spatula in hand, seeming to ignore the gloopy yellow mess all over the counter next to him.
“What are you doing?” I laugh, pulling a handful of paper towels from the roll above the sink.
“Ro tried to teach me how to make her french toast,” he explains, “so I’m trying to make that.”
I wet the paper towels in my hand and use them to mop up the egg mixture that has splashed all over the counter. “Was the mess part of the recipe?”
Glowering, he slides the spatula under one of the slices of bread on the pan in front of him and gives it a flip, the uncooked side making contact with the pan with a hiss.
“Look,” he snarks, “the only cooking I do is in a microwave or a blender, okay?”
I chuckle, squeezing the back of his neck. “Just cook that egg all the way through. I don’t want salmonella.”
“Don’t tempt me to poison you, menace,” he grumbles under his breath.
It doesn’t take long for the empty plate on the counter to be stacked high with golden-brown french toast that honestly looks decent, considering that he’s never made it before. It’s really kind of cute, in that ‘newborn baby deer trying to walk on its own for the first time’ kind of way.
We quickly finish our breakfast, which is surprisingly good; he didn’t give me much hope when he said that his child-stepmother tried to teach him how to make it, but it could almost compare to something that one of my chefs might serve.
I guess that I don’t have much room to judge him for his lack of confidence; I haven’t cooked a meal in so long, I don’t think that I’d even remember how to boil water correctly if asked.
“You said it wasn’t easy,” Emmett says as he rests his mug into the sink, “when you came out.”
“Telling my parents was the ‘easiest’ part,” I tell him, making air quotes with my fingers.
“I trusted them more than I trusted anyone else in my life and I thought that they would help me because they loved me. It was everything that came after that was hard. The first thing that my parents did was tell me that I was sick, and they asked if I was trying to anger God.”
I don’t miss the anger that flares behind his eyes as I speak.
“The second thing that they did was invite our priest to dinner so that he could pray over me and tell me how to fix myself. I did the fifty Hail Marys that he told me to do, I prayed six times a day for months to be cured. When my parents realized that none of it was working, they dropped me off at my grandparents’ house with three t-shirts, a pair of jeans, and a stack of paperwork that said that I was no longer theirs.
I haven’t seen them or my siblings since. ”
“And your grandparents…?”
“Infinitely more accepting than my parents and God,” I answer, pulling a sip of coffee from my mug. Stepping over to Emmett’s refrigerator, I pull the dry erase marker from the top of the magnetic calendar attached to the door and jot my address down in the corner.
“Come by my house after work,” I instruct him. “I should be there before eight.”
“What if you’re not?”
“Well,” I muse, my hand landing on his ass with a hard smack. “I seem to recall waiting for you while you threw yourself a nice little tantrum. So wait for me.”