Chapter Twenty-One
Not that Kind of Stalker
Trenton woke to a phone alarm set as loud as it would go. He reached instinctively over to silence it and became aware of the weight on his chest.
It was Hilary, and with his hair mussed and mouth open with a bit of dried drool in the corners it was the most impossible thing the man had shown him yet.
Seeing it, Trenton couldn’t help but wonder what his mother would say if she could see him here like this, in bed with such a handsome man, drowning in good fortune.
She’d probably kill him. That is, if she even believed him.
He was having a difficult time believing it himself, even with the evidence right in front of his eyes.
He set his hand to one of those shoulders. “Hilary? Do you need to get up now?”
The man made an irritated sort of noise and turned his face away, determined to sleep. Unfairly cute, it felt awful to shake him again. Or maybe not. He wanted to see what else a sleepy Hilary might do.
This time his hand was made prisoner. Hilary simply tucked it against himself and went back to sleep—if he could be said to have ever woken in the first place.
Trenton was hopelessly charmed. “Hilary, I think you need to go to work. Should I go in for you instead?” Patients would die on his watch, but that seemed a small price to pay for his jailer’s sleep.
There was a small movement, but it was only Hilary pulling the blanket up over his head. “We’re staying home. It’s Wednesday.”
It was Monday, not Wednesday, but Trenton didn’t mind suspending the laws of the calendar for such a cute curmudgeon. “Is Wednesday important?”
But Hilary was asleep again.
Trenton eased himself out of the bed, peeling the man off his chest like a sticker, and went to the kitchen.
He made the fastest breakfast he could think of—eggs and toast—and brought the plate back to the bed, resenting every second they’d been separated.
It worked. Hilary was willing to do for food what he wouldn’t for reason alone, but not without some concessions. “Feed me.”
Trenton didn’t expect Hilary to nest in his arms like a baby bird, opening his mouth whenever his hostage’s hand approached.
It was messier than Trenton thought it would be.
Twice he had to pick egg off Hilary’s face, and it added an incredible amount of crumbs to the bed, but that simple breakfast was more satisfying to him than anything he’d served over at the restaurant.
“You have beautiful eyelashes,” he informed the man.
Feeding him was giving him the kind of up-close view that allowed him to appreciate such things.
Hilary snorted. “Says the person who won’t fuck me.”
It had been embarrassing the day before, but already it wasn’t. No wonder Hilary thought he adapted easily. He could only guess where he’d be by the afternoon if they continued at such a rate. “Can’t I appreciate a man’s beauty for its own sake?”
“What beauty? I’m a withered old crone. Do you see these lines? Who has wrinkles like this at thirty-two?”
It wasn’t that bad, but yes, there were lines, especially around the man’s eyes. “Because you work nights.”
“I’m working today, aren’t I?”
“Because you’re covering for Vanessa. But you shouldn’t. Working both days and nights is worse than working nights alone. Your body will get messed up from not knowing when to sleep.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Switch to days.” He caught Hilary’s arm as the man stood to dress, the words important. “If there’s a pay cut, I’ll cover it. Don’t work nights anymore.”
“I told you, I don’t want you working.”
“Then you’ll switch to day shifts, won’t you?”
It was his first time stepping in like that.
Throwing his weight around, so to speak, and using Hilary’s anxieties to do it.
It was an asshole move, but he didn’t have much of a choice.
It would take a while to build up arguments based on their own merit.
Until then he’d have to rely on tricks, even if it did make him feel scummy.
Hilary’s eyebrows went up. “I see.”
Trenton held the gaze, forcing himself to focus on the dark circles beneath the man’s eyes to keep from backing down. Surprisingly, he won the standoff.
“Not like I’m attached to nights,” Hilary said as he pulled his scrubs on. “I just needed them if I was going to see you during the day.”
It was an arrow right through the heart. “You’ll have my time. All of it.”
“But only if I work days, is that it?”
No, he wouldn’t threaten. Not after words like that. “I want you to switch, but I’ll accommodate you in the meantime. I’ll learn to sleep days so I can be up with you.”
Hilary turned, the comb still in his hair. “Come here.”
And just like that, Trenton was nervous. But still he went, stopping just in front of him.
“Bend down,” Hilary commanded.
Trenton wasn’t sure what that meant. Did he bend at the waist? Kneel? Get down on all fours? He settled for a sort of hovering crouch. Hilary kissed his cheek. “I’ll speak to my nurse manager about the switch. Don’t change your schedule. We can’t have you looking like me, can we?”
Trenton’s cheek was tingling. No one had ever kissed him before, and it was shocking how quickly that had changed—and with no warning either. “I’d give anything to look like you.”
“Then be a good boy and be waiting here when I come home, yeah?”
Hilary said it in that breezy way he used when he was trying to hide his anxiety, but it wasn’t working. He was oozing it, a fearful kind of desperation.
“I’ll be here,” Trenton promised, but didn’t know what other kind of consolation to offer. “I won’t leave. Not for a minute. Or do you want me to come with you? I could sit quietly. I wouldn’t be in the way.”
Hilary smiled, or tried to, anyway. The anxiety held him too tightly to do it properly. “Am I that unstable?”
“I want to be there,” Trenton corrected.
“The days when you would come to the restaurant—when you would stay for hours. That was everything to me. It’s still everything.
I couldn’t have made it without you. I don’t want to make it without you.
So don’t think I’ll go anywhere. I’d have to be crazy to leave you.
Even crazier than I already am. Or do you think I could find someone like you again? ”
“You’ll find me wherever you go. I told you; I’m going to keep following you.”
“Then there’s nothing to worry about, is there?” He gave over his phone. “Put the GPS tracker on it.”
It was boring without Hilary. There was a lot in the apartment still to explore and so many books to read, but he wanted the time to pass.
Seven to seven. That was the official shift.
But there was also giving report to the oncoming nurse, and that could go overtime, especially if the nurse taking over arrived late.
Added to all that was the commute, and Trenton realized, too late, that he could have offered to meet Hilary at the hospital.
That would have cut out some of the waiting.
But he’d already agreed to wait at home.
He could text Hilary to change the plan, but that might cause panic, and he didn’t want Hilary thinking he felt trapped, or worse, that he couldn’t be trusted to keep his promises.
He’d wait, and Hilary would see he was reliable.
That was the plan. But he still wanted to do something.
Some grand, sweeping gesture that would announce him trustworthy and worth choosing forever.
There wasn’t anything like that, but there were little things the man might like.
It was only after he’d finished the laundry and made the muffins that he realized he was playing house.
Hilary had explicitly said there were no expectations in bringing him home, no role for him to play, and yet, here he was, at the first opportunity, playing the wife.
It was embarrassing. Not the being a wife part, but being a self-appointed one, as if he thought that a couple of meals and a clean house would earn him any title other than glorified roommate.
Still, it was better to keep busy. Reading was an option, but he was too impatient to sit still.
Moving around was better, but he was quickly running out of tasks to do.
Hilary wasn’t a clean freak, but he certainly was tidy.
The counters were clear, the floors clean, and even the shower was in a good state with no sign of grout or mold.
It made him wonder whether Hilary would be insulted to find him cleaning, as if his own work wasn’t good enough.
But Hilary wasn’t the type to be looking for insults.
Still, this thing between them felt so new, as if the year together at the restaurant had been no preparation.
He hadn’t known he was being stalked then, and the knowing seemed to change things.
He tried Googling it, but of course there was little about traditional stalking that related to his situation.
He wasn’t being held against his will. His stalker wasn’t doing anything to make him uncomfortable.
In that way, Hilary didn’t really seem like a stalker at all, but it felt rude to deny it.
After all, Hilary would know whether he was a stalker.
And the man had organized his life around seeing him.
That, by itself, did kind of fit the ‘stalker’ definition, though it was missing the connotation of distress.
Trenton would have liked to get another opinion on it, and he thought maybe he’d bring it up again with Hilary, but when he heard him at the door, he forgot any and all questions.
He moved so quickly that by the time the door opened he was waiting, making it look as if he’d been standing in front of it all day.
It wasn’t what Hilary was expecting, and he saw the surprise fold out into the man’s tiredness.
For a moment, they just looked at each other, not really daring to believe the other was there.