Chapter 20
As Scott stood in front of the door that allegedly led to Will’s new place, he wondered if Will would be impressed or pissed off that he’d managed to track him down.
It hadn’t been easy to find Will’s address. In fact, it was pure luck that Scott had run into Mitch, one of Will’s friends from his army days, who mentioned that he had rented an apartment in Brooklyn on Will’s behalf. Apparently, Will hadn’t wanted his name to be connected to the apartment in any way.
To say it was baffling would be an understatement. Scott had been baffled a few weeks ago too when Will had abandoned him in Dubai without any warning whatsoever—besides the cryptic message that alluded to his phone possibly being monitored, which had sufficiently freaked Scott out.
So the chance meeting with Mitch had been a godsend. Hewas finally going to get to the bottom of it, whether Will wanted it or not.
Lifting his hand, Scott knocked.
After a few moments, there was a muffled sound of footsteps and the door opened.
“Surpri—!” Scott cut himself off, blinking at the guy on the other side of the door.
It wasn’t Will.
It was Gadiel.
He looked so different from the guy he remembered that Scott actually had trouble believing that it was the same person. The Gadiel he’d known and briefly dated had worn either snow-white Arabic clothes or equally impeccable designer clothes. This guy was dressed ina pair of sweatpants and an oversized faded T-shirt that seemed oddly familiar.
“Scott!” Gadiel said, blinking. He smiled, recovering from his surprise much faster than Scott did. “Will didn’t tell me you were coming. Come on in!”
Scott smiled distractedly, struggling to find something to say, but his mind seemed unable to get past the fact that Gadiel was in Brooklyn—that his cousin was living with Gadiel in Brooklyn. It made no fucking sense.
“Will is here?” Scott said, letting the door shut after him.
“He’s in the shower, but he should be out soon,” Gadiel said. “Take a seat.” He gestured toward the couch.
Scott looked around the small living room. Noticing a bowl of popcorn on the table by the couch and Netflix on the screen of the TV, he said, “Is this a movie night or something?”
Gadiel shrugged. “Sort of? We usually watch something in the evening. We were going to watch a Jurassic Park movie tonight.”
We ?
“Would you like something to drink?” Gadiel said, opening the fridge. “We have... beer and orange juice. Hmm, we really need to go grocery shopping.”
We ?
“Beer is fine,” Scott said distractedly.
He accepted the bottle of beer, sat down on the beat-up couch, and took a small sip, studying Gadiel more carefully. The T-shirt on him definitely was familiar. Didn’t it belong to Will? It definitely looked too big on Gadiel. Since when did Will start sharing his clothes with his clients?
The sound of running water stopped, and Scott turned his head when there was the sound of footsteps.
Will stopped dead in his tracks in the doorway.
“Scott?” he said.
Scott ran his gaze over him, but unlike Gadiel, he looked like his usual self: put-together and reserved, his expression as unreadable as ever.
“Hello there,” Scott said lightly. “Good to see you alive, cousin mine.”
A wrinkle appeared between Will’s brows. He shot a look at Gadiel before looking back at him. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”
“Does it matter?” Scott said with a shrug.
But Will was frowning. “Of course it does. If this location is compromised, we’ll have to move.”
“Oh come on!” Gadiel said. “I like it here!”
Scott looked skeptically around the small, shabby living room. Gadiel liked it here?
“Mitch told me where to find you,” Scott said.
Some of the tension eased from Will’s face. He sat down in the armchair and accepted a beer from Gadiel with a murmur of thanks.
Gadiel perched himself on the arm of Will’s chair and looked at Scott curiously. Fuck, he was ridiculously gorgeous even in that ratty shirt, his stunning blue eyes and pretty lips drawing Scott’s gaze.
Will cleared his throat. “Well, you found me.” His voice was very dry. “How are your parents?”
Scott answered absently, before asking the questions he really wanted to ask. “Why is Gadiel here? Why are you still his bodyguard? You were supposed to quit by now.”
Gadiel visibly tensed up.
“It’s complicated,” Will said.
“Well, uncomplicate it for me. I’ve got time.”
Will didn’t look particularly eager, but after a moment, he started talking.
Scott listened to him with growing amazement. His amazement had little to do with what Will was saying. It was the fact that over the course of Will’s explanation, Gadiel kept squirming closer to Will until he was half in his lap instead of being perched on the armrest.And Will didn’t even blink, his arm absently wrapping around Gadiel to steady him.
Scott could only stare at them. In all the years of knowing Will, he couldn’t remember ever seeing his cousin this at ease with someone all over his personal space.He was usually much more guarded than that. Correction: Will still seemed moderately guarded as he talked to Scott, but it was as though... as though Gadiel was inside the impenetrable shield Will surrounded himself with.
Despite being engaged in a conversation with Scott, Will seemed to react to every minuscule movement Gadiel made, glancing at him every few seconds despite Gadiel not really contributing to the conversation besides a hum or two. As for Gadiel, in spite of his awkward perch half on Will’s lap, half on the armrest, he looked very comfortable and relaxed.
It was fucking bizarre. If Scott didn’t know better, he’d think...
But no. Will was straight. Thisdidn’t mean anything. Will had been pretty protective of Gadielback in Dubai too; it was natural that they’d only grown closer after living in such close quarters for weeks.
“Hey, can I talk to you alone?” Scott said, unable to quash his curiosity. “No offense, Gadiel. It’s a—family thing. Private.”
Gadiel looked less than thrilled about getting off Will’s lap but, nodding, got to his feet. “I’ll go to the store,” he told Will. “We’re out of groceries.”
Will frowned. “It’s not safe.”
Rolling his eyes, Gadiel laughed. “Don’t be silly, it’s just around the corner. I’ll be back in ten minutes. No one will give me a second look.”
It didn’t seem as though Will agreed, but he didn’t object when Gadiel walked over to Will’s jacket thrown over the couch, retrieved his wallet, and headed to the door.
“Put on a jacket, it’s pretty cold outside,” Will said.
“All right, dad,” Gadiel said with an eye-roll, slipping on Will’s jacket.
“Ten minutes, Gadiel.”
Gadiel blew him a kiss and left. He didn’t even glance at Scott.
As the door closed after him, Scott said, “What the fuck, man?”
Will dragged his gaze away from the door and looked at him. “What?” he said, sounding distracted.
“He was sitting in your lap!” Scott said.
“No, he wasn’t,” Will said, frowning. “He was sitting on the armrest.”
Scott gave him an incredulous stare. Had Will genuinely not noticed that Gadiel had been all over him or was he playing dumb now?
“Whatever,” he said. “The point is, why are you playing house with him?”
Will shot him a tight look. “Did you miss the part about his life being in danger? I’m his bodyguard.”
“He’s wearing your clothes,” Scott said.
Was that a hint of red on Will’s cheekbones?
“We had to leave Dubai in a hurry,” he said. “Gadiel didn’t pack a lot of clothes, so I’ve been letting him borrow mine.”
Scott frowned. All right, that made sense.
Pulling out his phone, Will glanced at the screen. “I shouldn’t have let him go alone,” he said under his breath, getting to his feet.
Scott scoffed. “He left five minutes ago, come on. Nothing is going to happen to him in five minutes!”
“You’re right,” Will said, but he walked to the window and looked at the street below. “He will be fine.”
Scott lifted his eyebrows. Will sounded as though he was trying to convince himself. It was so strange.
“So,” Scott said after a few minutes of silence. “When is this gig going to end?”
Will said nothing, still looking out the window.
“Will?”
Will said nothing.
“Will!”
“What?” Will said, sounding very distracted.
Scott stared at his back in confusion. Will had always been very responsible when it came to his job, but such obsessive behavior seemed a bit too much.
“It’s been fourteen minutes,” Will suddenly said, breaking the silence. “Something is wrong.”
Scott huffed, rolling his eyes. “Jeez, I don’t remember you being this controlling and paranoid with your other clients.”
He watched with increasing bemusement as Will started pacing the room. Pacing! Will never paced. Never.
“Twenty minutes,” Will said after a while. He picked up his gun holster from the table and clipped it to his belt. “I’m going after him. Stay here.”
Of course Scott didn’t stay there. He followed Will outside, ignoring Will’s exasperated look. He was great at ignoring it. He’d had a lot of practice.
Gadiel wasn’t in the store around the corner.
“Maybe he’s just left and we missed him on the way,” Scott said, eyeing Will cautiously.
He’d never seen him that worked up. He could actually see the anxiety on his face, and that wasn’t fucking normal. Will was a pro at maintaining a calm facade no matter how worried he actually was.
“We wouldn’t have missed him,” Will said tersely, his eyes scanning their surroundings.
He walked to the street vendor nearby and asked her if she saw a young dark-haired guy in a gray T-shirt.
“The cute one with those baby-blues?” the woman said. “Yes, he went that way.”
Will quickly headed in the direction the woman had pointed.
“Thanks,” Scott said, and ran after his cousin.
They rounded the corner and immediately saw Gadiel.
He hadn’t been kidnapped or killed—or whatever horrors Will had imagined.
He looked perfectly fine.
More than fine.
He was walking leisurely in their direction, a large grocery bag in his left hand. In his other hand he was holding a smaller bag with what looked like croissants.
And he wasn’t alone. A guy around Gadiel’s age, maybe in his early twenties, was walking beside him. Judging by his playful attempts to take the grocery bag away from Gadiel, he was trying to be helpful to the cute guy he wanted to get to know better.
Gadiel was shaking his head, clearly declining his help, but there was a smile on his face.
Will came to an abrupt halt, watching them for a moment. His face was as inscrutable as ever, but his eyes burned a hole where the guy was touching Gadiel’s arm.
At that moment, Gadiel finally noticed them.
It was almost comical, the way his entire face lit up when he saw Will. His footsteps quickened and he came to a stop only once he was in Will’s personal space.
“Hey,” he said breathlessly, giving Will what could only be described as heart eyes. He was looking at Will like it had been months since he’d last seen him, not just half an hour. “What are you doing here? Were you looking for me?”
“Yes,” Will said, his voice clipped, taking the grocery bag from Gadiel. “You weren’t in the store.”
“Oh, I went to the bakery to get the croissants you love,” Gadiel said. “Were you worried?”
“What do you think?” Will said testily.
“Sorry,” Gadiel said, leaning in and pecking him on the cheek. Will scoffed, looking unimpressed.
“Aw, I’m really sorry, Will,” Gadiel said, pecking him on the cheek again and peering up into his eyes through his thick eyelashes. “Don’t be mad at me?” He kissed the corner of Will’s mouth.
And to Scott’s amazement, Will folded like a cheap lounge chair, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders. “All right,” he said, more softly. “But don’t do this again. You know I have reasons to worry.”
Scott blinked, utterly stunned. He couldn’t remember Will ever admitting being worried.Hell, he couldn’t remember Will ever being this okay with being touched in public. Will was usually very uncomfortable with any form of PDA. He didn’t allow his girlfriends to even hold his hand in public, much less keep kissing his face.
“Eh, you should have said that you had a boyfriend,” the guy behind Gadiel spoke up.
Gadiel and Will kind of froze. A series of emotions flickered over their faces as they stared at each other. Gadiel’s cheeks turned pink before he finallyturned to the guy. “He isn’t—we aren’t—”
“Let’s go,” Will said curtly, steering Gadiel away none too gently and completely ignoring the guy.
Gadiel practically melted into his side, allowing Will to guide him away. He didn’t spare his unlucky admirer even a glance.
Knowing very well how that felt, Scott threw the guy a sympathetic look and followed Will and Gadiel back to the apartment.
He noted that Will didn’t remove his hand from Gadiel’s side until they reached the apartment building, but maybe he wasn’t aware where his hand was—he and Gadiel were bickering over which Jurassic Park movie they should watch.
“Don’t be a snob!” Gadiel was saying as they entered the apartment. “The new movies are perfectly fine! They’re very entertaining!”
Will snorted, dropping the grocery bag on the table. “They’re dumb. You just like the actor who plays the lead.”
Gadiel flushed. “And what if I do?” he said with a challenging look in his eyes. “Nothing wrong with enjoying some eye candy. He’s hot. I like competent, older men.”
Will’s face was blank. “Fine,” he said, putting the groceries away. “Don’t let me stop you from enjoying your eye candy.”
Scott didn’t know what kind of reaction Gadiel had expected, but that didn’t seem to be it. Gadiel scowled at Will’s back before storming toward the couch and plopping down on it. Picking up the remote, he put on the latest movie and grabbed a bowl of popcorn. “Scott, you should sit beside me,” he said with a sweet smile.
Scott looked from him to Will, feeling like he was missing something, but shrugged and sat down next to Gadiel.
After a few minutes, Will joined them in front of the TV, taking the armchair again.
Gadiel popped some popcorn into his mouth and chewed aggressively. “He’s so hot, isn’t he?” he said, his eyes on the screen.
Figuring that he was addressing him, Scott shrugged. “He’s pretty hot, but personally, I prefer dark haired men. And more refined men, though can’t deny there’s some appeal in the rugged look too.”
“Him being all protective is very hot,” Gadiel said.
Scott dearly hoped he was more subtle than that when he liked a guy. He glanced at Will, but his face was unreadable as he watched the movie.
Gadiel pouted, clearly unhappy that he was failing to provoke a reaction from him.Shifting lower on the couch, Gadiel stretched out his legs and tucked his bare feet against Will’s stomach.
“Gadiel,” Will murmured.
“My feet are cold,” Gadiel said, wiggling his toes under Will’s T-shirt.
“Then you should wear socks,” Will said, wrapping his hand around Gadiel’s ankle. “You aren’t in the Middle East anymore.”
“Socks are gross. I’d rather wash my feet five times a day than wear them.”
“You’re such a child,” Will said with a chuckle, returning his gaze to the screen. Scott stared at the way Will’s hand was still wrapped around Gadiel’s ankle, his thumb absently stroking the fragile skin there.
Fucking hell.
What was going on here?
Scott spent the rest of the movie trying to puzzle it out, but he couldn’t. At times it seemed as though there was definitely something going on between them, but then Will would close off and Scott would think no way . Besides, his cousin was straight. And he never slept with his clients. He was too responsible and boring for that. But there was definitely something off about this relationship. It was way too intimate. Except Will would never...
So Scott thought in circles, arguing with himself until the credits rolled. Only then did he realize that Gadiel had fallen asleep.
“He’s going to get a crick in the neck,” Scott said quietly, grimacing at the awkward angle of Gadiel’s head.
Setting Gadiel’s feet on the floor, Will got up and moved Gadiel so that he was fully lying down on the couch. His touch was so careful it was almost... almost tender. And the intense expression in Will’s eyes as he gazed at the sleeping guy took Scott aback. But when Will straightened up, his expression was neutral.
“You should probably go,” he said quietly. “And don’t come back. Although it’s not likely, someone might have followed you here.”
Scott nodded, and Will followed him to the door.
Putting on his jacket,Scott said, “You do know he’s practically in love with you, right?”
Will stiffened, his face wiped of any emotion. “He’s young,” he said evenly.
Scott looked at him carefully. “Having unrequited feelings for a straight man sucks, trust me.”
Something flickered in Will’s eyes. “Your concern is noted,” he said.
“I’m just saying that you should put some distance between you—”
“I know him better than you do,” Will said, his tone clipped. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I disagree. I’ve seen enough.” Scott shrugged. “He’s absolutely gone on you. And for some reason, you aren’t doing anything to discourage him.”
Will’s face was blank.
“I hope for your sake that I’m wrong and there’s nothing going on,” Scott said. “Because everything you said to me about why any relationship with Gadiel was a bad idea is valid. But you seem to have forgotten that. Or maybe you think it doesn’t apply to you, because you can’t possibly be that foolish and irrational, right?” He snorted. “You aren’t an idiot like Scott, after all. You don’t mess up. You don’t act irrationally.”
“You should go.”
“You know I’m right, Will,” Scott said, meeting his cousin’s eyes. “Stop this while it’s not too late.” Frankly, after what he’d seen, he was beginning to wonder if it was too late already. Whatever the hell was going on, it might not be completely one-sided if Will couldn’t see the situation rationally anymore.
The truth was, Gadiel was getting married to the daughter of the president of the UAE next month.
Hopefully Will would do the right thing. The smart thing.
But then again, he always did.
***
Will locked the door behind his cousin and leaned against it for a moment, gathering his thoughts.
He’s absolutely gone on you. And for some reason, you aren’t doing anything to discourage him.
Of course he knew about Gadiel’s infatuation. Over the past few weeks, it had only grown. But Scott was wrong. He wasn’t not doing anything to discourage Gadiel. He was doing it every goddamned day—and largely failing. He did try to put some professional distance between them. He did try to be stern with Gadiel. He did try to ignore to Gadiel’s flirtations. The problem was, it worked only half of the time. Sometimes, he slipped. Sometimes, he would smile and tease back, because he was terrible at ignoring Gadiel. Terrible at not indulging him.
Sighing, Will walked to the couch. Crouching in front of it, he stared at Gadiel’s sleeping form. A wavy lock of dark hair had fallen over his face, and Will lifted his hand and brushed it away carefully.
Gadiel smiled in his sleep a little, his soft lips parting. They were so full. And so pink.
Will tore his gaze away.
Slipping his hands under Gadiel, he lifted him carefully and carried him to his bedroom.
He set him down on his bed, but a hand grabbed his shirt when Will attempted to straighten up.
“Will?” Gadiel mumbled in his sleep.
“Yeah, it’s me. Sleep, baby.”
Gadiel smiled and rolled onto his stomach, and his breathing evened out again.
Will stared at him for a long moment, watching him sleep like the worst sort of creep.
Then he turned, and left.