Chapter Eight
Over the next few days, Wyatt worked hard to create some kind of routine for his work and his friendship with Ryan. He didn’t want the other man to feel obligated to hang out with him, or eat with him, or even talk to him, but Ryan always sought him out.
“Are you trying to push me away?” Ryan asked one evening when in determination that he should get a choice, Wyatt had set a single place setting in the cavernous dining room.
Ryan had showed up in the kitchen, where Wyatt was eating at the island, with his plate and silverware and had shot him a half-hearted glare. “Do you not like eating with me?”
It had been difficult not to flush. The problem wasn’t that Wyatt didn’t like hanging out with him, it was that he was increasingly loving it, and he’d really liked it to begin with.
“If I want space, I’ll take it,” was all Ryan had said about it before setting his plate down right next to Wyatt’s.
They hadn’t gone surfing again, and Wyatt hadn’t invited himself to use Ryan’s home gym. And Ryan hadn’t pushed there either, which was probably smart. The truth was getting half-naked and sweaty together was a terrible combination if they wanted to keep things platonic.
The attraction was there. The possibility for it to deepen wasn’t far behind. And at least half the time, Wyatt imagined saying fuck it, and pinning Ryan to the nearest convenient surface.
The wall. The kitchen counter. Ryan’s bed.
Wyatt’s bed. In his wilder daydreams, Ryan’s bike again.
His imagination definitely wasn’t doing him any favors.
He’d go to bed, and lie awake in bed, running through memories, real and otherwise, and put off jerking off as long as possible until he was burning up and there was no other way to relieve the pressure of wanting Ryan.
And every time, even as he wrapped his hand around his cock and gave himself an experimental stroke, Wyatt knew that it wouldn’t help because in the end, it wasn’t what he really needed.
What he needed was the god damn real thing; on top of him, under him, pressed against him. Wyatt was discovering he wasn’t particularly picky except it had to be Ryan Flores.
Wyatt wasn’t na?ve enough to believe it might be the same for Ryan, but there was more than one morning when he swore he caught the sharpened edge of sexual frustration in Ryan’s eyes. He recognized it because he saw the exact same fucking thing in his bathroom mirror each morning.
“You ready to go?” Wyatt looked up, and Ryan was standing there, board shorts and a loose tank, one nipple almost poking out the armhole.
He’d dressed in jeans and a polo shirt that he’d dug out from the back of his meager closet, because he was going to see the aunt of the guy he liked, and old habits died hard.
Now Wyatt was wondering if he was criminally overdressed.
Ryan raised an eyebrow. “You know, I have lots of money but my family rarely lets me give it to them. My titi won’t even let me buy her an air conditioner.”
Okay, so he was definitely overdressed. But changing would mean admitting why he’d pulled these clothes out in the first place, and even though Wyatt thought Ryan probably knew, admitting it was a whole different story.
“It’s okay,” Wyatt dismissed, “I worked in hot kitchens my whole career.”
“Don’t tell me the Bastard didn’t give you guys even a measly fan?” Wyatt had made the mistake a few days ago of referring to Bastian Aquino by his hated nickname, and Ryan had been unexpectedly delighted and had been looking for ways to bring him up so he could use it.
Wyatt shouldn’t find it adorable, but that ship had definitely sailed.
Maybe he should stop trying to fight it, and instead figure out how to embrace it—no matter how impossible the situation felt.
“I shouldn’t have told you Aquino’s secret nickname,” Wyatt admitted.
But Ryan just kept grinning in delight as they headed down the garage steps. Ryan opened the door of the Tesla, and Wyatt followed suit, sliding into the sleek car.
“If I ever meet him, I might have to accidentally slip one or two ‘Bastards’ in,” he said as they backed out of the driveway.
“If you ever met him, you wouldn’t even dream of it.”
Ryan raised a dark eyebrow and the hot, insolent look in his eyes swamped Wyatt with desire. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I like living on the edge.”
He’d definitely noticed. It had been a little hard to miss, and Wyatt, who considered himself laid-back but grudgingly cautious, found it strangely appealing.
At first he’d thought it was only Ryan's looks that had attracted him, but Wyatt was beginning to realize it wasn’t just his exterior that attracted him—it was the whole package.
“You drive too fast,” Wyatt pointed out as they screamed onto the freeway, the Tesla handling like a dream, even as he refused to glance over and check the speedometer. “Don’t tell me you’re aspiring to be a professional race car driver too.”
The other night, Ryan had told him that in high school, before he’d gotten the big scholarship to play baseball at Stanford, he’d briefly considered surfing for a living.
“Becoming a professional beach bum,” Wyatt had teased, but it made sense.
Ryan craved adventure, craved waking up and not knowing exactly where he was.
Craved the liquid lighter fluid of adrenaline running through his veins.
“Maybe,” Ryan said with a dimpled, slanted grin.
“All things considered, baseball must feel pretty sedate for you,” Wyatt pointed out.
“Oh come on. You’re not one of those idiots who think baseball is slow and boring, are you?” Ryan gave a self-conscious snort of laughter. “You totally are.”
“I’m sure playing the game is a hell of a lot different than watching it,” Wyatt retorted.
“This should have been my first question in the interview: do you think baseball is a boring lesser version of golf? Or curling?”
“Curling is fantastic,” Wyatt argued. “Have you ever seen those Swedish guys?”
“Yes.” Ryan’s lip curled. “And I’m going to remember you voted baseball under curling because of the hot Swedes.”
“You’re very hot too,” Wyatt said because he should be loyal and honest. Or something like that.
Ryan cut over three lanes, taking the exit ramp going at least seventy miles per hour. Wyatt didn’t flinch, because he’d learned that if he flinched, Ryan would drive even faster.
“You’re also a maniac,” Wyatt mumbled under his breath.
“I heard that,” Ryan announced cheerfully.
“Tell me about your titi,” Wyatt suggested.
“Flor? She’s been here . . . fifteen years? Twenty? We’ll have to ask her. She came over with my mom.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask about Ryan’s mom, because even though he’d mentioned his aunt half a dozen times, his mother hadn’t ever come up. But Wyatt didn’t, because he knew how much it could hurt when someone thoughtlessly asked about his—and it had been eight years since she’d died.
Some wounds didn’t heal, they just scabbed over.
“She basically raised me,” Ryan continued, essentially but not completely answering the question that Wyatt hadn’t asked. “She’s probably my favorite person in the whole world.”
The wound created by his nana not remembering him hadn’t even had time to scab over yet, and it throbbed at Ryan’s words.
“She and my two cousins run a cleaning business. Rich people’s houses, all that bullshit. But she’s good at it, and loves her clients and they love her. Someday, she wants to open a restaurant. I keep telling her I’ll loan her the money, even charge interest, but she won’t take a penny.”
Wyatt thought of his nana, and one of the lesser lies that he’d told her recently: that the sale of her little bungalow in a Sacramento suburb would pay for her extended care in the memory care facility.
It wasn’t the most painful lie he’d ever told her—that was still ongoing and likely to remain so—but it had been entirely necessary. She’d never accept Wyatt paying for her care.
“Anonymous donation?” Wyatt asked, even though they both knew it was useless because they both had tough-as-nails, independent female relatives. They were so easy to love, but almost impossible to help.
The wound ached again when Wyatt remembered that Bea Blake was no longer as independent as she’d once prided herself on being.
Ryan rolled his eyes. “If only that would work.”
“You’ll figure out something, eventually. You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who just gives up.”
“When you meet her,” Ryan confessed, “you’ll realize that she’ll never let me. I just funnel as many nice, rich people as I can find her way, and that’s how I make sure her dream comes true.”
"You're a good person," Wyatt murmured.
"Not really. But at least I make an attempt," Ryan said flippantly. He pulled over next to a small house, painted bright yellow. “So, here we are.”
Wyatt hadn’t been nervous, but when faced with the prospect of getting out of the car, he realized he was really nervous.
It wasn’t so surprising that he wanted Ryan’s titi to like him, and not because he wanted everyone to generally like him.
Considering how compartmentalized Ryan typically kept his hookups, Wyatt wondered if he’d taken the job as Ryan’s fake boyfriend if he would have ever met her at all.
“Just make sure you don’t mention Eric,” Ryan warned as they walked up the concrete path to the house. The grass on either side was neatly trimmed and there was a profusion of tropical flowers on either side of the front door.
“Eric?” Wyatt asked blankly.
“My agent. Flor hates him. She thinks he’s a weasel.”
The door opened and a shorter woman with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and equally dark, intense eyes stepped out.
There was a wide smile on her face, and a few laugh lines around her eyes and bracketing her lips.
She looked warm and friendly and the way she immediately pulled Ryan into a big hug and then said loudly, “He is a weasel,” made Wyatt want her to like him even more.