28. Chapter 28 #2
“You absolutely shouldn’t have.” He tightened his embrace around Sami. “I want to do this with you, and there’s nothing your annoyingly clever brain can cook up to say that’s gonna change my mind, got it?”
Sami smiled. Finally. Baz traced the crescent shape of his dimple. “Got it,” he whispered.
“With all this at stake for you, why did you hit on me? Why would you risk that?” That had self-destruction written all over it.
“Full transparency? In the beginning, I did hope you’d let sensitive information slip.
But it wasn’t just that! You were clearly into me, but at the same time, you were so determined to hate me I thought there was no way you’d change your mind.
I thought, maybe, I could have a fun, non-committal fling with a hot guy who’s equally determined for it to never go anywhere outside the bedroom.
Until you ruined it by being so sweet to me and opening up about your family and…
You’re just so you. I didn’t stand a chance. ”
Baz hadn’t expected to ever feel sorry for being likable—he hadn’t expected to ever be likable in the first place. If only Sami had told him earlier about the trouble he was in, maybe… Well, he knew now, and he wouldn’t turn his back on Sami again.
“I get it. I guess we aren’t mysterious strangers anymore. Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Sami chuckled breathlessly. “I like this one better. Even though I shouldn’t have let it go this far while on borrowed time.”
Was jail supposed to stop them? If Baz had to wait for him before they could start a life together, he would. Except he wouldn’t, because there was no way in hell he’d let Ian get away with any of this.
“You’re not going to jail, Sami.” He kissed Sami’s forehead. Hopefully, the joke that forehead kisses were making Sami fall in love with him had more merit than Baz had dared to hope at the time. “We’re gonna take that son of a bitch down, okay?”
As a matter of fact, he knew just where to start—Erika’s husband, the assistant to the State Attorney.
He wasn’t a crook like that other lady. Sami being the one to turn Ian in had to count for something.
What interest would the state have in prosecuting a tiny fish when they could get a lead on the big shark who had been committing fraud for years?
“If we fail, it will wreck your career,” Sami said. Like that mattered anymore. Baz was already suspended, and who knew if Erika would allow him back. Might as well go out guns blazing for the man he loved.
God, he was in love. With Sami-fucking-Adam. How magical.
“Let it. I don’t care, as long as you’re out of the line of fire.”
Maybe they could start over someplace new, away from the drama. In a small firm, or away from the legal world altogether. Whatever Sami wanted. He deserved the world. Baz was determined to give him whichever part of it he could grasp.
“You’d sacrifice your job for me?”
In a way, he already had. He wasn’t sure when work had stopped being his priority, but he had a hunch that it had to do with the sparkle in Sami’s eyes.
“Let’s make a plan.”
“Baz…”
“My boss’s husband works for the State’s Attorney, he can help get you off the hook. If we get Erika on our side, I’m sure he’ll listen. Can we try that?”
“Okay, but Baz—”
“We should contact Ian’s boss too, and Captain Green. If they confirm he didn’t pass on the settlement offer, it will strengthen your testimony. I’ll report Ian to the bar myself to make sure that bastard never practices law again, and you’ll be free—”
“Baz!”
“What?!”
“You just told me that you love me more than your career. That’s kind of a big deal. Can we maybe just, I don’t know, sit in that for a while? We could watch a movie, or just…” Sami shrugged.
Oh. God, being in love with Sami felt so natural, he hadn’t stopped to consider—well, no time like the present to start considering. They wouldn’t fix anything tonight, anyway. The State’s Attorney’s Office had closed hours ago.
“Lika a date?”
Sami’s cheeks turned red, his gaze lowered. No way. Baz tilted his chin up.
“Don’t go shy on me now, hayati.” That would be a shame since bold and confident were such an intoxicating color on him.
A soft smile spread on Sami’s face. “Yes. A date. The thing two people do when they like spending time with each other. I want to do that. With you.”
Pink, fuzzy clouds raised Baz’s heart to the sky.
“So you like spending time with me, huh?”
“I love it.” Sami’s fingers dug into his shoulders. He shifted to his tiptoes.
“That’s pretty embarrassing for you to admit.”
“Yeah,” Sami chuckled. Baz barely had time to enjoy the sound before Sami claimed his lips again, but that was okay. He hoped to make him laugh every day from now.
“I love it too,” Baz mumbled against his lips, keeping their foreheads close. “Especially when you’re wearing my clothes.”
“I lied to you. I had no intention of returning this shirt.”
“I wouldn’t have taken it back, anyway.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
They met halfway in another kiss. He brushed his lips over Sami’s knuckles too, pressed them on top of his heart. All his.
Sami guided him toward his full-sized bed tucked into the corner of the room, smaller than Baz was used to, but he didn’t want space between him and Sami anyway. Not tonight.
The bump in the mattress pressed perfectly into his back. The scruffy, washed-out sheets reminded him of the ones he had in the home he had built with Eevee and Joel.
He welcomed Sami into his arms, clothed for once. The dark curls tickled his chin. He couldn’t resist twirling one around his finger.
Sami’s room was no less crowded than the living room; remnants of different projects were scattered around.
A half-finished jigsaw puzzle took up most of the already overflowing desk, boxes claiming to contain power tools stacked on top of each other next to a wooden structure Baz couldn’t begin to guess what it was supposed to be.
Books were everywhere but on the shelf, many upside down and opened in the middle.
A metal map of Palestine hung above his bed, an orange jewel in its heart.
Baz took it all in while listening to the rumbles of Sami’s low voice recounting the details of his life Baz had so craved to hear. Everything, from growing up in a small town outside of San Diego to the story of how he met Naija.
Both psychology freshmen at USC, their roommates had started hooking up.
Since he and Naija had bonded over their shared hatred for LA (“Have you been? It’s awful!
The traffic, the air pollution, the people…
Give me three feet of snow over that any day.
”), the solution was for Naija to switch places with Sami’s actual roommate.
“And you got away with that?” Baz asked. Colleges were awfully heteronormative about their room arrangements.
“Yes. The whole four years.” Sami grinned, rightfully proud.
“We’re actually invited to their wedding next year, so it worked out for them.
And after all that time, I didn’t want to live without Naija anymore, so when she got into Northwestern for her postgrad, I applied to UChicago Law and followed her here.
She’s my favorite person on the whole planet. ”
Baz was surprised that no part of him got jealous hearing that. How could he? The few months they had shared couldn’t compare to years of loyal friendship.
“I’m happy you have her.”
“Me too,” Sami hummed. “You never told me about any of your friends.”
“You met everyone who is important in my life.”
Sami sat up. “Really?”
Incredible how a single word could be loaded with so much judgment. Baz didn’t have time to mingle with strangers who didn’t bulldoze into his life like Sami had. Well, that, and…
“I’ve never been great at friendships. They always seemed happy to be rid of me after a few weeks.”
“Aw.” Sami stroked his cheek. “You can share mine. They like you. And they’re all some flavor of neurodivergent too, so they get it.”
Baz frowned. “Get what?”
“You’re autistic, right?”
…What?
“No, I’m not.” He would know. There would have been signs.
“Oh, honey. You are the biggest black-and-white thinker I’ve ever met.”
Much as Baz would like to deny that, he supposed he didn’t have a leg to stand on after all he put Sami through. “Okay—”
“You crashed out at a party because you didn’t know how to socialize. You called your colleagues having fun ‘barbaric’.”
Because they were! Had Sami forgotten about the beer bong? Besides: “Plenty of people don’t like parties.”
“I saw the way your eyes glazed over when you walked into Dorothy’s Friends.”
“I had a long day and it was really loud!”
“Overstimulating, you’d say?”
That felt like a trap. Was it a trap?
“I guess?”
“See! Also, the thing you do when you twirl your wrists and tap your fingers? That looks like stimming to me. And you make really intense eye contact, like, intense. And that’s hot, but it’s also not typical.”
Eye contact was a bad thing now? The way people had given him a hard time over his lack of eye contact growing up, he thought it was as important as breathing to people.
“So I like your eyes, sue me.”
“I like yours too. Point still stands, though. Oh, and you’ve eaten plain, flavorless bread every morning for years.”
“Bread has flavor!”
“And dare I say it’s comforting for you to eat the same safe food every day?”
“I mean. Maybe.” Nothing wrong with having something solid to rely on.
Sami looked at him with raised eyebrows, like he was waiting for some penny to drop. But…
Baz shook his head. They had much bigger things to worry about right now. Freeing Sami from the clutches of Ian’s dictatorship was Baz’s priority. Ruining Ian was a close second. Everything else, they had a lifetime left to figure out.
“All right. Can we focus on one crisis at a time?”
“It doesn’t need to be a crisis. It’s nothing bad. Just an extra piece of information about yourself that might help you give yourself more grace in the future.”
“Doesn’t feel like the kind of information you should have figured out before me,” Baz mumbled. If it was even true.
“What can I say, game recognizes game. But yes, we’ll put a pin in it. Sorry, I didn’t mean to spring this on you out of nowhere. I thought you knew.”
Hardly the first random thought Sami had dropped into a conversation. It was one of his most lovable traits.
Sami pressed a kiss on his lips and snuggled back into his shoulder. “My friends do come with a lot of inappropriate jokes, but if you can look past that, you’ll fit in great.”
“I’m sure I can keep up.” They still had a trivia night to win, after all.
The question of whether his friends knew about Sami’s predicament slipped out before Baz could catch it, with the unsurprising answer that only Naija did, and she hated it even more than Baz did (Sami’s words—Baz sincerely doubted that was possible).
The follow-up of “What about your family?” was too natural to pass up on.
The darkness that ran over Sami’s face made Baz wish he could fish the words out of the air.
“No,” Sami said. “Ian suppressed all media coverage about my arrest. For appearance’s sake, obviously, but that did mean they never needed to find out. I told them I got a job and that I wouldn’t attend my own graduation, so there was no point coming.”
“Weren’t they surprised about not having to pay tuition for a year?”
“I had, like, all the scholarships and loans and need-based aid I could get throughout my entire education. They never paid a cent.” His expression turned vacant. That wouldn’t do. Baz kissed his temple, his cheek. The tip of his nose.
“We’ll fix it. I promise.”
Sami’s hum sounded all but convinced. Baz would prove it. If that were the only meaningful thing he achieved in his career, he’d retire happy.
Since words didn’t manage to cheer Sami up, he brushed his lips over Sami’s neck and sucked at the tender skin, right above his shoulder, until it came back red. Fair was fair.
The hickey magicked a wide, silly smile back on Sami’s face, and Baz fell a little more in love with him upon seeing it. How close he had come to losing him. He’d be damned to let this chance at happiness slip through his fingers again.
When Sami’s eyes stayed closed for longer and longer, when his only contribution to the conversation were unintelligible sounds parading as words, there was only one thing left to ask: “Can I stay?”
“If ya not worried about yo’ tires,” Sami slurred. Still a sassy piece of shit even when half asleep. Baz was so damn lucky.
“You’d be worth it.”
“Sap.” Sami’s chuckle turned into a yawn. “What time d’you need to get up for work?”
“I don’t.”
Sami’s eyes snapped wide open. He jolted upright. “They fired you?!”
“Suspended while Erika cleans up ‘my mess’.”
Sami went pale as a ghost, as if that hadn’t been entirely Baz’s fault. He stroked Sami’s too-smooth cheek. He missed the stubble.
“Keep the puppy eyes to yourself. I was the stupid one here, confronting you the way I did.”
Sami sunk onto his chest. A warm, comforting, perfect weight. “I forgive you as long you forgive yourself too.”
“I think I can do that.” With Sami in his arms, everything seemed possible.
Sleep evaded him.
It wasn’t Sami’s tossing and turning, nor his adorable attempts to crawl into Baz—all that, Baz was looking forward to having in his life for good. No, it was his brain, running a thousand miles an hour, mapping out a plan of action.
Convincing Erika that Ian was a fraud was the key.
Sami said Ian would play golf with some rich clients tomorrow, something he apparently did on a regular basis, and that he had told Sami he didn’t want to see his face all day.
That offered a limited window of opportunity to sneak under his radar that Baz wouldn’t let go to waste.
With their combined effort, Ian would go down and Sami would be free.
It didn’t feel like enough. His recklessness had put Sami in danger, and still, marvelous, selfless Sami had doubled down with a gesture so grand, it demanded more than mere respect.
He deserved to get back the life Ian had taken from him—if he still wanted it.
He deserved to have the chance to pick up where he had left off and follow his dreams.
Maybe Baz could help with that. It was a long shot, but with Eevee’s connections at UChicago, who knew?
He reached over Sami, earning an adorable grunt and the digging of Sami’s nails into Baz’s bare back. He grabbed his phone from the nightstand. Several messages from Eevee waited for him under the digits declaring 2:12 am.
[8:33 PM]
How did it go!!!
[9:54 PM]
I hope your silence means good news
[10:02 PM]
Are you hooking up right now?
[10:26 PM]
BAZ I’M DYING HERE I wanna know how it weeent
Baz smiled into Sami’s hair. Curious as always.
We’re okay! But I have lots of making up to do.
I need your help.