Chapter 10
TEN
santos
“What is he saying about it?”
“I don’t know.” Ever grunted. I knew he wasn’t annoyed at me per se, but it was hard to compartmentalize and rationalize shit when I just wanted to find that son of a bitch and do the kind of harm that not even my family’s connections would keep me out of trouble for. “I’m sorry, I ruined everything.”
“You haven’t done a thing,” I promised.
I had to say, I’d been weirded out ever since Carlos asked if he could ride with me to pick up Danny.
Lunch had already been awkward when it became clear that I wasn’t ready to talk bout what had led to my discharge, and his experience was so starkly different from mine.
The ride consisted of him telling me what Danny had told him, which wasn’t a lot, and trying to make it sound like we weren’t both on edge.
By the time we had gone through the gates, I’d almost forgotten to keep the door open for him while I barreled through it.
I still didn’t know what to think. Danny had shared what he’d put together from the call and what Ever had shared about the punishment or whatever it was that he’d needed help recording.
Through it all, Ever had just burrowed himself into me.
I bet they had to be thinking shit about him, but I didn’t care.
He wasn’t weak, and he wasn’t a stubborn, spoiled kid who couldn’t face the consequences of his actions.
He was terrified. Imploding inside.
Once it became the two of us, with assurances to Danny that I’d keep him updated even though I doubted I would, he’d loosened up a bit. He was still clinging to my side, though. Refusing to let me see his face.
“I think I’m the problem.”
I saw red. “Because a Dom couldn’t handle you needing aftercare? That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?”
“It’s not so simple.” Why he felt the need to defend the Dom he hadn’t even seen the face of skipped me. “It’s not like he can do much when he’s a screen away.”
“Then he should’ve thought about it before he pushed you.”
It was the same thing Carlos and Danny had said earlier while talking amongst themselves. Truth be told, I’d needed the opinion of someone who was more comfortable with all these power dynamics than I was. A starting point of sorts to guide the simmering rage building.
The rage was still there, but it vindicated me.
It bothered me, too, more doubt piling up, because I had been hesitant at the beginning, too.
I’d doubted the good he was doing to Ever, but then I’d changed my mind.
Had I been convinced that this Dom was good, or had I just let myself think with my cock, because of all the action I was getting with Ever?
Ever, who I was supposed to be protecting.
Ever, who was pretending to be subtle about the way he never let more than an inch of distance between us.
About how his fingers clutched the hem of my shirt but let go the second I showed that I noticed he was holding onto me like the lifesaver I clearly wasn’t.
“Can you just…” Ever licked his lips. I’d started to head upstairs with him trailing behind, but I didn’t know where he was going.
Did he want us to snuggle in his bed, or was he too raw for it?
I didn’t know. I’d been away too long, and he clearly had new ways to cope, and I wasn’t privy to any of them.
Dread filled me as I realized that I should’ve asked Danny to stay.
He would know better. “I don’t wanna talk about it. ”
I sighed.
I did know that my spiraling was not helping. Ever had always read me like an open book, even when I’d been convinced that I was keeping everything under a fortress.
“What do you wanna do?”
“I don’t know,” he mumbled. I pulled him to me before the defeat in his voice translated to his body.
I hated this, and I hated not having the answers, but physical touch had always grounded him.
It had always warmed him up when things left him frozen and too deep in his head to put his thoughts in order at the speed that society demanded of him. “I want to make things right with you.”
That, I was not expecting. I was somewhat used to the way he processed things when too many emotions coursed through his body.
He reached conclusions, but he didn’t air them out in a particular order.
Waiting him out worked best, but it wasn’t always possible.
Or I wasn’t always able to pull it off. Definitely not, when whatever had all his thoughts scrambled up apparently involved me.
“What do you mean, babes?”
Silence. We didn’t have any grandfather clock around here, but I could’ve sworn I could hear the seconds ticking by.
One.
Two.
Three.
Was I counting the seconds, or was it just my heartbeat?
“It was you and I against the world,” he whispered.
“And, when my mother said they were hiring you to live in here, I thought, then I can make sure he’s okay.
I can take care of him, and I can talk with Carlos so that I know what to do, and it was going to be great. But I haven’t done any of it, and you…”
He shook his head before I could stop him, disentangling himself from me and heading toward his room.
It was my turn to freeze. Did I follow him? Did I let him chastise himself for something that wasn’t quite making sense to me?
For better or worse, my legs were carrying me to the doorframe of his room before I’d settled on a choice.
“Babes.”
Fuck.
I didn’t mean for my tone to come out so harsh. It almost felt like I was poisoning the endearment, the contained rage I’d have to work through seeping into a place it should’ve never reached.
Ever stood straight as a ramrod. His back was to me, but I knew asking him to turn around was pointless when he was going to do it on his own. I just had to wait him out. To be patient. It was doable.
I could’ve done without the glistening hurt in his eyes when he eventually did.
Or without the possessiveness that took over as I checked out the way my clothes engulfed his frame.
It was stupid. I didn’t even know why he’d put on my clothes—he hadn’t said a word—but I liked that he didn’t feel the need to apologize for it.
I liked that they’d smell like him after he took them off.
I would like it even more if he didn’t take them off.
Back when we were in boarding school and our frames were more similar, he ransacked my wardrobe on the regular. It was our secret while away from home.
“Uh, yeah?”
He had his hands clasped in front of him, the sleeves of the hoodie covering them completely.
More of that dread settled in my gut.
This was Ever, though. I knew him. I knew him better than anyone else did, and I refused to confirm that had changed. Clothes, kinks, friends, routines… None of that mattered.
“Get in the shower and come back down, okay? I’ll take care of everything.”
We were going to do the proper sleepover he’d been asking for ever since he’d asked me to sleep in his bed, as if that was normal between two friends who’d barely seen each other in a decade, only because they’d stayed in touch for the most part.
“Uh, okay.”
Yeah. The more I thought about it, the more the plan made sense.
I’d make some popcorn with extra butter and salt the way he liked, we’d watch a recording of one of the fancy theater productions that were his guilty pleasure, and I’d keep him buried under so many blankets he’d wonder if he could actually breathe through them.
If anyone thought it was childish, they could fuck off.
Society’s perceptions on how any of us should be behaving went down the rails when I’d finally wrangled him downstairs to the couch and cocooned him with the blankets.
I bet all his other friends could make better cocoons that would feel more satisfying, but he was under the blankets.
That had to be the important part. His feet were freezing for some reason, but the rest of his body was warm, and he didn’t tense when I wrapped an arm around his midsection and pulled him to me until his head rested on my shoulder.
I doubted he was paying attention to the screen in front of me, and he’d only stomached a couple fistfuls of popcorn I’d hand-fed him, but that was okay, too. I’d make sure of it.
“I’ve never been too much for you, have I?”
The question was muffled by the blankets he’d moved to cover more of his body, but it made me tense as if it had been screamed with a megaphone.
“Never,” I promised. I didn’t know if it was acceptable, if I should ask first, but I placed my lips against the top of his head and stayed there until I could feel he wasn’t trembling with the need to run away or get deep in his head again. “You and me, yeah?”
The words, the shortening of the promise we somehow had kept to each other without distilling its power or minimizing it as a kids’ thing, had him glance up at me. He had the roundest eyes. I didn’t know how he didn’t get more compliments on them.
“Even with all of this?”
My nostrils flared.
The anger wasn’t aimed at him, though. “Yes.”
I kept the answer simple. It was part the fact that I wasn’t good with words, and part the fear that some of that rising anger would make it into the words.
Ever wasn’t weak in the traditional sense people assumed; they thought he was shy and took longer to warm up to people, but that wasn’t a sign of weakness.
He was sensitive, though. Always had been.
It was the reason his relationship with his parents wasn’t the best, and the reason why they had him on a manufactured monthly allowance where he was technically the estate manager, but they handled it all for him and just asked him to do the things they couldn’t do from a distance.
I had always thought of it as a strength, the way he never thought twice about running to me, hugging me, and telling me he loved me when most of the time it took physical strength for me to initiate even half of that.
Our families weren’t the kind to appreciate that.
Definitely not in a man.
“I think…” He glanced down as he spoke. “I want to be a better friend.”
“You already are, babes.”
“No.” Now he glanced back at me. There was determination in his gaze. The hurt and the glistening that spoke of unshed tears were still there, but his jaw was clenched. “I don’t even know why you were discharged. You can’t mean that.”
“You…” I blinked. “You don’t?”
Ever all but leaped back. I had no idea how he managed to keep the blankets covering him. Most of him. “You thought I did?”
“Yeah?”
With how fast gossip traveled between our families, and how much they liked to add all the flair to their stories, I had assumed as much.
It had been a discomfort in my stomach I’d done the best to ignore, because I really, really didn’t want to get into it, but it had been there, merging into every second I questioned the way we worked now.
Every second I questioned his touch on my skin, and the way he’d been pushing me to befriend the one guy he knew with a military background.
I supposed it cleared some things up.
“So I’m an even worse friend,” he grumbled. “Fucking A.”
“You aren’t.” I gulped. “I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Why?” He frowned. “You know I don’t give a shit about military bullshit. It’s all toxic masculinity and colonialism and posturing and—”
“I know.” His rampage, one I felt somewhat guilty for interrupting, pulled a small grin out of me. “It’s not that. I wasn’t…I wasn’t discharged because I failed an op or betrayed my country or any of that shit in the movies. I wouldn’t care if that had been it.”
“Okay.”
Okay.
That was it.
Sure, he stared at me like he was sure I was going to keep talking, but he didn’t push. Just as I hadn’t pushed him upstairs to turn toward me, or do anything else.
I rubbed my chest.
Could I do it? Go down that particular memory lane? It might help him. At least, it would distract him from whatever it was he was still feeling about that…scene.
Had they broken up? Were we going to keep recording every time we fucked? Did I know what answer I preferred to those questions?
“It’s stupid.” I worked my jaw. It was stupid, and voicing it out loud made me feel even more stupid. “I got involved. With a higher up. The powers that be didn’t like it.”
Ever frowned. “You can be discharged for that?”
“Not per se.” To be honest, I wasn’t sure.
That part was too foggy. I’d just gone through the motions and pretended terror didn’t take hold of every limb at the thought of what my parents were going to say.
If they were going to give me a place to stay, or if I’d have to figure out how to rent something without an active income.
I hadn’t fully breathed until Ever’s father had reached out with a contract to be his protective detail.
“They added a bunch of stuff to it, but basically, it was either her or I, and I took the fall.”
Ever winced. “You loved her?”
“I…” My heart thrummed against my chest. Feelings were a complicated subject. “We had an agreement. She went no contact as soon as I signed the papers to be discharged. But if one of us were going to lose our careers, it should be the one who didn’t care about being there in the first place.”
Had I been naive? Yeah. Self-sacrificing? Probably. I’d read the reports from the Academy and heard the instructors talk behind my back. Everyone thought it was both my biggest flaw and the selfish reason why they’d want me in their teams.
It made me sick, but it clearly hadn’t stopped me from acting on it.
“Santos.” Ever frowned. “It’s not right. Your name is smeared because someone had it out for a woman in power?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
But I wasn’t going to get into it, into how, after the first night we’d been together, I’d ended up throwing up in the bathroom.
How I’d close my eyes when she’d sneak into my place, or how she’d made me take Viagra hours before she showed up so that I could actually get it up.
It wasn’t always needed. I hadn’t not wanted it most of the time.
It had just been easier to go with it. It had made things less lonely. For a while.
“Well, I hate her.”
He decided it just like that, without knowing even a quarter of the story.
I didn’t know if I should love him for it or be appalled.
I just followed his lead when he pushed me toward his bed and prepared to be trapped between more limbs than any human could physically have.