Chapter 2 #3
“Sorry.” Malcolm bit the inside of his lip, unsure where that tease had come from.
It was as if seeing his high school boyfriend again had wiped out the last seventeen years of maturity, and he was a lovesick teenager again.
Lovesick, tongue tied, and scared to tell anyone besides Iggy that he was gay.
“You need to stop where?” Iggy prompted.
“There’s a convenience store up here, right before the highway exit. I need a pit stop.”
“Perfect. So do I.”
“Still afraid to use airplane toilets?”
“I refuse to be stuck inside one of those things if the plane crashes. Not a chance.”
“Then you haven’t changed much.”
Iggy snorted hard through his nose. “More than you know.” Then he tossed Malcolm a flirty side-eye. “You’ve certainly changed. I like this cowboy look you’ve got going on. I’m surprised you didn’t pick me up on a two-saddle stallion. The pickup is a nice touch, though.”
“Trust me, it’s just a look. I’m a handyman, not a cowboy.”
“Shame. You definitely fit the cowboy mold.”
“Thanks?”
“It’s a compliment. I could have said you look like a big-rig truck driver.”
Malcolm snickered as he smacked his flat stomach.
“Don’t quite have the pooch for that yet.
It’s good money, but I can’t sit still for ten hours a day.
It’s part of the reason I wouldn’t make it as a cowboy.
Too much sitting on a horse, not enough working with my hands.
” His ridiculous, recently-acquired fear of horses was another good reason he’d never go that route again.
“You always were good with your hands.”
“I know I was.” He tried hard to catch Iggy’s eye, but the tall, sensual city boy was doing his damnedest to avoid looking at Malcolm.
Interesting.
Iggy needed to stop. Doing. That.
Stop flirting with Monte like he’d never forgotten how. Stop admiring the thick thighs, toned upper arms, and broad chest that Monte had developed as an adult. Stop remembering how good it felt to be held close by Monte, kissed by him, told he love—no, stop.
Malcolm. Not Monte. Malcolm.
This wasn’t the scenic route down memory lane, and they were both different people. They’d grown up, grown apart, and what they’d once had was irrevocably broken.
Some hurts went too deep, some bones shattered too completely to ever truly heal.
Iggy stared at the taillights of the car ahead of them so he didn’t keep staring at Malcolm’s perfectly cut figure in the driver’s seat.
“So, you’re the town handyman now. How’d that happen?
” As soon as the blasé question passed his lips, Iggy regretted it, because he knew the partial answer. And it wasn’t a happy one.
The cab seemed to chill a few degrees. “After Tomás died and left Melissa alone with four kids, I came back to Chance.” Malcolm grunted as he waited for his turn to merge into traffic.
“I started taking over some of Tomás’s old clients, building trust with residents and businesses.
Realized I liked being around my nieces and nephews, and since I hadn’t exactly left a real life behind anywhere else I’ve lived since graduation, I decided to move back home. ”
“That’s…an honorable thing to do, Mont—Malcolm. Uprooting your life for your sister and her kids.”
“Wasn’t honorable, just the right thing. For them and for me.”
Iggy’s curiosity kept spinning back to Malcolm not leaving a real life behind to move here, but this wasn’t a reunion of friends.
He had no obligation to befriend his reluctant Uber driver, and the last thing Iggy wanted to do was open himself up to questions.
Malcolm had always been a very tit-for-tat person.
Malcolm’s unwillingness to back down had led to their first kiss.
“So, I take it that between four kids and a full-time job, you don’t have much time for dating.” Goddamn it, he needed to stop blurting out personal shit like that. Iggy kept his eyes forward, on the approaching convenience store, his body perfectly still, while his heart started galloping away.
“The dating pool in and around Chance doesn’t provide for much more than the occasional dip when I’m in the mood,” Malcolm replied slowly. “But you’re right, I’m too busy to look for anything long-term. What about you?”
“Single and fine with it.” Mostly. Sometimes. Whatever.
“So, you’re also busy with your career in…”
“Donuts.”
“What?”
Iggy made a show of checking that he had his phone with its attached wallet sleeve, while Malcolm pulled into the busy convenience store parking lot.
“I want donuts. And coffee. I’d prefer a cinnamon honey oat milk latte with a blueberry scone from the café a block from my apartment, but this will have to do. Travelers can’t be choosers.”
“Right, gas station donuts and coffee. Scraping the bottom of the country barrel here.”
Gas station coffee might be the bottom of the barrel, but Iggy’s companion was certainly top shelf select—and he really needed to stop thinking like that. As soon as the truck stopped in a parking spot, Iggy leapt out, determined to put some much-needed space between himself and his teenage love.