31. Vince
Vince
E ven though I had already put my dick in his mouth, there was something about Caspian I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
There was something familiar about him, but looking at his face also felt like a dream.
Maybe I was confusing familiarity with arousal, thinking more of the night I’d taken him into the alley behind the church rather than anything else.
He’d definitely been cruising that night, but running into him at the church a second time felt far from coincidental.
He walked beside me down the street, the top of his head barely reaching my shoulder.
When I looked over at him, all I could see was a mess of red hair and the toes of his sneakers kicking out as he walked.
We went down two blocks and over four, finally stopping at a little coffee shop I used to frequent as a teenager.
“What do you like?” I asked .
“A vanilla latte is fine,” Caspian said. “I’ll get us a table.”
I nodded and he weaved his way through the line of people waiting for drinks so short it didn’t take long for him to disappear from view.
I ordered him his latte, got a black drip for myself, then carried both drinks into the back of the cafe where I found Caspian sitting at a small table tucked into the corner.
Setting both drinks down on the table, I took a seat beside him, pressing myself against the back of the seat.
It was an old nervous habit I’d picked up and never been able to shake.
Something about the bulge of my gun against my spine was the only thing I ever needed to calm my pulse.
“What do you want from me, Caspian?” I asked, taking the lid off my coffee to let it cool.
“What?”
“I know you know who I am. You told me as much the night we met. So you should also know that men like me don’t believe in coincidences.”
“I…” He gave me a coy smile that I wanted to slap off his face. “I don’t follow.”
“What are the odds, do you think, of two men who are decidedly not Catholic meeting up at a church?” I asked him, tilting my head to the side. “Twice.”
“I’m not stalking you, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“It wasn’t, but now that you mention it…”
Caspian’s cheeks burned a violent shade of pink, and I knew I’d hit the nail on the head. He didn’t have to admit it—I could see the truth of it mapped across his face, over the ways his fingers tapped the white cardboard of his cup, his leg bouncing beneath the table.
He opened his mouth to protest a second time, but I cut him off. “I’m flattered, Caspian.”
Jacob would hate this.
Orion would not approve.
“I’m not stalking you,” Caspian said again, voice weak, “but I don’t hate running into you.”
“You don’t go out of your way to avoid it.”
He shook his head.
“You go out of your way to ensure it,” I said.
He nodded.
Maybe I’d had a death wish since taking a bullet to the chest, but I wanted to know more about Caspian Andersen.
And not just in a sexual way either. I wanted to understand how his mind worked so I could make sense of a man who said he went out of his way to find me, but didn’t consider it stalking.
Maybe it was wholesome stalking. The kind that didn’t end with bloodshed. I could get behind that.
I deserved that, didn’t I?
“Why?” I asked.
Caspian stared down at his latte and shrugged.
“How does the priest know you?” I asked next.
I would entertain his wholesome stalking games, but I needed him to understand I was not a man to be fucked with. I was observant, and I had seen the way Jacob looked at him over the chalice of wine.
“What?” he rasped, shoulders giving a small quake .
“And don’t even think about lying to me,” I warned, bending at the waist to lean over the table toward him so I could speak quieter. “I know far more than you’d expect.”
Caspian didn’t have a poker face, which would only work out in my favor if we were to continue whatever little game we’d started to play.
The first expression that flashed across his face was fear, a slight widening of his eyes, almost imperceptible, but there nonetheless.
Then worry, confusion, and finally uncertainty.
“I’ve been to church before,” he said.
“Try again,” I warned. “But don’t worry if you don’t want to tell me. I’ll ask him later.”
“I was there!” Caspian blurted, hands flying up to cover his mouth, but it was too late.
“Where?”
“Church.”
“I know that.”
“No. I mean, I was there .” Caspian looked up at me, brows raised and mouth turned down like he was about to apologize for something. “The night you were shot.”
It was a good thing I’d had a lifetime of practice when it came to schooling my expressions, especially when something surprised me, because what kind of fool would I have looked like telling Caspian I knew more than I did, only to be caught so off-guard by the next words out of his mouth.
I swallowed down bile, chasing it with a drink of coffee that was still too hot.
I pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth to dull the pain of the burn.
I closed my eyes, pushing my fingertips against my eyelids until I saw stars, familiar constellations that always felt like home.
I let my mind rewind, back past bringing Jacob home, past Orion’s revelations, back to the night I was shot.
My memories were blurry, but I remembered being on the phone, I remembered searching the sky for the namesake of a man who wouldn’t come, and then…
trembling arms and frantic hands, footsteps, the scent of frankincense and sandalwood.
Two sets of blood-soaked hands pressing frantically at the hole in my chest. One I knew to be Jacob, the other…
The other I’d forgotten.
But when I opened my eyes in the middle of that cafe and locked eyes on Caspian Andersen, I didn’t need to look at his hands to know they were his.
“Vince,” he rasped, swallowing hard.
“Well,” I whispered, tongue still numb from the pain. “Isn’t that a revelation.”