Chapter 4
FOUR
Somehow, Alex had expected Lee to be a slob.
As it turned out, Lee was the very opposite—his side of the room was meticulous, and each night, he laid out his clothes for the next day in neatly folded stacks.
When Alex asked about it, Lee stilled, one hand flat on top of the most recent pile he’d prepared.
“Force of habit, I guess,” he said slowly. “Used to do it for my sisters all the time, and now I just find it saves me mental energy in the morning, not having to think about what I’m going to wear.”
It was a puzzle piece that aligned with how Lee talked to his sisters almost daily, and while Alex wasn’t actively trying to listen in, he couldn’t help but overhear the occasional conversational snippet.
Lee’s sisters seemed to treat him like a parent more than a brother, running their grades past him and venting their respective frustrations about teachers and homework, and professors and deadlines.
They also sought his advice on everything, from disagreements with friends to new haircuts to boys, boys, boys.
More than once, Alex had found himself biting down on a smile, reading on his bed while Lee tried to explain the finer details of male behavior to one of his sisters.
Yeah, good luck with that.
“You’ll make a great dad one day,” Alex finally commented one evening, after Lee had ended a call with his youngest sister Shelly—based on what Alex had caught, she must have spent a considerable amount of time ranting about a boy who’d promised he’d text and, three days later, still hadn’t.
Lee snorted as he set his phone on the bedside table. “Think I’ve got my hands full with these two for now.”
His mum wasn’t the caring type, wasn’t that what he’d said? No dad in the picture, as far as Alex could tell.
“I take it your parents weren’t around much?” he asked carefully.
“My sperm donor didn’t stick around long enough to leave his name, much less a return address.
” Lee’s dark eyes narrowed, his voice carrying the faintest hint of a challenge.
“So, no. All I know is he was Italian—which narrows it down to maybe ten million daddy candidates if you exclude all Italian men who are currently above the age of ninety and below the age of thirty. Not quite your family tree situation, is it?”
Alex closed his book and met Lee’s frown with a smile. “Not quite. Let’s just say that any muttering of illegitimacy would be an affront to the very fabric of our family tapestry.”
“Is that a direct quote or are you paraphrasing?”
“Translating the displeased twitch of an upper lip into actual words.”
Alex could see the precise moment Lee’s amusement won over whatever expectations he’d held about Alex’s reaction. “How very insolent of you.”
“That’s me—the rebel sheep of the family.” Hardly. Since it wasn’t often Lee volunteered personal information, Alex decided to prod for just a little bit more. “What about your sisters’ dad? Or dads, I guess.”
“He hung around for a bit before he decided my mum was simply too nuts for him.” Bitterness seeped into Lee’s voice.
His attention slid away from Alex to the open balcony door, warm evening air wafting into the room.
“Fair enough. But if you can’t handle it, what the hell makes you think it’s fine to leave three kids with a person like that? ”
All right, that had been rather more information than Alex had bargained for—not that he minded, he just wasn’t quite sure how to respond. “How old were you?”
“Eight. Got lucky that our grandma was around for a few more years so that by the time she died, I could—” Lee cut himself off, gaze sharpening on Alex’s face. “Never mind.”
“You could…?” Alex prompted, and Lee shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter.” Lee’s tone put an effective stop to the conversation.
Fine, Alex could take a hint. Even more so, he was also able to make an educated guess based on the tidbits of information Lee had let slip about his disengaged mum, how he’d been the one to lay out his sisters’ clothes for the next day, and the way they treated him like a father figure.
But why had Lee offered that opening about his grandmother in the first place if he had no intention of following through?
“If you say so,” Alex agreed neutrally, shoving a pillow under his chest as he opened his book back up.
“I do.” Lee reached for his ebook reader, and that was another difference to sharing with Jeff—Alex didn’t have to defend the fact that he preferred books to wasting time on a phone or tablet. Bonus, his thrillers weren’t embellished with a jarring soundtrack courtesy of TikTok.
For a minute, it was quiet in the room.
“I didn’t take you for a thriller kind of person,” Lee commented.
Alex glanced up and over, grinning a little. “What kind of person did you take me for?”
“Something a little more… high-brow, I guess. Virginia Woolf or Kazuo Ishiguro. Salman Rushdie.”
“Should I be flattered or offended?” Alex asked, tucking one finger between the pages of Baldacci’s most recent novel to mark his spot.
Lee made a seesawing gesture, one corner of his mouth hitching up. “Little bit of both? Also, who still buys hardcovers, mate? Especially when it’s a thriller you’ll read once—that’s what ebooks are for.”
“Can’t put an ebook into one of those neighborhood book exchange boxes, can you?” Alex countered.
“I strongly doubt you live in the kind of neighborhood that has a book exchange box.”
“Please, as if you do. But I drive by one on the way to team practice.”
“So you’re like the book-dropping fairy?” Lee’s smile was fully pronounced by now, the evening light washing his features in warmth, and Alex reminded himself not to stare.
Lee had an unfortunate habit of stripping down to boxers and a white tank top once he’d brushed his teeth in the evening, and it showed off his arms rather nicely.
There’d been a time when footballers were all about leg work while upper body strength wasn’t much of a priority—not anymore, and Lee was someone who took his whole-body workout program seriously.
Sucked for Alex’s peace of mind, especially as he could hardly tell Lee to put on some clothes when Alex himself liked to sleep naked and compromised by wearing boxer briefs when sharing a room.
“I’m giving back to the community,” he declared with an air of grandeur.
“Giving back to the community—of course.” For once, Lee seemed to be laughing with Alex rather than at him. “It’s hard-won, your reputation as everybody’s darling.”
It was, and leaving free books scattered about Liverpool had nothing to do with it.
Alex had learned to soften the crisp edges of how he’d grown up speaking with anyone other than his relatives, to balance his parents’ expectations with what he wanted for himself, and to keep any interest in the male half of the population in check—that was the price he paid.
He led a privileged life, no doubt about it, but being well-liked didn’t come naturally to him.
Funny how Lee had never bought what Alex was selling.
“Well,” Alex said. “Since you’re mocking me and my taste in books, what are you reading?”
Lee cut him a smug look. “See, that’s the beauty of a Kindle—you won’t know unless I tell you.”
“I’ll grab it while you’re in the shower.”
“It’s passcode-protected.”
“You’ve got trust issues, man.”
It was meant to be a joke, but based on how something tightened around Lee’s generous mouth, it fell flat. No response.
“I was kidding,” Alex added after a few beats of uncomfortable silence. “You can do whatever you want with your Kindle—I’m not judging.”
“Right.” Lee’s voice was slow, eyes distant, before he suddenly focused on Alex.
“Nah, it’s probably true about the trust issues.
You try having a stepdad who ditches you when you’re just a kid and doesn’t bother getting back in touch until he sees your name in the papers.
And when you tell him to go to fucking hell”—Lee drew a sharp breath—“he decides to sleaze his way back into your sisters’ lives.
Right? See if that teaches you to expect the worst from most people. ”
That was… a lot.
Alex twisted his upper body to fully face Lee, and for a strange moment, he was tricked into the illusion that Lee’s gaze skimmed from Alex’s chest down and around to his boxer-briefs-clad ass, the room warm enough that Alex had kicked the sheet down to his feet.
A blink, and whatever Alex might have seen was gone.
“So let me get this straight.” Alex took a moment to realign the pieces of what he’d overheard earlier. “When you told your sister to be careful around him—on the phone just now… I take it you were no longer talking about the guy who hadn’t bothered to text her?”
Lee pursed his lips. “Why would she need to be careful around someone she almost certainly won’t be seeing again?”
“I don’t know.” Alex shrugged one shoulder and smiled in a way that he hoped would diffuse some of the tension hanging around Lee. “I was caught up in a literary assassination, so I didn’t listen too closely. Just caught a few words here and there.”
“Right,” Lee said slowly.
“Not that I deliberately listen in on your conversations,” Alex hurried to add. “But we’re sharing a room, so there’s not a lot of privacy, is there?” Abort, abort. “Anyway, I just… That sucks. About your stepfather.”
Lee exhaled, some of the tightness around his eyes fading. “Yeah. It does.”
Since there wasn’t anything helpful Alex could offer, he simply nodded, and after a few seconds, Lee turned back to his Kindle. Alex waited for another moment, just in case there was more, then he reopened his book.
It was peaceful, almost.
Posted by @AlexanderBeaufort (June 8, 9:07 p.m.):
Sharing a room with @TheJeffWhitlock: chaos
Sharing a room with @LeeJTaylor: a neatly folded stack of clothes for the next day, every day.
“The point is…” Jeff dropped into another squat. “The point is that I perform better if I’m allowed to have a pint now and then.”