Five #2
And I was thinking I wanted to talk to him, but I wanted to see his face. He had a good face. I was worried for a second about what that meant.
“Angel?”
“I wanna eat at the cantina with the gazpacho, but I don’t want you to think we’re gonna be more than friends … but I would really like it if we could be that.”
He chuckled, and it was deep and sultry and nice. “We can be that, Angel.”
“You gotta quit with—”
“Jory,” he said, breathing out my name.
“Listen,” I said quickly, thinking I had to give him his out and not be selfish with what I wanted—a friend who didn’t really know me yet, who it would be easy to be around.
“I need to tell you something before we get to be friends, and then I spring this on you, and you think I lied—because I try to never lie or even sin by omission.”
“Jesus, you’re exhausting.”
I knew that. “So, my man is a member of law enforcement,” I blurted out, “so maybe you should leave me alone if your business is dicey.”
“What kind of law enforcement?”
“He’s currently a homicide detective.”
“I see. What’s his name?”
All he had to have was a mediocre background-check guy who could check out deeds for lofts in the city. It would be easy to find out who I lived with.
“Sam Kage.”
“But he’s gone, you say?”
“Not gone, just away.”
“How long?”
“Close to four months.”
“He must be on some kind of task force.”
“I think so.”
“So, see, he’s busy catching someone else, not me.”
“But that could change if you came up on his radar.”
“It doesn’t matter. A homicide detective and I would never have words.”
“No?”
“No, Jory, I’ve never been busted for anything.”
I thought about that. “I could be wearing a wire.”
“You watch too much television,” he informed me with a grunt.
That was absolutely true.
“Four months is a long time.”
Yes, it was.
And Sam was in Chicago, but had made no effort to see or even call me.
Sam completely ignored my questions about the woman draped over him on the yacht.
Sam did not care that it looked like I was on a date.
He had been, obviously, more concerned with the fact that Cristo Liron was a criminal.
Possibly a criminal. I had no way to either confirm or deny the existence of a police record, as the person who would usually tell me these things was the same one who was working hard to ignore my very existence.
It boggled my mind that he couldn’t even spare a two-minute phone call from a pay phone on his way to check in.
None of it would matter if I knew where I stood.
And while I knew I was loved, I had no idea where he was with his life-changing decisions.
Was he switching jobs, cities, priorities?
And was I to be consulted on any of it? I had no idea.
All I did know was that it felt like Sam had to decide between a job as a police detective and me.
And if it came down to it, what could he really choose?
He loved me, but the job was who he was.
What right did I have to ask him to give up his identity for me?
I would tumble right down the rabbit hole if I kept thinking about it, so I made a conscious decision to stop.
“Angel?”
Back in the now, I took a quick breath. “We gotta get shit straight.”
“Like?”
“I just look stupid,” I told him. “But I’m really not. You wanna sleep with me.”
He choked on whatever he was drinking. I hoped he hadn’t dribbled.
“Jesus, Angel, do you have any subtlety at all?”
“Not so much, no.” I sighed. “So, tell me, what are you thinking is going to happen here?”
“I don’t know.” He cleared his throat. “Because I really have no idea what to make of you.”
“In what way?”
“Well, you saved my little brother, and you’re not afraid of me, and your ass has got to be the most perfect one I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“What does my ass have to do with anything?”
“I want to hold it in my hands.”
“But you can’t.”
“I know that, but it doesn’t make me want to any less.”
“So, maybe we shouldn’t hang out if that’s—”
“I can control myself,” he said with a chuckle.
“But why should you have to? You’re hot. You can have anybody you want. Why waste time hanging out with me when it’ll just frustrate you?”
“Because I like you even more than I want to fuck you.”
“Yeah?” I was surprised and hopeful.
“Angel, you’re so pretty that my stomach hurts when I look at you, and I would be lying if I said the idea of fucking you is not something I’ve been thinking about since we first met.”
Me, too, but in a fantasy way, not in a possibility-of-actually-happening way.
“But I find I also want to just sit and talk to you and try to figure out what’s going on in your head.”
I swallowed hard.
“We can be friends, Angel, but when I take other men home and you go home alone to an empty bed, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”
He sounded very sure of himself, and something clicked in my brain.
“You’ve never been in love.”
“What?”
“You haven’t,” I assured him. “Because if you ever had been, you’d understand that going home alone sucks, being alone sucks, but you do it because you have no choice.
I can look at other people, look at you, and think, Wow, but I’m never gonna do anything about it because I’m in love.
I respect myself too much to have some casual hookup that could jeopardize the life I clearly want more than anything. ”
“That was quite a speech.”
“I need to be crystal clear with you if we’re going to be any kind of friends. I value myself enough to be honest.”
“It’s very alluring—your discipline—but are you certain your man deserves your sacrifice?”
I scoffed.
“Angel—”
“It’s not a sacrifice on my part to not sleep with you.”
“No, I didn’t mean it like—”
“If I slept with you, I would just be another guy you fucked, and you would just be standing in for the guy I really wanted and who I was building my life with.” Because as mad as I was, as lonely, as hurt, Sam Kage was still the only man I took off my clothes for. “So, us is never gonna happen.”
“Angel—”
“I gotta go, Cris. I’ll talk to you later.”
“No, don’t do that. Don’t blow me off. I’m sorry, okay? I don’t get the opportunity to have people in my life I don’t have to worry about, who I can just trust to not fuck me over, so c’mon. Forgive me already. Let’s go eat.”
I wasn’t sure. It had sounded like it was going bad fast.
“Angel …” He chuckled and ended with a sigh. “Please, let’s get some dinner. It’s my treat. Next time, it’s your turn.”
Next time? My turn? Suddenly, everything seemed back on track. We weren’t going on a date; we were just going to hang out.
“Okay.” I smiled into the phone. “Where should I meet you?”
And because he was no longer interested in getting in my pants, he told me where to meet him and finished with telling me to hurry the hell up because he was starving. Just like normal. I was very pleased with the man.