Chapter 17
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Where are you staying?
His mother’s text caught Shannon off guard.
It wasn’t the first message she’d sent him.
His brothers and sister had all messaged or left voice notes for him.
Some of them had been asking when he was coming home.
Others had been checking if he was still alive.
Of course he answered; he didn’t want them to worry.
He’d sent a pic of the view from the deck and told them he was settling in at work.
It seemed they were less comfortable asking for a hand over text than they were face to face.
His ex had messaged once to ask if he’d finished throwing a tantrum—he had ignored that one.
He was suspicious about why his mother wanted to know where he was staying, which was probably the wrong attitude.
Same place, with the trees, why?
Did she know someone? Had she been stalking him online?
I can’t send you anything for your birthday if you don’t give me an address.
His birthday wasn’t for another month, and he wasn’t sure if he’d still be at Dante’s. While everything seemed to have settled back down, there were things lurking not that deeply in the shadows. He leaned back in the lunchroom chair, the plastic back digging into his ribs.
When did a fling turn into something more?
Were they actual friends or only friends while he was living there?
As far as he could tell, Dante didn’t have friends.
People knew he existed, but that was as far as it went.
Dante didn’t seem to have anything except for work; however, from the online stalking he’d done, he knew Dante was very well respected in that community, with people recommending his workshops and bemoaning that he didn’t teach longer courses.
Aside from posting what Shannon now referred to as knife-porn, which people seemed to drool over, Dante didn’t have any other social media. If he was on apps, he must have them turned off when in Foggy Basin.
He gave his mother Dante’s address, figuring that he’d need to redirect his mail when he moved. That he still had half his crap in the fish trailer meant that he hadn’t moved in. He was living in limbo.
Was he waiting for Dante to be ready to go out in public or was he putting off making another decision about his future? After all, if he signed a lease, that was more permanent than renting a room.
Did he really want to date, or was he enjoying fucking his landlord?
Sure, there were strings and the risk of getting burned, but as long as he didn’t start planning a future that was fine… Wasn’t it?
And he definitely wasn’t imagining waking up hearing bird song and staring out at the trees while drinking coffee for the rest of his life. Nope, not once…
More like a thousand times
He also wasn’t going to miss sleeping next to Dante when he moved out into some bland house, which he’d have all to himself, and buy furniture that he liked and spend his free time doing whatever he wanted.
They were the things he’d been looking forward to; now they seemed like shallow knee-jerk reactions to always caving to what someone else wanted.
He washed out his lunch tub and tossed it in his locker.
Maybe all he’d been looking for was peace and stability, and he’d already found that, which was why he was reluctant to make another change. It had taken a couple of months, but it felt as though he’d finally started breathing instead of being on alert for the next thing.
He was adapting to the slower pace of life and was pretty sure that the stress of going back would kill him. He’d been burning out without noticing, both from his relationship at the time and the job. Maybe if he’d only had to deal with one, he would have coped.
Maybe, but it didn’t matter now.
He was here, and since this was his life, he needed to figure out how to make it work.
For the first time, he began to wonder if he could wait for Dante, or if he was spinning his wheels waiting to get hurt?
He had no idea because it mostly felt like the kind of relationship that he wanted, except that it wasn’t a relationship.
This is what happened when he bounced from one dick to another. What he needed to do was move out and clear his head, and bed, even if that was the exact opposite of what he thought he wanted.
That was a decision. He’d make the effort to look at more rentals and take anything within his budget that had room to park all his vehicles and the fish trailer—he was not giving that up until he was settled.