Page 29 of Missing in Action

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Holden

Lurching unsteadily across the room and falling twice, Holden managed to strip his clothes off before he threw himself down on the bed. He replayed the kiss and the way Tyler’s grey eyes darkened and made an attempt at masturbation because it was his birthday damn it, and he hadn’t even got off. His cock was harder than hard but he couldn’t come. Maybe this was a sign of things to come. At fifty, things were clearly slowing down. Soon he wouldn’t need to worry about sex addiction because he wouldn’t have the capacity nor the desire. He closed his eyes and drifted away with tears still staining his cheeks.

Chapter Twelve

Tyler

Tyler woke late after a disturbed night. He’d stayed up reading Holden’s book far too late because firstly he’d been worried about Holden, worried that the lights in his house didn’t go off for the longest time and secondly, because the book was utterly gripping. Holden was a fabulous writer. He deserved to be king of crime, not scratching a living in Clear Water. Tyler was more than half way through the book, while the one-handed read Holden had given him remained untouched.

He showered before he fitted his prosthesis, examining the stump before he rolled the liner on. It looked good and felt okay. He hadn’t been too troubled with pain at all since the weed at Holden’s place. It wasn’t phantom limb pain that had kept him tossing and turning last night.

He made some coffee then sat at the kitchen table with the packet of stamps and his stamp album, sorting through them with a pair of tweezers, separating them out into countries and cross referencing in the album to see if he had them. There were some nice stamps—old ones, uncancelled ones, pretty colored ones—maybe Holden had paid more than he let on for them. He let out a cry of excitement when he came across one from Newfoundland. That was one of his areas of philately, Newfoundland stamps before they became part of Canada in 1949.

He didn’t know why, but maybe collecting from a dead country appealed to him because he could one day complete that collection and be satisfied knowing there was none missing. Not that he’d ever own the pricier specimens. He checked his collection quickly, sure he didn’t have this one, a Newfoundland dog on a red background. No, he didn’t. He smiled and admired the stamp for a moment longer. Lovely. He was still sitting looking at the rest of his small Newfoundland collection when a knock at the door made him tense.

He walked down the hallway to answer it with his stomach churning. Holden stood leaning against the door frame with a tired, rueful smile on his handsome face. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Tyler said. He admired the balls on the guy to show up first thing after what he had confessed last night. Tyler probably wouldn’t have been seen for dust.

“About last night.”

“Yeah?”

Holden sighed. “I was drunk.”

“You were.”

“If I was inappropriate, I’m sorry.”

Tyler looked at him for a long moment. “You weren’t.”

“Not even when I told you about…” he stopped.

Tyler shrugged. “I call that getting shit off your chest, not being inappropriate.”

Holden’s dark eyes softened, carried a hint of shine. He swallowed. “I’m sorry anyway, sorry for what you had to save me from, sorry for being such an utter fuck-up and sorry for…” he stopped again. “Actually, you kissed me so I can’t say sorry for that.”

Tyler smiled. “Why don’t you come in for some coffee?”

He led Holden down the hallway to the kitchen and Holden took a seat opposite the spread out stamps and open stamp album. He smiled as Tyler poured him a mug. “Any good finds?”

“God, yes.” Tyler put the mug down in front of Holden and retook his seat. “I didn’t have this one from Newfoundland.” He turned the album around so Holden could see and pointed to the dog.

“Nice. Are those your particular favorites?”

“Yeah. I was trying to complete the collection but there’s a few, like the very early ones, that are way out of my league.”

“Let me have a look.” Holden pulled his phone out of his pocket and thumbed a few buttons. Tyler watched his dark lashes against his cheeks and admired the view. For a guy who had been utterly shit-faced and crying the night before, he certainly pulled it together fast. He looked fucking great. Way better than any fifty-year-old Tyler had ever seen before. He lowered his gaze down Holden’s throat to the open neck of his white linen shirt, the hint of a tan at the top of his chest and the brush of the darkness of his nipples beneath the sheer material. Fuck. Tyler swallowed, his pants getting uncomfortably tight.

Holden looked up and Tyler met his gaze, trying to will away the heat creeping up his cheeks from his neck. “Like this one?” He showed Tyler a picture of one of the coats of arms with heraldic flowers of the UK that Tyler had looked at longingly so often and wished he could stumble across by magic in one of the mystery bundles from eBay.

“Yeah.”

“1857,” Holden said. “That’s worth a pretty penny. Thirteen thousand bucks.”

“Yep, that’s why I’ll never own it.”

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