Page 29 of The Blame Game

He’d started out working as a stylist for women. Then started having sex with some of those women.

But when he realized how in demand men who were willing to sleep with men were and what he’d be paid to do it … well, he’d taken one look at his bank account, another at what grad school would cost, and never looked back.

It was Audra who’d talked him through the prep and bought him a toy to practice with.

Audra who he’d called after his first appointment with a man when he was quietly freaking out because he hadn’t hated it.

He’d been horribly awkward the first few times. Terribly inexperienced. Though clearly that hadn’t deterred Dom, who’d been working his way through their available escorts and settling on none of them until he’d met Shea.

It gave Shea a perverse pleasure that he’d been the one who’d caught Dom’s attention. The one who he’d continued to see. The picky bastard had chosen him and that was a weird point of pride.

Yet Dom was the only man Shea had ever fallen in love with so maybe that meant something. He was trying not to read too much into that but, well … it did raise a lot of questions.

Because the term gay for pay was a little crass but maybe not inaccurate for him.

He’d certainly never looked at a man twice until he started getting paid for sex, and even after, he still thought of himself as being heterosexual. If he walked down the street, it was women who caught his eye. Women who turned his head.

But Dom … fuck, there was something about him.

No previous client or relationship had ever made Shea feel so seen.

Some clients preferred things to be businesslike and transactional. Some liked a more personal touch or to be swept up in a fantasy.

Most treated him with respect and the ones who didn’t were no longer clients, so it wasn’t that.

Dom certainly wasn’t the only client Shea had laughed with.

He’d held a few while they cried.

Under the right circumstances, it could be a very warm and real interaction.

But there was more to it.

Even his ex-girlfriend Keira, who had loved him and tried to commiserate when he talked about what he’d lost when he’d left hockey behind, had struggled to grasp what he was saying. But she’d never been on a path to going pro or elite in her field, so no matter how hard she’d tried, she’d never quite understood.

But Dom had.

Dom knew what Shea had gone through when his career ended. Knew how much of his identity had been wrapped up in being a player.

Knew how lost he’d been without that.

“Are you sure you don’t need to go to the hospital?” Audra asked, her tone skeptical. “You keep spacing out.”

“Ugh.” Shea rubbed his face again. “No. It’s not smoke inhalation. It’s been a weird day.”

“I’m sure.” She licked a stray droplet of wine from the rim of the glass. “Maybe you should let this be your sign from the universe to wrap up this arrangement with him. You don’t need the money anymore.”

“I know.”

After graduation, after Shea had been hired at the physiotherapy clinic, he’d stopped taking on new clients for sex and let others fizzle out. Eventually, he’d politely ended things with the few remaining clients who wouldn’t take the hint.

Save for one. The one he refused to stop seeing.

Sure, Shea made more money in sex work than he did in PT but he truly didn’t need to keep his arrangement going with Dom. Not for monetary reasons, anyway. He had no debt from school, his car was paid off, and he had reasonably healthy savings and investments for a twenty-eight-year-old.

Actually, he was doing better than most of the people his age. At least the ones he knew.

Audra was right, this was the perfect time to step away from the business completely. Except …

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