Page 43 of Blown

Jake sucked in a breath, checking the hall again, and knocked louder. “Rafe?” he called out quietly. “If you’re up, can you let me in so we can talk?”

He held his breath, listening. He even pressed his ear to the door to try to hear inside the apartment. He swore he heard movement of some sort, but it was faint and didn’t last long. It could have been Nally’s ghosts.

There was no point in trying anymore that night. Jake pulled back from the door and slumped down the hall, heavy with defeat.

He couldn’t keep going like this. This wasn’t the life he wanted to live. He hated the constant feeling of dread as he waited for his lies to catch up with him. He’d told so many, especially in the last ten years. It was a miracle that he still had any clout in the glass world. Hélène wasn’t the only person he’d pretended to know or the only name he’d slipped onto his resume and hoped no one would check up on.

His entire career was a carpet of exaggerations and outright lies. Rafe was right about him upstaging him in Corning. He’d pushed his way in front of so many other deserving artists to grab someone’s attention first because deep down, he believed he was shit and they wouldn’t notice him unless he snagged attention first.

It had to end. As he settled back in his flat, stripped out of his clothes, used the bathroom, then flopped straight into bed, he knew it had to end. The lies stopped now, and as soon as the sun came up, he would put as much effort into making things right with Rafe as a way to start the next chapter of his life as he’d put into concocting wild falsehoods to smooth over the pain that he’d spent his life desperately trying to bury.

The sun came up sooner than Jake was ready for. He’d barely slept at all and definitely didn’t feel rested enough to drop to his knees and beg Rafe’s forgiveness, but life rarely waited for the best moment before happening.

He dragged himself out of bed, showered and dressed, then made himself a cup of instant coffee. Instant coffee was an insult to the bean, but that seemed to be all that British households had in his experience. He couldn’t eat anything to go with it, and by the time he ventured out of his flat and began his search for Rafe, and maybe some knee pads and lip balm for all the groveling he knew he had to do, his stomach was sour and his nerves frayed.

He found Rafe way sooner than he expected. It was Saturday, which meant no classes at the arts center, since it was still summer, but as Jake walked into the front hall, wondering if the office would be open so he could use the coffee maker, Rafe was there.

They both stopped dead at the sight of each other. Rafe was walking out of the corridor on the other side with a box of something that must have been delivered the day before. He looked as rough as Jake felt. His eyes flashed with intense emotion for half a second before his expression turned guarded.

“Morning,” he muttered, then walked on toward the front door.

“Rafe, I’m sorry,” Jake jumped after him. He wanted to make his apology quickly and earnestly. “Can we talk?”

Rafe stopped just inside the door with a sigh. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before stepping to the side to set his box on a display table near one of the windows. “Fine,” he said, crossing his arms. “Talk.”

It wasn’t the reassuring start Jake had hoped for. Rafe was still angry. Whether anything he said would make the slightest difference depended on how angry.

Jake took things slowly, gathering his thoughts and really thinking about what he wanted to say as he closed the distance between himself and Rafe.

“I want to make things better between us,” he said, trying to keep himself calm and resist the urge to spin whatever tale he thought would bring Rafe back around to his side. He met Rafe’s steely eyes and went on. “I fucked up. Badly. I’m more sorry for that than you can know. I’m afraid to say anything because I don’t trust myself not to fall into old habits and make shit up to fix things. I don’t know what to do. I just know that I have to make things right, one way or another.”

He was seriously worried that he might throw up, the moment was so tense. Coffee had been a terrible idea.

Rafe drew in a breath, arms still crossed, just staring at him. Jake’s hands went numb. His lungs burned with the need to say something and expel air. His brain shuffled through a dozen different platitudes that might make Rafe smile again. He wanted to desperately to talk his way out of the situation. Anything would have been better than just standing there with Rafe watching him. But if he wanted to have a chance of proving himself to the man he was increasingly sure he loved, he had to say and do nothing.

Finally, after what felt like a decade, when Jake was about to crack, Rafe breathed in like he was going to say something.

He never had the chance to speak, though.

A knock on the front door snagged both of their attention, snapping the moment. They turned in tandem to find Hélène Rénard rapping on the front door’s window, then cupping her face to the glass and peering inside.

“Allô!” she called through the door. “Good morning. I see you. I have come to view your glass.”

FOURTEEN

Goddamn Jakefor playing with his emotions like a golden retriever thrashing around with its favorite toy in its mouth. Rafe twisted and ached with the emotions that welled up in him as Jake made his apology. The worst part of it was that as much as Rafe knew he should feel anger, betrayal, and frustration with the man, and he did, he definitely did, the emotion that bounded straight to the top of his confused insides was lust.

Fuck, but he wanted Jake so badly when he looked so vulnerable and needy the way he did just then. He wanted to throw him over the table, tear his clothes off, and do things to him that would probably make even Bax blush, what with all his past Pagan orgies which he swore he hadn’t had, even though everyone knew he was lying.

Instead of acting on those impulses, he waited, knowing that prolonged silence was the rope that Jake usually used to hang himself.

He didn’t. He stayed perfectly quiet, even though his eyes said everything. Rafe knew his fake fiancé well enough now to know that he desperately wanted to blurt out a string of whatever he thought Rafe would want to hear to try to make itbetter. The fact that he was fighting to do nothing, just waiting to see what Rafe had to say, was a colossal turn-on. One Rafe didn’t want, but couldn’t resist.

He was saved from doing something he would probably regret when Hélène Rénard, of all people, knocked on the arts center’s front door.

“What the bloody hell?” he murmured under his breath, then strode over to open the door.

“Good morning!Bonjour!” Hélène greeted them, stepping through into the front hall as soon as Rafe held the door for her. She threw her arms wide, then had to adjust the enormous, designer bag she had slung over her shoulder to keep it from falling. “I have arrived! Is this the Hawthorne House Arts Center?”

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