Page 28 of Depths of Desire
By the time we hit the main highway, the last of the snow had turned to slush. I rolled down my window an inch and let the cold air in. It helped clear my head. Maybe a little too much.
Lennox said something about the interstate being clean all the way home. I nodded. That was good. It meant we’d be there before dark. Back to reality. Back to the plan.
Neither of us said much more after that. There wasn’t anything that needed saying. What would I say, anyway? “Don’t wait for me.” That was stupid. It presumed that he was yearning for more of me. In reality, Lennox had gotten exactly whathe had wanted, and so had I. Brilliant, blazing, devastatingly passionate, and, most importantly, temporary.
It was when he pulled up before my house in the early afternoon that we sat in the silence for a few moments. We didn’t need to, but a sort of reluctance came over me. Just a few paces away was the entrance to my parents’ house. Snips waited inside, my parents, too, and a life I had left behind like a broken and glued vase you didn’t want to throw away.
Even if I had the time for it, even if he wanted it, even if stars aligned, where would I bring him? I saw my parents so clearly in this moment, the memory fresh as if it had just happened. It wasn’t so bad. Not the way I heard horror stories of guys coming out and getting thrown out of their homes. My parents didn’t say anything nasty. They didn’t say anything at all. I had video called them to break the news before the tabloids could, and I saw the way their cheekbones dropped a little when I uttered the fateful words. “Thank you for telling us,” Mom had said, and Dad had cleared his throat.
After that, nothing. When we spoke, it didn’t come up. When I visited, it was life as usual. Snips asked, of course, but she was smart enough to do it when we were alone and young enough to ask all the wrong questions. “So, are you dating? Is he handsome? I bet he’s blond.” Yet my parents never mentioned it again. It was as if I hadn’t come out, and the news hadn’t spread. It was as if this part of my life was irrelevant—worse, nonexistent.
Was that a place where I would want this cheerful, smiling guy to enter? To have dinner with people who would do everything in their polite power to pretend I’d brought home a buddy, not a lover? Hell no.
But it didn’t matter. We weren’t lovers, and we had no time to become lovers.
“Well, thanks for the…everything,” I said, gesturing vaguely.
Lennox shot me his signature grin, the kind that melted the frost from the corners of the windshield. “My pleasure.”
Mine, too, I thought, then got out of the car and picked up my duffel from the back seat.
Lena’s room was upstairs, and the curtain dropped over the window as I glanced at it. The car slowly pulled away and glided into the distance before disappearing around a corner.
The front door swung open, and my little sister planted her hands on her hips. “You’re late.”
Seeing her warmed up something in me that I thought was dead by now. “Snips,” I said, a smile stretching my lips uncontrollably wide. I crossed the front lawn in four long strides and dropped my duffel inside the house, then thrust my arms forward, wrapping them around Lena and lifting her into a hug. She was tall like our parents, but still half a foot shorter than me, and she was light as a feather. “We gotta get some food into you.”
Lena scoffed as I planted her back on the floor. “Not your bland chicken, thank you.”
“It’s protein. We like protein. It’s our friend.” My tone rang knowingly as I stepped inside the house and shut the door. “Where are they?”
“Out. They almost dragged me to their date with the Richardsons, but I knew you had to be close,” Lena said, leading the way into the large open living room. It was spotless as always, not a thing out of place and not a speck of dust on the obsessively polished surfaces. My parents were a team, that much was for sure. Dad vacuumed, polished the floors, and dusted every surface whenever there was a single mote of dust in the air. Mom was the same, but her priority was always to put everything in its designated place. They were people who loved order and neat things. I’d half expected them to put labels on Lena and me growing up. Turns out, they weren’t fond of labels if they didn’t conform to theirperfectly normalexpectations.
“Date?” I asked.
“What do you call afternoon cheese and wine tasting?” Lena asked.
“Torture chamber in the deepest circle of hell, if I had to call it anything,” I admitted.
Snips laughed aloud and dropped into an armchair that swallowed her wiry frame whole. “I missed you, Big O.”
I stood by the fireplace to chase away the chills from that short walk across the lawn. The tree was decorated so perfectly that it lacked even a hint of inspiration or creativity. The entire place looked like it was picked up from a catalog. The socks hanging from the mantel didn’t have a single loose thread.
“How did getting snowed in go?” Lena asked.
I glanced at the fire, suppressing the flood of flashbacks, the echoes of Lennox’s panting, the blazing movement of his fingers along my back, and the life-ruining sensation of his body coiling under mine in ecstasy of pleasure. “Ten out of ten. Strongly recommend.”
“Mm, I wouldn’t hate spending extra time with Lennox Ellery,” Lena said.
I snorted.
“What?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” I said in a hurry. My snort was perhaps a little too contemptuous.You’re barking up the wrong tree, Snips, my snort had said loud and clear. “Not sure if Lennox is that kind of guy, Snips, that’s all.”
“Mm, Summer said the same thing,” Lena mused.
I frowned at my sister. “She did?” Lennox hadn’t come out. I remembered him saying that.
