Page 78 of Counterpoint
When he got back to his cube, he fired off an IM to Jackson.Guess who’s putting out fires on Brada now?
Ah hell, man. That joker do you, too?
Didn’t have to ask who Jackson meant.Affirmative.
Beers? 6 PM?
Yes, please.Would ruin the workout, but so did stress. Adrian ran a hand over his face and checked his phone. Another text from Dominic.
I really appreciate it. You’re the best, Adrian.
He stared at the text, then set his phone aside, the tangle in his stomach pulling tighter and burning deeper.
Because he didn’t quite believe what Dominic had said. Felt more like placation than actual affection. Or his fucking job, hiswell enoughjob, was getting to him. Either or. Probably the job. God, he should take on some freelance job to have an outlet, but he had notimeright now.
Beer tonight with Jackson sounded fantastic, though. He really needed to get his head screwed on better.
Chapter Fifteen
After a Friday morning of putting out metaphorical fires for very real customers, Adrian itched to get the hell out of the office for lunch. Seemed everyone had the same idea, because most of the cubes he passed were empty, their occupants already having fled into a summer day that wasn’t hellishly hot for a change.
The weekend was nearly here, thank god. His work with the Brada team had been grueling and infuriating. The code was a disaster, and he’d worked late the previous night, even coming back to the office after snagging a beer with Jackson to get on top of it.
Today? He was gonna slack a little today.
He grabbed some kebabs from a nearby cart and ate while wandering up into Tribeca. While he preferred meandering through independent bookstores, he ended up in one of the big corporate types, along with a mix of tourists, students, and people who worked in the area. The new releases didn’t hold too much interest, but the magazines caught his eye. Sometimes they had good literature journals. And maybe there was some kind of history magazine he could buy for Dominic.
Worth a look.
Of course, they lumped all the arts together on the bottom shelves, so he ended up on his knees, sorting through some popular movie and music magazines to find what he was wanted. He picked out a few poetry journals and found a magazine on archeology. Perfect.
Right before he rose, a swirl of color half-hidden behind some drumming magazine caught his attention. It was a tattooed arm, so like Dominic’s he nearly dropped the magazines in his hand. But it couldn’t be.
Except...the more Adrian stared, the more he realized the tattoo wasn’t similar.
ItwasDominic’s arm, down to the knot-work on that shoulder. Had to be. Adrian knew every line and curve. Had traced them all with finger and tongue. He fished the magazine—one on rock music—out, and a band stared back at him.
Twisted Wishes. A group photo of the four members of the band, all of them in various poses.
And there were Dominic’s tattoos on a guy who didn’t look like the sweet, bookish man he talked about poetry with and took to museums and art galleries. Nor the man he’d fed cake and pie and ice cream. This man was shirtless and in leather pants. His dark eyes were surrounded by makeup, and that smirk was crimson red. But the designs on his skin—those were inked into the man Adrian fucked and loved and bound. The man who kept secrets and had fear in those same dark eyes when Adrian dug a little too deep.
Adrian’s heart tumbled over and over and over. This was the answer, what he’d been waiting for Dominic to tell him, except now heknew.
He’d been dating a fuckingrock starall this time and hadn’t known it. Been ignorant and foolish.
Something like anger zinged through him, and then embarrassment. He didn’t keep up with the music scene, hadn’t in years, and Dominic had walked in and taken every advantage of that.
Adrian gathered the magazines he’d collected, plus the one with Dominic on the cover, and took them to the counter to pay. On the walk back to his office, numbness set in. Why hadn’t Dominic told him? That tumbled around in his head, along with an image of Dominic from that rare moment the Sunday after their trip to the Met. Dom with his acoustic guitar, playing it inches from Adrian, after having tangled in the sheets. The gentle, beautiful sound, and that poised edge he’d had, eyes hooded, fingers moving like magic over the strings. The calm, centered look he’d had, the one that had melted into both joy and sadness when he’d smiled at Adrian.
There was more to this than deception. Therehadto be.
On the way back to his cube, he passed Jackson’s, then backed up. “Hey, Jack?”
His friend started, hands poised on the keyboard. “Yeah? What’s up?” His eyes were a little wider than normal, and there was a darker spot just under his collar—a bruise that hadn’t been there this morning.
“You, uh, have a good lunch?”
A smile broke out that Adrian hadn’t ever seen on Jackson before—at least not as wide and as sappy as this one. “Yeah. I did.”
