Page 6 of Seeking Two Lovers

Grey tossed me a bottle of water and crashed in the other corner of the couch again. “So.”

“So,” I echoed when he didn’t continue.

“You okay?”

Goddamn him.

“I hate when shit gets riled up in my head,” I muttered, turning to peer out the living room wall of windows overlooking the Pacific.

“Want to talk about it?”

“You know I don’t,” I snipped.

“You always feel better after you do.” He pushed like always in his reasonable tone, the manipulative bastard.

“Did you like her?” I asked, ready to quit with the serious shit.

“Our hookup?”

I nodded, picking at the skin of my hands’ callouses. Work kept my body in prime shape but was hell on my palms.

“Willing hole,” Grey reminded me in his typical vulgar way.

“Someday, somebody is going to turn you inside out.”

He didn’t give me his usual spiel about never settling down.

I glanced over to find Grey studying my face. “What?”

He shook his head and guzzled water, breaking eye contact. Rarely was he the first to look away. The confident, cocky asshole took pleasure in making others squirm.

It was one of the characteristics that made him a good businessman. The fact he didn’t love anyone but himself was the icing on the cake.

Well, he had feelings for me to some platonic extent.

Enough that he’d dragged me across the country after we graduated from high school, saving me from hell.

His rich-as-fuck father had paid his way through college while I’d been gifted the second bedroom in the apartment Mr. Scott provided for his use. I’d labored in exchange for money for the first time in my life, soaking in the California sunshine and slowly learning how to deal with and somewhat move on from my childhood.

Shit still rose in my head like it did thanks to look-alikes and bits of religious rhetoric inadvertently caught on TV or radio, but at least I had my freedom.

Nine years and counting…no one from my life before had found me since I’d escaped.

I couldn’t imagine what I would do if my past ever caught up with me beyond in my mind. As a child, I’d learned the hard way that runaways, even those heard speaking of leaving, would be found and properly punished.

And having grown into a man, those promises, the results of rebellion I’d seen and experienced, made me want to shrink in on myself.

Weariness settled into my bones from the hell my mind had dealt with all night while trying to get off to show Grey my appreciation. He always put in the hard work to bring the woman home for us. I should have wanted to sink into the couch and not move, but my feet grew as restless as my mind.

I got up without a word and gave my muscles reason to flex so I wouldn’t feel the desire to escape even further than I’d done with my best friend. Fuck knew I wouldn’t find a safer haven than living with Grey.

Only a few dozen steps upstairs to the second floor I all but had taken over and I shut myself in my bathroom. A hot shower would help to calm me, be the final push to allow sleep once I laid down.

But true rest wouldn’t come.

It never did.

3

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