by Tinnean
“Why? What did I do?” The bastard was a good actor, I’d give him that, with that little-boy-lost look on his face….
“You….” If I didn’t know him for the two-timing, cheating… cheater that he was, I’d have bought it in a heartbeat. I throttled the rage and pain that threatened to come pouring out. I couldn’t tell him his betrayal had cut my heart to ribbons, couldn’t let him see how he’d hurt me. I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. I shrugged again. “You didn’t do anything. That’s the problem.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have changed. I will change.”
“No.” I wasn’t going to set myself up for more hurt. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. “It’s too late for that. I’m used to variety.” I was a pretty damn good actor too. I should get an Oscar for this performance. “I… I need some excitement in my life.”
Tim stifled a snort, and I glared at him.
“You want excitement?” Wills’s tone was like ice, and I turned to say something that would rub my past in his face.
The words never got past my lips. One minute I was about to pour scathing, hateful words on him, and the next, I was on my ass on the floor, blinking back tears of pain. My nose throbbed, and I brought my sleeved arm up to catch the blood seeping from it. I stared at Wills in utter shock. He’d never once raised a hand to me, not in the months we’d been together, not even when I’d broken up with him over his answering machine.
Cris and Tim both attacked. They knew how to fight, and they knew how to fight dirty. That was how they went at Wills now, coming at him from both sides, lashing at his groin, his kneecaps, his kidney…. Oh, God, his kidney with only partial function.
I whimpered and wanted to cover my eyes, not wanting to see the damage they did to him, but I couldn’t. I watched in sick fascination.
It didn’t take long, not more than a matter of minutes, but when it was over, Cris was on his knees, doubled over, gasping for breath. Tim was against the bar, cradling his side where Wills had struck him with the flat of his shoe, and Wills, pale and shaking, looked at his hands in horror.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” His lips twisted, and he turned toward me. I didn’t think to flinch away from him. “You didn’t have to run, Theo. I would have… I’ll get my things out of our… your apartment.” His eyes muddy with the pain I’d been eager to inflict, he turned away.
“Just a second, Whitebread!” Tim straightened, grabbed his arm, and jerked him around. He was going to punch Wills; I had no trouble seeing that. I could also see that Wills was going to let him, but instead of throwing a punch, he touched Wills’s cheek. “You’re cryin’.”
What?
“No.” Wills jerked his head away. “I never cry.” But tears were spilling down his cheeks.
“Did you hurt him, Tim?” I demanded.
“No, I think you did that, Sweetcheeks.”
“Stop calling him that. Look, if you’re gonna punch me, punch me. It’s a long drive to DC, and I—”
Tim clenched his hand into a fist.
“Don’t you hit him, Tim!” I scrambled to my feet and threw myself between the two men, glaring at Tim over my shoulder. No one hit Wills.
Tim arched an eyebrow. “I had a feelin’ you were a trifle overemphatic about wantin’ this guy out of your life.”
“Shut up.” I pretended to find the blood on my sleeve interesting.
“Here, babe.” Wills handed me a handkerchief, and I mopped up the blood still trickling from my nose.
“Are you gonna forgive him?” Tim asked me, kneading his side.
“Forgive me? What for?”
“I thought….” I raised my gaze to his. “I know it’s stupid, but….”
“If it’s bothering you enough to break us up, it isn’t stupid.” Wills ran a palm over his cheek and blinked, obviously surprised to find it wet. He patted his pockets for a handkerchief, but I had it, and it was covered with blood.
“Here.” I took a napkin from the stack on the bar and gave it to him.
“Thanks.” He dried his face. “Now, please, babe. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I thought….” I had to look away, the expression on his face was so earnest. “I thought you were cheating on me.”
“Y’see? It isn’t….” My words sank in. “You thought what? Never mind. That is stupid! Is that why….” Color left his cheeks. “Jesus, that was why you were sniffing me?”
“What?”
“Last night, after I got home… I thought it was so hot, but… but you just wanted to see if I had another man’s aftershave or cologne on me?”
What was he talking about?
“Theo, why?” There was such pain in his voice. “Have I ever done anything that would make you think I wanted someone else?”
I’d succeeded in hurting him, better than I’d ever dreamed, although I hadn’t intended it with that action—even though I hadn’t washed his pillowcase, his scent on it had become faint, and I’d needed to have it in my nostrils after such a long time.
“You could have wanted a woman again,” I said quietly, reluctant to let him know how needy I’d been. As a bisexual, he always had that option. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t understand why you’d think I’d cheat on you. I love you.”
I cleared my throat. “Love has nothing to do with it.” Plenty of men who claimed to love their partners had been in my bed. Some of them had even shown me pictures when they’d taken out their wallets to pay me.
“That’s right.” Cris had finally caught his breath, but he staggered a bit as he rose to his feet and crossed to Tim. “You okay, babe?”
“Yeah. I’ll live. How about you?”
“I’ll live.” Cris grinned at me, but it was more a grimace. “Y’see, Sweet….” Wills gave him a look that dared Cris to call me that one more time, and he raised his hands in surrender. “He never told us his real name.”
But once I’d retired, hadn’t I…. No, I guessed I never had—maybe in an effort to keep my past separate from the shining future that had appeared to be within my grasp? And obviously Paul hadn’t told either. I sighed. “It’s Theo.”
“You forgot one important thing, Theo,” Cris continued, directing his cold stare at Wills. “We all cheat sooner or later. We’re guys.”
“I haven’t cheated!” Wills snapped, his frustration evident.
Tim turned to glare at Cris, his eyes narrowed and his lips in a tight line. “You cheated on me?”
“Now, Timboy—”
“Don’t you ‘Timboy’ me!” He held up his hand, with the gold band on his ring finger, then grabbed Cris’s, with its matching ring. “I thought you knew what would happen—”
“I didn’t cheat. I was just trying to point out….”
“They can sort out their own problems.” Wills stepped close, into my personal space. His breath was warm on my face. “Theo, I didn’t cheat on you.”
“You were gone for four weeks.” I cringed at the childish words.
“I was given strict instructions not to contact anyone.”
“Even me?”
“I’m sorry, babe, but no one.”
“But Vince said—”
“He wasn’t there to countermand those orders. I had no choice. I’m sorry,” he said again.
“Why would it matter to Huntingdon?” I shook my head. “The point is, you were gone for four weeks.”
He blinked in confusion. “So?”
“I know you, Wills.” I folded my arms across my chest. Maybe I was ready to forgive him, maybe I wasn’t. “We’ve had sex two and three times a night since you moved in with me. Sometimes even more.”
“And you think I couldn’t keep it in my pants for a month? Does that mean you’ve been screwing around?”
I started choking. “No!” I hadn’t had sex with anyone but him since the night he’d walked into the ED. “I just thought…. Well, someone with your sex drive wouldn’t be able to last four weeks withou
t getting laid.”
“Someone with my sex drive? Are you mental, Theo?”
“I’m not mental,” I said resentfully. No, I wasn’t ready to forgive him. “Since we’ve met, you’ve had a steady diet of sex. You can’t stop cold turkey.”
“I did give my right hand a workout. And every time I came, it was your name I moaned.”
Okay, that explained the less than copious amounts of come when we’d made love, I conceded to myself.
“Before I met you, I was too involved with work to have more than a random one-night stand here and there. I didn’t get much out of them, so I stopped. And then I met you. Theo, did you think I was kidding when I said I loved you? If I can’t have you, I don’t want anyone else.”
“Really?” Okay, I was definitely going to forgive him.
“Geez, Theo. You can be such an asshole!” He fisted his hands on his hips. “Do you know what yesterday was?”
I started to say “Wednesday” automatically, but then I stopped and thought about it. “It was a year since we met.” Since he’d walked into the ED behind Vincent.
“Yes. But more than that, it was a year since we became lovers.”
My jaw dropped. He remembered the actual date?
“What? Did you think I’d forget the night you popped my cherry?”
“You took Whitebread’s cherry?” Trust Tim to overhear that, even in the middle of a quarrel with his own lover. Cris looked interested too.
Wills turned bright red and groaned. “Having succeeded in embarrassing myself….” He closed his hand around my arm and dragged me to the far end of the bar. I liked the feel of his hand on me, but then he let me go. He propped one hand on his hip and ran the other through his hair. “Look, Theo. If you want to count it from the day I moved in, then fine, that’ll be our anniversary, but as far as I’m concerned, we’ve been together since a year ago yesterday.”
“You were out of town. I didn’t think you remembered.” Shit, it had slipped my mind.
“But I sent you flowers….”
“Yes. The flowers.” I scowled at him. He had to remind me what started the whole fucking mess. “Guys send flowers when they’ve done something dumb and they want to make up for it.”
“And you’d know this how?”
“I’ve had clients who called the florist while they were still in bed with me.” Being the realist that I was, I’d known some of the men who’d used my services were married—okay, maybe more than some of them—and while back in the day I’d been blasé about it, now it hurt like hell.
“I’m not a fucking client! Theo, I sent you flowers because I love you and it was the anniversary of something that meant a lot to me.”
“Maybe that’s so, but… but what about the note? ‘I’m sorry. Forgive me. I was a fool.’”
“What? That’s not what I told him to put on the card!”
Did he think I was illiterate? Irritated, I fished the card from my pocket and threw it at him. “Here. Read it for yourself.”
He caught it, stared down at the damning words, then looked up in some confusion. “But this isn’t what I told him to put on the card. It was supposed to say….” Abruptly, that cold look returned. “Y’know what? Fuck it. I’ve done nothing this whole year to make you think I would even look at someone else, and yet you’re willing to believe that I’d fuck any warm body just because you’re not around?”
Why wouldn’t he? There were so many men who were younger, who weren’t as used….
“We… we don’t do that in my family,” Wills said. The cold look was gone, and his eyes were shiny with unshed tears. He turned away. “I’m going back to DC.” His voice broke, but he continued in spite of it. “It’ll… it’ll take me a while to get my stuff together, but I’ll be out of there as soon as I….” There was defeat in the line of his shoulders. He had lost all hope. He was giving up on us, walking out on what we had.
What we had.
“Wills.” I caught his arm, bringing him to a halt, but he refused to face me. I moved to stand directly in front of him and turned his face toward me. “What was the note supposed to say?”
He finally looked into my eyes. “It was supposed to say ‘Thank you for giving me the most wonderful year of my life.’”
“Really? I gave you the most wonderful…. Really?”
“Really. I love you, and….” A single tear spilled over, but before he could brush it away, I caught it on my fingertip.
This was what we had, that Wills loved me and I loved him. I kissed the rest of his words from his mouth, and he sighed and closed his arms around me, holding on tight. His shoulders shook under my hands, and I stroked and petted him.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”
“Just please don’t do this to me again.”
“No. I won’t. It’s just….” I caressed his cheek, and he turned his face into my palm, kissing the scratches left by the rose thorns.
“It’s not easy for someone in our business to have a relationship with someone not in our business.” Tim joined us, still favoring his side.
“I don’t care what Theo used to do. And I won’t cheat on him.” Wills burrowed his head against my neck, and I could feel his lashes as his eyes closed and the warmth of his breath as he yawned. “Sorry. Thought I was gonna lose you, babe. Been driving all night to get here.”
“It doesn’t take that long to drive to Savannah from DC.”
“Traffic. Accidents. Construction. Fog.”
“You look like shit, baby.”
“Thanks so much. I haven’t slept in….” Another yawn cut off his words.
“C’mon. I’ll put you to bed. You guys can have lunch without me,” I said over my shoulder. I took Wills’s hand and led him toward the stairs that went up to the second floor. “Tim and Cris live up here. Tim put us up in his spare bedroom.”
“‘Us’?”
“Miss Su and me.”
“’M glad you didn’t leave her. I didn’t get in until late.”
“But you promised to come home early.”
“I know. I’m sorry, something came up at work.” Didn’t it always? “Theo, you’re coming home with me?”
“Yes. After you get some sleep. I’ll even spell you on the drive home.”
“No one drives the Dodge.”
“Then I’ll find another way to make the drive pass quickly.”
“We gonna play ‘I packed my bags to go to Grandma’s’?”
“I had singing ‘Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall’ in mind, but….”
“Anything but that!” He grinned but sobered quickly. “Theo, I’m sorry I punched you in the nose. I didn’t break it, did I?”
“No. You must have pulled your punch.”
“I never pull my punches.”
“You don’t?” I’d seen what he had done to Tim and Cris. If he hadn’t pulled the punch he’d thrown at me, my nose would have been a flattened pancake remnant of itself. He looked insulted, though, so I smiled at him and patted his shoulder. “If you say so.” I opened the door to the kitchen. “Miss Su, look who’s here!”
She came tearing into the room and leaped into his arms with a single bound.
He laughed, but, oh, Jesus, he sounded so tired. “Hello, Miss Su. Did you miss Daddy?”
“Mrrow.” She purred and purred, ran her sandpaper tongue over his cheek, and rubbed her head against his chin.
“She isn’t the only one who missed you, Wills. I’m sorry. I was so stupid. I just thought—”
“The only thing you should think is that I love you. I’ll always love you.”
“It feels like forever since I’ve kissed you. May I?” I felt I had to ask permission.
“Oh, God, yes! Please! Kiss me, Theo!” He fit so well in my arms.
“Mrrow!” Miss Su had gotten caught between us.
“Sorry, Miss Su.” I backed up a step, took her from him, and set her down on the floor. She shook herself vigorously, gave us a reproachfu
l glance, then sat with her back to us and began to groom a hind leg. I laughed but barely had time to straighten before Wills was in my arms again. His lips trembled under mine, and his taste filled my mouth as he parted them willingly. It was like coming home.
We were both panting as if we’d finished a marathon when I finally released his lips, and I was hard and aching, but he yawned again, and I knew that, while he’d let me have him, he’d be too tired to enjoy it.
There would be time later.
He swayed a bit and mumbled, “You said something about putting me to bed?”
“Yes. My bedroom is right this way.” I took his hand, and he let me usher him down the hall.
“Nice room.” His eyes were closed, and I laughed and closed the door.
“It’s nicer now that you’re here. I’m so sorry….”
“It’s done, behind us. Forget about it.” He took off his suit jacket, his movements sluggish.
I’d never forget, and I’d never let him regret coming after me. “You’re falling asleep on your feet, babe.”
“Like hearing you call me ‘babe.’ Didn’t think I was ever gonna hear it again.”
“Oh, Wills….” I bit my lip to keep it from quivering. “Let me help you get your clothes off.”
“Thanks.” He stood motionless as I unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it back off his arms.
“Your chain.” It hung from his neck, the charm over his heart.
“My chain.” Wills closed his fingers around it, a tender smile on his lips. He opened his eyes and stared into mine.
“Oh, babe.” I stripped him to his shorts and undershirt, pulled back the bedspread, and caught him before he tumbled face-first onto the bed. “Easy does it.” I eased him down onto it.
“’M wiped out.” He rolled over onto his stomach. “Don’ let….” His words became slurred. “… sleep… long.”
“Go to sleep.” If he’d driven all through the night, then he’d been up for more than thirty hours. I shed my clothes, leaving them on the floor next to his. I’d see that he slept as long as he needed to.
