“Big surprise.” Healey tried to back away, but Diego stopped him. “Don’t retreat. It’s okay.”
“I think—” Healey bit his lip. “I might have trouble compartmentalizing you.”
“Unless you’re a flight attendant or a serial killer, I can’t see why you’d need to compartmentalize me.” Diego touched a button on his phone, and the overhead light dimmed to a soft, golden glow.
Much better—more romantic.
“I have the self-control of a honey badger in heat. Tell me now if there’s any place you don’t want me to touch, and I’ll respect your wishes. I just need to know. And I might fuck up. But not on purpose.”
Their eyes locked. Seconds felt like whole days. Diego slid slowly, sensually onto his back. Subtly provocative. Inviting.
He licked his lips. “Why don’t you point to something, and I’ll let you know if it’s off-limits or not.”
“Okay. But don’t try the ‘Ow!’ maneuver. Thanks to Shelby, and every rom-com ever, I’m wise to that.”
“I’ll make a note. No practical jokes.” Diego nodded. “Good to know.”
“Let’s start with the basics,” Healey muttered as he made his way to the foot of the bed to point at Diego’s big toe. “How about this?”
“You want to touch my toe?”
“I want to suck it. Ever since the first time I saw your naked foot, I’ve wanted to put my mouth on it, which is weird because I’m not usually a foot man, but, Christ. Just look at that gorgeous foot.”
Diego covered his eyes. “You are a mental case.”
While he swallowed his ire, Healey said, “Some people don’t have the first clue they’re talking to a dude whose life was recently torn apart by mental illness. You don’t have that luxury.”
Diego paled. “Christ, I’m sorry.”
“Not a big—”
“You’re right, though. And I’m sorry. It’s just something I say—a line from a cartoon. I never meant—”
Healey waited while Diego got all over himself backtracking from that.
“I won’t be saying it anymore, I guess.” Diego jammed a pillow under his head. “Are we ever going to do this?”
“Do what?”
“Get off?”
“We’re dating now. We’ve got all night.”
“You may have, but the clock is ticking on me. I like to sleep. Do you have any kind of plan?”
“Again with the plan.” Healey backed away. “You didn’t like groveling or begging and now I have to ask which body parts are off-limits one by one. My only plan is to hang in here until I come, no matter what.”
“Is talking foreplay for you?” Diego asked. “Are you getting paid by the word?”
“How would you like me to answer that?” Healey glanced over, all eyebrows and attitude.
“Honestly.” Diego’s tone didn’t allow for argument.
“It’s not foreplay.” Healey sat up and crossed his legs. “I talk when I’m nervous. I don’t want to fuck this up—”
“C’mere. It’s obvious we’re just going to have to get this over with.”
“Oh, because that’s sounds so—”
“Shut up.” Diego hooked his hand around Healey’s neck. “Let me get lube.”
Healey braced himself to anchor Diego when he leaned over to open the nightstand drawer. Diego’s quick nod reassured him he’d done the right thing. Plus, neither of them fell off the bed. Sometimes, Diego was like a dance partner. If Healey figured out his steps, then things went smoothly. If he tripped over his feet, then boom. Square one.
Diego withdrew a small bottle of a superior lube brand. At first, when Healey tried to take it from him, he didn’t let go.
“Don’t compartmentalize,” Diego said before his fingers loosened their grip. “It’s all yours.”
Healey nodded. “You’ll tell me if—”
“I will.”
Decision made, Healey wrapped his arms around Diego, delivering kisses and bites and licks to the side of his neck. “You smell delicious.”
“Stop talking now.”
“Okay.” Healey got his fingers on the waistband of Diego’s briefs. “Can these go?”
Diego nodded.
Healey helped him out of his briefs—on fire for all that tan skin. Muscles defined Diego’s chest, along with the sparsest line of hair arrowing down to a patch of trimmed pubic hair and a gorgeous, flaccid cock. He kissed the top of one foot, and then the other, and then climbed, taking turns, alternating his kisses between one leg and the other: arch, instep, ankle, shin, calf, knee. The back of the knee.
He laved all that warm soft skin. So vital. So vulnerable and undefended.
“I’m up here.”
Carefully, he lifted Diego’s foot so he could see. Kissing the instep again, he smiled.
“I’m earning your trust.”
“This is trust.” Diego’s voice shook with emotion. “You have no idea.”
“I think I do.” Healey took his time kissing the rest of his way up Diego’s legs. “Thank you.”
The inside of Diego’s thigh got special attention. Healey fondled his balls. He even got a reaction from Diego’s dick, which surprised him.
“You get hard?” he asked.
Diego nodded. “Physical contact with my cock. Sometimes fabrics or rolling over a bump in the sidewalk . . . one time I was holding a cat. I’d rather not go there.”
Healey leaned over and whispered, “Roll over?”
Diego started the process of shifting his body. After a few seconds, Healey asked, “Need a hand? I’ve only got one, but it’s yours if you need it.”
“It will be quicker if you position my legs.”
He helped Diego as casually as he could. “Sure.”
Before he could pull away, Diego gave him a kiss that lasted until he couldn’t catch his breath. Healey was dizzy when they broke apart. Diego caught his jaw.
“But for future reference, unless I ask you to,” said Diego, “don’t move me.”
Healey promised he’d never do such a thing, all the while reaching for the lube. He probably would have promised to hold his breath forever and drink the ocean too, he wanted Diego so badly. He was too desperate, almost sick with wanting him.
Two more of those devastating kisses and it might be too late for the lube. Finding a position Healey could manage proved difficult. Between his arm and Diego’s circumstances, they’d probably require stacks of pillows . . . but . . . oh yes. He let out a groan of satisfaction when his slicked-up dick slipped between Diego’s thighs.
There was no wrapping Diego in his arms. No long, passionate kisses to lead up to slow lovemaking. No penetration of any kind. Just a lubed dick and some friction. Impersonal and a little perfunctory, it still proved too much for him. Healey froze, indecisive for one terrible moment, before he jerked twice and shot his load.
“I’m sorry. Wow. I’m so sorry.”
“For what?” Diego had to torque his body around to see Healey’s face. “Premature ejaculation?”
“Yes. Shit.” Healey’s head spun. “Oh God. I have ED now too.”
“Shut up,” Diego said affectionately. “You do not.”
“That’s never happened before. Wait. That’s what everyone with ED says, isn’t it? But no, you’ll say that it isn’t and—”
“Healey.” Diego rolled to his side and cuddled against him.
“It’s a normal thing, though, right? It happens?” Healey clutched at the idea. “Sure it does. I’ve been through a traumatic incident. Plus, I’m not exactly at one hundred percent, physically. You know?”
“Heals.”
“Only my family calls me that.” Healey bounded out of bed to pace. “Oh my God. I have ED. I’m too young to have ED.”
“Healey Holly.” Diego used a tone of voice Healey’d never heard from him before. “Stop.”
Before Healey could get to the switch on the wall, Diego changed the lighting with his phone. Healey didn’t want to turn around.
Even in the fading light, he felt aglow with jizz, as if he was standing underneath the searchlight of a police helicopter, dripping with bioluminescent spooge.
“Come here,” Diego ordered.
After the lights dimmed to almost nothing, Healey returned to the side of the bed.
Diego patted the mattress next to him. “You are just ridiculous when you’re nervous.”
“I am,” Healey admitted before sitting down.
“You also talk too much.”
Healey’s gaze headed heavenward. “To be fair, I only really do that when it becomes necessary to take a position on a subject that matters a great deal to me because I have to thoroughly consider all the potential outcomes—” One look at Diego’s face and he clammed right up.
“You get nervous when you take tests.” As Diego reiterated this, he ran a finger idly over Healey’s stomach, gathering a sizable glob of his come on one finger before sucking it into his mouth. Healey couldn’t take his eyes off that finger. Or that mouth.
No compartmentalizing here. Healey liked the whole goddamn package. Diego lit him up inside and overwhelmed him and subsumed him.
“I repeat.” Diego’s come-hither smile melted Healey’s spine. “This is not a test.”
Healey’s eyes snapped open at exactly 3 a.m., according to his phone. For a microsecond, he didn’t know where he was. Didn’t recognize the man lying next to him. Physical sensations, too, seemed strange. Cast on one arm, aching body, muscle pain, stiffness. Then reality poured over him—the levee holding back his memories failed, and everything came rushing in.
Diego knew about the accident.
He’d been able to find out what happened between him and Ford with relative ease. And he probably thought Healey’s secretive behavior, his reluctance to talk about the case and the past, were due to the trauma of the event or the gag order. But neither was precisely true.
Guilt and grief flooded his heart.
The night of the accident was still so very clear in his mind. He’d missed every sign that Ford was spiraling out of control. He hadn’t seemed secretive. He hadn’t appeared erratic or anxious. He hadn’t been extra talkative or unusually silent or obviously self-medicating. Healey’d been so caught up with his own worries, with defending and graduation, he missed troubling behavior on Ford’s part.
Then again, maybe Ford had simply gotten brilliant at hiding his paranoia . . .
The end result? Healey let everyone down, especially Ford.
“What’s got you thinking so hard?” Diego’s voice was a sleepy diesel-rumble, like a bus engine starting up.
“Ford. I forgot for a minute and everything was all wrong.”
Diego went oddly still. “What’s that mean, ‘everything was wrong’?”
“The light. The room, the furnishings, the bed. I woke up just . . . lost for a minute.”
Diego’s let his body fall back. “Better now?”
“Sure,” Healey lied. “But it’s late. You sleep. I’ll see myself out.”
Diego nodded and turned away. “Night.”
Healey leaned over and kissed Diego’s temple. “Pleasant dreams, hot stuff.”
A small smile found its way to Diego’s lips. “You too, when you get to bed.”
Healey picked up his discarded clothing before stepping into Diego’s bathroom to dress. Turning around, he saw again the changes to Shelby’s little room—changes that didn’t seem benign in the cold, predawn stillness.
The feeling of uncertainty he’d woken up with, the eerie sense of things not being right, persisted.
A new homeowner could erase his family’s tracks and paint over their personal touches, negating their ownership of the house, but now it felt like someone was trying to erase their past in Bluewater Bay altogether.
But that wasn’t fair, was it? The closet where Shelby had scrawled her schoolgirl crushes on the wall was still there. Diego wasn’t that guy. He wasn’t trying to erase anything. He was trying to build something new for himself, and it wasn’t fair to impose old memories and sentimental garbage on him, any more than it was fair for Healey to blame himself for what happened with Ford.
God. He had to stop doing that. No good could come of second guessing that awful night.
On the way out, he stopped for a glass of juice. The picture on the fridge intrigued him. Diego and his mother, who had almost identical lovely, intense dark eyes. She looked barely old enough to babysit him. Another picture showed Diego as a stocky kid with his arm around a road-weary dog.
Photos had been piled in neat stacks on the counter by Diego’s fax machine—Diego, at various kid milestones. Always with his mother. Always smiling and happy and posing. It gave Healey the shivers to think of them—if it was just the two of them—so vulnerable to the world. Healey was a pack animal. His need for community, for tribe, had never been so clear to him as it was after Ford’s arrest.
Healey needed a network of family and friends. He reached out to people when he was lost or lonely. He always had done.
Who did Diego have, now that his mother was gone?
Did he need someone? Not everyone did. And some people had family and it didn’t matter, they could take them or leave them at will. That’s the first thing he’d learned from Ford.
Some people got pushed from the nest, and they were expected to fly. If they didn’t want to fly, or for some reason they couldn’t, then they fell. Splat.
Some families practiced a ruthless kind of social Darwinism—even among their own offspring.
Was Diego from one of those?
No. The evidence—the photos—all showed a loving mother and her respectful, caring son. This wasn’t about Diego.
The feeling Healey couldn’t shake, of wrongness, of being out of sync, out of touch with everything important to him, only got worse the more he worried about it.
He’d come home to find answers.
He’d thought he would find them in Bluewater Bay, but he’d only found more questions. Now, he’d gone and let himself get distracted.
Diego was a magnificent distraction—no doubt about it. In fact, Diego was well on his way to being more than a distraction. Diego was like playing the best kind of video game—the kind where the rules changed with every encounter. Diego could become an obsession.
There’s a problem when the distraction becomes as important as the mission.
Healey’d come home to find his center. Instead, he’d run into a whole new set of balls to juggle. He’d moved on too fast. The past hadn’t quite let go of him, and until it did, he shouldn’t confuse things by starting something new.
Not that he believed Diego was “starting” anything with him.
They were fucking.
That’s all it was and that was absolutely fine.
Probably, Diego hadn’t found his center yet, either. He’d lost his mobility. His mother had passed. He’d had to give up a job that was important to him—maybe Diego had some grieving to do, as well. Healey looked back toward the bedroom. He pictured returning to bed. Remembered his dad, hoping for the best with Christine. Relived the smile on Ford’s face when he’d produced the G26—the Baby Glock—out of fucking nowhere and started firing out the driver’s-side window.
With a shaking hand, Healey jotted a note for Diego to call him.
He signed it with a smiley face, and left.
“Night.”
That sounded normal, didn’t it? His voice hadn’t had a catch in it when he said it, or . . .
He’d been half asleep, for fuck’s sake. Healey’d said he was thinking about Ford and he was leaving, and Diego had said, “Night.”
“Okay.” Diego spoke the word several minutes after Healey closed the front door.
No reason to feel especially vulnerable.
It locked automatically. “Okay.”
Diego lay back with his eyes closed. His body felt . . . full. Energized. Alive.
His only bruise, a deliberate love bite to the tender skin inside his upp
er arm, throbbed. It ached just right if he lay with his hands behind his head, so of course he did. And every time he felt the slight, sweet sizzle of pain, he thought of Healey’s mouth, Healey’s teeth, Healey’s mesmerizing blue eyes, and the way Healey’s lashes swept down to hide his unhappiness when he left.
“I woke up and everything was all wrong.”
Healey’s first thought was for Ford.
Diego would have argued, even pleaded, with him to stay, except for that.
The memory set off a depth charge inside Diego, breaking him open in some new way, unearthing a hidden trove of grief and rage.
He would not be left behind again.
In his ignorance, he’d believed a few nights with Healey couldn’t hurt. He’d believed Healey could walk away and he’d be fine. He could walk away too, after all. Roll away.
Yet when Healey did that very thing, he got butt-hurt and cranky and . . .
Back when he’d talked to the doctors and the physical therapists, they said he’d have to “accept” a new normal. Full stop. He’d met with the occupational therapists, the advocates, the allies, and yes . . . he’d even talked to some of the new-age quacks, and he’d come away with the determination to “define” his normal for himself. He’d been in control of his normal since, and he’d never looked back.
This wasn’t normal, “new” or otherwise. No one could call this normal, to be so hung up over a guy he’d only just met.
Nothing from his experience—neither his outsider childhood nor his days filming the news—offered relationship guidance. The key to his entire existence before the accident, his secret, his most basic survival skill was dodging disaster.
“Get up, papi, we have to go now.”
“It’s cold.”
“I know, baby. Pull up your hoodie. Look what I made you. See? Like Slytherin.” Green and gray felt, stitched clumsily together, cut on the ends to resemble fringe. She had a similar felt scarf in Ravenclaw colors.
Be ready to move. Be spontaneous. Be crafty. Be mobile.
Be able.
Be able is fine, Mami, but what if the world throws a great big Impedimenta! in your way? Or a Crucio! His sad little laugh spilled over again. There was no way to keep it in. He was losing his fucking mind.
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