by Roni Loren
The thought scared the shit out of him. He should’ve never come here. He’d humiliated himself in front of Colby—well, Mr. Wilkes back then—once before, reading too much into things and making a fool of himself. That was enough for one lifetime. Plus, he knew that Colby had let him off easy tonight. They’d eaten at Waffle House in near-silence. But Keats had no doubt that the questions would come tomorrow. What Keats had done back then was unforgivable on so many levels. And Colby had taken heat for it even though the guy had done nothing wrong. Keats had seen the not-so-subtle references in the news coverage when everyone was looking for him back in Hickory Point. The young music teacher had fucked up and crossed lines with his poor, innocent student. Ha. If they’d only known the real story.
But now Keats was going to have to deal with the consequences if he stuck around. Fuck. That was the last thing he wanted to face. He eyed the neatly made bed in the middle of the room. The damn thing looked so fresh and inviting. Since he’d broken up with his last girlfriend a few weeks ago, he’d been back to paying week-to-week at the Texas Star Motel with the cash he made from the day labor jobs he picked up here and there. But tonight his ex’s punk-ass brother had caught up to him, demanding money she owed him. Keats hadn’t known Nina was running pills for her brother—or taking them. It’d been one of the reasons he’d broken it off with her. But now she was telling her brother, Hank, that Keats had taken off with her stash. And Hank wanted his grand back.
Hank and two other guys had cornered Keats earlier that day, catching him off guard. Keats knew how to fight, but he also wasn’t stupid enough to take on three dudes who were probably armed and amped up on crank. He’d handed over his rent money, and Hank had kindly offered to give him until Wednesday to make his next payment. Fucking psycho.
So now he had two days to come up with at least another couple hundred bucks for Hank and more for rent. And, of course, it’d rained this morning so the construction work he’d been picking up hadn’t needed guys today, which was why he’d resorted to his old standby of busking in the park. Playing his guitar was what he enjoyed most anyway. But until Colby had come along, he hadn’t earned enough to even pay for another week at the motel.
The cash he had made was tucked in his pocket. It was enough for one night at least. He could sneak out now and save himself the drama of tomorrow. It’d be a dick move, but he doubted Colby really wanted him staying there anyway. He’d taken him home out of guilt, like a stray. But if he left now, he would never know if Colby really planned on giving him five hundred bucks. That wouldn’t fix everything, but it could go a long way for him right now. And he didn’t have to do anything for it but sleep in a comfortable bed and have an uncomfortable conversation. That was worth it, right?
His stomach flipped over. Maybe not.
The smart thing would be to sneak out. Colby probably wasn’t going to give him the money anyway. He’d probably want to turn him in to the police as a former missing kid or something. Hell. No.
He got to his feet, planning to grab his shit and get out, when there was a knock on the door. His heart jumped in his throat at the sudden sound.
“Keats?”
Shit. He sent a quick plea to the universe that Colby hadn’t seen him standing in his doorway. “Uh, yeah, come in.”
The door opened and Colby stood on the other side, wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts, his hair still wet. His sheer size had always done something to Keats—a few inches taller than he was and broad as hell. But now that Colby wasn’t close shaven and had let his hair grow a little longer, the effect was even more potent—like an untamed version of the teacher he used to know. Add to it the hint of color in his face, warmth Keats knew was a post-orgasm glow, and Keats was completely fucking distracted.
Colby handed him a thick white towel. Clothes were folded on top of it. “I thought you might want to shower before bed. The guest bathroom should have shampoo and soap in the cabinet beneath the sink. Feel free to use whatever.” He nodded at the clothes. “Those are probably going to be too big, but the shorts have a drawstring, so you should be able to tighten them.”
“Thanks, you really don’t have to do this. I mean, I have some extra clothes in my backpack.” Though most of it was dirty. He had planned to go to the Laundromat this morning before his unfortunate run-in with Hank.
Colby frowned. “They’re probably wet from the rain. Leave them out here in the hallway and I’ll toss them in the wash. Then you’ll have your own stuff for tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to do my damn laundry,” he said, scraping a hand through his hair. Colby being nice to him was making him feel like an even bigger shitbag for wanting to sneak out. “I can handle things. In fact, I don’t even know why I agreed to come here.”
Colby leveled a gaze at him. “I don’t suggest you get any ideas about leaving tonight. We made a deal. I expect you to honor it.”
Keats turned away, his defenses rising in response to that don’t-fuck-with-me look Colby was so good at giving. “Like you’re going to give me five hundred bucks for nothing.”
“The house alarm is on,” Colby said, sounding tired. “So I’ll know if you try to leave. I don’t make a habit of holding people captive without their consent. But tonight, you gave me that right when you took my offer. I bought your time. Now it’s mine until morning. So take a shower, put your dirty clothes out here, and go to bed. You do that, and you’ll get the money you were promised. I don’t break my word.”
The way he’d said mine until morning had Keats’s traitorous brain spiraling down a forbidden path. He pushed the ridiculous reaction down and replaced it with a safer one—sarcasm. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? You keep people captive often?”
The corner of his mouth tipped up, revealing a dimple hiding beneath the scruff. “Never mind. Good night, Keats.”
Keats watched him stroll back down the hallway and grimaced. So much for his brilliant escape plan.
—
Colby leaned against his kitchen counter, sipping coffee and watching bacon fry. This was normally the time he’d be getting in to school to start his workday. But he’d apparently entered some other dimension. Not only did he have no job to go to this morning, but now he had a smart-mouthed houseguest sleeping the morning away in the other room.
Fucking Keats.
Colby had been so goddamned relieved to find out Keats was alive. But seeing this hardened version of him was difficult to stomach. The kid he’d known had been a gentle soul—smart and a little shy, talented as hell. The songs he’d written in high school had shown a depth and ability that Colby hadn’t seen in anyone that young since. But all of it had gone to shit because of stupid mistakes. Mistakes by Colby with how he’d handled things, how he hadn’t seen the warning signs that Keats was reading more into their time together than he should. Mistakes by Keats’s jackass father, who’d made it his mission to make his son feel worthless. And mistakes by Keats, who had run away instead of trusting the people who were trying to help.
Now where that gentle soul had been was a world-weary, angry guy who seemed to barely be getting by but was too mistrustful to accept any help from anyone. The whole thing made Colby want to punch something.
He flipped the bacon and heard movement behind him. Keats shuffled in, wearing only the shorts Colby had lent him. The sight jarred him for a second. He kept expecting to see the boy but kept finding a grown man there instead. The tattoos he’d noticed on Keats’s forearms last night went all the way up—full sleeves of colorful ink, framing a lean but defined torso. Colby cleared his throat and looked away. “Mornin’.”
Keats’s bare feet smacked over the ceramic tile and he pulled out a chair at the bar. “You’re going to burn that bacon. Heat’s too high.”
Colby glanced back at Keats and lowered the flame on the burner. “Bacon expert?”
He shrugged. “I wor
ked the griddle at a breakfast joint for a while. You ruin enough bacon, you learn the tricks. Low and slow.”
Colby grunted and turned back to the pan. “I usually microwave it, but I’m out of paper towels.”
“Microwave?” Keats’s chair scraped the floor, and he walked over to Colby, putting his hand out for the tongs. “I got it. You have any eggs?”
Colby was surprised to have his formerly hostile houseguest offering to take over breakfast, but he wasn’t going to complain. Cooking wasn’t exactly his strong suit. He handed over the tongs, grabbed a carton of eggs and some butter from the fridge, and dug a skillet out. Keats got the other pan going in no time, cracking the eggs one-handed.
Colby slid into the spot behind the bar to sip his coffee. Watching Keats from behind, his face obscured, made it easy to forget who was standing there. The tattoos alone were something to behold. They weren’t rush jobs; they were art. Expensive shit by the looks of it. From this distance, he couldn’t tell what all of it was, but he could see trailing music notes and scrawled words—probably lyrics if he knew Keats. Colby’s gaze traced over the words and lingered on the way Keats’s shoulder muscles moved as he shifted his attention between the pans—efficient, almost elegant. Colby forced his attention to his cup of coffee.
Having a half-naked guy in his kitchen wasn’t a new occurrence. Even though Colby tended to gravitate toward women more often than not, he’d figured out pretty early on in his life that he didn’t fit into a narrow lane when it came to sexual preference. It took him a little longer to figure out that besides attraction he only had two true requirements when it came to his bed partners—submissive and tough enough to handle what he liked to dish out. What was below the waist mattered a lot less to him than what was in someone’s wiring above the neck. That was what got his blood pumping.
But none of that mattered right now. Beyond the fact that Keats had declared he wasn’t into guys last night, this was Keats. A twenty-something-year-old guy he’d pulled off the streets. A former student. Off-limits.
Keats dished up a plate of eggs and bacon for them both and then stood at the counter to eat instead of taking the chair next to Colby.
“Thanks,” Colby said, stabbing a piece of scrambled egg with his fork. “This looks great.”
Keats poured himself a cup of coffee and dumped in sugar and a little cream. “No problem. I figured someone who microwaves bacon can’t be trusted.”
Colby smirked. “Are you still working as a cook?”
His gaze shifted down to his plate. “Nah, I quit the diner a while back when I got a gig at a tattoo shop. That was a good job—decent pay and the owner did my ink on the house. But then he got sick and they had to shut down, so lately I’ve been doing construction.”
They ate in silence for a few moments and Colby was trying to figure out how best to approach that looming elephant in the room when Keats pointed his fork at the window behind Colby. “So what’s with your neighbor?”
Colby glanced over his shoulder to see Georgia in her yard, picking through the remnants of the toilet paper he hadn’t gotten to yesterday morning. “What do you mean?”
He swallowed his bite of eggs. “Nothing, just saw you hightail it over there last night, figured I’d interrupted plans or something.”
“I was supposed to help her finish cleaning up, and I was going to bring burgers over but . . . got sidetracked last night.”
“By me?”
“Eventually by you. But by whiskey first. Had a shitty day at work.”
“How come?”
Colby pushed at his breakfast. “A student attempted suicide over the weekend.”
Keats flinched. “Sorry. He okay?”
Colby blew out a breath, not sure why he was sharing any of this with Keats but unable to stop. “Yeah, thank God. But I’ve been put on leave since I was the last one to counsel him. His parents want an investigation.”
“Counsel?”
Colby took another long sip of coffee. “Yeah, I’m a school counselor now. I went back for my master’s after . . . after I left Hickory Point.”
Keats’s head lowered and he picked at the food on his plate. They stayed quiet for a few more minutes until Keats shifted on his feet and cleared his throat. “You lost your teaching job because of me.”
Colby leaned back in his chair, the past pressing down on him with that, smothering him in the bright, airy kitchen. “No, I resigned. I knew the rumors wouldn’t stop. And really, I didn’t want to be there anymore anyway.”
Colby wouldn’t tell Keats that he’d been physically sick with grief for months, torturing himself with the constant what ifs, wondering what could have saved Keats, and knowing, deep in his gut, that he’d handled things all wrong. He’d seen too much of himself in Keats and had wanted to be there for him. But he should’ve known that offering that level of open conversation could be misconstrued by a confused kid. He hadn’t kept the boundaries clear enough. And that last night, when Keats had asked if Colby was bi, Colby had admitted that the rumors were true.
Looking back, it had been so inappropriate to share that. But he’d seen Keats tearing himself up for feelings and urges he was having, using his father’s hateful language as a constant internal soundtrack. He and his dad had had a huge fight that final night, and his father had threatened to send Keats to military school.
Besides the regular music classes at school, Keats had been taking guitar lessons two nights a week with Colby. But that final evening, he hadn’t shown up for his appointment at the rec center where they met. Late that night, he’d shown up on Colby’s doorstep instead, carrying his broken guitar. Keats’s father had smashed his son’s most precious possession against the wall.
Colby had made the fatal error of letting Keats inside. Keats had spilled everything about the fight with his dad. His father had found a sheet of lyrics Keats had written—a song called “Off Limits” that had made it sound like Keats was in love with a boy. His father had flipped his shit, called Keats every disgusting name in the homophobe handbook, and had told him he’d rather be dead than have a fag for a son. Even when Keats denied that the song had anything to do with that—that it was really about how everything he loved to do, like playing music, was off-limits—his father hadn’t listened. His dad wasn’t going to be satisfied until his artsy son turned into what he wanted—a tough-as-nails “man’s man” who would follow in his father’s and older brother’s footsteps into the Marines.
It had taken everything Colby had not to drive over to Keats’s house and beat the stupid out of Keats’s father. How could anyone look at Keats and not see how talented and amazing the kid was? But he’d controlled himself and had tried to be there for Keats as a sympathetic ear and to offer a safe place for him to express his feelings. But when Keats had asked him point-blank about his sexuality, Colby hadn’t been able to lie. Instead of saying that wasn’t an appropriate question to ask him, he’d been honest.
Colby had long suspected the kid was confused about his sexuality, and he’d wanted Keats to know that if he felt drawn to both guys and girls, he wasn’t alone, that it was okay to have the feelings he did. That being a “real” man had nothing to do with who you were or weren’t attracted to. But while Colby was busy trying to be Mr. Save the Day teacher, he’d been too stupid to realize that Keats’s confused feelings were a lot less hypothetical and a lot more personal. Not until Keats had leaned over to kiss him had Colby realized how wrong everything had gone.
And he’d handled the whole situation in the most immature and dangerous way possible, reacting out of fear, thinking of self-preservation first. He’d shoved Keats away and asked him to leave.
And Keats had. For good.
“So you left there and came here to be a counselor,” Keats said, breaking Colby out of his reverie. “Glutton for punishment?”
He huffed a quiet laugh. “Maybe.”
>
“And now you’re on leave because some kid tried to off himself?” Keats shook his head and ate his last bite of bacon. “I guarantee you they don’t pay you enough to be held responsible for the decisions of teenagers. I remember what I felt like back then. I didn’t know which way was up. No amount of talking or intervention would’ve made me change my mind about running away.”
“I don’t believe that,” Colby said. “I screwed things up that night. I should’ve handled it differently.”
“No.” Keats shook his head, his gaze shifting away from Colby’s. “You did what you needed to do so that you didn’t get tossed in fucking jail. I was messed up and terrified of what my dad was going to do. You were nice to me, listened to what I had to say, and seemed to give a shit. My head got all mixed up about it and I thought that maybe if I kissed you, you’d let me stay there and not send me back home. Plus, I think I needed to find out if what I was feeling was really attraction. You know, that maybe the reason I felt so out of place all the time was because I was into guys or whatever. But it was just reaching for straws.”
Colby considered him. “Was it?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. I haven’t wanted to kiss a guy—or do anything else with one—since.”
“So I scared you off guys for good. Good to know,” he said, trying to lighten the mood and chase away the dark memories.
Keats met Colby’s gaze for half a second. But whatever he had planned to say never made it out. He grabbed his plate and turned around to rinse it in the sink.
When he spun back around, he hitched a thumb toward the hallway. “Thanks for the breakfast. I’m going to grab my stuff and get out of here. You don’t have to pay me the money. You don’t owe me anything. Never did.”