by A. M. Arthur
“Found it,” he announced upon his return to the main room.
“Hope you didn’t hurt yourself.” Tate’s words were soft, but they carried in the quiet store.
Jonas liked the snark. Made needling the guy more fun, and it gave him something more entertaining to do than stare at racks of used women’s clothing. He carried the sheets to the counter and set the basket down. “Do you need some kind of receipt for these?”
“Nah, Doris was just doing me a favor.”
“Why do you work at a homeless shelter?”
I need to get my brain-to-mouth filter checked.
Tate tilted his head, apparently not offended in the least. “Why not work at a homeless shelter? There are a lot of people these days with nowhere to go, especially teenagers.”
Jonas glanced out the front window at the brick building across the street. “You get a lot of teens there?”
“I would hope so.” Tate arched one eyebrow impressively high. “We’re a homeless shelter for LGBT teenagers.” Jonas’s confusion must have been all over his face, because Tate sighed. “Gay teens. Gay, lesbian, trans, whatever end of the spectrum they identify on.”
“I know what LGBT stands for. I didn’t know there were enough of them that they needed their own homeless shelter.”
“Where the hell did you crawl out of, a rock in Siberia? Gay teens make up almost forty percent of the homeless youth population in this country. Their asshole parents kick them out and a lot of them have nowhere to go except the streets. We may not be a big operation but we help as much as we can.”
Jonas made a time-out gesture. “Okay, sorry, Christ. I just...” I don’t think about those issues because they don’t directly affect my life.
So, did working in an LGBT shelter mean Tate was gay?
Tate crossed his arms and settled his weight on one foot, his gaze roving over Jonas like he was studying him for a quiz later. “Let me guess. Rich boy. Privileged life. Great future ahead of you until you... What? Crashed your BMW into a tree while driving drunk? Knocked up a sorority girl and you’re being punished?”
Jonas stared, both impressed by and annoyed with Tate for reading him so easily. “You have no right to my life story.”
“Ha, I got close. You don’t want to be here, do you? Not even a little bit.”
Nope. Well, maybe a little bit. Even though expulsion hadn’t been at the top on his list of ways to remove himself from the role he’d played at college—the horny frat boy who would eventually find a girl, get a great job, settle down, make babies and maybe make his father proud of him.
He’d pledged the fraternity because his father had demanded it. Here, no one expected anything from him except that he do his job and respect his curfew. “It’s not so bad here.”
Tate’s brow furrowed. “Where are you from?”
“Lake Bluff, Illinois. It’s near Chicago.”
“Ah. City boy.”
“So? You some grass-fed country boy?”
“Hardly. I grew up in Wilmington. Been in or around it my entire life.”
“All eighteen years of it?”
“Twenty-three.”
Tate was older than him. Why the hell did that matter?
“And you’re what?” Tate smirked. “Thirty?”
Ouch. “Ha ha. Twenty-one.”
“Out of college?”
Time to change the subject, like, now.
Except he answered, instead. “I have two years left. I’m, uh, taking a break.”
“You’re twenty-one and still a junior?”
“Yes.” No way was Jonas admitting he’d been kept back in fourth grade because he sucked so badly at math.
“Uh-huh. You’re going to be around the rest of the year?”
“Probably until next summer, yes. Why?”
“Then, as it seems we’ll be seeing more of each other, we should grab lunch or something one day. I can show you around the neighborhood. Maybe you’ll realize it’s not the slum you seem to think it is, that there are some great people here.” Tate flashed him a cocky smile that irritated him to no end. “Believe it or not, there’s a fantastic coffee shop two blocks from here.”
“I’m, uh, pretty busy here most days.” He also had no intention of letting Tate find out how close to the mark some of his comments were.
“Come on, man, even thrift store employees get days off.”
He had to give Tate something so he would go away. “Maybe. We’ll see.”
“Maybe is not no.” He pulled out a clunky flip phone that was probably on a monthly minutes plan. “Give me your number.”
Jonas had no good reason to do that, but he did. And he put Tate’s number in his own phone, a little embarrassed by his top-of-the-line model and unsure why.
“I’ve gotta get these back to the shelter,” Tate said as he picked up the basket of sheets. “It was nice meeting you, Jonas. I’ll see you around.”
“Yes, um, you, too.” That didn’t make a whole lot of sense as a response, but something about Tate made him fumble around even though he usually had no problem talking his way through a social situation. That kind of pissed him off.
He tracked Tate’s easy stroll across the street. He had just enough sway to his hips to make Jonas wonder...
Didn’t matter. He and Tate were not now, nor were they ever going to be friends. If Tate actually called about coffee, he’d find a way to get out of it. Eventually Tate would get the message and back off.
He hoped.
* * *
Tate punched the lock code into the shelter’s back door harder than necessary, taking his confusion over the last ten minutes out on the keypad with trembling fingers. Holy fucking hell, Jonas Ashcroft was gorgeous. Like, model gorgeous with a perfectly contoured face, high cheekbones, thick brown hair, the prettiest hazel eyes he’d ever seen on a human being. And the faint “I forgot to shave today” scruff?
Yeah, scruff always did it for Tate. Just enough to feel it when they kissed or to tickle between his—nope. Pointless fantasy. Tate was interested, but everything about Jonas—from his perfect posture to his pointed stares—screamed “straight.”
Except for the handful of times he’d caught Jonas holding eye contact longer than most straight guys would with a gay one. Not that Jonas had any reason to guess Tate was gay. Tate wasn’t obvious about it, and it wasn’t like he’d gone in with any serious flirting. And a lot of straight people were staunch allies. Hell, they’d actually exchanged phone numbers, even though Tate had figured the coffee shop thing to be a long shot. Especially after he’d kind of insulted Jonas while delivering the invitation.
Tate was too busy with the shelter and his sisters to bother dating, but if Jonas could smooth out some of his prickly edges, Tate wouldn’t mind being friends.
A friend you want to lick from top to bottom.
“Tate? You back?” Marc’s shout echoed down the corridor from the direction of the kitchen, and he followed the sound.
When he and Marc had decided to go all in on the shelter two years ago, it was through determination—and maybe a tiny bit of luck—they’d landed this location. Not only because it helped tie them to the thrift store, but because the building had once been a restaurant and it came with a full kitchen. He found Marc in there with a clipboard in hand, going over the racks of metal shelves that stored their food donations. Their budget for purchasing food wasn’t what Tate wanted it to be, so they relied heavily on the generosity of a few frequent donors.
“Oh good, you got the sheets,” Marc said after a quick glance in his direction.
“Yep.”
“How’s Doris? Gout any better?”
“Not sure. She wasn’t there.”
“Yeah? She left Raymond in the store alone?” Marc chuckled.
Raymond Burke was good people, but Tate
had witnessed him fussing with the registers—and customers—enough to know why he stuck to the back room and donation pickups. He’d been a construction foreman in his early life, until a back injury forced him to find new work. Doris had already been working for the owners of All Saints Thrift Store, and they’d wanted to sell and move to Florida. Doris possessed, according to herself, all of the business sense, so they’d taken a chance.
Money wasn’t always free-flowing in the Burke house but they both seemed to enjoy the challenge. The store was open Wednesday through Sunday so she could supervise almost all business hours, unless their daughter, Claire, volunteered to help. But Claire was pretty busy lately surviving her senior year of high school, so Tate hadn’t seen her around much.
“Her nephew is staying here for the year.” The memory of Jonas’s beautiful face made Tate smile. “I can’t decide if he’s an asshole or not.”
“Uh-oh.” Marc turned around to face him, lips twisted in a familiar smirk. “Don’t tell me you’re crushing on him already.”
“You would too if you saw him. He could give Matt Bomer a run for his money in the drop-dead-stunning department.”
“Oh yeah?” Marc straightened. “When you’re done, can I have him?”
“You wish.”
“He’d be so lucky. Unless...”
Tate stared at Marc’s amused face until he finally gave in and asked, “Unless what?”
“Unless you think this one’s gonna be more than your usual habit of pump and dump. You thinking about getting serious for a change?”
“Asshole. No. He’s probably straight anyway.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t admire the goods.”
“So true. Did Lilah strip the beds yet?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.”
Tate used his elbow to push open the door from the kitchen to the main area of the shelter. With planning help from Raymond and the design expertise of their third partner, Dave, they’d redesigned the open floor plan to make five smaller rooms with three sets of bunk beds each. Thirty beds that allowed them to create safe spaces for girls, boys and everyone in between, depending on who showed up for the night. They also had two separate bathrooms with showers, and a large living area with donated couches and picnic tables for eating breakfast.
They didn’t have the resources yet to offer more than one meal, but they always had snacks available at night. The doors opened at eight and closed at nine, and everyone had to be out by eight the next morning, until the weather turned. Once the cold set in, they’d open the doors at six. In the two and a half months since they’d officially opened their doors, all thirty beds had been full every night.
All it had taken was word of mouth.
As much as Tate loved helping these kids, his heart also broke for each and every one of them. He knew what it was like to work the streets for meal money. He knew what it felt like to offer up your mouth for a twenty-dollar bill, and how dirty that money was in your pocket. So did Marc.
They both had their own reasons for doing this every day.
Lilah had stripped the beds, as promised, and they smelled faintly of lemon disinfectant. The mattresses were thin, college dorm style, and each one was encased in a rubber cover to protect against lice, scabies and anything else the kids might bring in with them. Cleanliness standards were huge, especially when it came to a nonprofit like All Saints House. Even the smallest violation could get them shut down.
Tate remade the beds with the freshly laundered sheets. They couldn’t afford their own washer and dryer yet, so Doris had very generously offered to let them use her set at home. Sometimes Tate did them himself, sometimes another person in the Burke household helped out, but every single morning the shelter had clean sheets for the beds.
He bumped into Lilah in the main area, where she was wiping down the picnic tables with disinfectant. A retired school counselor with a husband who made good money working for the city, Lilah had plenty of free time to help with the shelter.
She’d also been friends with Doris forever.
“Did you know Doris and Raymond have a nephew?” he asked.
She paused in her work and looked up, her wire glasses halfway down her nose. “Yes, Raymond’s sister’s son. He’s about your age, I think.”
Jonas had seemed genuinely affronted when Tate teased him about being thirty, and Tate kind of liked that he was older than Jonas. “I met him today at the shop.”
“I’d heard something about him staying with the Burkes for a while. Some kind of trouble at college.”
“Oh yeah?” Tate’s instincts had been spot-on, then. “He knock up some mayor’s daughter?”
Lilah laughed. “No, nothing like that. Doris isn’t one to gossip, especially about family. You’d have to ask her for the details. Or her nephew, I suppose.”
“I tried. Jonas didn’t seem keen on talking about it.”
“Oh, Jonas, that’s right. You two get along well?”
“He’s a little rude, but he agreed to let me show him around. Get to know the neighborhood.”
“That was generous of you.”
“Well, he’s easy on the eyes, so it’s not a hardship, trust me.”
“So you do have an ulterior motive.”
“Don’t I always?”
Tate went off to finish making the beds, the sound of Lilah’s laughter trailing behind him. Tate had always had a plan, ever since he was fourteen years old and had become the man of the household. It had helped him and his two sisters survive their father’s death, and two years later, their mother’s.
First step in Tate’s new plan: figure out just how straight Jonas Ashcroft really was.
Don’t miss Come What May by A.M. Arthur,
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Copyright © 2016 by A.M. Arthur
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ISBN-13: 9781488057038
Hard Ride
Copyright © 2020 by A.M. Arthur
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