by Jaime Samms
That got a snort form Blaire, then he sipped his coffee. “You’re welcome. We have to move forward, and I was holding on to our old dynamic without realizing it.”
Lee studied him. “Maybe I was too,” he admitted at last. “I’m sorry. Maybe I was looking for slights where there were none.”
Blaire settled comfortably into Vince’s chair. “This was a terribly grown-up conversation.”
“Sure.” Lee offered him a shrug. “Guess it was.”
“We’ll talk later about your duties and how I might have hobbled you.” He leaned forward and placed his elbows on the desk. “And maybe you can think about if you might be holding on to an outdated image of Vince. He’s not the wet-behind-the-ears kid we thought he was.”
That was true. He’d done a lot of work to get the video game off the ground and keep the momentum going while Blaire had moved his focus to marketing and other undertakings, trying to diversify their interests so they didn’t depend too heavily on any one venture. Without the long hours Vince put in finding all the best avenues to coding, software, and manpower, the game would have been dead in the water before it had ever been pitched to a single investor.
“He’s smart, determined, intuitive, compassionate.”
Lee tore his gaze from his treat to look at Blaire. “Your point?”
“What’s holding you back? Are you afraid he really is that weakling kid you first thought he was? Or are you afraid he isn’t and that he can take you on and maybe even win?”
“This is you not getting involved in my personal life?”
“This is me seeing a friend at a crossroads and hoping he knows he doesn’t have to go it alone, no matter what choice he makes.”
“So we’re friends now?”
Blaire snorted at him, sipped his coffee, and got up from Vince’s desk just as the office door opened and Vince stepped inside. “We always were, asshole.”
Vince stopped on the welcome mat, glancing between them. “Everything okay?” His gaze rested on Lee when he said it. Like the question was directed at him. There was a fierce light in his eyes.
“Fine.” Lee got up. “I’m taking an early lunch.”
As he pulled on his jacket, he tried to ignore the sigh Vince didn’t quite manage to suppress. He’d been taking it easy for the weeks he’d been staying at Pete and Vince’s house. Anything too strenuous and he had them both, and Blaire, on his case, so he was making a point of being careful.
At least he’d be able to get on with his life now that his back wasn’t flaring up when he did simple things like put on his coat. Nothing like a month of practical immobility and near-constant pain to remind him he couldn’t be trusted to make healthy decisions without the constant supervision of everyone around him.
He did take the lemon tart off its plate as he left the office, though. Because they were good, and he liked them. And Vince had done a nice thing, and kept doing nice things for the jerk who responded by snapping at him.
Lee opted to take the stairs—slowly—rather than the elevator. He needed to get back in shape if he was going to be trudging up and down his building’s stairs at some point.
“Lee?”
He held in a sigh and stopped. “Vince.”
“I did bring your lunch back. From the diner.” A bag rattled, but Lee didn’t make the effort of twisting around. It was probably a roast beef sandwich or a bowl of broccoli soup. It was a given that Vince knew what he liked at this point.
“Thanks.”
“You want to go somewhere and eat?”
“That was the plan.”
“Why are you always running away?”
“I’m not.”
Vince’s footsteps on the stairs, coming down to stop on the landing above him, were almost tentative. “Bullshit.”
“Why are you always following?”
“You want me to go away? Leave you alone? Stop bringing you lemon tarts?”
“Y—” Lee swallowed the word down. Damn it. No. I don’t want any of that to stop.
But he’d have to meet Vince halfway at some point, or eventually, Vince would stop. Then Lee would be alone again. Like I want.
Tired, Lee plunked down right where he was, in the middle of the stairwell. After a moment, Vince joined him. He handed over one of two bags he was carrying.
“You’re fucking persistent, do you know that?” Lee grumbled, but took the bag.
Vince grinned into his lunch bag. “Takes one to know one, doesn’t it?”
Lee grunted. “Maybe.” He could admit he had been doggedly trying to shake Vince off so far.
“So who do you think is going to out-stubborn who?” Vince winked at him.
Lee rolled his eyes, then peered into his own bag. Roast beef. He pulled out the sandwich and began to unwrap it. “Why do you keep buying me lemon tarts?”
“Because you like them.”
“Think you’re going to sweeten me up?”
That earned him a snort. “With those? Not likely. I’ve tried them. They’re called ‘tarts’ for a reason.” He took a bite of his own ham and Swiss and chewed. “Why do you like them so much?” he asked after he’d swallowed.
“They remind me of something.” He bit into his lunch, hoping having his mouth full would deter Vince from asking him anything else.
“Yeah? What?”
Of course it’s not going to deter him, idiot.
Lee swallowed. “It was a long time ago.”
“But it still matters to you.” Vince set his sandwich on its wrapper in his lap and reached into his bag again. He brought out two cans of fruit juice and handed the kiwi-apple one to Lee, keeping the blueberry-pomegranate for himself.
“When I was about . . . ten? I think? I snuck into Mom’s kitchen. Stole an entire lemon meringue pie from one of her catering orders and ate the entire damn thing in one sitting. She was furious. And completely unsympathetic when the rotten stomach came.” He shook his head and sipped his drink. “But she petted my hair after, gave me an apple juice, and sang this lullaby. Something in Korean. I didn’t understand a word of it. She said she remembered the tune and a few syllables, but not really what it meant. When she started school, she was only ever allowed to speak English. Her parents were not typical that way. They wanted her to be American.”
“How does getting sick on a lemon meringue pie when you were a kid lead to you loving Jim’s tarts now? Usually it’s the opposite.”
“It’s one of the best things I can remember from being a kid.”
“Mom worked that catering company and a cleaning job: twelve-hour days, seven days a week. Died before I was sixteen. Cancer.”
“Geez, Lee.”
“Yeah. It pretty much sucked.”
“Your dad?”
“Who knows. He was into the next big thing, not into being a dad. Child Services tried, but they never found him, and I . . . lost myself in the wilds of New York City. If my own father didn’t want me, why would anyone else? Scraped my way through the rest of high school, worked my ass off to pay for college and earn scholarships, then worked from my internship up to win Oscar Caruthers’s attention.” He picked up his sandwich again and examined it for the next best bite. “That worked out well, as you know.”
They ate in silence that wasn’t completely oppressive. Thankfully, Vince didn’t say any of the clichéd crap people always did when Lee talked about his shitty parents and difficult entry into adulthood.
Correction. Mom wasn’t shitty. Just not strong enough.
They were gathering up the garbage from their meals when Vince finally spoke. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I’m not going to die, and I’m not going to run off. I don’t have better things to do.”
“Pete’s hardly been home in two weeks, though, and when he is, he’s exhausted and punchy.”
“It’s his job. That’s what he does, and that’s what his job does to him.”
Lee snorted. “Funny. That’s what Mom always said. ‘It’s your dad’
s work. It keeps him busy.’ But it kept him away. Then she said it about her job, whenever she was too tired, or when she was sick and couldn’t take a day off anyway.” He slammed his bag of wrappings into a tight ball. “Then she died.”
He got up and headed back up the stairs.
Vince didn’t follow right away, which was just as well. The lump in Lee’s gut turned over, and he didn’t want Vince around when the meal he’d so thoughtfully picked out came back up.
Their conversation on the stairs explained a lot about why Lee was the way he was. It didn’t help Vince figure out what to do about it. The rest of the afternoon at the office was tense. Lee looked unhappy and a little green, and for once, didn’t complain about Vince insisting he go back to Pete’s with him.
They didn’t say anything on the ride, nor did they talk much through dinner and cleanup. Lee promptly disappeared into his room and closed the door, and Vince heard nothing from him for most of the evening.
Vince got very little work done while he waited for Pete to come home. He was antsy and irritable when he finally heard Pete’s key in the lock. It shouldn’t have surprised him so much when Pete’s news sent him right over the edge of annoyed and into irrational.
“I’m sorry, what?” Vince tried hard to keep his voice down, but it rose anyway. “When were you going to tell me?”
“I just got the call yesterday, Vince. Calm down.” Pete wasn’t even looking at him, but was stripping to his boxer briefs and heading for the bathroom. It wasn’t like him to be so methodical about undressing. Nor did he normally ignore Vince as he changed for bed. “Bonnie gave me the contract today.”
“And you signed it without even talking to me?” Acidic emotion burned holes into Vince, and he clenched his fists.
“It’s my career, and since when do we consult each other when work takes us out of town for a few days? You don’t tell Blaire you’ll let him know after you talk to your boyfriend, when he tells you there’s a client meeting out of town.”
“No, but—”
“I don’t tell the studio they’ll have to wait while I check with you to see if it’s okay I go on a remote shoot. We just go, because that’s the kind of jobs we have.”
“That’s different. Wolf’s Landing is one thing. It’s your job. You do what they tell you to do. This is separate.”
“Which you asked me to help you negotiate, remember? You asked me to help you get Wolf’s Landing people involved. Did you think I was going to sit back and let all the choice gigs go to other people?”
“Of course not. I didn’t think—”
“Who rented out the studio space for the voice-overs?”
“I did. Seattle had the best—”
“The best equipment for the right price, and it’s not too far away, giving Wolf’s Landing people the option of doing the voice work without interfering with the series work. it’s the same booking I would have made. But you can’t ask me to pass the opportunity to another AD now because—why? Lee’s being a pill?”
“I didn’t think you would take—”
“Vince.” Pete turned to face him. He wasn’t mad. He wasn’t even exasperated. He just looked tired. “What would you have told me if I had talked to you first?”
“I—” Vince frowned. Would he have told Pete to stay in town? To say no and stay home?
“This is likely the only chance I will ever get to work directly with the big names. That isn’t in my job description under normal circumstances. This gives me more responsibility and connections. It’s my chance to work with people who might remember my name when something else comes up. Wolf’s Landing isn’t going to last forever, and when it’s over, I will need things like this on my CV.”
He was right. Of course he was right. And if Pete had asked, Vince would have told him to take the job. Because Wolf’s Landing wasn’t going to last forever. But Vince didn’t want to talk about that. If they didn’t talk about it, he could put off thinking about it, and what he might do when Pete had to leave town.
“Besides, you and Lee—you need to figure this shit out without me as a buffer between you. If you can’t, we have bigger problems than a maybe two-week shoot in Seattle.”
Again, he was right, and that point was even scarier than Hollywood fickleness.
“Babe.” Pete stepped into his personal space. “Stop worrying. I’ll be gone a week. Maybe ten days. There will still be a few days of hiatus left, and we can do something. Get some time off and we can run away someplace.”
“Lee and I can’t take time off at the same time,” Vince said automatically.
Pete rested his forehead against Vince’s chest. “No,” he agreed. “I guess you probably can’t. Not very often, anyway.”
“We can both work remotely, though.” Vince hurried to mitigate that issue. No sense borrowing more trouble. Pete hadn’t mentioned the three of them going someplace. Just him and Vince.
“The timing sucks,” Vince said.
“The timing was always going to be during hiatus. There was no other way to work it and still get the crews and equipment and expertise you needed at a price you could afford.”
“I know.”
“And I’ll tell you the truth.” Pete stepped back and resumed getting undressed. “I took the job because there’s this runner. Her name is Kylee. She’s good. Fast and reliable and efficient.”
“She after your job?”
“Someone always is. But she’s actually good enough to get it. And she’s also going to Seattle, so I couldn’t risk not going. There are a million people trying to get into this business, and thousands of them would work on a show like Wolf’s Landing in a heartbeat. I can’t pass up a chance like this to pad my CV and impress the right people.”
“I understand.” Vince took the pants Pete was trying to fumble onto a hanger, and tossed them and the hanger aside. “I do, I promise. It was a knee-jerk reaction, and you don’t have to keep explaining it to me. I would have told you of course you had to take the job.” He turned Pete around to face him, so he could look at his face. “I’ll miss you. I love you. I want you here with me. But I get the way your job works, and I knew it when I signed on.”
“Lee will be here.”
“About that.” Lee’s soft voice at the door made them both turn. “I don’t know what you guys are discussing, but I did hear you say I would be here, only—” He let out a breath in a huff, like he suddenly forgot what he’d been about to say.
He was staring at Pete, and there was no mistaking the longing in his gaze.
Vince looked down at his lover, seeing him through new eyes. He was naked except for the dark briefs covering his round little ass and nicely mounded package, his chest smooth and toned. But Vince knew all that about him, and he didn’t think those physical traits, nice as they appeared, were what held Lee’s rapt gaze. As Vince so often found himself doing—with both of them—Lee gave the impression he had seen beyond the obvious, to Pete’s essence.
“Lee?” Vince asked, lifting an eyebrow, not moving from where he held Pete in his arms. Lee’s expression heated Vince’s blood. It was hungry, almost predatory, but there was a hint of uncertainty there too. Vince wanted to peel back the aggression to get to the pieces of Lee that he so jealously guarded. He could use Pete to do that. Pete would let him, despite his earlier warning. They were both here now, so why not do it together?
But Lee had to make the move into the room, take that first step.
Vince held his breath, hoping.
“I’m—” Lee cleared his throat. “It can wait until morning.” He lifted a hand in an aborted wave and turned, fleeing down the hall.
“Lee!” Vince would have gone after him, but Pete held on to his arm.
“Let me?”
Vince made a face. “He can’t just— He needs to come back here.”
“And that is why you have to let me,” Pete said grimly, snatching up his robe from the chair by the door and flinging it over his shoulders.
; Relief washed through Vince. They were in this together.
For once, Pete wished his house was a tiny bit bigger, if only to give him more time to collect his thoughts before he got to the end of the hall and Lee’s room. When he knocked on the closed door, it was a few moments before Lee opened it, and then, only a sliver to peer out at Pete.
“What?”
“What’s going on?” Pete asked him, placing a hand on the door to keep Lee from pushing it shut. “Since when do you run away?”
“I didn’t run. I was— You were . . .” Lee waved a hand vaguely. “You two were in the middle of something.”
Pete grinned. “And since when have we ever stopped you getting in the middle of us when we’re in the middle of something?” Not that they had done much together beyond that first tentative foray when Pete had sucked him off, and then Lee had done the same for Vince the next morning. Since then, there had been mostly flirting, some kisses and petting, but nothing that required anyone remove any clothing.
Lee stared at him, mouth hanging slightly open.
Gently, Pete pushed the door, and Lee gave enough ground Pete could reach up and ease his chin up until his lips met. “You’re no idiot, Lee.”
Lee shook his head.
“So you know what’s going on here. I don’t know how you can not know.”
“I know.”
“Well, then?”
“Why me?”
Pete crossed his arms and leaned on the doorframe, fully blocking the door from closing on him now. “Really?”
“Really.” Lee stalked off, deeper into the room, words huffing out on hot breaths. “I mean, I get it. I’m a pretty safe bet. Vince knows I’m not a sociopath. And he knows I get around. So it’s not a stretch to think I might be into something like this.”
“‘Something like this’?” Pete followed him into the room. “What would you define ‘this’ as, exactly?”
Lee whirled on him, coming up short to keep from bumping into Pete, who was giving no ground. He flung out a hand, but let it fall. “This. You and him.” He frowned. “And me.”
“The word you’re looking for is us.”