Page 58 of Dangle

Trey looked at me, and the look on his face told me all I needed to know. He’d never considered not having all that constantly filling his head with noise.

Trey’s phone continued buzzing throughout the drive to the airport. I commented no further, but only just. The craziness coming out of that fucking device had to be causing neuropathy in the kid’s hands. We pulled into the airport just as the leash on my filter pulled tight.

SUVs lined up side-by-side when we pulled to a stop in the parking lot next to the others. Why people who wanted to go unseen used these huge-ass, sleek, black monsters, I’d neverunderstand. They were the furthest thing from inconspicuous as something could get.

The driver slipped from the vehicle and stood nearby. Out the tinted glass, Ewen and the guys from Trey’s team strolled out of the terminal toward the Holt Enterprises plane. I watched for several minutes. The younger guys laughed and cut up, and though Ewen joined their jocular mood, his eyes scanned the tarmac. Once a Marine and all that shit.

At the foot of the stairs up to the sleek plane, Ewen turned, and even though dark lenses hid his gaze, I knew he looked for me. I sighed.

The idyllic had come to an end.

I opened the door and stepped out of the sleek black vehicle. Checking our surroundings, I beckoned Trey toward me. He slid out into the tiny space left for him between where my body filled the gap between the door and the side of the vehicle, blocking anyone from seeing who stepped out.

“I’m going to do this here.”

“What—”

My mouth slanted across his. His tongue met mine as eagerly as his hand gripped my waist, pulling our bodies together. Time slowed. Focus narrowed.

Until the driver cleared his throat.

“Apologies, gentlemen, but if you want to make it home, the pilot says you must board. Ten minutes ago, really.”

We parted, Trey’s eyes blown wide. Mine mirrored them, if I had to guess. Everything seemed brighter. Sighing, I said, “We should go.”

The way he tongued his lips as if he wanted to savor the taste of me…us. Fuck, I’m screwed.

“Gentlemen?”

I nodded, turned from the distraction of Trey motherfucking Malachek, and grabbed my bag from the driver. My palm itchedto take his, but I held myself back. The boy needed to make this choice for himself. But if he ever did, I would lay claim to him whenever and however he would let me. I wanted the world to know his worth, and that he was mine.

As we tramped toward the terminal, I said, “Think about what I offered. Then call me.”

His phone rang, but he silenced it without looking at it.

“I will.”

The phone rang again, only this time Trey picked up. A man’s voice yelled through the phone. I wasn’t close enough to hear what they said or even know who it was, but I had a decent idea given what Trey told me about his piece of shit sperm donor of a father. He confirmed it a moment later when he said, “Dad, there’s a storm?—”

Then I heard him,“You wouldn’t be racing back to campus trying to beat a storm if you’d kept your lazy, ungrateful, stupid ass where it belonged instead of flitting around the fucking country like a fucking humongous disappointment dead set on ruining your life and this family’s legacy.”

His voice dropped back to where it was when Trey first answered the phone, meaning I could no longer hear what was being said. Not that I needed to. The man had said enough.

I stayed by Trey’s side all the way through the terminal, check-in, and across the tarmac to the foot of the plane’s stairs. He paused there, took a deep breath, and said, “I gotta board. I’ll talk to you when I’m back in Manchester,” and with that he hung up.

Rage pulsed visibly under his skin like blood through veins after a hard workout. If that hadn’t had me pissed enough, the tears that glistened in his eyes pushed me into a rage of my own. Trey never said a word. Instead, he held his tongue, boarded the plane in front of me, and cut up with his teammates, but whatever that Donnie Malachek said hurt Trey badly, and itmade me want to hurt the man. I wanted to unleash the fury I felt on him until I exacted a pound of flesh for every hateful, hurtful, tear-inducing word he uttered.

FIFTEEN

TREY

The plane landed in a flurry of snow. Massive, heavy, wet, icy flakes fell from the sky in rapid succession, covering everything and staying put. The freshly plowed runway, which I saw on our approach, now looked just as white as the ground surrounding it.

Instead of disembarking on the tarmac, the pilot pulled us directly into the hangar. Then his disembodied voice came on overhead.

“Welcome back to Manchester, everyone. Give the ground crew a bit to get us settled, and we’ll have you on your way. FYI, you’re the last ones getting in by air until this mess blows through and gets cleaned up.”

All of us stood as soon as the flight attendant allowed us to unbuckle. We’d been under strict orders to stay seated and buckled in throughout the flight. If I’d been flying commercial, I’d have been pissed. As it was, I still wasn’t all that happy with being stuck in one place for so long.