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I knewit was Flynn trying to break into my house because he’d never been able to get the key into the lock on the first try in as long as I’d known him. It wasn’t like I even had a fancy keypad panel like Rob, but then again, maybe that was the problem.
An actual, physical, key was too plebian for him.
“God, it stinks of wine and desperation in here,” he announced, kicking his way inside.
It was dark, yes, but I hadn’t been holed up long enough for the place to smell like anything besides the lemon verbena cleaning spray I used in the kitchen. It was Sunday night, maybe Monday morning, and of course it was dark because unlike the rest of my filthy rich friends, I splurged on blackout curtains. And after I’d taken Owen to the airfield, I’d come right home, closed them all, and thrown myself onto the couch in a well-deserved state of melancholic misery.
I hadn’t felt sorry for myself in almost ten years, so I was well overdue another round of self-pity.
“This feels like grounds for dismissal from your little club.” Grayson’s voice filled the room and I closed my eyes again with a tired sigh. “This is far from trophy-winning behavior.”
“I don’t think you can dismiss anyone from a club you’re not part of,” another voice chimed in, and I dared to look toward the door, wondering what sort of circus Flynn had brought with him.
“Wesley, do you remember Archie?” Grayson flicked his hand between the owner of the unidentified voice and me.
“Should I?” Wesley asked.
“Probably not.” Grayson laughed and pulled a plastic grocery bag from behind his back. “You were positively inebriated the first time you met him.”
That indirect introduction clicked the pieces into place and I recognized Wesley as the doorman from Rob’s little residential living experiment in Mid-City. Wesley was also Grayson’s best friend and roommate, if I remembered correctly.
“This is for you.” Grayson stood behind the couch, dangling the overloaded bag a foot from my chest before letting it fall. It landed hard and loud, a painful clattering of metal against my sternum.
“What the fuck?” I sat up, managing to shove the bag into my lap as I moved. It tipped and four cans of spray cheese rolled out on the floor. “God, you’re both assholes.”
“It’s your comfort food.” Flynn shoved my legs onto the floor and sat down next to me. Grayson cocked his hip against the back of the couch and stared down at me, Wesley hovering beside him like he wasn’t sure where to go or what to do. I couldn’t blame him for that. I didn’t know either.
“I don’t need comforting.”
“The state of your home says otherwise,” Grayson said.
I shot a glare up at him. “You’ve never even been here before. Maybe I like the dark.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Wesley said softly, eyes focused on the curtains across the room. “But when Grayson and Rob were being idiots…it felt a lot like this.”
“I don’t even know you,” I reminded him, twisting off the security seal on one of the cans of cheese.
“I knowyou, though,” Flynn said, and I glowered at him while I shot a swirl of cheese onto my tongue. “But what I don’t know is why you’re still here.”
“Because Owen left me, obviously.”
I threw the can of cheese at him and folded my arms in front of my chest. Owen left me and I’d come home and cried about it because I didn’t know what else do. If he’d let me get on the plane with him, I would have had almost five hours to talk him out of leaving me, but he’d blocked me on the stairs and kissed me like he wanted to bury me six feet under with his goddamn tongue, and I couldn’t fight him.
I hadn’t cared about what Owen wanted or what he’d needed the first time we were together, the absolute least I could do was try to manage something different now. And if Owen wanted to leave me, if he wanted to spend the rest of his life away from mine… well, I’d find a way to give him that. It was apparently a deal I couldn’t talk my way to the dotted line on, a first. But a fifth when it came to the list of my life’s regrets.
“You never struck me as the quitting type,” Grayson said.
I flipped him off and Wesley laughed.
“He doesn’t want to be with me. I’m not going to force him.”
“If you believe that, you’re a fool,” Flynn said.
“It’s what he told me. I asked him to be with me, I took him on a stupid date like you suggested, and he used his words and he told he hated me for it. ” My breath caught in my throat. “I tried to give him a reason, but none of them were enough. And he wanted to go, so he’s gone.”
“I’ve only had one real boyfriend before,” Wesley said. “But that feels like a copout to me.”
