“Kid, we gotta get this horse cleaned up,” I said as I turned back to Sam.
“Why? I wanna go faster. We barely got started.”
I shook my head and brought Magic to a stop. “Jump off. Let’s go back up to the house.”
“Are you in trouble? Is that why there’s a cop here? Are you going to go to jail?”
“What? No. He’s a friend.” I rolled my eyes. This kid could be—
“Oooo. He’s your boyfriend, isn’t he?” Sam asked as he slid off Magic’s back.
I gave him a glare, which only made him laugh as he ran out of the pasture, once again refusing to use the gate. I was left shaking my head and being very glad I didn’t have kids of my own, as much as I adored Sam.
After I’d put away Magic’s halter and lead ropes I headed up to the house, but Trent met me in the driveway before I could get there. “Leaving already?” I asked. I didn’t know what he was doing there, or why he hadn’t been returning my messages.
He shook his head and leaned against his patrol car. “Sorry to drop in. I didn’t realize you had company.”
“Friends from California who are visiting for a while,” I explained.
Trent gave me a little smile and crossed his arms over his chest. “I saw Dean in the driveway and thought he was someone you were seeing before he introduced himself.”
I snorted and shook my head, hoping Natalie hadn’t heard that story. She could be a jealous woman when she wanted to be. “He’s just a friend.”
“I’m glad,” Trent said.
I was still angry at him, as much as I was glad to see him again, so when he tried to come in for a hug I shook my head. “Nope. We need to talk first.”
He didn’t look that put off by my refusal. “I agree. Um… do you want to go to my place or do you want to talk here?”
I loved my house and was comfortable there, but I also didn’t want Sam overhearing something he was too young to know about. “Let’s go to your place. But I’ll follow you.”
“It’s about a twenty-minute walk, even from the edge of town like you are here. I’m right in the center of Thornwood,” he let me know, even as I headed toward my SUV.
“And if I get mad at you and want to leave, it’ll be even faster to come back home with my vehicle.” He didn’t say anything to that as I got in my SUV and he went to his car. Natalie was watching me from the front door, and I gave her a wave before I pulled out of the driveway and followed Trent down the main street in town to a row of townhouses right by the grocery store.
“It’s a lot smaller than your house,” Trent warned me as we got out of our vehicles and headed toward a plain-looking townhouse near the end of the row. Trent’s townhouse, like all the others on the street, had light gray siding and a dark gray roof. The only thing that really stood out to me was the faded police parking sign hanging on his front door.
“It’s bigger than my apartment in LA was,” I said as I followed him inside. “And cleaner too.” Actually, his place smelled like fresh lemons. I figured it was probably a cleaner, but it didn’t have any of the funky chemical smell that went with most of the cleaners I was used to. His front door opened up to a living room with one couch in it, like mine, but his was a lot newer. I saw a small kitchen to my left and two doors, one of them for the bedroom and the other for the bathroom, I guessed, but I didn’t ask.
I was still too mad at him for ignoring me.
He tried to hug me again after closing the door behind me, and this time I let him. It felt good to be in his arms again, to be held, and it reminded me of the night we’d shared. As those thoughts sprang to life in my mind, I pulled away, and he let me go.
“How’ve you been?” he asked as I leaned against the wall next to his couch.
I shrugged and stuffed my hands in the pockets of my jeans. “Busy. How’s your sex life been?” I was being blunt and I could have been nicer, but I didn’t see a reason to be. He’d hurt me, and I had a right to be angry with him for that.
He blanched a little, and I felt slightly better at knowing he wasn’t unaffected by my anger. I needed to know that, needed to see that what I thought of him and what I said actually mattered to him on some level.
“Quiet,” he admitted. I waited for him to tell me more, to let me know just how many guys he’d fucked since me. I wanted that kind of information because if I knew, if I heard the numbers, then I’d know for sure I hadn’t mattered and maybe I could have started to give up whatever feelings I had for him.
But he didn’t say anything more than that, so I asked him directly. “How many since me?”
“Caleb….” He shook his head and came closer to me. With the wall against my back, I couldn’t move away, but when he put a hand on my hip and rested his forehead against my neck, I didn’t move to touch him. I turned my head away and looked toward his front door. I shouldn’t have come here. Being alone with him, when I still wanted him so badly and cared about him far more than I should have, was not a good idea in the least.
“I’d like to know the number,” I said. He pressed his mouth to my neck, and I shut my eyes.
“Why? What would knowing do for you?”
Trent lifted up my shirt and pressed his hands to my stomach. This wasn’t a brief touch at all. Instead I felt the warmth of his palm completely against my stomach, and I stood there, absolutely unsure of myself as my resolve to be angry with him, to hate him almost, began to slip away.
“Because I want to know how little I meant to you.” It was the truth, and all of my hurt and anger wrapped up into one little sentence. I pressed my lips together as he pulled his mouth from my neck and used his hand to turn my face toward him. I looked at him, waiting for an explanation. But instead he kissed me. I didn’t open my mouth for him, didn’t even think about it, and after a few minutes of trying to get me to kiss him back he stopped. Then we were just staring at each other again.
“You know what I’m like,” he reminded me, as if it was my fault that we’d had sex and then he hadn’t called or texted me back.
“You said we would be friends afterward,” I countered. He put his other hand on me too, both of them on my stomach, right above the button of my jeans. “I called and texted you, and you didn’t say hi back once. That’s not what friends do.”
He scrunched up his face, like he was upset about what I’d said, and I expected him to move back, since I clearly wasn’t into what he was offering, but he moved his hands lower so that he was cupping me through my jeans. I lifted my eyebrows at him. “Really? Did you bring me here because you thought we’d ever be having sex again?”
This time he did stop touching me, and as stupid as it was, I wished he hadn’t. He braced his hands on the wall on either side of me, holding me there in front of him. If I bothered to take my hands out of my pockets, I could have touched him too, but I knew where that would lead. I wanted him, and he clearly still wanted me. And if I got to touch him, then we’d end up together again. We might not even make it to the bedroom. Part of me didn’t see a problem with that, and it was at war with the thoughts in my head about how hurt I was and how angry I’d been at him for not calling me back. It was such a simple thing, to want an answer to a text message.
“I was worried about you,” I told him as he leaned his head against my shoulder. I let myself do the same to him. He smelled like pine trees, like the forest that grew around Thornwood. I closed my eyes and relaxed by a few degrees. It wasn’t much, and I definitely hadn’t forgiven him for anything. But with him here in front of me, his warm breath on the side of my neck, it was hard to be as mad at him as I had been.
“I know. I got your texts.”
“You didn’t say anything back.”
He sighed and kissed my neck. “I’m sorry.”
That really didn’t do anything to calm my anger. He was sorry, which was great and all, but seriously, what the hell?
“Tell me how many guys you’ve had sex with since me.” I didn’t like repeating myself, and I should have just let it drop and figured it was anywhere from one to ten, maybe, but I wanted a real answer.
He didn’t answer me at first, and I thought I’d have to ask him again. But then he did. “None.”
I frowned, because he had to have been lying. “Yeah, right.”
Taking his phone out of his pocket meant moving away from me, and I wished he hadn’t. But then he showed me the app on his phone with all the guys he’d either had sex with or wanted to. “The star in the corner of their profiles is red if I’ve been with them recently. It’s supposed to be fun, like we were hot together or something stupid like that.”
He logged in, then handed it to me. I didn’t need stars on an app to tell me he hadn’t been on it recently, though. “Says here you have forty-two unread messages and haven’t logged in for fifteen days.” It was nosy of me to go through his messages, and I should have just given him the phone back. But I wanted to know what the guys who wanted him said because I was in that group too. I may not have met him on some cheesy hook-up app, but I’d been just another man in his bed. I’d known that when we were having sex, and the first day afterward had been hard. But it would have been a lot easier if he hadn’t completely shut me out.
“This guy says he misses you,” I told him. I felt disgusted with myself just looking through the messages, but it was hard to turn away and stop reading them once I started. “This one wants you again.”
Trent shrugged and reached for the phone. I handed it back to him without a fuss. It wasn’t any of my business what he did. We’d tried to be friends, and it hadn’t worked. Now he was just some guy I desperately wanted, and had honestly really liked, but knew I wouldn’t be having again.
“These are the kinds of idiots I have sex with,” Trent told me.
“Thanks for lumping me in with them,” I snapped defensively.
He quickly shook his head and went back to putting his hands on me, this time on my hips. He still went under my shirt, though, and ran his thumbs over the band of my jeans. It was getting harder to stand still with my hands in my pockets instead of touching him too. It would have been so easy to give in, to say screw it and just have sex with him and figure it out in the morning. But I was better than that, and stronger than that, and I was worth more than just someone for him to fuck when he was having a bad day.
“That’s the problem. You’re not like them. Not to me.” His voice was soft, and a second later he kissed me. I couldn’t keep fighting him, not that I’d ever really been that good at it, and I kissed him back. But I refused to touch him. He moved his hands around to cup my ass through my jeans, and I opened my mouth a little for him. When he pushed his thigh between my legs, rubbing against my cock as he had me pinned to the wall, I flicked my tongue between his lips.
I didn’t think about what he’d said, or question him about it either, as my will slowly cracked. I brought my hands out of my pockets and rested them on his chest. He put his hands under each of my thighs and lifted me up. I slid my legs around his waist and didn’t stop him as he pushed against me, letting me feel every hard inch of him.
Wanting him wasn’t the problem; it was how I felt about myself afterward that was. If I could just be one of his anonymous hookups, then I could have easily given in. I probably wouldn’t have had on my clothes shortly after arriving. But I wasn’t like that, couldn’t be, and the only way I was going to let Trent have me again was if there was something more between us. I didn’t need a ring, or even a promise of years to come, but I did need commitment. I’d been the other person, and I wasn’t doing that ever again.
I pulled my mouth away from his before we could go any further. “Trent, enough. Stop.” He slowly let me down and hung on to me until I moved away from him.
“I can’t be someone that you just have sex with. I’m sorry. I wish I could, because then things would be a lot easier between us, but I’m not like that,” I said as I began backing up toward his door.
He took my hand, stopping me before I could get away from him and back to my house, where I was usually much saner. “I didn’t bring you here to have sex with you,” he said.
“Really?” I didn’t believe him for a second.
He gave me a little grin. “Okay, maybe a little. But mostly I just needed to talk to you. And then I had you here and we were alone and I can’t not touch you when we’re alone.” He shrugged and pulled me toward him. I came and he let go of my hand. “Talk to me for a bit?”
I nodded. “Sure.” I could manage to talk to him for a little while without wanting to yell at him. Probably. Wanting to have sex with him was always there, but yelling at him was something I had wanted to do often enough to him too in the past few weeks. He was frustrating in a way few people had ever been for me before, Paul included.
We sat down on his couch and our hands seemed to come together on their own without me wanting it. But I didn’t pull away. It was good to hold his hand, to feel his rough palm against mine, to lace our fingers together as we sat quietly in his living room. I didn’t want to start talking first, and he didn’t start either. But one of us had to.
I laid my head down on the back of the couch and looked up at the ceiling. “Did you not have sex with any of them because you didn’t have a bad day since we last spoke or because you found somewhere else to get your needs met?”
“Neither. What makes you madder, that we had sex or that I needed some time to myself after?” he asked.
He hadn’t given me much of an explanation, but after asking him the same question repeatedly, or what felt like the same question to me at least, I didn’t really want the answer anymore. That wasn’t true. I did want the answer. I wanted it a lot. But I wasn’t going to keep pushing him if he so clearly didn’t want to talk about it.
I turned my head to glare at him, but he wasn’t looking back at me, so I wasn’t sure if he noticed it or not. “I was mad, and still am really, that you just cut me out like you did to Eli and every single one of the other guys you screw and never talk to again. I didn’t expect a lot from you, but I did need to know that I wasn’t like them, that we were friends who had sex once when you needed someone to be there for you and that we would be friends again after.”