A picture of a too-sexy smiling blond from this evening intruded on the mental images. Garrick snarled and bared his teeth at the image, instinctually protecting what was his.
Devlin.
You can’t have him, pretty boy. You can’t give him what I do when we’re together.
Except--Garrick raced out of the bathroom and grabbed up his discarded watch--Devlin might let the blond try. Garrick certainly hadn’t given Devlin a lot of honesty since showing up in town, or any real reason to think he even wanted Devlin back. Looking at the time, Garrick felt sick to his stomach as he realized Devlin could still be on that date right now, maybe even moving toward a more intimate moment. After all, at the apartment the other day, Maddie had implied this wouldn’t be Devlin’s first date with Darren.
If he isn’t there already, he could be close to crawling into bed with that hot young thing right now.
Garrick’s legs went out on him and he stumbled to his knees. No. Everything inside him twisted and pulled, ripping at him from the inside, and he grabbed for the coffee table. Devlin is mine.
Keys sitting on the coffee table winked with the glint of the moon and pulled Garrick’s attention to the scrap of paper sitting beneath them.
Devlin’s cell phone number.
During dinner at the Fine’s, Garrick had noticed Devlin’s card attached to the refrigerator. He’d repeated the number in his head every time he looked at it. As soon as he got a moment to himself, he tore the corner of a newspaper, jotted it down, and tucked it in his pocket for safekeeping.
The paper called Garrick to it; once seen, he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there. He reached out, unable to withdraw his hand or stop his fingers from closing around it. His cell sat on the table too. The moment Garrick pulled it to him and punched in the first number, he thought he might throw up.
He hit the second, third and the rest, anyway, clicked Send, and held his breath.
Devlin picked up on the fourth ring. “Hello?”
“I know you’re probably still out with Darren and I know it’s rude to interrupt and I know I don’t even necessarily have the right to do it and, goddamn it, I wanted to kill the blond when you walked into the restaurant with him, but I had Shawn and you thought something, but it’s not what you think. It wasn’t a choice, beautiful. It wasn’t you or them, I promise. You’re everything to me. I don’t want you to be with him. I want you to be with me. Please tell him you have to go and come be with me. I’ll wait all night. Forever, if that’s what it takes. I’m not ever saying goodbye to you again.” The words poured out of Garrick, one on top of the next, through a throat that barely let him make sound.
Oh Jesus. Garrick’s chest banded too tightly for comfort. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.
A long silent pause--too fucking long--sucked the rest of the air right out of Garrick’s body.
He hung up the phone as if it had a disease, without Devlin ever having said a word.
Garrick didn’t dare risk hearing a rejection. If he did, he might never get up from the floor again.
Chapter Ten
Devlin leaned against his headboard, in total darkness, listening to the drone of a dial tone buzzing in his ear.
Gradyn’s--Garrick’s--heartbreaking run-on confession reverberated in his ear, all of the words mingling for a moment in a confusing cacophony until a handful sorted themselves out and rang loudly, as if someone shouted them into his very being.
It wasn’t a choice between them and you; it’s not what you think.
And, he called me beautiful.
Devlin’s heart squeezed and he stifled a ridiculous sob. His muscles protested the tension that had held his entire body in rigor from the moment Garrick Langley’s name had shown up on his cell phone’s LCD screen. Devlin forced himself to breathe, but the second the tightness within him released, he hissed through a concentration of pleasure as the thick silicone dildo lodged halfway up his ass slid out of his body and dropped to the mattress.
His passage throbbed as if it were a pair of hands reaching to pull something into its clutches again. Devlin fitted the rounded head of the toy to his pucker once more and nudged it against his rapidly closing entrance. He closed his eyes and pushed the black silicone against his ring. As he did, he tried to conjure the image that had helped him relax enough the first time to get the dildo inside him. Pictures of the same man immediately came back into Devlin’s mind but instead of the tattooed, bald, muscle-bound images of Gradyn that had kept Devlin company in his dreams for five years, a chiseled, sleeker, raven-haired Garrick appeared. The desperate longing in Garrick’s voice from just minutes ago filled Devlin’s head, along with a picture of the frightened man in Devlin’s hallway the other night, which then morphed to the sexy-as-all-get-out memory of him laughing with Shawn as he carried the boy out of the pizza joint.
Devlin’s cock stirred and pushed against his belly but his channel would not stop clenching long enough to ease the toy back into his ass.
Come be with me. I’ll wait all night. I’m not ever saying goodbye to you again.
Devlin’s body already knew what his once-broken heart feared to risk again.
He tossed the dildo aside and grabbed his sweats from the foot of his bed. He crashed against his wall with a thud as he hopped his way into them and then grabbed his T-shirt and finally his keys off a table by the door as he tore out of the apartment.
* * * *
Devlin’s bare feet squished in the mist-damp earth as he ran across the Fine’s front lawn but he didn’t dare slow his steps through the slick grass or up the narrow flight of white-painted steps that led to Garrick’s apartment.
