Foolish Me

I never thought anyone would love me. How could they, when Franky, the one man I’d been certain loved me, had showed me the only thing I had to offer was my youth and my body?

Of course a good many men did love me—physically—but that was because from the time I was fifteen and my father threw me out of the house for being gay, I’d been a rent boy.

And then I’d met William Matheson. Wills…of the ordinary brown suits and nothing special haircuts…someone I shouldn’t have looked at twice.

But I did. Something about his warm, chocolate brown eyes brought my gaze back to him again and again.

I couldn’t say I fell in love with him at first sight…as much as I might have yearned for it, what rent boy would ever believe shit like that?

But I did. I’d asked him to move in with me, hoping but never believing….

And now…Now we were living together.

* * * *

Through too many years—those years when I’d been a rent boy—I’d learned to keep my mouth shut, stifling any curiosity I might have about my clients. Wills wasn’t a client, had never been a client. He was my lover, but…

Old habits die hard.

Oh, I knew Wills was a troubleshooter who dealt with computers, and his company was in DC, but I’d never questioned him about it or about why, on occasion, he carried a gun. He traveled throughout the country, and some of those areas probably weren’t too safe.

Mark Vincent, his boss, worked him like a son of a gun. Weekends, holidays, early morning, late into the night, long weeks away without any or minimal contact….

And that was something else I never questioned.

* * * *

It was Indian summer, and the weather was warm and dry.

We’d been living together since we’d returned to DC from visiting his family on Memorial Day.

For a change Wills had the weekend off. After an early dinner at Raphael’s the evening before and then taking in a concert, where I’d bought him the group’s T-shirt, we’d come home and fucked like bunnies. I was looking forward to a long, lazy Saturday in bed, where eventually we’d do more of the same.

I was drifting in and out of a dream where instead of meeting Franky the day my father had thrown me out, I’d looked up to see Wills standing there, smiling at me and holding out his hand for me to take.

But when I reached out for it, suddenly it was gone—he was gone—and I was alone.

“Wills? Wills?” I woke up to realize I was alone. I sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

Where was he?

I clambered out of bed, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and went looking for him.

I found him standing outside the front door of the apartment he shared with me. He did look good, shirtless, his treasure trail disappearing beneath the waistband of the low slung sweats he himself wore.

I blinked. “Wills, what the fuck…?” Tucked into the back of his sweatpants was his gun.

“Mr. Vincent is grinding his coffee.”

“Huh?” What did that have to do with Wills having his gun on him? I looked past him to where Vince sat on the stairs leading up to his attic apartment he rented from me and offered him a confused smile. “How come?”

“I have no idea. You want to ask him?”

I scrubbed my scalp and blinked. It was too freaking early for this. Still…“Vince? Why are you grinding coffee on the stairs?”

“I have a houseguest. I didn’t want the noise to wake him.”

Okay. That made sense. I still hadn’t met the man, but Wills had run into him on the stairs once or twice when Vince had been taking him up to the attic apartment. “What does he look like, babe?” I’d asked, curious as to what kind of man Mark Vincent would actually bring to his own home.

Wills had got that blank look, and then shrugged. “Oh, just your average, everyday-looking kind of guy.”

Before I could press for more details, like height, weight, age, eye and hair color, and did it seem as if this guy cared about Vince, Wills’s lips had curled into the half grin that made me weak in the knees—I’d always thought that was a bunch of bullshit until the first time he’d turned it on me and my knees had become like jelly—and he’d given me an actual come-hither look and sauntered into the bedroom, lazily stripping off one article of clothing after another. My cock had hardened, my tongue hung out, and I’d forgotten all about Vince’s friend.

Now Vince set aside the grinder, his expression thoughtful. “Theo, I need a favor.”

“You’ve got it.” I still felt I owed him for what he’d done for Paul.

Vince claimed he’d had nothing to do with the death of the bastard who’d put Paul in the hospital last spring, but either way Shaw, or whatever the fuck his name really was, was dead, blown up when he’d tried to get into Vince’s apartment, which was why Vince was back here living in the attic apartment that had been his before he’d moved to Forest Heights.

There was also the matter of the fee Paul had been rooked out of. An envelope addressed to him had come in the mail while he was still in the hospital. It contained a cashier’s check for fifteen hundred dollars. I’d had the feeling Vince was behind it, but he’d denied it when I’d asked him, and I’d dropped the subject. If he didn’t want anyone to know he was a sweetheart of a guy, his secret was safe with us.