Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 138844 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 694(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138844 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 694(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
I was so fucking tired of everything. But at least Lucian was happy, huh? He was making friends in his kink circles and living the life. Next week, he had meetings in Luxembourg, a seminar at the fucking OECD headquarters in Paris, and then more meetings in Frankfurt. He was making it.
All I got right now were late nights at the office where I was buried in files upon files of shareholder complaints and future lawsuits in the biggest clusterfuck of an acquisition gone wrong. They fucking knew they wouldn’t get their money’s worth when they sold off the subsidiaries, but that didn’t stop them from taking each other to court, now did it?
Actually, I got a lot of Chinese food and self-doubt too. Take that, Leroux.
He returned a moment later with new drinks, and I could kiss him. Fuck no, I couldn’t. Whatever. Fuck. Move on. I cleared my throat. Whiskey—a whole bottle of it. He knew me.
I loosened my tie and shifted closer so we could talk without screaming. My thigh bumped into his, shoving images of Christine to the forefront of my mind. She was waiting for my answer. Are we getting back together or not, KC? Just answer me.
I took a big swallow of my drink and winced at the burn.
I couldn’t touch Lucian, even platonically. Every time I did, I saw Christine, tapping her foot impatiently, as if the mere memory of her wouldn’t let me forget reality for a fucking second.
The bastard leaned in close and spoke in my ear. “You wanna get a room with the bottle?”
“Yeah!” I nodded.
He chuckled and poured a drink for himself too. Then he drained half his glass before shrugging out of his suit jacket, and I sensed what came next. He wasn’t leaving here until he knew my plan.
What if I didn’t know myself? What if I wanted to drink till I passed out and just ignore forming a plan altogether?
“Have you decided what to do yet?” he asked.
I didn’t know if it was the door opening ten feet away, the AC, or the constant motion in the bar, but something sent a whiff of his cologne my way, and I clenched my jaw.
Get back together with Christine and be there for Noa? And keep my parents happy?
Say fuck it and leave it all behind, maybe find a man and…
I swallowed hard and picked up my glass again.
Jesus Christ, I was fucked.
“Hey.” He put a hand on my thigh, stilling it. I hadn’t even noticed I’d been bouncing my legs like Noa. My little drummer. He could never sit still. “Are you really going back to her?”
I didn’t want to. I felt like I was going to suffocate. At the same time, I could already hear my mother if I came home for Sunday dinner and told her I was single.
“The rumors aren’t true, are they? You need to find a wife, Kyle. You need children, a family, a woman to come home to. God—imagine the shame if… I can’t even say it.”
I stared down at my drink and tried to take a calming breath.
My crime? I’d roughhoused with a neighbor when I was nine years old. We’d been tumbling around on the lawn in swim trunks, and I’d been more concerned about getting back my goddamn toy truck than whatever the fuck my sexuality was. But the only people worse than my extremist parents were the fundamentalists next door. They’d run over to our backyard, torn their son out of my grasp, and dragged him away.
Weeks later, he’d been sent to a Christian summer camp for “troubled youth,” and the women in our community had started talking. My mother had started talking. Rumors here, rumors there.
I closed my eyes, almost wishing I still believed their threats about hell and damnation. Being scared was legit. Being scared forced you to act a certain way. Now…? I was just a fucking coward.
My life wouldn’t end if I came out. If anything, it would begin.
And yet…
I couldn’t.
Lucian had once told me he hated nicknames. It was back in high school, if I remembered correctly. Not long after we’d first met. He’d called nicknames childish. Scott was Scott, not Scotty. Kyle was Kyle, not KC.
That had lasted about a week. Then I’d almost lost my shit on him, and I’d told him I hated my name. It’d taken years to tell him why, but maybe he’d understood. It made my skin crawl every time I heard my mother and father summon me.
Lucian had never tried to call me Kyle again after my burst of anger. In fact, he often used nicknames today.
Knowing him, he’d understood that a name could be more than a name. A name could be part of your identity. It could bring forth memories that haunted you. You could associate it with a part of you that you wanted to kill off.