James and Merrick by Jessica Skye Davies

Author:Jessica Skye Davies [Davies, Jessica Skye]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LGBTQIA+, Age-gap, arts (visual), friends-to-lovers, hurt/comfort, stripper, engagement, artist, maestro, tailor, London setting, Welsh ancestry
Publisher: NineStar Press, LLC
Published: 2021-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

“Are you really sure you don’t want me to be there?” Shawn asked as he drove James through London late Sunday morning.

“Yeah,” James said quietly. “I have to do this on my own. I haven’t been much of a man about this so far, so I guess I gotta be all at once now.”

“Well, look, message me when you’re going in, yeah? If I don’t hear back from you in an hour or so, I’m going to send in the cavalry.”

James laughed hollowly. “Don’t worry. Michael wouldn’t kill me. It might stain or wrinkle his Versace trousers. He’ll bitch me out for sure; my ears might be ringing for a few days. He might even throw things at me. But if he wants me dead, he’ll have somebody else do it.”

Shawn usually appreciated James’s sometimes dubious sense of humour, but at the moment, he wasn’t entirely sure James was joking. He was probably right about the designer labels putting off any immediate threat, though, so Shawn guessed it would be safe enough to leave James alone with Michael long enough for them to have a serious talk.

Eventually, Shawn pulled his Rover to a kerb close to Michael’s upmarket block of flats. “Ring me as soon as it’s done. We can go directly to a pub and see you get properly fucking trollied. Or I’ll get you back to yours, or mine, or whatever you want.”

“You’re a damn good friend, Shawn. I owe you for finally making me face what’s really going on in my life. I only wish I’d done it on my own sooner.”

“Maybe if you didn’t have someone like him running you down all the time you would have, but then you wouldn’t have needed the reality check, would you?” Shawn said, laying an inspiring hand on James’s shoulder.

“Well,” James said, taking a deep breath and opening the car door, “here I go.”

As James walked into Michael’s apartment, he swore he could almost feel the tension in the air. There had been almost twenty text messages and several voice messages from Michael overnight, but James hadn’t got a chance to look at or hear them, let alone respond to them. Shawn had plucked the mobile phone out of James’s hand and deleted the lot of Michael’s messages, telling James he didn’t need whatever abuse they contained.

James took another deep breath, carefully setting his keys on the table beside the door.

“Rachele,” Michael called from down the hall, “please do leave the bath undone just now. I might have to bloody murder my fiancé and that bastard Shawn Lasting if I see them, so no sense having to clean it all again. Can you believe he actually kidnapped Jacques-Yves yesterday for some overnight thing—and I almost didn’t mind the break from him, but he knows he needs to be around me while I’m getting these wedding things done or people are going to start thinking I’m making up the whole thing! What’s the use of marrying a—”

“It’s not Rachele,” James called before Michael could continue.

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