The Suit by Amy Lane

Author:Amy Lane [Lane, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-64108-375-1
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2022-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

A Shift in Expectations

CARL STARTED to get cold, lying on top of the covers without any clothes, but Michael was sleeping.

It seemed imperative that, for this moment, Carl let him sleep.

Finally when he was not only cold but also had to pee, he worked carefully to situate Michael under the covers before sliding off the bed and into his briefs and T-shirt before using the facilities.

He stayed in the bathroom for a moment after washing his hands and splashing some water on his face to see if anything about him was different. Same guy, he thought. Starkly handsome in a broad-shouldered, Viking sort of way. Green-eyed, a nose that was short a millimeter from being described as “Roman,” and an almost perpetually quizzical expression, as though he was used to watching the world behave in absurd and strange patterns around him.

I can’t be that guy anymore. The guy who fell into things, like he’d fallen into his job or fallen into his attachment to the Salingers, no matter how satisfying that was. Michael hadn’t just fallen into his bed—Michael had chosen him, after a whole lot of heartbreak and a whole lot of violence and pain and fear. The violence and pain and fear had been written on his skin, and the thought of that made Carl’s hands shake.

Michael had walked through fire, and apparently he thought Carl was one of the good things that had been waiting for him on the other side. Carl needed to do better, be better, to be that sort of reward. Michael deserved better than an also-ran. He deserved a hero.

But not a hero like Chuck or Hunter, who, though pretty damned heroic, didn’t really fit the mold Michael had in mind. Carl had seen the signs in him from the very beginning: making an apartment out of an airplane hangar, learning to cook with his ex-wife, thinking about how to integrate his children into the life he was building in this new city.

Michael needed a hero who could be proactive. Not about the adventures that might befall them all, but about their personal life. Carl’s ex-wife had done the wrangling, the proposing, the “Where’s this relationship going, Carl?” and that had been fine with him. He’d assumed he’d get married, assumed he’d be unhappy in that relationship—or absent—and had then fulfilled both prophecies nicely.

Carl had known his relationship with Danny had been doomed from the start. You didn’t fall in love with someone in rehab when they said right up front that they could kick the whiskey, but they couldn’t quit their addiction to their one true love.

This was different. It wasn’t a hookup like Chuck had been. It wasn’t a one-off or a “hey, let’s see where this goes,” only to have it go nowhere. It wasn’t a “wait-and-see” like Ginger had been, which he was glad hadn’t gone anywhere because apparently she was as corrupt as most of Serpentus.

This was someone Carl liked, admired, and cared for, and he’d made Carl his holy grail.

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