Tramps and Thieves by Rhys Ford

Author:Rhys Ford [Ford, Rhys]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay romance
ISBN: 978-1-64080-038-0
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2017-09-18T05:00:00+00:00

Eleven

“I STILL think this is a very bad idea. You can’t even use the bedroom until the hazmat people go over it. Why would you go to a hotel when Grandpa’s got a huge empty house?” Alex shouted from his perch on the edge of the loft’s long couch. “And Dante’s okay with this? He’s going to let you do that? Because the house has things like a security gate and sometimes even guys with guns around it.”

There were a lot of things Rook liked—maybe even loved—about the cousin he’d shaken out of his family tree in the last few years. Alex Martin was smart, geeky, adorable but awkward enough he came off as endearing rather than an asshole like the rest of Archie’s spawn. But sometimes that stumble of foot-into-mouth tendency in Alex’s brain brought Rook up short.

Rook stared at the empty duffel bag he’d pulled out and put on the bench in his walk-in closet. He hadn’t put anything in it or even opened a drawer to see what he had that was clean, but as soon as his boyfriend bit his lower lip after Rook told him he wasn’t staying at Dante’s or Archie’s house, Rook knew he’d made a mistake.

Dante and Alex were right. He couldn’t stay in the loft or sleep in the bedroom, and despite his outward calm, he was more than a little freaked out.

He just hated admitting it.

It was well into tomorrow. If the people poking at things in his bedroom ever cleared the scene and if he could stand the smell of puke in the air and a faint hint of bleach, Rook could stay in the living room and not be anywhere near the bed where he’d unwrapped the remains of a man’s life. The dead didn’t bother him, not normally, but this one did. He’d seen death before, too many times to count if he stopped and thought about it. Carnies were too poor for doctors, and a trip to the hospital was a declaration to have affairs in order, because the sick were never coming back. There’d been summers on the circuit where he’d knocked on a performer’s trailer door only to find them bloated and ripe, their corpses cooked in broiling heat. It was a hardscrabble of a life, one usually leading to a death from disease or booze and drug addiction. He’d wanted more than that for himself, but today broke him.

But he wasn’t going to show it. Especially not to Alex. Tucked out of Alex’s sight behind the bookcases cordoning off the living space, he shouted, “Did you just say… let?”

When Rook peeked out of the closet, the look on Alex’s face was priceless. His owlish blink behind the faint sheen of his spectacles and the hesitant curve of his lip while he sucked in his breath to contemplate his options would have been comical if it hadn’t been countered by the scowl on Archie’s wrinkled face as he let himself into the loft.

In his

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.