The Devil You Know by S. J. Coles

Author:S. J. Coles [Coles, S. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LGBT Romance Fiction
Publisher: Totally Entwined Group
Published: 2022-03-21T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

“This was a mistake.”

“One of our better ones,” Dom murmured as he got to his feet, his voice slurry with sex.

Hilary turned his face away, heat flooding his cheeks.

“How about that drink?” Dom said after the silence had stretched into awkwardness.

Hilary nodded, not making eye contact as he pulled his trousers back up. He heard the sound of ice dropped in a glass then the glug of liquid. He retrieved his rumpled shirt from the floor and pulled it on as Dominic held out a glass filled with ice and a clear fluid.

“I have no idea if it’s good,” he said as Hilary took the glass. “I just know it’s from Russia.”

Hilary had glimpsed the bottle of single variety Belvedere vodka when he’d come into the room and sipped the fiery liquid appreciatively. “It’s good,” he said.

Dom smiled a half-smile and gestured at the sofa. Hilary glanced at the lift door but, suddenly tired beyond all reason, sat. Dom shrugged his own shirt back on and sat a careful distance away, sipping his whiskey in the silence.

“You never answered my question,” Hilary said quietly.

“Which one?”

“If you didn’t hate me…why…”

“Why was I such a cunt?”

Hilary looked at him. He sat with his arm along the back of the sofa, close to but not touching Hilary’s shoulder, regarding him with a sad smile. “Well…yeah.”

“I’ve spent a long time trying to answer that question,” he murmured, “as have various therapists. All I know for sure is that back then I was…angry. All the time.”

“Why?”

“Lots of reasons,” he said with a wry smile. “And no reason at all. My dad was…” He hesitated. “I had what my therapist calls a ‘troubled upbringing’. But I know now that you can only blame your parents for your shit for so long. I know myself better now. And one thing I did figure out was why you wound me up so much back then.”

Hilary stared at him. Dom’s full mouth was unsmiling, but his eyes were warm. Hilary fought the sensation of double vision, this face he knew so well wearing an expression he never knew it was capable of, let alone would ever be directed at him.

“You…you liked me?” he said, voice barely above a whisper.

“You never guessed? Even now?” Dom asked gently.

Hilary glanced at his discarded tie, the briefcase lying where he’d dropped it, felt the ghost of that hot touch across his skin. “Honestly? I thought you’d taken your mind games to a new level—and that I was falling for it all over again.”

Dom’s face darkened. “Then you really must think I’m evil.” Hilary didn’t answer. Dom’s heavy gaze slid away. “I fought it. Fought you. It confused and angered me. But…yes. It was all because I liked you—more than liked.”

Hilary slumped into the sofa cushions, staring into his drink as hard thoughts shifted position in his head, clunking into place to make a clear but grim picture.

“I’m sorry. It’s not enough. But I wanted to say it, anyway.”

A knot in Hilary’s chest, one that had been there for years, unacknowledged, suddenly loosened.

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