Page 137 of Bobby Green

Dex nodded soberly. “But it’s out of his hands now—and he’s made his peace with it.”

“Really?” And until he asked, Bobby had forgotten how hungry he was for the answer.

“Why?” Dex looked over Bobby’s shoulder, like he was checking for Reg to just appear. “What did you have in mind?”

Bobby outlined a very simple plan, and Dex grimaced. “Do you think he’ll agree to go back in the game?”

“You did,” Bobby reminded.

Dex smiled slightly. “Your eyes were so goddamned wide.”

Bobby winked. “I’m still a country boy at heart, Dex. Not all the dick in the world changed that.”

“Yeah.” Dex’s smile was reassuring. He was as married as a guy could get, but he didn’t regret a goddamned minute of his past. “Okay, country boy. Am I going to be losing you after this?”

Bobby shrugged. “We’ll ask Reg. If this works.” He smiled, and it held all the hope he could summon. “He really does like to watch me fuck, you know.”

A week later, Dex’s laughter, warm and a little dirty, gave him the confidence to walk into the scene room and take his shirt off and pretend this was like any other scene.

When Dex left the room, Bobby looked over to Reg, tired, small, huddling in on himself without his usual cockiness, and thoughtThis is it. He needs me. It’s time to take him back.

Breaking the Circle

REG CUDDLEDinto Bobby’s chest, suddenly understanding the entire purpose of being there on the shoot with Bobby.

“Dex set me up!” he said, feeling betrayed.

Bobby nodded, unbothered. “He helped me out,” he said, those strong arms around him still. Then he closed his eyes. “God, Reggie—it’s been two months. Are you ever going to forgive me?”

Reg rested his cheek against Bobby’s bare chest. “I’m old,” he said, because the thought had been nagging at him, haunting him for the last week. “You… you and me—maybe we’re just better off—”

Bobby kissed him then, mouth warm and sweet, hard like a man’s, demanding.

God, he was so good at giving Reg a center, a thing to do, a place to be, a person to strive for.

Reg opened to him helplessly, all his trepidation washed away in the heat of his body. In the heat of his kiss.

“What’s it gonna be?” Bobby whispered again. “I want you back. I wantusback. I went to sleep with the man I love and woke up with nothing.”

Reg feathered a touch along the healing scar on his stomach. “How can you… look what she did,” he whispered. Then, even more horribly, “You went tojailbecause of me!”

Bobby shook his head and cupped Reg’s chin between his fingers. “I’ll say this once out loud, and it’s important. I went to jail because ofme. Because I got violence in me, Reg. You were there to pull me off Keith Gilmore, but I needed to hold myself back off that cop, and I didn’t.”

“You were under—”

“Extreme duress,” Bobby said, sounding like he’d recited the words a thousand times. “It’s why it was two weeks and not three years. But even if it was three years, I woulda gotten out and come looking for you. I woulda written you letters, embarrassing ones, like in the books we read, because you’re who I would be thinking of the whole time.”

Reg nodded, closing his eyes tight, listening to Bobby’s heart beating in his chest. “I would have broken my heart and died if I couldn’t see you for three years,” he said, all the missing him of the last two months washing over him.

“What’s it gonna be?” Bobby asked again.

Reg looked around at the pretend bedroom, where so many people had fucked each other raw for fame and money.

“Not here,” he said wretchedly. “I don’t… I don’t want to do it here.”

Bobby half laughed into the hollow of his shoulder, and his chest shook. Reg was going to ask if he was crying when he realized that he,Reg, was the one whose eyes were burning, the one who couldn’t catch his breath.

“Can we go—” Bobby started out, and Reg interrupted.