Page 4 of Regret Me Not

“So there can be sex jokes. Eventually. I just want to make sure.” Very gingerly the kid lowered Pierce until he was sitting. After he straightened, he scampered up the steps and pulled off his sodden robe, laying it out on the chaise to dry, and kicked off his ruined leather sandals.

“Oh geez.” Pierce thought of the massacre of perfectly good shoes and robe and was attacked by his conscience, which he’d assumed was dormant or dead. “Kid, I’m sorry about the clothes—”

“Don’t be.” He shrugged. “They’re my old man’s, and since he kicked me out of the house for Christmas, he can pretty much kiss off his super classy robe and huaraches, you hear me?”

Pierce wasn’t sure whether to chuckle or be horrified. “Just for Christmas?” he asked, making sure.

He lowered the sunglasses over his eyes again, probably to help him look insouciant when he was—in all likelihood—wounded. “Folks were having important political friends over. I’m a gay embarrassment, so I got the beach house. Last year they were in Europe, and I got the beach house with my boyfriend and we fucked like lemmings. No boyfriend this year.”

“The lemmings are safe?” Pierce asked, sympathies reluctantly stirred. Parents who judged their kids for sexual activity? He knew those assholes! Pierce and Sasha had grown up with their very own set.

Kid laughed, sounding young and happy instead of casual and cynical. Pierce liked the sound. “Here, let me rub your leg down—I promised.”

Pierce grunted. “Kid—”

“Hal—”

“Like the computer?”

Hal stared at him, unimpressed. “Oh dear, aSpace Odysseyjoke. I’ve never heard one of those, given that I’ve had this stupid name since birth. Now give me your leg.”

Pierce complied, startled by the venom. “Well, I could call you ‘Prince Hal,’ like—”

“King Henry the Fifth? Like in the Branagh movie?”

Pierce racked his brains, trying to remember. “I thought Branagh just didHamlet,” he said, confused.

Hal gasped and wrapped his hands around Pierce’s ankle. “Heathen! How could you not know about the Branagh King Henry? He was young and still faithful and downright adorable!”

As he spoke, Hal worked his capable, agile fingers up Pierce’s leg—between that and the hot, bubbling water, Pierce’s entire body was melting like chocolate in the sun.

“The faithful part is important to you?” Pierce asked, trying to keep his mind on the conversation and not just tilt his head back and drool. Maybe his doctor was missing out on something here. The rubdown in the tub after the physical activity felt like an exciting new way to make a battered body feel whole again.

“Mmhmm… wow.” Hal rubbed careful circles around the network of scars on Pierce’s knee. “What did you do here?”

“Car accident,” Pierce told him again.

“I know that—but here?”

“The door buckled in and ripped up my knee and thigh,” Pierce admitted reluctantly. “My arm and shoulder too.”

“You were driving,” Hal assessed. “What happened?”

Oh, Pierce didn’t want to talk about this. “One of those super big trucks ran a red light,” he said shortly, and then Hal started rubbing circles at the place where his knee was stiffest. Not the part with the scars, curiously enough—it was like Hal had magic fingers.

“Bummer. Were you alone in the car?”

Ugh.This was what Pierce didn’t want to talk about. “My soon-to-be ex-wife,” he said, unable to control the loathing.

Hal seemed to hear it anyway—but didn’t stop working Pierce’s calf and knee. Belatedly, the intimacy of the situation hit Pierce, and he felt stupid. Another human being was touching him, giving him pleasure that was unsolicited by duty or money.

It had been so long.

Pierce closed his eyes and groaned, waiting for Hal to ask the inevitable question.

“Soon-to-be ex?”

It hadn’t taken long.