Page 19 of The Allure of Ruins

I dreamed that I woke up and the apartment was trashed, and I had to tell Colton he’d slept through Gen being in his home.

Two years ago, that would have terrified me.

There might even have been some hyperventilating.

What had changed because of therapy, and Colton, was that now I forced myself to open my eyes, lift my head, glance around, see there was nothing…

and go back to sleep. At home, there was always a light on.

It was easier. Normally, at Colton’s, I would wake up in the middle of the night and still be okay because the wall of windows showed either millions of stars, falling snow, or the city lights.

This was Chicago, and there was always someone else awake.

Rising off the couch, still wrapped in the blanket, I shuffled over to the fireplace, turned it off, plunging the room into darkness, and walked over to the window and looked down at the front of the building.

There was a CPD patrol car there, which was comforting, but I also thought, unneeded.

It was always the case, early in the morning, before dawn—it seemed hard to be scared, or even concerned with nightmares, when you weren’t supposed to be up.

Heading toward my room, I heard Colton call my name.

Moving slowly, I went toward his open bedroom door and then leaned in to see if maybe he’d called out in his sleep.

But the light on his nightstand was on, and he was sitting there, still, I knew, naked under the loosely wrapped quilt.

I kept my eyes lifted, focused on his face so as not to admire the hard-muscled chest or the chiseled abdomen.

“You all right?” I asked him.

“Did you wrap me up in the blanket?”

I stared at him. Even half awake, logic had to prevail. Who else might it have been?

“Fine,” he griped. “Why did you do that?”

“Because a wet towel is no good for your comforter, sheets, or mattress.”

“Yeah,” he mumbled.

“Plus, what if you got cold?”

“I keep this apartment at seventy degrees.”

“Yeah, but still, you might have gotten cold.”

“I can’t believe I passed out.”

“You were attacked on Friday. You got punched and then got stitches. Yesterday, you worked at a shelter all day and then had to deal with my shit at night. Of course you were tired. Now turn off the light, get under the covers, and go back to sleep,” I ordered, making for the door.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“You can talk to me in the morning.”

“It’s morning now.”

“Later in the morning, then,” I said, yawning. “I’ll take you to breakfast if you’re good and you go to sleep now.”

“I’m not a child. I’m older than you.”

“Are you? Are you really?” Apparently, it was impossible for me not to be snarky with him at any time of day.

He let out a frustrated huff of air.

“Please go to sleep,” I soothed him. “Kill the light like a good boy and try not to dwell on the mid-century abomination you chose.”

I was almost out the door.

“Abomination? What’d you just say?”

I didn’t stop. “I told you those nightstands were heinous. The lines, the minimalist fixtures, they make me rabid.”

“I hate this.”

That stopped me, and I spun around. “What do you hate?”

“I need to confess something to you.”

“I’m sorry, go ahead.”

He exhaled sharply.

“May I ask something while you’re thinking?”

After a moment, he said, “Yeah.”

“Did you line up someone to go with you to the black-tie event later this evening? Because if you did, you should probably call and confirm with them.”

“Have you noticed you always try and tell me what to do and it never works?”

I cleared my throat. “Have you ever noticed that nine times out of ten, you actually do what I want?”

“No. That’s not true.”

I scoffed. “It is though. You don’t like to be managed, you don’t like to be nagged at, and you really hate—most of all—for anyone to tell you what to do.

However, if I suggest something, it gets in your brain, and then a couple of days later I’ll ask you a question, and as long as you’ve forgotten that I was the one to bring it up in the first place and you think you did it on your own, then you’ll do it. ”

“No.”

“Yes,” I insisted.

“Name one time,” he dared me.

“I can name ten off the top of my head, but are you awake enough to banter?”

“I hate this.”

“You said that before. What do you hate?”

“This.”

“Arguing at four in the morning? Is that it?”

“Yes,” he muttered.

I smiled at him. “Please go to sleep. I’ll see you in the later morning.” I stopped in the doorway. “Thank you for bringing me home. You’re very good to strays.”

“You’re not a stray,” he grumbled. “You always make it sound like I did you this big favor by having you work for me and taking care of you, but you take really good care of me too.”

I sighed deeply. “That’s possibly the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Would it be scary for you if you came and lay down by me?”

My stomach flipped over, and not in a bad way, but in the good way that I had nearly forgotten. “Nothing about you has ever scared me.”

“Which is interesting, right?”

I thought about it a moment. “It is, yes.”

“Well, nothing you’ve ever done has made me think, huh, he’s strange.”

“What about weird?”

“Not even weird. Ever since you told me all those years ago that I had to make intuitive leaps and think faster, I’ve been doing that.”

He had, that was true. Now he could basically read my expressions.

“It’s not great for learning other people, like what makes them tick. It doesn’t leave room to get to know others because I just want it to work the same.”

“I know what Dr. Butler would say.”

“What would he say?”

“He’d say that codependence is bad, and that you need to have someone else work for you. We should stay friends, but I shouldn’t work for you. It’s too much time spent together.”

“What do you think?”

“It shouldn’t matter what I think, only what you think.”

“That’s crap. Tell me what you think?”

“I think it’s far too early in the morning to be having such a serious conversation. We both need to go to bed.”

“Okay.”

I turned to go.

“Will you come lie down?”

I looked at him over my shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

“I think you want to sleep next to me, and I want to sleep next to you, so let’s do that and see if it’s all right.”

“You’re straight,” I reminded him.

“Which has what to do with what I’m asking?”

I sighed and crossed my arms. “You’re a smart man. You know precisely what it has to do with what you’re asking.”

He was quiet a moment. “I don’t want any other guy to get in my bed with me,” he said softly. “But I don’t want a woman in here either.”

I had to grab hold of the doorframe so I wouldn’t sink to the floor. “That’s new, isn’t it?” I barely got out. My breath kept catching.

“Not that new.”

Oh.

“It’s been like this for a while for me,” he confessed. “But because you were so hurt, I didn’t want to…scare you off.”

“That could never happen,” I promised him. “Not with you.”

He stared at me, searching my face, and I was drawn farther into the room by the warmth in his eyes.

“Colton?”

He cleared his throat. “See, I think we’re both unsure what to do because neither of us wants to mess up and lose the other person. I know not having you here would be the worst thing I could think of.”

“Yes. Same.”

“See? There you go. I may be straight, but as many times as I think about—” He stopped.

“As many times as you think about what?”

“No. It’s not nice.”

“Let me be the judge.”

He took a breath. “I want to hold you down, and I worry that would scare you.”

“I want to be held down—by you,” I added, “since we’re being honest. But I worry how I’ll react.”

“You’re saying you want that, with me, but you’re scared.”

“Yes. I know how you are when people say you’re too rough in any way. I can’t have you leave me if I’m not ready.”

“And for me, because it’s you, and I know how I’ve been with you for the last five years, and how you’ve been with me, I feel like this, now, if you get scared, I would wait until you’re not.”

“Yes, but what if I’m never not scared?”

“But you’ve never been scared of me.”

“Because there was nothing romantic between us.”

He squinted at me. “Hasn’t there been?”

It was a lot of honesty. “I think we’re both tired,” I replied before my brain exploded.

“Okay,” he said, sounding defeated.

I had to know. “But can I sleep in here with you?” I asked, my heart in my throat, wanting to lie down next to him and at the same time being terrified of how I would react.

“Would you, please?” he rasped.

Moving quickly, I walked over to the opposite side of the bed, let the blanket drop to the floor, and then took off the sweater.

“Is that mine?” he groused at me. “I’ve been looking for that.”

I chuckled. I couldn’t help it.

He turned off the light, and I got into bed, under the covers, as he rolled onto his left side, facing away from me.

“What’re you doing?”

“I think maybe if you hold me, instead of me holding you, that might be better. Then the choices are yours, and it’s about exactly what you want.”

After a moment, I agreed.

“Do you want me to put something on?”

“No,” I whispered. “Do you want me to take something off?”

“Yeah. Can you take off your shirt?”

“I can.”

“Okay. Because if your skin feels…not right on mine, then I’ll know what we’re gonna be, and we can go from there.”

It made sense.

“Conversely, if touching my skin scares you, we’ll know something as well.”

“Very well reasoned.”

“Lawyer,” he said.

I was smiling as I pulled my shirt up over my head and put it on the bed beside me. Slowly, I got closer and felt the heat from his skin before I reached him. His breath was shaky, ragged, and I loved that. He was afraid to be repulsed. I was afraid to be…afraid. We were quite a pair.

Sliding in close behind him, I thought, I want my mouth on the back of his neck at least once in my life. I have to know what that feels like . Easing forward, I brushed his hair to the side, then pressed a kiss to his warm skin, inhaling at the same time.

“Oh,” he husked softly, almost a whine.