Page 3

Three

“Stop smiling at your phone, it’s disgusting. I wanted you to cheer up, not meet a man and turn into all the other obnoxious saps living at the Tower.”

Skye rolled his eyes and glanced over at Avan. “Sorry, what was that?”

“I know you heard me. I’m sitting directly next to you. What’s the deal with you and this guy, anyway? Why are you acting like you’ve never been on a date?”

Biting his lip, Skye glanced up the road. They were on Artist’s Hill now, several houses away from Skye’s but close enough that his heart started doing high kicks in his chest. “Because I haven’t been on a date in so long it’s starting to feel like never.”

“You know how to seduce a guy,” Avan said flatly.

“Yes, thank you. But I’d really like this to be about anything other than sex for a while, and there’s a ninety-eight percent chance this dude is going to throw his drink in my face when he finds out what I do for a living.”

Avan said nothing. There was nothing to say, and they both knew it. The lovers that their brothers had all found were the exceptions to the rule. Most of the Sins had tried to date in the past, after taking their job, and it always blew up in their faces.

He hadn’t lost hope he’d find his unicorn in the herd of wild horses, but he knew that statistically—being that he, Avan, and Mauro were the last of the bunch to find someone—the pool of people willing to put up with the fact that they fucked for a living and not consider it cheating was a little too small.

“Maybe don’t tell him,” Avan suggested as the GPS told him the house was coming up.

Skye closed his eyes. “That would be the safest bet for me, but it would be a lie, and I hate the idea of not telling him the truth.”

“You’re way too good to be a fucking Sin, man.”

Skye laughed, but the sound of it died in the back of his throat as Avan pulled into the driveway and saw Rami waiting out front. He was pacing back and forth in a small line in front of the stoop, his hands twitching at his sides, his eyes wide and a little panicked.

He went still when Avan put the car in park, and he looked like he didn’t know what to do.

“Fuck. He is hot.”

“Eyes to yourself, dickhead,” Skye muttered, and then he opened the door and stepped out. When it shut, Rami startled, then walked up to him. He raised his arms, then dropped them, then stuck out his hand like he was going in for a shake.

Skye did everything he could not to laugh. He was officially obsessed with his adorably awkward uncertainty. “How about a hug?” he offered.

Rami’s shoulders sagged. “That’s what I wanted, but I didn’t know if it was appropriate.”

“Fuck appropriate.” Skye settled his arms around Rami’s waist and tugged him close. His body was warm—Christ, it was so warm. And he smelled like jasmine. Not the actual flower, but the kind that came in lotion bottles.

For some reason, the thought of Rami putting on jasmine lotion made Skye grin.

“That was nice,” Rami said after pulling back. He was hunched in on himself, and his body was tense, but he was smiling. It only lasted a second though. His gaze cut to the car, and his face fell at the sight of Avan.

He wasn’t an intimidating guy. Not like Stone or King. He had tattoos, but they were always covered by his long-sleeve shirts. He had short, shaggy hair and wore black-framed glasses and had a sort of nerd vibe to him.

But there was also something imposing about him. His expression was always stoic, his eyes deep-set and piercing. He embodied his sin in ways that Skye never quite felt like he did, and he radiated pride.

It tended to affect the people around him, and Skye felt a sudden urge to wrap himself around Rami to keep him from feeling nervous.

“His name is Avan. He’s one of my best friends. We work together,” Skye said carefully, hoping Rami wouldn’t ask just yet. He would tell him the truth when he did. He hated liars, and he wasn’t about to become one of them.

Rami turned to face him. ‘I’ve seen his picture before.’

Skye bit his lip to keep back his huge grin. “Honey, not to disappoint you, but Avan knows ASL.”

Rami blinked in surprise, then rolled his eyes. “I should have assumed if he’s your best friend.”

“It’s okay.” Skye could see Avan’s head turned to hide his laugh. “But we’ll have to give up secret conversations until we get to the restaurant.” He extended his hand and threaded their fingers together when Rami took it.

Pulling him to the car, he opened the back door and climbed in. Rami stood awkwardly, then dipped his head low. “You don’t want to sit in the front seat?”

“He’d rather sit with you. He’s tired of looking at my face,” Avan chimed in.

Rami slid in and frowned. “That’s weird. You have a really nice face.”

Skye held his breath to hold back a bubble of laughter, though he couldn’t keep himself from taking Rami’s hand again. He homed in on him, feeling for any kind of tension, but Rami seemed happy with the contact.

“Driver, to the restaurant,” Skye ordered.

“Fuck off,” Avan said with a laugh, but he put the car in reverse and backed out into the street.

Rami was quiet for the first couple of minutes, and then he turned to Skye and asked, “So, are you a prostitute too?”

It took Avan a second to right the car from his swerve after Rami asked the question. Skye’s ears were ringing, and his head was spinning from the shock, but it settled after a beat and didn’t turn into a whole vertigo spell. His throat felt thick, and he wondered for a second if this was a trap.

His friends had suffered from attacks in the past—Jet taking the worst of it from his client who turned into a violent stalker. But when he looked at Rami—really looked at him—his eyes were wide and curious.

He cleared his throat and managed to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Um.”

“I’m sorry. Was that the wrong thing to say? I’m not sure what the appropriate title for your job is.”

Skye took a beat, then said, “I guess that works. Technically. But our jobs are a little more complicated than prostitution implies.”

Rami’s face did something complicated, like he was processing Skye’s words, and then he nodded. “Okay. What do you call yourselves?”

“Sins,” Skye said.

Rami’s lips twitched, and then he laughed. “Because the seven deadly sins. I get it.”

“Are you a client?” Avan asked sharply.

Rami’s brows flew up. “Oh. No . No, I’m not…” His voice dropped to a whisper, and Skye had to read his words off his lips. “I don’t have that kind of money.” He looked ashamed, and Skye suddenly felt a rush of guilt.

“Avan’s only asking because we’re not used to people who aren’t clients knowing us. At least not the people who live outside of our neighborhood. And some of the guys have had stalkers, so we have to be cautious.”

“Oh. I understand that. People can be really invasive. They think if you work in the sex industry, they have a right to your body and you can’t have a say in what they take.”

He sounded like he knew what he was talking about, which was a surprise. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who did sex work, though maybe that was an unfair assumption. He was absurdly good-looking, after all, and he was living on one of the most expensive streets in Norwich. If he was the family disappointment when it came to his art, maybe he was paying his bills another way.

But Skye realized he didn’t want to ask because he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to make that the tone of their date. He wanted to know Rami. To see what made him smile and what made him cry. To see if he was a dog or a cat person. To see what he liked on his burgers and how he took his coffee.

The rest could wait.

He took a breath, then said, “Does it bother you?”

Rami blinked. “That’s a strange question.”

Skye’s eyebrow lifted. “Is it?”

Rami didn’t answer him, and Skye wondered if maybe he’d overstepped somehow. But then Rami squeezed his hand and shifted closer, his eyes fixed on the horizon. The moment suddenly felt still. Quiet. Good.

Skye found himself breathing a little deeper and a little easier. He’d never felt like this before. It had to mean something, didn’t it?

“How about a subject change?” Avan suggested after a long beat.

Rami nodded. “I like talking about history.”

Avan met Skye’s eyes in the rearview mirror, and he winked. “Wonderful. Tell me your favorite historical fact.”

Rami looked like Christmas had come early. He took a deep breath, glanced at Skye, then said, “Well. Did you know that there’s a theory the Ancient Greeks were genetically colorblind, and that’s why their art—I mean, before the British came and removed all the paint from their artifacts—was so garishly painted?”

“I don’t get it. It has to make sense. You can’t just deep-fry something and call it a UFO because it’s round-shaped.”

Skye was grinning so hard his cheeks hurt. He picked up one of the deep-fried, cheese-stuffed artichoke hearts and zoomed it in the space between him and Rami before shoving it in his mouth. The appetizer had been sitting for nearly ten minutes, but the cheese was still hot enough to sear the roof of his mouth.

“See,” he attempted to say.

Rami rolled his eyes. “Yes. But also no. They should just call things what they are .”

He took a more delicate bite of his own, then blew on the molten insides. He seemed to not enjoy extreme temperatures of anything, Skye noticed. He ordered his drink with no ice, and he was only eating the outside of the artichoke while the cheese cooled.

“I have a good friend who’d agree with you. He’s a very literal kind of guy.”

“Is he Autistic too?”

“No, I—well. He might be. I don’t armchair diagnose anyone though,” Skye said. He was noticing strong similarities between August and Rami, but far be it from him to make any kind of assumption.

Rami cocked his head to the side, then set down the artichoke heart and raised his hands. ‘Is he a Sin too?’

Skye smiled and didn’t bother pointing out that there was a chance—even if it was a tiny one—that someone in the bar understood ASL. He swiped his hands off on his jeans, then answered back, ‘No. He’s an artist. But he’s in a relationship with one. Lust,’ he spelled. ‘He’s our boss. Owns the Tower.’

Rami looked startled. ‘Can you have a boyfriend?’

‘I can have a boyfriend who doesn’t mind…’ He didn’t have the lexicon for what he wanted to say. ‘My job,’ he eventually signed.

Rami nodded. His face wasn’t very expressive at all for someone as fluent in ASL as he was, but he was starting to notice little subtle twitches, eyebrows barely up, barely down as he signed. He wondered how many people paid Rami close attention. He had a feeling not many.

‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

Skye shook his head. ‘No. I’ve been single for a long time.’

Rami bit his lip, and for a second, Skye thought he might offer to change that. It would have been his move if he’d been set up that way. Rami’s cheeks darkened with a blush, and a smile played at the corners of his mouth, but after a long beat, he dropped his hands and picked up his fork, spearing the artichoke heart and taking a bigger bite.

Skye’s stomach sank down to his feet. He must have been doing something wrong. They’d been at the table for nearly half an hour, and he’d been laying it on thick, but Rami wasn’t taking the bait. He knew he hadn’t misinterpreted what this was. They both knew it was a date, but Skye realized maybe his expectations were skewed because unless he was interacting with the Sins, most of his contact with people ended in sex.

And he had to remind himself that while sex was great—and he would not say no to a night with Rami—it wasn’t his endgame. He didn’t even have one of those in mind yet. The thought of not knowing where something was going was suddenly thrilling.

“I—” His words were cut off when both of his hearing aids suddenly gave their loud, obnoxious four chimes in his ears. They were dying. “Shit.”

Rami sat up straight. “What’s wrong?”

“Hearing aids are dying.” Beep-beep beep-beep . He pulled them out and slipped them into his pocket. He hated waiting for them to fully die. It made him anxious sitting there in anticipation of the world going muffled and thick. ‘Sorry,’ he signed.

Rami looked confused. ‘Batteries?’

‘They charge in their case, and I left that at home.’ And, of course, in his fixation on the date, he’d forgotten to charge them the night before. He’d stayed up late watching YouTube videos of people making clay sculptures.

‘We can sign. I like ASL. It’s easier than speaking.’

Skye could not relate. He was pretty sure he’d never default to his hands before his mouth. One of the classes he’d taken was for adults losing their hearing, and so many people took to the language like it had been lying dormant, waiting to be activated.

He was not one of that crowd. He struggled to remember sentence structure, non-manual markers, mouth shapes, and if his eyebrows went up or down during questions, and his hand placements were often so wrong. There was terminology and slang that he’d been taught that had slipped his mind.

He still didn’t know what Deaf Bing meant or the appropriate time to sign Champ, and at this point, he was too afraid to ask his teacher.

He felt lost and foolish.

But Rami hadn’t once complained about how slow he was or the fact that he was somewhere between ASL and signed English, even when he was trying. He just rolled with Skye’s pace and looked perfectly happy to do it.

God, he wanted to get this right. He wanted to end this date with the promise they could do it again. That Skye could have another chance and not fuck it up.

‘Are you okay?’ Rami asked.

Shit. Busted. ‘Sorry. I have a lot on my mind, and I…’ His hand hovered, pointing at his chest. He took a breath. ‘Am I doing something wrong?’

‘Wrong?’ Rami echoed the sign, tapping his Y hand on his chin, then used his finger to indicate he was asking a question.

‘I like you,’ Skye told him. ‘You’re funny and hot and nice.’

Rami’s cheeks darkened again, and his shoulders hunched slightly. ‘Thank you.’

Skye laughed. ‘I wasn’t trying to flatter you. I’m being honest. But I get the feeling you’re not as interested in me, and I want to know what I’m doing wrong. Or is it just me?’

Rami looked panicked, glancing from left to right, and then he stood up. ‘Can we go for a walk?’

Skye was not expecting that, but he knew the neighborhood well, and a walk sounded really nice. He hadn’t come with a big appetite, and he was glad they weren’t waiting on huge entrees. ‘Let me pay. Want to wait for me outside?’

Rami nodded, looking relieved, and he darted away. Skye was terrified suddenly that if he took longer than a second to get the bill squared, he’d go out and Rami would be gone and Skye’s number would be blocked. He’d been on better dates than this and had been ghosted.

So why would this go differently?

He approached the bar, and the bartender began to talk quickly. Skye held up his hand and put his finger to his ear. “Sorry, I’m deaf, and I can’t understand you. I just want to settle my bill.”

Her eyes widened, but she nodded and swiped his card after he handed it over. She motioned for him to sign, and he only just managed to roll his eyes because he was deaf, not a child. He knew how to close a bar tab.

His heart was tripping in his chest as he tucked the crumpled receipt in his pocket next to his hearing aids, and he held his breath as he walked out through the front doors.

Fuck. He was right. Rami was nowhere to be found.

God, seriously, what had he done? How was he so much of a disaster that he couldn’t manage a single dinner and?—

A hand touched his shoulder, and he spun, almost toppling over. Rami caught him with his strong arms. His fingers dug into Skye’s biceps, and then he slowly dragged them down until he was holding both of his hands.

He was standing close. Not close enough to kiss, but almost.

Rami licked his lips, then said in a voice pitched just loud enough for Skye to hear, “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was me. I really like you, but I’m also a virgin, and it has to stay that way for a long, long time.”