Neil stopped his words with his thumb again, letting Joshua suck on it a moment. He wanted to tell him that nothing was going to change about his feelings. That ignoring them, repressing them, would backfire eventually. But he didn’t want to end the night on a sour note. He loved Joshua too much to send him off angry. It used to be that he valued the truth; now he just valued Joshua. He kissed his mouth. “Go home. You’re tired.”
“And I need to jerk off.”
Neil groaned. “Asshole.” He bit back the suggestion that they take care of it together.
“Will you jerk off, too?”
Neil swallowed and nodded.
“I’d like to see that.” Joshua’s voice was soft, full of yearning.
“You could.”
Joshua’s eyes lit up and then the fire guttered out again. “I have to go. C’mon, Magic. Paul’s home.”
The giant roll of fur, more like a log than a dog, really, huffed from the bed in the corner and didn’t move.
“I guess she’s staying here.”
Neil stroked his fingers along Joshua’s jawline. “Come back after your shift. Stay with me tonight.”
Joshua backed into the hallway, his mouth still red but his eyes flashing danger. “I can’t. I’ve told you. And I probably won’t come over tomorrow, either. I have the late shift. So I guess I’ll see you and Magic… I don’t know.” He winced. “Later.”
“Later,” Neil murmured, watching Joshua unlock the door to his apartment and rush inside.
Joshua’s loud, angry cry of frustration that came as soon as the door was shut was expected, but it still made Neil tense up. He hated how Joshua hated himself. But what could he do about it except wait…and love him? He hated to admit it, but he’d fallen for the kid from the start, when Joshua had bitten into his lip and stared innocently down at him while wrapped in nothing but a towel.
And that was why he wasn’t going to pressure Joshua anymore. Not for another kiss. Not to spend the night. Not for anything physical at all. Neil could wait.
When the time came, he’d show Joshua how good it could be between men. How wrong his parents were to call it sin. He’d have Joshua begging for him to go beyond their current lust-soaked, fully clothed gropes. Yes, when Joshua finally asked to have sex with Neil, he would make him sing out in gratitude and praise.
For that, Neil could wait. Because he was in love. And when love came for a man, there was no denying it. Love was big, powerful, and strong as fuck. And he—serious, focused, never-loved-anyone-before Neil Russell—was flattened by it. He’d wait as long as it took for Joshua to love him back.
He’d wait forever.
Chapter Four
April 2022—Scottsville, Kentucky
Joshua was surprisedby the message he got from Paul. He and his boyfriend Fisher were going to be coming up from Nashville to visit with Paul’s grandma and wanted to get together. Joshua was excited to meet Fisher. After all, he’d been with Paul for quite some time now.
Paul had invited Joshua to meet Fisher once before—in Nashville—and asked him to bring Lee.
It they’d gone, it would have been the first trip that Joshua and Lee had taken together.
Well, except for the visit to Lee’s sister in Louisville. That had been a tough trip. She was still grieving for her lost child, and just the sight of Lee, with all of his scars, seemed to undo the year of therapy that she’d gotten under her belt. When she’d lost her crap, yelled at Lee, and then slammed upstairs to a bedroom, her boyfriend had asked them to leave, and they had.
Joshua had held Lee while he cried, rocking him back and forth on the hotel bed and rubbing his scarred back. Their mom had died when Lee was twelve, and their dad had abandoned them when Lee was sixteen. His sister was the only family Lee had left. And now she couldn’t bear to be near him.
“You’ve got me,” Joshua had whispered. “You’ve got me.”
It was as he’d held Lee on the hotel room bed, the vacancy light shining red outside their window, Joshua had finally understood why Lee couldn’t forgive himself, and it broke his heart. Because he understood all too well. He hadn’t even been there the morning of Neil’s death, hadn’t had a single chance to save his life, but he still blamed himself for living.
He and Lee were both survivors, and they both struggled with guilt.
The Nashville trip to meet Fisher and see Paul had never happened though. Joshua couldn’t lie to Lee about the reasons why, not like he could lie to Paul. The truth was he’d let perfectly normal issues at Stouder Lumber become emergency-sized in his mind, until he’d been able to convince himself that it was right to put the trip off indefinitely in order to resolve them. When, in fact, the problem—a few of the Mennonites struggling with the newest computer program he’d installed—wasn’t a big deal in the scheme of things, and could have easily waited a few days. He simply couldn’t make himself go back.
Maybe if Paul wasn’t still living in the same apartment, the one they’d shared beside Neil. Maybe if Joshua hadn’t held Lee on that hotel bed as he sobbed, and understood in his own heart how impossible it would be to ever go back to the places or the people death stole from them.
