Not his dad’s cigarettes as he’d lied one more time about where he’d been and what he’d been doing despite Gavin having seen his car in the motel parking lot earlier that afternoon after following him and the woman—who wasn’t his mom—there from the restaurant he’d seen them at earlier.
Not the first woman he’d caught his dad fucking over the years.
Not the sickly-sweet cloud of Geoff’s vape juice as the man looked him in the eyes and flat-out lied about where he’d been and who he’d been with, yetagain, and told Gavin he was simply imagining things.
He closed his eyes and forced back the stinging tears as he held his wounded hand cradled against his chest.
I’ll be okay.
He’d survived everything else he’d gone through in his forty-one years of life.
I’ll get through this, too.
It would hurt like a motherfucker, but life would go on. He kicked himself in the ass he didn’t spend the whole weekend at Kent’s a couple of weekends ago and fuck someone, or at least let himself get fucked. Had he done that, it likely would have allowed him to force Porter out of his mind for a little while and maybe find someone else for the night to help him start the process of letting his emotional wounds scab over.
He’d even looked up the website for the local BDSM club in Sarasota, and spotted there was a munch the previous weekend.
He almost attended that until he chickened out. And he didn’t attend any events there this weekend, either.
No, he wasn’t quite ready for prime-time yet.
Maybe I should hit Grindr and line up someone to meet me at the Toucan this weekend. The two of them can fucking go to hell. I can be an extra bitch, walk up to them with a new guy, and burn that motherfucker down.
Or, better, he could show up, and if they weren’t there he could march his mystery new guy around and pretend to all his friends there wasn’t a damn thing wrong.
Porter? Porter who? Fuck that asshole, and the asshole he’s fucking, too.
Jayce had tried calling Gavin last weekend and after sending it to voicemail, Gavin blocked his number.
Porter didn’t call again, though.
Fortunately, Jayce didn’t have Gavin’s e-mail address, and Gavin hoped Porter wouldn’t give it to him. He’d already blocked Jayce on all his other social media accounts.
He finally got the nut loose, then headed inside to go wash his skinned hand and bandage it, because his middle knuckle was still bleeding a little.
While he was doctoring his hand in the break room, he heard the door chime for the front door go off, and Morris speaking to someone out in the lobby.
When he emerged from the breakroom, he walked down to the lobby. “Are those my parts?”
“No—hey, wait,” Morris called to the FedEx driver.
The guy turned. It wasn’t their usual driver, either.
Morris held up a package. “This is for Addleson, not us.”
The driver took it and looked at it. “Oh, dang it.” He punched something into his electronic scanner and scanned it. “Thanks.” He headed out.
Morris walked over and handed Gavin one of the small boxes. “That’s probably yours.”
“Thanks.” He looked around. “Where’s Della?”
“Lunch, and errands. Always check the packages while the driver’s here, if you can.”
“Why?”
Morris hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the front door. “Our street number’s nearly identical to Sunbay Aviation’s address. We get each other’s stuff all the time. You’d think the drivers would learn by now.”
“Oh.”
