Page 28 of The Himbo and the Lord

How can I explain what I don’t understand myself?

Should I?

Wouldn’t it be better—more merciful—to let him believe this is who I am out in the real world? Wouldn’t it save us both?

I have no answers. For anything.

So instead, I get a cab and give the driver the name of our hotel.

Not a single clear thought goes through my brain in all the time it takes me to arrive back at my room.

It’s only as I undress and sit on the mattress that the heart-clutching torment begins.

* * *

If you toldme I’d only slept for a second, I’d believe you, and alas, my eyes spring open when the banging on the door starts.

My brain is sluggish from all the hours I spent awake, mortification slowly taking over every cell in my body. It’s now all I know, all I am, as I sit up and look around confused.

I’m officially the mortified man, and I... don’t think I’m ready to face anyone.

Especially the three men outside my door, who never let me bury my head in the sand.

And that’s one of the reasons I’m so scared of losing them in the first place.

I sigh.

There’s no way out of this.

I open the door wordlessly, and turn my back on them without looking them in the eyes. I need to go to the bathroom first.

I do my morning routine, maybe a little slower than usual, and splash some water on my face a good five times.

I need to be one hundred percent awake for this conversation. I don’t want them any more distracted from our trip than I’ve already made them. We have only two more days here, I don’t want to lose that as well as...

Ru?The asshole in the back of my brain asks.

I never really had Ru, so it’s physically impossible to lose him.

“For fuck’s sake, Nathaniel, just come out already,” Seth snaps at me from the other side of the door.

I want to whine that I don’t want to, and stomp my feet like a toddler, but that goes against my desire to want to spend more time with them, and I don’t know how many more discrepancies I can keep up with.

This is fucking exhausting.

With that, I let out another sigh and open the door.

“God, you look pathetic,” Kit says with his “kind” ruthlessness. It shouldn’t be possible for someone to infuse a word with both things, but he’s a master at it—which is why he’s a master at marketing and can sell anyone anything.

“Well, I didn’t get a lot of sleep,” I snap at him.

“I didn’t either,” he says with an unapologetic shrug.

“Neither did I,” Tony adds with a smirk, and then Seth rounds it up.

“Or me.” My best friend sounds worried, and I don’t want that. I don’tdeservethat.

It hits me then.

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