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His fear fades quickly, and now he’s just staring at me like I’m stupid. I blush, because it was a ridiculous guess, but it’s the only thing I could think of. I mean, it ain’t like he shoved a damn wild hog back there.

Did he?

“I promise,” he says, before I voice my newfound wild hog theory. “It’s nothing that can hurt us.” He mumbles something that sounds like "Not anymore" under his breath. “Just trust me, okay?”

“I do,” I answer, because it’s true. I trust Austin with my life. So, wanting to assure him, I step out of the truck with him still wrapped around me, and I press a gentle kiss against the corner of his mouth. As close as I can get without actually touching his lips. He purrs like a kitten in my arms, and I give him the tightest hug I can before setting him on the ground.

“We’re going to be happy, Daddy,” he tells me before motioning toward the restaurant. “I’m going to make sure of it.”

Once I’m inside, I order the pancakes he asked for, knowing it’s probably just a ruse to get me out of sight so he can fix whatever keeps banging around in the truck bed. Regardless, he asked me for them, and I can never tell my boy no.

He’s out there long enough for me to make a quick call to Bubba, letting him know we left town a few days early, and to keep an eye on the trailer each day when he goes to work. It’s on the way, and I’m a little nervous that if Shelly stays soberlong enough to notice we’ve ditched her, she might torch the damn house.

“D-Bag?” he answers, sounding like he’s choking. “Sorry.” He coughs some more, before continuing. “Sorry, I’m smoking. What’s cookin’, good lookin’?”

I know the familiar sound of slurring in Bubba’s voice better than I know a lot of things. I look up at the clock on the wall. Five-thirty in the morning. “You’ve got work in thirty minutes. The fuck are you doing?”

“Nah,” he says, and then he makes a sucking sound before hacking up another lung. “I took the day off.” He belches loudly, and then he sniffles, catching me off guard. “I’m nursing a broken heart, Dallas.”

My entire body goes stiff, because in all the time I’ve known him, I’ve never been Dallas to Bubba. I’ve only ever been D-Bag. Even during my job interview. I walked in, he looked me up and down, and proudly proclaimed, “I can just tell you’re going to be the biggest douchebag I’ve ever met.” After a tense fifteen second pause, he added, “I love that about you.”

“What about your broken heart?” Glancing over my shoulder, I spot Austin by the truck. He’s bent over the side, legs dangling in the air behind him. At first, I worry he’s hurt, but I guess he was just messing with something in the truck, because he hops down and uses the extra fob on his set of keys to close it.

“Johnny broke things off with me,” Bubba says through a sniffle and a hiccup.

“I didn’t realize you were together.”

“We wasn’t. Not romantically or nothin’, but we’re a team, you know? Bubba and Johnny: biffles for life.”

“The fuck is a biffle?”

“My best friend for life and ever and ever. Austin said that’s what he calls his best friend. I thought it sounded cute, and it fit me and Johnny perfectly. At least, I thought it did. Now he’s moving to the overnight shift. He put the request in this afternoon. Just submitted it to Human Resources and left without saying a word. He’s my other half.” He pauses before adding, “Well, at work, at least. I just can’t figure out why he’d want to abandon me like that. What if that’s it? My future work life with my work husband . . . over. Gone. Forgotten to time.” He pauses again, and I already know what he’s about to say, because he’s sitting in his trailer house, drunk on moonshine, waxing poetic. Sure enough, the dramatic bastard continues on his crazy train, rambling out, “On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before. Then the bird said ‘Nevermore.’”

“Ah, hell,” I say, pinching the bridge of my nose. Not Edgar Allan Goddamn Poe again. “You’re going to be fine, Bubba. Just call him. Talk to him. Ask him why he put in the shift change request. You and me can hypothesize until the sun fallsfrom the sky, and it ain’t gonna get a motherfuckin' thing done. Just call him. And if it don’t work out, just go out there and get laid. Jesus, Bubba, you’re like a sexy son of a bitch. You ain’t got to be so doom-and-gloom. You’ve got this.”

He’s quiet for an uncomfortable length of time before asking, “You think I’m hot?”

I have to pause, because—aside from these new feelings for my boy—I’ve never thought of another man sexually. Now that I’m thinking of it, I don’t necessarily hate the picture painted in my mind. I can imagine all those creases and crevices forming his deeply indented abs. The curve of his ass, and how it would feel in my hand. And then I think of Austin. My Aussie. My good fuckin’ boy.

My phone chimes in my hand, and when I look at the screen, Aussie sent me a message. I look out the window again, and he’s in the car. “Bubba, Aussie’s waiting on me. Just call Johnny and talk to him. I love you, bro.”

“I love you too, D-Bag,” he says with a final hiccup before ending the call.

Seconds later, I open the message Aussie sent me and I have to do a double take, because it’s a picture. A picture of him sitting in my pickup truck. He’s got the phone angled down, showing his stomach and legs. My cock swells to life in my jeans, because my good boy looks like a fuckin’ whore right now.

He’s completely naked. No crop top. No impossibly tight shorts. He ain’t even got on underwear. Austin Snowden is naked, going balls to the wall in his methods of seduction. Because that’s what this is at this point, isn’t it? There ain’t really any point denying it any more, because in the image, he’s got his hand around his hard little cock, and there’s a little bead of liquid at the tip. Underneath the image, he’s written:Get the food to go. Wanna check into the motel. Wanna cuddle.

I look up, almost choking on my own saliva when I see the waiter, a young man, maybe twenty or twenty-one, and he’s staring down at the picture of Aussie’s cock like it’s a fuckin’ feat to be devoured.

“I’ll take the food to go,” I inform him, meeting his gaze. “And if you ever look at my boy’s cock like that again, I’ll take your eyes.”

The man licks his lips and looks down at the picture again. “Totally worth it.”

He has a point.

Aussie ain’t said a word since I got in the truck. Actually, that ain’t true. When I got in the truck, he lifted his phone, showing me a nearby hotel, then he said, “Drive.” He’s just been sitting there nibbling his bottom lip ever since. When I pull into the parking lot of a worse-for-wear Comfort Inn, I turn and look at him.

“I love you, Aussie,” I say, just needing him to come back to me. Needing him to know he ain’t got to hide away in his head, ’cause there’s nothing he ever has to hide from me. “Did you change your mind? Aboutwatching . . . you know.”