Page 24 of Regret Me Not
Pierce may have only known the guy for two weeks, but he was pretty sure Hal hated to be alone.
But what sort of asshole asked a guy he barely knew to drop his life in Florida and come to Sacramento on a whim?
Pierce washed his hands and padded on the new rubber mats into the kitchen, where Hal had dished up two bagel sandwiches with some orange juice.
“This is awesome,” he said, heart giving a big throb in his chest. “You’re… you’re really good at taking care of me.”
Hal grinned sunnily. “See, that’s excellent to hear, because my parents think I can barely take care of myself.”
“They’re deluded,” Pierce said shortly, sitting down and unfolding his paper napkin onto his lap. “They’ve never woken up to bagels and orange juice with you.”
He expected Hal to add “And blowjobs!” and maybe broach the subject—but that didn’t happen.
“Well, maybe they were never as kind as you were,” Hal said, smiling shyly.
Pierce’s stomach knotted. “Kind?” God, that’s what he’d said the day before too, after Pierce had gotten off the phone with his ex-wife.
“Yeah. The way you talked to Cynthia—that was… I mean, I was prepared to hear you hate her. I thought she sounded like a real bitch—but you didn’t. You were… kind. And in the end, I think she got it. She got why the divorce. She understood.”
Pierce looked away, feeling uncomfortable. “I’m not always nice,” he said, suddenly desperately afraid of letting Hal down. “You know that. I was a grumpy bastard two weeks ago.”
“You were in pain,” Hal said simply. He beamed up at Pierce, showing no regret about the things they’d done in the night—hell, almost no knowledge of it. Just simple, uplifting forgiveness.
Pierce nodded and tried to give Hal something real. “Less pain every day,” he said brightly.
“That’s what I like to hear.” Hal wiped his face and nodded decisively. “Okay—I’m going to go get my yoga mats and an area rug from upstairs—I don’t want you trying yoga on the tile.”
“I could do yoga in your place,” Pierce said, and Hal’s furtive look from under his lashes made something in Pierce’s stomach twist.
“I, uh, need to clean up there,” Hal told him. “It’s just easier for me to go get my stuff.”
Pierce nodded, wondering again what sort of damage Hal could have inflicted on his apartment in the two days after Thanksgiving and before he’d come down to the pool and seen Pierce struggling to do water aerobics to his iPhone.
In a dim, sort of distant way, it was starting to dawn on him that Hal had been very much alone in his life before he’d sprawled in a lounge chair and started bossing Pierce around.
Hal deserved more than that.
“So,” Pierce said, resolving to talk about the blowjob in the room. “About—”
“Christmas shopping? I figure Target for decorations and toys, you think? And you should be able to get an appliance there for your sister, right?”
The desperation in his voice hit the raw edge of Pierce’s nerve, and Pierce finally got it. They weren’t supposed to talk about the blowjob in the night.
And for a moment he struggled against that—because he wanted to talk about it. Hell, he wanted to reciprocate it. But, oh God. He was leaving in two weeks. Whatever happened in those spare, breathless moments in the dark, how much could it mean?
Everything, you fucking coward. It means everything.
But Pierce had been locked in the silence of his own head since… well, not even before the accident. Since before Cynthia, really.
Since Loren.
Since he’d last believed in unicorns.
“What, uh,” Pierce struggled to articulate. “What, uh, would you like for Christmas?”
Hal’s full mouth—had been wrapped around Pierce’s cock—quirked up at the corners. “A teddy bear,” he said with satisfaction. “Something… something furry. To hug in bed.”
Pierce remembered Hal’s fingers petting the silky hair on his chest as he sucked on Pierce’s nipples. “I can do bears,” he said, fully aware of the innuendo and unable to stop it.
