Page 36 of Fe
I did. You defended me. It was a brave thing to do. But then, I already know you’re brave.
Fen put down his phone and sighed. Misery had gone. Happiness was back. It was that easy.Wow!Ripley had said exactly the right thing. Fen snuggled deeper into bed. He had a method of sliding into dreams that he enjoyed. By letting his mind wander along familiar paths, he’d found he could project himself into a different life, one where he didn’t have muscular dystrophy, one where he was in the ballet corps.
In his dreams he always wore the right thing, said the right thing and had lots of friends. That night, he just had one friend. Ripley was watching him dance and was wide-eyed in wonder. And Fen had never danced so well, never leapt so high.
The dream faded and Fen slid into another. One that touched reality where he was spending time with a man who listened to him. They’d shared painful memories, laughed together and…had been attacked. Fen had been scared but they’d come through it and they had a connection. Fen liked Ripley. He thought Ripley liked him.
Even though Ripley wasn’t here with him in his bed, Fen felt the current flow between them, a crackle of energy telling him there was hope for more. Hope for tomorrow. Well, hope for Friday and Fen hadn’t had that sort of feeling for such a long time that it both thrilled and scared him. The possibility of more. His heart might have started the end game but Fen hadn’t. There was still time.
And when he finally dropped into a deeper sleep, he was no longer trying to escape his life but looking for one he could slide into as himself.
10
Ripley’s week had gone well. Success in court was always something to be pleased about, but in the evenings, the flurry of messages between him and Fen had somehow made his world lighter.
Ripley had textedHi. I can’t sleep.
Fen had repliedI can. Goodnight.
That had made Ripley laugh more than it should have. As had Fen’s textHow do you keep an idiot in suspense?
Ripley had repliedI don’t know. How?
He tapped inHow?again when Fen didn’t reply. ThenHello?And finallyOh, damn it.Fen sent back a GIF of a smiling dog.
Ripley was surprised how much he looked forward to silly texts—how old was he?—and to hearing about Fen’s day, and even how much he enjoyed telling Fen what he could about his.
Now it was Friday, Ripley would see him in person and he was feeling…nervous, which was a strange sensation. Even in court, anxiety was rarely an issue for him, mostly because he never went into court without being thoroughly prepared.
Yes, sometimes the unexpected happened, a witness changed their testimony, or disappeared, or evidence was ruled inadmissible, but he saw those events as challenges. Mostly. He was used to public speaking, accustomed to talking to people from all walks of life: whether that was a homeless man, a newsreader who was on TV almost every night or a murderer. It didn’t matter whether someone was a top tier businessman or if they had a title. People were still people. Some were arseholes and others were not. But they all had to obey the law and suffer the consequences if they chose not to and were caught.
Sometimes, waiting for the conclusion of a jury’s deliberationsdidmake him edgy because he could never be a hundred percent certain the verdict would go the way he wanted or expected. Justice wasn’t always done, particularly when a client walked out of court a free man when Ripley was convinced they were guilty.
Tonight, he wasnervous for a different reason. Mostly because he feared he’d over-thought this and would end up disappointed. That could be avoided by not setting out his proposal and merely letting things roll. Since the whole notion had come to him, he’d swung betweenaskanddon’t ask.Indecision bred anxiety and more indecision. What he wanted to propose was the right thing for both him and Fen, but… There was abut.
He decided he’d see how things went this evening. Thinking on his feet was one of his strengths. He might as well use it.
When he arrived at the place where they were eating, Fen was waiting by the lifts in the lobby. He looked so pleased to see him that Ripley felt as if his heart lurched in his chest. Fen didn’t have his crutch.
“Hi.” Fen gave him a bright smile.
“Hi. No trusty weapon tonight?”
“Sometimes I can manage without. Plus, I don’t want to take the risk of attacking someone who looks at you wrong.”
Ripley chuckled. “How did you know I wasn’t already in the restaurant?”
“I went up and checked, then came back down again.”
“What if I’d been going up as you’d been coming down?”
Fen made a mock gasp of shock. “That would have been a disaster. We could have been doing it all night.”
Ripley pressed the button and the lift door opened straightaway. He gestured for Fen to go in first. The moment the doors closed, Ripley pulled Fen in and kissed him. Impulse, a touch of desperation fed by lust… It couldn’t be a long kiss. The lift was too fast for that. But the kiss was long enough to make Ripley’s pulse race and his cock swell.I still want him.Had he needed to convince himself?
They broke apart before the doors opened and Fen looked into his face through heavy-lidded eyes. “Should we go down again? Then back up, then down… We could.”
Ripley swallowed hard.
