Chapter One
HUDSON
“You know, you really do get a lot of hole pics,” Porter said, sauntering in to stand beside me at the front desk of my gym.
“You’re not meant to be behind here,” I said, pointing to the Staff Only sign he had just brushed past without even looking, his eyes glued to the cell phone screen in front of him, his fingers manically swiping left and right.
He looked up briefly at the sign and smiled. He glanced over at me and his lips stretched even wider. When he glanced back down at the phone, his smile practically fell off his face.
I clenched my jaw and stepped toward him. Just because we’d known each other for over twenty years and he was one of my closest friends, didn’t mean he still didn’t annoy the living shit out of me sometimes.
Like right about now.
“You’re not meant to be behind the counter, Porter,” I repeated in a low, but firm, tone.
“What? Oh, that?” He glanced over at the Staff Only sign. “Relax, would you? That rule only applies to staff. You’re not staff, you own the place. Ooh, look at that pink beauty!”
He gazed downward again. I looked down briefly only to see a closeup of what I guessed was some guy’s asshole. An extremely close closeup of some guy's asshole.
Wait, where was my phone?
Suddenly my brain clicked into gear as a torrent of rage began to swirl in my belly.
“Porter,” I growled. “Are you on my phone?”
I looked around the piles of papers scattered messily across the counter, flicking them up in search of my phone. “I swear to god if you’ve installed some app…”
“Hudson Madden.” Porter’s light green eyes widened in my direction.
We both looked at one another, like two lions who had just spotted each other in the wild for the first time, unsure of what would happen next and who would emerge as the dominant one.
Me. I would be the dominant one because I was in no mood for Porter’s bullshit.
“I’m offended that you would even think that I would do something like take your phone. That would be such a betrayal of trust.”
I pulled open the top drawer under the computer and found it. My phone was sitting there, just where I had left it. I hmpfed loudly enough for him to hear it.
Loudly enough for him to break out into a self-satisfied smirk.
Loudly enough for him to walk over the couple of steps to me, lean his self-satisfied face in until he was just a few inches away from me, and say, “No. See, what I did was take a few pics from your social media, cut off the head because no one really gives a shit about that anyway, and set up a fake account on Gruff—on my own phone—to see what kind of response I, meaning you, would get.”
The guy was freaking unbelievable.
“Porter.” I blurted it out so forcefully that he jumped back, startled. “Why on earth would you do that?”
“Well,” he began, straightening his shoulders to regain some of his lost composure. “It’s down to you and me now, Hudson.”
“What do you mean?” I quirked an eyebrow while checking the phone in the drawer to make sure it really was mine and not some dummy phone he'd switched it with. Hey, I couldn’t afford to let my guard down with this guy.
The screen lit up and the image of a smiling Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino beamed back at me. Relief. I smiled for a brief moment. Romy and Michele's High School Reunion really was the best movie of all time.
My smile quickly turned to a scowl when Porter started talking again.
“Well,” he said, turning to face me as his expression grew more serious. He was still dressed in his all-black workout gear and his skin was covered in a light mist of post-workout sweat. “Stirling has got Mikey."
"Yes, he does," I said, genuinely happy for the guy. "They're coming up on a year together now."
"Really?" Porter seemed somewhat surprised. "Goes to show you how quickly time flies."
I nodded as he continued, "And Steel has Nick now, so we barely see him anymore either."
There was a slight undertone of something in Porter’s voice that I couldn't quite make out. It wasn’t jealousy or resentment, maybe it was...longing?
"From what I hear, Steel deffers has his hands full with Nick," I said with a knowing grin.
"Oh yeah, for sure," Porter agreed, flopping down into one of the spare chairs behind the counter. "That boy is one helluva brat...in the best possible way, of course."
We both chuckled while I made a mental note to check in with Steel to make sure he was really okay the next time I saw him.
Porter started spinning himself around aimlessly in the chair as I mulled over his words. He had a point. Both of our closest friends were in relationships. We were the last two single Daddies standing.
But was that really such a bad thing?
Porter was happy the way he was. At least, I thought he was. He got plenty of action. Between all the apps he was on and the amount of time he spent at Revolver, Daylesford's most exclusive BDSM club, he had no shortage of explicit sexscapades to fill me in on. He was looking for fun and fucking, nothing more serious.
Kind of like me. Well, except for the fun and fucking part. Come to think of it, I wasn’t looking for much of anything at all, really.
“So what has the fact that we’re the last two single Daddies left in the quad squad got to do with you creating a fake account for me on Gruff?” I said, returning to my original question.
Silence. When Porter spoke, he was so quiet I had to move in just to hear him.
“I just love you and I’m worried about you, Hudson.”
Damn him. I hmpfed again.
That was the thing about Porter Jones: even when he crossed the line—and boy, had he done that plenty over the two decades we’d been friends—underneath it all, there really was a good guy. One of the best, actually.
"Delete the app," I said, but the bite in my voice was gone.
"I will, I will," Porter said with a sigh as he grabbed the phone and began tapping away.
I’d never been a big fan of apps. I knew plenty of people who had met their person on them, so I knew they worked. It wasn’t in any way a judgment. Trust me, I’m the least judgmental guy you'll ever meet.
It was probably just a me thing. I needed that face-to-face connection with someone that you only got when you saw them in person, not in a small thumbnail image on a screen.
You know you’re forty when...right?
Besides, I’d never had a good experience on apps the few times I had tried them. Apps were too restrictive for someone like me. They reduced you to a few limited labels: top, bottom, or versatile.
What if you didn’t fit into any of those predefined labels? What then?
You got blocked, abused, and deleted, that’s what.
Heck, dating wasn’t any easier. I’d had a couple of semi-serious relationships, but my last relationship had been the biggest, most serious one.
Richie came into the gym one day on a New Year’s health kick, hellbent on turning his life around. His curly ginger hair and easy smile had melted me from the moment he walked through the front door.
He was wickedly cute, smart, thoughtful, complicated, and tortured. Very tortured.