“We slept through it.” Benito shrugged. “I’ll get something later.”
“Fuck off. I’ll bring you something. Wait here.”
Mickey detached himself from Benito’s warm embrace and slid out of bed. His feet hit the bare floorboards and he ducked out of the bedroom before Benito could protest.
Naked, he padded downstairs and into the kitchen. As luck would have it, a basket of clean clothes was on the counter. For the sake of his neighbours, he found a pair of clean sweats and dragged them on. Then he opened the fridge and pondered the contents.
Living alone, he didn’t cook much, especially in the morning, but the soul-deep urge to take care of Benito was impossible to ignore. And he had bacon, obviously. Because, well, bacon.
Mickey scrambled eggs and grilled the bacon. Then he toasted English muffins to go with and slathered them in butter.
He had no milk, but a vague memory of Gianna telling him everyone she knew drank black coffee let him worry about it less as he climbed the stairs.
Benito was exactly where he’d left him, sprawled out on his bed, poking at the phone Mickey knew to be the one Gianna called him on. His legal phone.
Stop it. Just ten more minutes . . . please?
Mickey ignored the phone and held out the plate and coffee mug. “Back in a sec.”
He ran back for his own and returned to find Benito sitting up, grinning as if he’d won the fucking lottery. “Wow. This is the first breakfast I haven’t paid someone to make me since I was about fourteen.”
“Don’t get too excited,” Mickey cautioned. “At best, it won’t kill you.”
Benito looked as though he had more to say, but his appetite got the better of him, and wouldn’t you know? Watching a fine dude eat a plate of food Mickey had cooked was the hottest thing ever.
After, Benito disappeared downstairs to clean up. That was pretty hot too, but with reality closing in, Mickey forced himself into the shower instead of following him and pressing him up against the kitchen sink.
When he was done, Benito took his turn and dressed in the clothes he’d worn to the club. “Gianna messaged me. She’s locked herself out of her iPad. I gotta take her to the Apple store to get it fixed, but I can come back after and take you to your car?”
Mickey shook his head. “Nah. It’s too far out of your way. I’ll get a cab later.”
“That’s gonna rinse you.”
“Serves me fucking right.”
Benito mauled his bottom lip with his teeth. Mickey regarded him from the bed where he’d stretched out in denial that it was past lunchtime and he had a million things to do. “You know I’m just going to get my car, don’t you? I’m not going in the club.”
“Not my business if you do, mate.”
“Yeah, but I meant what I said last night—this morning—whenever it was. I kind of lost track.”
“You remember everything you said?”
“Of course I do. I was too drunk to drive, not function.”
Benito leaned against the doorframe and thrust his hands in his pockets. His phone—singular—and his car keys were on the chest of drawers beside him. Where’s his other phone? Did he even have it last night?
Now that Mickey couldn’t remember, and not because of the rum he’d drunk before Jaiden had cut him off. Or the crazy-hot blow job he’d woken up to. But because apparently his brain had cherry picked the details of their latest encounter, and all Mickey clearly recalled was the relief in his soul when he’d looked up to see Benito right fucking there.
“What’s the matter?”
“Hmm?” Mickey snapped his gaze back to reality. “What?”
Benito pushed off the door and came to the side of the bed.
Mickey sat up.
Benito crouched in front of him and frowned. “Are you okay? I mean, like, really? Last night was pretty heavy.”
“It wasn’t, actually. I’m years into this journey, and what happened last night was fucking tame. I do know better than to medicate cravings with booze, though, so I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t apologise to me. I don’t deserve it.”
“Why not?”
Benito’s gaze shuttered, then slid over Mickey’s shoulder, staring past him at the window. “I don’t know. I just don’t.”
The bubble they’d created overnight began to deflate. Mickey eyed Benito’s shower-damp hair and itched to comb his fingers through it, but the heartfelt yearning was ten minutes too late. “I’ve never asked you straight up,” he said. “Maybe I didn’t want the answer, but we can’t hide from it forever.”
Benito said nothing, and tension blanketed the room, settling deep in Mickey’s bones.
He leaned forward and found Benito’s hands, tangling their fingers together. “This might not make much sense to you, but I have to know what it is. Whatever you’re into, I have to know, okay? If we’re gonna keep seeing each other, I can’t live with the fucking wondering. I can’t—fuck. I just can’t.”
Benito sucked in a shaky breath and tore his stare from the window.
The apprehension in his gaze was killer. Mickey shivered, and every moment they’d shared till this point seemed to hang over a gaping cliff. “Tell me,” he whispered. “Please.”
Desperation flashed in Benito’s dark eyes. He took another breath; then something seemed to shut him down. Iron gates went up, and whatever he’d been about to say died a fiery death. “There’s nothing to tell,” he said flatly. “I ran with a bad crew in London, but I don’t do that shit anymore.”
“Sure about that? Because—”
“Fucking hell.” Benito rocked back on his heels. “Why won’t you listen to me?”
“I am listening,” Mickey said. “I’m just trying to tell you it’s okay if there’s more to it. I know I said I couldn’t be around road life anymore, but maybe I overreacted. Or it’s something I can work on. I just don’t want any bullshit between us.”
“It’s not bullshit. How many times do I have to tell you I’m a broke taxi driver?”
Benito spoke low, but his words echoed in the quiet room all the same, and another shudder clutched the base of Mickey’s spine.
He repressed it, swallowing down the roiling mass of doubt and fear that bloomed in his chest. “I’m sorry,” he blurted. “I told you already I’m a paranoid freak, and it gets on top of me sometimes—”
Benito silenced him with a kiss, a fierce clash of lips that took Mickey back to the night they’d met. When they’d been strangers in an unfamiliar room, about to jump into the abyss.
No parachutes.
Freefall.
Some days Mickey was still falling. Others, he’d crash landed already and fucked everything up.
They broke apart, panting. Benito’s gaze was bottomless.
Fierce.
He gripped Mickey’s chin. “You’re not a fucking freak. Don’t ever say that shit around me again, or we’re gonna have a problem. You feel me?”
A thousand rebuttals danced on Mickey’s tongue, but he swallowed those too.
Just for this moment.