“Black SUV?” Josh asked.
“Yeah—you’re slowing down. Never mind. Hunter’s car. Okay. Bye.”
He signed off before Josh could answer and stood up, stretching because his muscles had chilled, even though the rain was warm. Josh slowed down and pulled up to the curb, and Grace walked stiffly to open the passenger door when the driver’s side door slammed, and Grace caught his breath, squinting inside the car.
“What are you looking for?” Hunter demanded.
“Josh! I thought he was looking for me.”
“No, I was looking for you. Josh was tracking your phone.” Hunter’s voice was a rough growl, and he loomed over Grace, not so much with height but with anger and frustration.
And, maybe, worry?
“No,” Grace insisted. “I was sure it was Josh. Josh is the one who always comes looking for me.”
“Augh!” Hunter pushed his hand through his hair, which slicked back from his head and hung in lank dreadlocks past his ears. “Why can’t I come looking for you too?”
“Because I’m not worth it!” Grace argued back. “I’m stupid. Not even my parents cared about me. Why would you?”
“Because I’m smarter than your parents!” Hunter retorted furiously, taking a step toward him and then another. Grace crossed his arms in front of himself, feeling naked.
And cold.
But mostly naked.
“Baby,” Hunter murmured, venturing to put his hands on Grace’s biceps—not hard, but firm, like he was comforting, or keeping Grace from running away again. “Come on. Can we have this discussion in the car? Or I could take you home—”
Grace closed his eyes and winced. “Everybody’s there,” he groaned. “Why would I want everybody to see what a mess I am?”
“Come on, then,” Hunter murmured, wrapping his arms around Grace’s shoulders. “I still have my apartment in the city. I use it mostly to work out in now, so it might smell like dirty socks, but it’s got a couch and a place to sleep and a coffee maker.”
“Food?” Grace asked, burying his face into Hunter’s chest and staying there, surrounded by him. “I could eat.”
“We’ll get takeout on the way into the city,” Hunter promised him. “Anything you want. Just come on, baby. Let’s get out of the rain.”
“Yeah, okay,” Grace muttered, but he didn’t move for a moment. In spite of promises of an apartment and a little bit of quiet and a giant cheeseburger and fries and a shake, the fact was, here, with Hunter’s arms around him, his heart pounding in his ears, was as safe as he thought he’d ever been.
AN HOUR later, Grace was fed and showered, sitting in Hunter’s loft apartment right off the river, wrapped in a practical fleece blanket and watching the rain falling on the big windows. Hunter had made him coffee and then given him carte blanche to the cream and sugar, which was a mistake. Grace tended to like his coffee as slightly flavored sweet milk, but, well, a little warm.
Still, it hit that place inside him, the caffeine having its usual atypical effect on him and calming him down instead of ramping him up. Josh had assured him this was because he had untreated ADHD, but Grace had tuned him out after that, so he could never figure out why that meant coffee made him sleepy.
But it was working its magic on him now, and when Hunter emerged, dressed in navy blue sweats and a white T-shirt, Grace snuggled farther into the slightly battered upholstery of the couch and watched him pour his own cup.
The loft was sort of an amazing place. The bed and dressers were shoved up against the wall by the bathroom, and the couch was back against the wall farthest away from the window. The kitchen was on the side nearest the door, and it had a fully functioning stove and enough of a marble counter to hold a coffee maker and a toaster and a toaster oven, everything pushed back until it was ready to be used. The table in the kitchen area was small and made of wood, with old-fashioned wooden chairs surrounding it.
All of that left the center of the apartment empty, and Hunter had filled it with a gym mat and free weights. The couch had a coffee table in front of it, and then? The view was strictly business.
Except beyond strictly business was the entire city of Chicago in the rain.
Grace couldn’t help but stare beyond his own worry and his petty bullshit and look out at the entire city of Chicago, which absolutely did not give a crap that he’d been a fucked-up kid who’d made a series of really bad decisions.
It certainly didn’t care about the fact that Dylan Li couldn’t manage the requirements of being an adult human if someone gave him two roadmaps and let him steal another one.
“You warm enough?” Hunter asked kindly, and Grace pulled the navy blue fleece blanket around his shoulders. He wasn’t really cold, but Hunter’s hooded sweatshirt and his own yoga pants—as well as the T-shirt and briefs he’d had under them—had been hung up in the bathroom to dry. He was wearing one of Hunter’s white T-shirts and a pair of worn gray sweats, both of them ridiculously big on him.
He was already making plans to smuggle them out of the apartment.
“Fine,” he said, eyes drawn from the view of the city, impersonal in its watch over thousands of people, to the view of Hunter, very personal as he regarded Grace with concern in his eyes.
Those eyes, glinting silver in the soft light from a side-table lamp, darkened.
“I don’t believe you,” Hunter said. “Talk to me.” He took his mug of coffee—a splash of cream, no sugar, Grace noted—and moved to the couch. After he set the mug down on the table, he backed into a corner of the couch and held out his arms.
Grace eyed him suspiciously. “What dark sorcery is this?” he asked.
“It’s called a snuggle, Grace. You scared the hell out of me, and I would very much like to hold you until I’m okay.”
Grace followed his lead and scooted into the vee of his legs, turning slightly to pillow his cheek on Hunter’s non-pillow-soft pecs. For a moment, he lay there, feeling the up and down motion of Hunter’s breaths, watching the rain streak the windows.
Every emotion running around his frenzied brain like a hamster on methamphetamine stopped in its tracks, licked its own privates, and chilled.
For a few dazzling heartbeats, Grace could see a clear path of light through all the crazy in his head, and following it was the easiest thing he’d ever done.
“I was a mess in high school,” he said, eyes on the rain. “My parents were never around, and dance was only three days a week. I spent half my time at Josh’s, but, you know, it wasn’t my house. Not then. Josh was so smart. He came up with different things for us to do. Martial arts. Petty revenge. Breaking and entering just to beat someone’s security system was so much better than the shit I could get into on my own.”
“With great power comes great potential to fuck up?” Hunter asked, and Grace smiled.
“I need that as a T-shirt. Could you get me a T-shirt that says that? I want one.”
“As you wish,” Hunter murmured, kissing the top of his head. “Keep going. You had Josh to channel your criminal impulses. What happened then?”
Grace sighed. “I gave Gabriel Hu a blowjob after school. He liked it. He decided I should be around to do it whenever he wanted, and I… I was so stupid I thought that meant something good.”