Bad Boyfriend (2 page)

“What?”

Peter’s face went motionless, calm. Did he use that face when he was keeping people from running back into a burning building after someone they loved? Quinn had a sudden premonition he was about to know what that desperation felt like.

“I’ve been dealing with some stuff.”

“I noticed.” A preliminary skirmish, no casualties.

“I’ve been with other people. Not a lot. Just sometimes.”

“Okay.” Quinn managed to keep that word even, despite the flare of panic.
Christ, how many? Were you safe? When the hell did you manage that in your double shifts?

“Do you remember the Christmas party? When I asked you to come get me?”

Cops and firemen and paramedics drinking. Together. God help the innocent bystanders. “Yeah, some guy met me in the bar and told me they were going to get you home later.”

“Yeah. That was one of those times. And…”

So it was possible for one breath to last a lifetime.

Peter couldn’t look at him. “She’s pregnant,” he finished.

Quinn knew there weren’t too many different ways to interpret that, but he heard himself stupidly ask, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I had sex with a woman eight weeks ago and she’s pregnant. And before you ask, yes it’s mine and no I wasn’t too drunk to know what I was doing. She’s going to keep it and—that’s what I want. We’re going to get married.”

Married
. Quinn heard himself repeat the word, but it sounded far away.

“This—” Peter made a vague gesture that was supposed to cover ten years of sharing an apartment, a home, a dog, a life together. “It’s never been all I wanted.”

“We could—” But Quinn stopped himself before he finished it.
We could do it together?
The three of them? Did he even want to suggest it?

Peter shook his head. “I’m going to marry her. She’s— It wasn’t something she was expecting either, but I need to do this.”

“And the fact that you also need a dick up your ass or down your throat when you want to really get off? Is that something she can expect?”

“I don’t— I’m not gay, Quinn.”

“You’ve been faking it pretty good for ten years. And it’s not as if I made a pass at
you
at your brother’s birthday party all those years ago.”

“You’re the only guy I’ve ever fucked. And I was married before.”

“Yeah, to Stacy, I remember. All two months of your marriage. After you jerked me off at your brother’s party.”

“You knew what you were getting into.”

“And I’m to blame for not saying to hell with your closeted ass?”

“No one’s to blame.” Peter looked down.

“Yes, someone is. You.”

Peter pushed away from the table. “I never made you any promises.”

“Living together for ten years is a fucking promise, Peter.”

“You were on active duty for four of it.” Face implacable, Peter leaned back against the counter with his arms across his chest.

Quinn itched to get that look off his lover’s face. “I’m confused. That wasn’t you begging me to come in your ass last night?”

Peter’s gaze was steady, like Quinn was the irrational one in this conversation. Not irrational, clueless. Months of Peter pushing him away, spending all his time at work, coming home last night acting like he’d finally figured something out. Leave out the sex and it almost made sense.

When Quinn didn’t get an answer, he said, “Then what was last night about?”

“I wanted to give you a nice goodbye.” Peter turned away and opened a cabinet. “I’m only taking the stuff my mom gave me.”

Gave us
, Quinn wanted to point out, but he stared at the box on the counter as another horrible realization pierced his brain. “So when I came home from work, you were going to be packed and gone?” Did his voice break? Did he care?

“Yeah, but I was going to talk to you.”

“Why bother? I’m sure a note would have covered it.”

“Don’t get—”

Quinn shoved the table away and stalked over to box Peter against the counter. “Dear Quinn, The last ten years were a mistake. I’m straight. Except when we fuck. Later, Peter.”

Peter shoved Quinn away.

“You don’t have to marry her to be the kid’s dad.” Quinn wanted to pin the son of a bitch against the counter again, but he was afraid that would lead to one of them taking a swing.

“Yes, I do. He deserves better than that.”

“Than what? A father who’s so ashamed of himself he wraps himself in a lie?”

“It’s not a lie.” Peter’s face flushed. “My dick got hard. I came. You’re the one who’s having trouble with the facts.”

“And what facts are you going to share with her? Are you going to tell her who’s been getting your dick hard for the past ten years?”

“No. She doesn’t have anything to do with that. I’m not asking her what she’s been doing either.”

“Maybe I owe her a warning. I hate to think of her waking up to this same shit ten years from now—with a kid to think about too. Don’t worry. I’ll be sure to explain how not gay our relationship was.”

There it was. An honest emotion on Peter’s face. But it wasn’t love or sorrow. It was fear. “Don’t. Please, Quinn, don’t. I know—I know I’m hurting you, but don’t do that to me. You can’t tell anyone.”

“You know how I love it when you beg.” The words felt like he was swallowing dirt, clumps falling cold and dry into his stomach.

“Quinn.”

“I’m not going to say anything. Ten years is a hard habit to break.”

“Thank you.” Peter went back to taking dishes out of the cabinet.

“But I gotta say, if you’re trying to pass, you might want to try harder. I don’t think many straight guys pack their stoneware before they walk out.”

“I moved some clothes last week.”

Last week. “Where?”

“I know we’ve got another month on the lease, but I found a place that will take dogs.”

Quinn couldn’t make his mouth form a word. His body snapped to attention, braced for whatever abuse was coming his way as the commandant looked for some kind of weakness in his eyes. He must have made some kind of sound, because Peter turned around.

“He’s my dog.”

Quinn knew that. And he could remember dress whites covered in dog hair, chewed shoes and endless drool. But he was the one who fed him and took him to the vet when Peter was working.

Quinn started for Peter. Maybe to punch him, maybe to kiss him, one argument no better than the other, but after the first step the floor turned to quicksand. What had ever happened in his life to make Quinn think this was safe, that this would last? He fucking knew better than that.

His hands closed on the box instead of Peter. The box made a satisfying crunch as it hit the wall, and Quinn stepped over the pieces as he left.

Chapter Two

“The baby’s godfather? Seriously? He is so fucked up.” Jamie offered his Corona bottle for a toast.

Quinn touched the neck of the bottle in his hand to Jamie’s lightly. What were they toasting? Peter’s son’s birth or the fact that Quinn’s ex-lover was his own special classification in denial?

“Weren’t you like his best man or something for the wedding?” Jamie’s version of commiseration felt a lot like pouring salt into wounds Quinn thought had healed.

“No. His brother was.”

“But you were in the wedding.”

“Yeah.” Quinn wanted to turn and put his elbows on the bar, but on a Friday night at The Arena, there was barely enough room to breathe let alone grab that much prime real estate. Instead, he scanned the writhing bodies on the dance floor. Skin shining with sweat, hips and arms an invitation and a celebration of sex. Had he ever felt that kind of freedom? The years he would have spent dancing and fucking had been spent hiding out first in the Navy and then with Peter. A few trips out in the last eight months hadn’t given him much of a taste for the kind of instant sex being advertised by the cute club rat who’d flipped long hair out of his eyes to wink at Quinn on his way to the dance floor.

“Okay. Scratch that. You are the fucked up one, my friend.”

Inwardly, Quinn agreed with Jamie’s eye-rolling and his words, but he didn’t nod.

“And she still doesn’t know?”

She. Chrissy. Peter’s wife. Quinn had really wanted to hate her, but she’d been nothing but warm and friendly to everyone.

“That’s what they tell me.”

“I don’t know if showing up tomorrow with that stupid ponytail will make it more or less obvious.” Jamie flicked the tiny curl gathered at the nape of Quinn’s neck. “They didn’t have scissors at that commune you went to over the summer?”

“It was a summer camp for kids with cancer. And I’m going to get it cut.”

“Dye it too. You look fifty.”

“Fuck you.”

Jamie laughed. “In your wettest dreams, Navy.”

So there was a lot more gray now than just at his temples. Hell, he swore it had gotten worse in the six weeks since he’d come home.

“I think she knows—about me, anyway. Not that anyone is allowed to say the word gay in Peter’s presence. She wanted advice about her wedding dress, for Christ’s sake.” That had been the moment when Quinn knew he had to get out of town.

“That is wrong on so many levels.”

“Thank you, Dr. Phil. Are you charging for this? I thought we were having a drink.”

“You brought it up. What did you say?”

“That whatever she decided would be exactly what Peter wanted.”

Jamie wasted some perfectly good pale ale when he spluttered, spraying the side of Quinn’s face. “I take it back. You don’t need a beer and a piece of ass. You need a fucking therapist. And I think you are beyond Dr. Phil’s help at this point. Exactly when did you flush away your last bit of self-respect—that is whatever the Navy left you with.”

The foot Quinn placed firmly on Jamie’s instep was more about the Navy crack than the personal insults. “I’m not still in love with him if that’s what you’re saying.”

“So prove it. Put an end to this insanity with a big
fuck you
.”

“Like how?”

“Show up tomorrow with a drag queen on your arm and ask Peter if he thinks she makes your dick look bigger.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“His family. They’ve always been good to me. I couldn’t—” He hadn’t worried about losing touch with Peter’s brother Dennis. They went back too far for that, had been through too much in the Academy together, but he’d thought losing Peter meant losing the rest of the Laurents too—cracking on pop culture with Peter’s sister Alyssa, war games with Peter’s dad, and worst of all, losing Peter’s mom. Claire had welcomed him, mothered him, from the first time Dennis had brought him home on their break from the Academy. Two weeks after Peter moved out, Claire had called to tell him her son’s business was his own, but as far as she was concerned, Quinn was still a member of her family. He couldn’t humiliate them in church like that.

But the idea of showing up with a date, a very obviously gay date, someone who Peter would have to notice, got entrenched in Quinn’s brain.

“Tell me you’d try something like that in front of Clan Donnigan.”

“Okay, so not a drag queen,” Jamie agreed. “But something…” He turned to scan the club. “Yeah, something like him.” He jerked his chin at the dance floor.

Under one of the brighter spots, a short slender guy—the twink who’d given Quinn that flirty flip of his black hair—was dancing, or publicly fucking the guy he was with. A hula dancer couldn’t have moved her hips like that. His shirt was black, open in the front to show off a mesh tank top that didn’t do much to cover his smooth white chest. Quinn leaned into Jamie but couldn’t see what assets the guy had below his waist. Given the number of guys stealing looks at him, he must have had something impressive under his black jeans.

The guy worked his dance partner like a stripper pole, swinging around him and giving Quinn a good look at his face. At the moment, the pretty boy’s head was thrown back, eyes shut, mouth wet and open like he’d been panting his lover’s name. A shock went right to Quinn’s dick, a flash of heat and blood, like those lips were inches from his cock instead of twenty feet away. Then the twink opened his eyes and stared at him, tongue tracing his lips before he went back to humping his dance partner.

“Not my type.” Quinn took a long pull of his beer.

“Oh, babe, that mouth is everyone’s type. But that’s kind of the point, Quinn.” Jamie waved his empty at the shirtless bartender. “Don’t make me dare you.”

Quinn shrugged. “I’m thirty-five years old. I think I can handle it.”

“Really? Because I don’t think you can. I think you’re just a pansy crying into your beer over the one that got away. You don’t have the fucking balls to face him and make him deal with the shit he pulled.”

“Shut. The fuck. Up.”

“Knew you wouldn’t do it. You think he’s going to come back, don’t you? That after a year he’s going to come crying back because he can’t live without you and your dick?”