The Unforgiving Minute (23 page)

Ryan wasn’t sure Josh looked much less confused by that explanation, but his dad chose that moment to ask Ryan about Rome. Josh was drawn naturally into the conversation as Ryan talked about what he’d seen of the city, and they both talked about their experiences of the different monuments and buildings. One of the many things that interested his dad about architecture was the emotional reaction it elicited from people who experienced it. It fascinated Ryan as much as it did his father to hear what Josh had felt on visiting the same places that he had.

Dessert was finished, an unspoken agreement being reached between Josh and Ryan not to tell
anyone
when his mom offered them the choice between fresh fruit and yogurt or cheesecake, and coffee had just been poured when Ryan thought he heard something. Something more than the slightly indecent sounds that were escaping Josh as he drank his coffee. And yes, he heard it again. High-pitched whimpers.

“Mom?”

She paused in her retelling of Ryan’s most embarrassing childhood moments—and thank God for that, because Josh was enjoying those almost as much as the coffee—and listened for a second before glancing at her watch.

“Time for the next feed,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“Puppies,” his dad supplied.

“But of course,” Ryan said, shaking his head slightly as his mom got up and opened the door to the mud room. The whines turned into excited yips as she disappeared inside.

“I see nothing changes,” Ryan said.

His dad looked at him. “In what world did you think it would?” he asked, his long-suffering tone belied by the affection in his eyes. “More coffee, Josh?”

“Yes please.” Josh’s response was only slightly slower than his first serve.

Ryan cast a disapproving gaze over him. “I’m going to have to cut you off soon for your own good. You won’t get a wink of sleep otherwise.”

After Josh had finally been persuaded that he’d be allowed more coffee tomorrow, Ryan’s dad sent them through to the living room while he started clearing the kitchen. Ryan made a token protest but, truth to tell, the last few days and jetlag were beginning to catch up with him. By the time his parents came through, he was all but asleep, head on Josh’s shoulder. He woke up just enough to announce it was time for them to go to bed.

“You have everything you need, Josh?” his mom checked.

“Yes, thank you,” Josh said, ducking his head slightly with a trace of shyness, and that wasn’t
fair.
As if his mom wasn’t already twisted round his little finger.

Ryan showed him up to his room, which had his boyhood tennis trophies on the bookshelves together with old books and DVDs that he really should see his way to sorting out when he next had time. Or perhaps he didn’t need to, if he really was going to buy his own place.

They both had a quick shower—separately, sadly, as there was no en suite—and got into bed. As they lay there in the dark, it felt odd to Ryan, being home, surrounded by familiar noises as the house settled for the night, but with Josh there next to him. Odd, but good. Better than lying there on his own would have felt.

“Thanks for coming with me,” he said quietly.

“Thanks for asking,” Josh said, just as quietly. “Your folks are awesome, by the way.”

Ryan already knew that, but Josh saying it left him feeling warm inside.

“Mind you, I am a bit worried I might get nibbled to death by a rabbit in the night.”

“I’m the only one who gets to nibble you,” Ryan said, and yawned.

“Promises, promises,” Josh teased, and settled closer against Ryan. “Go to sleep.”

So Ryan did.

R
YAN
drifted gradually out of a deep sleep. Opening his eyes, he realized Josh wasn’t there next to him. Panic jolted through him until he remembered where he was, what had happened over the last few days, and how unlikely it was that Josh had run out on him again. He groped for his phone. When he finally got his eyes to focus, he saw he’d been asleep for eleven hours. Holy crap. No wonder his bladder felt like it was about to burst.

Having solved that problem, he pulled on a T-shirt to go with the sleep pants he always wore at home and went downstairs, where he could smell coffee and hear the murmur of voices. He found his mom and Josh on the couch in the living room. They each had a small, yellow puppy in their laps, pulling hard at the bottles his mom and Josh held for them. The wonder on Josh’s face as he looked down at his puppy stopped Ryan dead. Just when Ryan thought it wasn’t possible to love Josh more than he already did, Josh proved him wrong.

It was his mom who first saw him standing there, doubtless with a sappy smile on his face. “Take this one and I’ll make you some breakfast,” she said, offering him the tiny bundle in her lap, which protested briefly at the removal of its bottle.

“Easy, little one,” Ryan said. He cradled the puppy in one hand, so large compared to it, and took the bottle from his mom with the other.

Josh smiled at him as he took his mom’s place on the couch. “The kraken finally struggled awake, then?”

“Yeah, sorry about that. Guess I needed it.”

Josh’s puppy made a pathetic sound, pulling his attention away from Ryan. “Hey, buddy, what’s up? Oh, you’ve finished it all, big guy. There’s no more for you, not unless you want to grow up into a hippopotamus.”

“You know they can’t understand you, don’t you?” Ryan was expertly feeding the puppy in his lap as he gave a sideways glance at Josh’s sudden descent into near baby talk.

“Don’t take any notice of the big meanie over there,” Josh said, his puppy now held against his shoulder, where he was patting its back softly to burp it. Ryan’s mom had obviously provided detailed instructions. “He’s always cranky till he has breakfast.”

“Always?” Ryan asked, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t remember you complaining yesterday.”

Josh’s cheeks pinked and he concentrated on the puppy. Once it had gotten rid of that pesky trapped wind and licked Josh’s chin into the bargain, Josh brought it back down to his lap and started petting it. The pup squirmed in bliss under Josh’s hands, making happy little squeaking sounds.

Ryan tried not to feel jealous, but wasn’t entirely successful. “If you get him too excited, he’s likely to pee on you.”

“Aw, don’t listen to him, buddy. He’s a nice guy really.”

“So what’s the story with these two?” Ryan asked. They looked like purebred Labradors, rather than the usual mongrel pups that people disposed of like garbage.

“Their momma was practically a baby herself, so she rejected them,” Josh said, and dear God, did he
really
put his hands over his puppy’s ears as he spoke?

Ryan cleared his throat to disguise the odd mix of hilarity and tenderness he felt. He’d
never
suspected Josh could be such a softie. While he gently burped his own pup, he opened his mouth to talk about plans for the day, about showing Josh the local tennis club and the gym, but then he closed it again. Josh was happy. Tennis could wait.

Chapter 23

O
VER
the next few days, Ryan had three sessions with Zoe. She’d fitted him in at short notice as a favor, for some reason seeming to have a soft spot for him. Zoe had been a competitive three-day-event rider before a bad fall had broken her back. She now spent most of her day in a wheelchair, though she still rode for pleasure, a big, bomb-proof horse that her partner Sam owned and which they’d trained together for the purpose.

Ryan would leave Josh at his parents’ house while he’d drive the hour it took to get to Zoe’s practice. He hated to admit it, but he needed time on his own. While he was sure that he loved Josh, things had gotten way more complicated than he’d ever expected.

Ryan hated Mitchell with a slow-burning anger that was alien to him. He loathed and despised him for the way he’d purposely identified and cut out from the herd a vulnerable, affection-starved youngster who’d only wanted to love and be loved, and who had offered Mitchell so
much
, if only he’d had the wit to recognize it for what it was. Josh’s love was of so much more value than money or fame.

He also, and this was harder to admit, hated Mitchell for the ease with which he’d fooled Ryan. Ryan had been delighted to have his attention, and then there was the sexual attraction he’d felt toward Mitch. He didn’t know what to do with that.

After his second session with Zoe, he drove up Lookout Mountain instead of going home. He spent some time just standing there, the wind whipping at his hair as he took in the view that was so familiar to him, yet which showed him something new each time he came here. Gradually, he was able to put things back into perspective, helped by the sight of the wide-open spaces, the mountains that rose in the distance, and the city of Denver, so small and insignificant in the midst of the plain. Objectively speaking, Mitchell was attractive. He also knew
exactly
how to use that. Objectively speaking, Ryan wasn’t at fault for finding Mitchell attractive, and he had nothing to be embarrassed about over the fact Mitch had seen his attraction. As Elena and others had told him throughout his life, he
was
naïve when it came to other people. It was his default to trust people. It was simply the way he was wired. Maybe in future he wouldn’t be so quick to defend someone without first examining the opposite point of view, but he didn’t want to lose his trust in people. Mitchell was an aberration, and Ryan refused to let that aberration affect how he lived the rest of his life.

He picked up a pebble, weighed it in his hand for a moment as he thought, and then threw it hard over the edge of the mountain and into the vast deep beyond. With it went any self-blame he felt about the way Chase Mitchell had manipulated him. He was guilty of nothing more than being trusting. And being trusting was a
good
thing.

Driving back into the city, Ryan felt a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He was also thankful Josh felt comfortable enough with his parents that he could be gone for so long. After his shyness on the first day, Josh had settled in surprisingly well, and Ryan had finally worked out why. His mom had extended her lame-duck adoption program, treating Josh like a member of the family. She wouldn’t usually let guests help around the house, but she’d set Josh to chopping vegetables, or setting the table, or anything else that needed doing. It was a technique she used with neglected animals that came to their house. Showering them with love and affection while walking on eggshells around them would only make them more self-conscious and anxious. Treating them with warm acceptance and giving them structure and boundaries meant that they settled down much more quickly. Ryan just didn’t want to think what it was she’d seen in Josh that led her to treat him that way.

While the subject of Mitchell hadn’t passed between them again, Ryan knew that Josh wasn’t right. He wasn’t sleeping well, and he’d lost weight since Monte Carlo. Ryan was out of his depth on this. He thought it might be a good idea for Josh to get help from someone who knew about this stuff, but he was reluctant to suggest it; it might sound as though he was following Mitchell’s pattern, telling Josh he needed to meet arbitrary and shifting requirements if he was to be worthy of love.

Those thoughts and his powerlessness raked up all his anger at Mitchell again, and some of it spilled out during his final session with Zoe. He didn’t tell her much, and it was all anonymized, no matter how much he trusted Zoe. He couched it in terms of asking about his impulse control when it came to Mitchell, because Ryan was damn sure that the first time he saw him, he’d flatten him. That probably wouldn’t be good for his career, getting him, at the very least, thrown out of whatever tournament it happened at, and possibly facing criminal charges. Worse, everyone would want to know
why
, and that could never be told. There was also the way it would make Josh feel, because Ryan was pretty sure Josh would end up feeling responsible.

By the time he’d puzzled through all of this out loud, Zoe had that look on her face.

“I know the answer, don’t I?”

“Do you?”

“It’s not that I can’t control it. I’m telling myself I can’t because I don’t want to.” Because he wanted instant gratification and revenge more than he cared about the consequences. He was being selfish.

He got home to find Josh on his parents’ couch, the puppies snoring softly in a pile in his lap. When he saw the smile that lit Josh’s face at the sight of him, he knew that in this, he couldn’t be selfish. He wouldn’t risk hurting Josh, not for anything.

“I’ll put Buddy and Sweet Pea back,” Josh said, his voice low so as not to disturb them.

Ryan shook his head sorrowfully. “You don’t get to name anything ever again.”

To his dismay, the pet names that Josh used for the puppies seemed to have stuck. Ryan thought the pups had come to them to
avoid
abuse; instead, poor little Sweet Pea looked set to go through life with a stripper’s name. Or at least what
he
thought was a stripper’s name. His mom had sided firmly with Josh on that and had then proceeded to quiz him on just how he knew so much about strippers’ names. Josh, the traitor, had laughed.