TAKE ME HOME (4 page)

Evan didn’t say anything.

“You okay?” Kyle stepped into the doorway. “Was that about the new job?”

“Yeah. Something they need me to take care of.”

“Anything I can help with?” Kyle leaned against the doorjamb, looking more at ease than he had in weeks. He had white frosting at the corner of his mouth. How did he make frosting look like a planned accessory, like a sample everyone would be dying to lick off him?

Evan reached up and ran the pad of his thumb over Kyle’s lower lip, traveling the length from one corner to the other before swiping at the frosting.

Kyle’s eyes widened.

What the hell was he doing? Evan dropped his hand. “Frosting. On your lip.” Kyle trailed his index finger along the same path, then followed it up with his tongue.

“Uh, sorry to interrupt.” Miguel was standing in the hallway, shifting on his feet. “You should, uh, come on out and have some cake before everyone gets to work.”

“Sure,” Evan said. How was he supposed to go eat cake, let alone wait tables, with a raging hard-on? Two minutes with Kyle and he was out of control again. He had to find his own place soon. Or maybe he didn’t. At some point, Kyle was going to go through with his plans to move Take Me Home

15

back to Ohio. Maybe Evan could keep the apartment. Living alone for the first time in his life could be a good thing, couldn’t it?

Guess he’d find out.

“I’m going to take off,” Kyle said.

Evan wanted to ask if he was headed to the apartment to write, but he held back. Kyle didn’t need the pressure. “Thanks for coming.”

Kyle nodded and smiled, and Evan couldn’t look away. Kyle said, “See you at home later.” He left before Evan could respond.

“Thanks for inviting him,” he said to Miguel.

“No problem.” Miguel watched Evan for a moment more, then added, “You’ll remember your promise? You won’t become a stranger?”

“Not a chance.”

“I’m going to hold you to that.” He pointed toward the dining room. “Cake.”

“Sure thing, boss.” Evan didn’t want cake, though. Now that Kyle had left, his stomach was in knots.

Tonight he’d talk to Kyle, and they’d figure out what was going on with the network and this journal. After he gave Kyle the surprise he’d picked up earlier, though. He didn’t want anything to get in the way of that.

His priority for the next week was to help Kyle through his writer’s block. It’d been going on for far too long.

That was what friends did for each other.

Actually, more like that was what boyfriends did for each other, but he had no illusions Kyle Bennett would ever be anything more than a friend.

16

Sloan Parker

Kyle sat on the couch and held the flat box in his hands. The grief was like a shot to his heart again, like the day of his grandpa’s funeral.

When he’d gotten home from the party at Castillo’s, he’d been grateful to spot the package sitting on the coffee table. Something else to focus on other than Evan, than the way Evan had touched him in Miguel’s office and the words Lorrie had said to him earlier. He’d needed the distraction, but it still had taken him an hour of goofing around on the Internet and two movie rentals before he’d been able to lift the box onto his lap.

He forced down a stiff swallow as he thought of the last time he’d seen his grandpa. Lying so still, looking pale and puffy, not like the smiling, crinkly-eyed old man Kyle had adored, and wearing a dark blue suit which hadn’t been anything he’d worn in his life. He’d always been in his cowboy boots, jeans, and a long-sleeved flannel shirt. A farmer. A down-home family man.

Losing him had hit Kyle hard. Especially after living so far away for the last several years.

Without words, Evan had seen the pain. He’d stayed with him after the funeral. They didn’t talk.

Instead, Evan had put in a DVD of Captain Blood, then Mutiny on the Bounty and Captains Courageous—all the movies his grandpa had shown them once he’d found out Evan liked the old black-and-white classics. They’d watched movies until the sun had come up the next morning.

Whatever was in this box couldn’t be as bad as losing the old man.

He removed the lid. A leather-bound journal lay inside. He couldn’t bring himself to touch it. Why hadn’t it been with the others?

His grandpa had kept journals all his life. He’d made them sound as if they were no big deal, describing them as daily logs about life on the farm in northern Ohio, about the weather and the crops, an emotional moment mixed in when his kids and grandkids were born.

When Kyle’s grandpa had passed away four years after his wife, they’d found dozens of journals in boxes hidden under his bed. Kyle had sat on the edge of the bed, leafing through the pages of book after book, tears in his eyes at one point as his grandpa wrote about helping search for a missing seven-year-old girl after a tornado had ripped through the county one spring day in 1964. His grandpa had been the one to find her body in a field three miles north of her home.

While Kyle had read more, his dad had packed the closet full of clothes, shoes, and stacks of back issues of The Old Farmer’s Almanac into boxes, ignoring Kyle and the journals. That night, his dad had taken the boxes of journals home with him, along with the clothes and the aging yellow hardcover almanacs. Kyle had never asked his dad what he’d done with the journals. He didn’t want to know. They were probably boxed up in the attic or under his dad’s bed, the dust mounting until you couldn’t read the embossed year on each cover.

Except for this one.

Take Me Home

17

Its cover was blank, and the overall size was smaller than the others. A sealed envelope was sticking out from between the cover and the first page. Kyle slid it out. On the front was his name, written in his grandpa’s handwriting. The same handwriting he’d seen in the other journals and in the letter his grandpa had sent after reading Kyle’s first as-of-then-unpublished mystery.

That letter had praised Kyle for the excellent story he’d crafted, stating it was only a matter of time before Kyle found his success.

His grandpa had died a week after the release of his first book.

Kyle set the journal on the couch beside him and opened the letter.

Dear Kyle,

I am asking my attorney to see you get this journal two years after I’m gone. I want you to have distance from my passing before you receive it. You are the only one to ever read what is written inside. I am ashamed of few things in my life, but what I did all those years ago to hide the truth is something I could never bring myself to tell anyone. Until now.

I want you to know one thing before you read this. I loved my wife, my family, and the life I’ve had. All my children and grandchildren are special to me, but I know if anyone could read this journal and understand, it would be you. I thought about burning it before I go, but I can’t bring myself to destroy the words—it would be like destroying the memories. I am the only one left who knows the truth of my youth, and a part of me can’t stand that dying with me. Please read these words and carry them with you through your life. For me. And for yourself. I hope you learn something from my mistakes.

I am proud of you for all you have accomplished, and I was honored to have been the first person you shared your story with. Don’t ever lose faith in yourself.

And always remember to follow your heart.

Love,

Your proud grandfather

Victor Bennett

Kyle refolded the letter and held it in his hands. The last person to hold that paper had been his grandpa. Oddly, he felt more distant from the old man than he had in the past two years.

He picked up the journal.

Could he open it? Read his grandpa’s secrets?

Not yet.

He tucked the letter back inside, carried the journal to his bedroom, and stashed it in his top dresser drawer.

Later. He’d know when it was the right time.

All he knew now was he didn’t want to tell Evan he’d gotten it. Talking about his grandpa would lead Evan to asking the question Kyle didn’t want to answer.

When are you moving to Ohio?

He’d made the decision six months earlier. It had felt like the right call at the time. Now?

Who knew. He sure as hell didn’t. The quiet charm of Liberty Falls sounded good. He could write. Think. Breathe.

But…what about Evan?

18

Sloan Parker

When Kyle had first had the idea, he’d waited a week to tell Evan. He’d expected him to be pissed, but there was no response. Evan had been too busy with the new house and the screenwriting competition. All Kyle could wonder was, Will he miss me? When had he turned into such a damn sap?

Three days after that, Evan and his boyfriend had broken up, and Evan had moved in with Kyle. The breakup had come completely out of the blue and had left Evan reeling for months.

Yet another reason not to take Lorrie’s advice.

Kyle returned to the couch, set his computer on his lap, and stared at the screen. If only he could concentrate on his work, he might not be so obsessed with what he wasn’t getting in his bedroom lately. As usual, nothing came to him. He slammed the laptop lid closed.

“Fuck it.”

He stretched out on the couch and rubbed his temples with both hands. He’d tried everything he could think of. Every technique he’d ever read on how to overcome writer’s block.

Including the one that suggested standing on his head while clearing his mind and humming. All he’d gotten out of that was a headache.

Nothing had worked. The results were always the same. Documents full of crap he wouldn’t be caught dead with on his laptop. Knowing his editor, Sue Ann, she’d want to publish every last word. Even if he were dead, he wouldn’t want anyone to know about his failures. He’d deleted the files and started over.

Except…he hadn’t really started yet. For the last two weeks, he’d done nothing but stare at a blank screen. And the stupid fucking ceiling swirls.

It had been a year since his previous release, and he’d spent that time shooting the shit on Facebook and Twitter and teaching workshops on writing. Two books on the New York Times Best Seller list, and he felt like a fraud instructing more talented writers on the secrets of his success. He’d finished the last workshop a month ago. Since then, he’d wondered how many had asked the financial office at UCLA Extension for their money back.

He should’ve invited that delivery guy in earlier, released a little tension. He had to write something. Anything. He sat up, opened the laptop, and placed his hands over the keyboard.

Start with the body.

In a car? In an alley? Along the road?

“How’s it going?”

Kyle glanced up, and his breath caught. His writing, the journal, the delivery guy, everything else vanished from his thoughts. All he could see—all he wanted—stood across the room.

Evan. Holding a bag of takeout, his blue eyes focused on Kyle, a smile on his face. He had on the red dress shirt from Castillo’s. It was untucked, the top three buttons undone, the black tie hanging loosely around his neck.

From the day they’d met, Evan had no idea how good looking he was. In high school, he’d been shy and quiet and hadn’t had many friends. At almost thirty, a part of Evan was still that kid who never got the attention he deserved. He thought his geeky hobbies and intelligence made him undesirable. The little fucker had no idea what he did to most guys.

To Kyle.

“It’s going the same as yesterday.”

Take Me Home

19

“Sorry.” Evan held up the bag. “I brought dinner.”

“Thanks.”

Evan shrugged. “Thought you might be working and would want something easy.” He carried the bag with him to the kitchen and kept talking as he went. The apartment was small enough you could hear another person from any room in the place. “Did you get the messages I left by the phone?”

“Yeah.” And Kyle had thrown them in the trash. Lots of guys had been calling him, wondering where he’d been, wanting to “get together,” “have a drink,” or any of the other not-so-subtle ways guys had for asking to get laid.

“And I saw Ricky at the gym this morning,” Evan said over the rustle of the takeout bag.

“Guess he’s been trying to get a hold of you all week. Said he was hoping to hook up.” Great. Kyle closed the empty document on his laptop. He didn’t want Ricky. Or the delivery guy. Or any of the other guys he usually would’ve been anxious to follow through with.

He’d never experienced a dry spell like this before. He was so horny, if Evan jumped him right then, he’d probably blow with one touch to his dick.

Evan walked into the living room with plates full of Castillo’s specialty blue corn enchiladas. He set Kyle’s on the coffee table in front of him. “Forgot to tell you. Guess who I saw at the restaurant yesterday?” Evan sank onto the couch next to Kyle, plate in hand. “Jake Gallagher.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep. God, that man is gorgeous. You should’ve seen the waitstaff. Half the guys and all the women were drooling. You’d think we’d never seen a movie star before. I think Miguel was even a little taken with him.” Evan laughed.

That laugh sounded good. Damn good. Evan was finally acting more like himself.

I could make him feel so good.

Kyle forced that thought away. “Hey.” He bumped Evan’s knee with the side of his fist.

“How’s it feel?”

“Damn.” Evan laid his plate on his lap and leaned back against the couch. “I can’t believe it. Or that I’m done at the restaurant. And that party… I can’t believe Miguel opened late.”

“That man has a soft spot for you.”

Evan smiled, flashing a hint of a dimple on his right cheek. “I thought he’d be upset to see me go, but he’s happy for me. Says I can come back if this doesn’t work out.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“I hope not.” Evan ran a hand through his blond hair. “’Cause going from writing for an Emmy-winning show back to waiter would royally suck.”

Kyle laughed with him, but all he could think about was that hand running through his own hair, down his chest, his abs, wrapping around his dick.