The Arrangement (16 page)

When he reached the table, Carter slid back into his seat and picked up the drink Reed had placed before him earlier. It disappeared in two healthy gulps. Instead of sitting down across from him, Reed chose to remain standing, his usually vibrant eyes dark and shadowed.

“You know what? I can’t. I think I’m done with this…arrangement, or whatever it is we have going on between us.” Reed waved his hand in the air while Carter sat in shock, trying to absorb what he was saying. “It’s causing me undue stress, and I don’t need it.”

“Reed,” Carter began. “I didn’t—”

“Stop.” Reed cut him off. “Don’t say you didn’t mean it because you did. And it’s fine. It’s your life, and you have the right to live the way you want. However,”—Reed shook his head sadly, looking down at Carter, who suddenly couldn’t find enough air to suck in a deep breath—“it’s not the life for me.” He placed a check on the table. “You can pay Vernon. I’ve got work to do in the back.” Without another word, he turned on his heel and strode away, disappearing through the doorway behind the bar.

Stunned, Carter sat at the table littered with dirty plates and glasses. Without bothering to look at the check, he tossed a wad of twenties on the table. He had a meeting to get to and couldn’t begin to wrap his head around what Reed said. Chalk it up to him once again disappointing someone. Someone he didn’t want to admit he’d begun to care about.

Because it wasn’t Reed that Carter was ashamed of, it was himself. Like he knew he’d do from the start, he’d hurt a truly nice person. It was why he didn’t do relationships; no one deserved to get stuck with a person like him—someone who was blind to anything other than his own needs and wants. There was little Carter could find about himself to be worthy of love; the seeds of self-loathing had been planted early and dug their roots far and deep into his psyche.

His life was a riot of threads, the younger years creating a spider web spun out to include Jackson, his business, and the carefully drawn persona he allowed the public to see. He couldn’t possibly add another circle to include someone like Reed, who’d rightfully demand and deserve all of him. His past and his present. His heart.

His past had been nothing to remember after he left home. Lucky enough to have his high-school diploma, he worked wherever he could, sleeping in parks and shelters until he found a steady job in the mail room of an advertising firm, where he listened and kept his eyes and ears open, taking in everything he heard and overheard. He could work there by day and go to college at night. After four years he took his savings and his information, and with his new name, left to make it big in New York City. Calvin Hastings had become, legally, Carter Haywood.

There were times he believed his own carefully crafted backstory of parents who died young, leaving him to be raised by elderly relatives. The lines of reality blurred, so he wasn’t certain he could tell where the Carter Haywood he created and his true self became separated.

Fear and crushing self-doubt crawled through his veins like a sniper on a rooftop, sweeping through him, but he blocked them, like he did all his mistakes and the ugliness trapped inside him. No time to sit and reminisce or beat himself up over what might or could have been. From the first Carter knew there was a chance feelings might develop when he made this arrangement with Reed. He’d been willing to risk it and try because of their undeniable physical attraction.

But now all that was done, and surprisingly it wasn’t him who wanted it to end but Reed. Pain shot through him like a cramp, and he almost gasped out loud, it hurt so badly. Maybe he was sick, or something was breaking apart inside him.

He might be several years younger, but Reed was the mature one in this twosome, for Carter could easily have imagined keeping up this arrangement for years. He left the bar, hailed a cab and settled into the back seat; then, as they drove away, craned his neck for one last look through the rear window of the cab and heaved a sigh of regret. Whatever love he had, needed to be reserved for Jackson; his heart wasn’t available for a double occupancy.

That didn’t stop him from thinking about Reed, no matter how busy he got after he’d returned to the office; for the rest of the day his mind wandered from discussions of market forecast projections and sales demographics to recalling the weight and press of Reed’s lithe, naked body as he pushed inside him, or his own hoarse cry when they climaxed together. And as quickly as the image rose in his mind, Carter dismissed it.

Some things weren’t meant to be.

‡

H
e might have
meant it when he told Carter they were finished, but that didn’t make Reed any less miserable for having said it. And as the days went by and Reed’s life slipped back into its usual monotony of school and work, he wondered what Carter was doing and if he missed him. Every morning he checked his phone, foolish with hope that he’d see a text from Carter with an
I miss you and I want to see you
. His phone remained depressingly blank, and Reed lectured himself to stop acting like a lovesick jerk.

Once again he’d fallen for a man who didn’t have a heart to give. And while Carter wasn’t cruel as Mason had been, their tentative relationship, for want of a better word, proved much worse. He’d treated Reed with tenderness, making him feel wanted and special. Reed fell for him, without realizing until he stepped off the ledge that he was plummeting headfirst toward earth without a safety net.

Even his father noticed his miserable emotional state and brought it up when he came to the bar for dinner one night, about two weeks after his confrontation with Carter.

“What’s wrong? You look like shit. Do you feel okay?”

Reed reached over and pinched a few fries off his father’s burger plate. Because he hadn’t been sleeping well, Reed decided to halve his medication the past few days, and his appetite came roaring back to life; he’d already plowed through a towering pile of nachos yet the emptiness remained inside.

“Yeah, school and stuff.”

“Ask him about the stuff,” said Vernon, joining them. “He’s doing great in school, told me he got all A’s on his tests. It’s that bastard he was seeing.”

His father turned a curious eye on him, and like he was four again Reed squirmed under his regard. “You didn’t tell me you were seeing anybody. What happened?”

Everything. I fell in love, then told the guy I didn’t want to see him again.

“Nothing.” Taking time to decorate his French fry in a patina of ketchup, Reed avoided looking at his father. “I saw someone a few times, but it didn’t work out.” He glared hard at Vernon, daring him to contradict what he said.

“Why are you bullshitting your father?” Obviously Vernon didn’t put much stock in Reed remaining angry with him. “This guy kept coming into the bar, and he and Reed began seeing each other. Then one day he shows up with his fancy clients or somethin’ and pretends like he don’t know Reed. Piece of shit, I say.”

Reed groaned his frustration and gulped down his club soda. Angry as he was with Carter, he’d begun to wonder if he’d been too quick to break it off with him. From the beginning Carter had made him no promises. If he wanted to keep his business and personal life separate, he had that right. The times when it was the two of them had been pretty damn special. He chewed on his fingernails and stared off into space, recalling how Carter’s mere voice and touch broke him down to the core.

Despite Carter insisting the two of them weren’t in a relationship and never would be, he still noticed little things, things only someone who cared would pay attention to. If Reed had mentioned he enjoyed eating something, merely in passing, Carter made sure to have it in the suite, waiting for him when he showed up after work the next weekend they spent together. One time he complained of a stiff back from studying, and Carter surprised him with stress relieving bath salts they both enjoyed in the oversized jetted hotel tub.

He’d also given him small gifts—nothing expensive, but thoughtful ones, like a special reading light to cut down on the glare.

“For all your studying,” Carter said with a smile when Reed opened the box. “You don’t want to strain your eyes, although you’d look sexy as hell in a pair of glasses.”

Things like that made Reed so curious about Carter’s personal life and why he tried to make it all about the sex yet showed a surprisingly sweet side as well. And even though he’d been the one to end it between them, Reed needed that final closure, that understanding of why—why Carter presented himself to the world as a cold businessman, devoid of feelings, when Reed knew him to be the exact opposite. Reed supposed it was the anxiety in him that needed those details wrapped up nicely before he could move on. He could never be satisfied until he had all the facts and the hows and whys clear in his mind.

“Reed.
Reed
.” He came back to the present to find his father and Vernon staring at him.

“What?” He brushed his hair back in his typical nervous gesture, noticing his hand trembling. The signs all pointed to his stress levels at the maximum he could endure. Perhaps he needed to visit Dr. Childs and ask her for advice, more as a mother figure than as his therapist.

“We’ve been calling your name. What’s wrong? Is Vernon right? Did this guy mistreat you?”

“No. He’s wrong. He and I…I’m fine.” Irritated at having to discuss his love life in a bar with his father and his boss, Reed shut down. “Everything’s fine. I need to serve those people over there.” Without a backward look, he strode to the waiting customers and decided to get a grip on his life and stop allowing everyone—Dr. Childs, his father, Vernon, even Carter—to make decisions about what was best for him. Happiness didn’t fall into your lap—that was for fairy tales and movies. Sometimes you had to fight for the right to be happy, which might make the ever after all the sweeter.

But putting himself out there, taking that initial step scared the hell out of Reed. The anxiety spiked, crowding out his best intentions. Sure, taking a risk meant a chance to succeed. But what if he tried and failed? What if he lost it all? Throughout the rest of his shift, Reed wrestled with himself, still uncertain what to do, hating the doubts that continued to plague him.

Later that night when he’d gotten home from work and showered, Reed sat in bed, cup of tea in hand, and began to search for anything he could find on Carter Haywood. Maybe Dr. Childs was right and he should do a little deeper research into Carter’s background. It might give him better insight into the type of man who on the outside seemed to have everything yet Reed knew for a fact led a hollow and lonely life. The nights they spent together, Reed, up often at night from his medicines, studied Carter in his sleep. Restless and wakeful, Carter would sometimes cry out or reach for him, and Reed drew him close, feeling the pounding of his heart. Warm and comforted, they’d both fall asleep, if only for a little while.

Reed bypassed all the usual stock articles which seemed to repeat the same carefully constructed biography: “came out of nowhere to take the PR field by storm” or “has an uncanny knack for predicting the hottest new trends before anyone.” The only personal fact about the man, if you could call it that, was the last line of his bio, which merely stated in one succinct line: “Carter Haywood lives in Brooklyn.”

Surely there had to be more to Carter than his resume and sharp business skills. And though it was weird to obsess over a man who was almost a stranger, in some ways Reed knew him better than anyone else, having taken the man inside his body. For that reason alone, he couldn’t walk away as easily as he should. He hadn’t had that many lovers and none who’d stirred up these mixed emotions.

It all made him want to hold on even tighter, no matter that he was the one letting go.

An hour passed and he’d dug a bit deeper, a trend becoming obvious in the charitable contributions made by both Carter individually and his firm—all were to children’s charities.
He’s not a complete bastard,
thought Reed. Deep down he knew there was way more to Carter Haywood than a winning smile and a boatload of confidence. Carter might be only thirty-two, but the shadows hiding in his eyes told a story of a lifetime already lived. It hurt Reed to have to dig for bits and pieces of the life story of the man he’d spent entire weekends with and made love to.

Then again, Reed hid some pretty big secrets about himself from Carter as well.

A several-years-old headline in an online newsletter grabbed his attention, and with mounting excitement, Reed read the blurb, his tea growing cold. It acknowledged a gift of ten thousand dollars to an organization dedicated to helping children with disabilities, on behalf of Carter Haywood and Jackson Miller.

Reed fell back on his bed with a whoosh of accomplishment. That name, Jackson, could be the full name for Jacks, who was the child Carter asked someone to pick up from another child’s house in the text. If it wasn’t Carter’s child, maybe he was a brother or a cousin? Reed hated having to play a guessing game, but instead of getting angrier at Carter, all he felt was deflated and unhappy. He couldn’t understand why Carter continued to hold him at a distance.