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Ian had fallen asleep in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest and his head tilted back. Alek poked him with the blunt tip of his pen.
“Hmm?” Ian mumbled, then dropped his eyes to the paper. “What escorts? You said… You said they were dating app matches. Wait, there were escorts too?”
Fuck. It was hard to keep all of the lies straight when he had a concussion to contend with. He really thought he told Ian about the escorts. He had the strangest sense of déjà vu.
Alek wrote,The matcheswereescorts.
Ian was even hotter when he was angry. His already chiseled jaw was carved into sharp relief, and the way his brows dippedto darken his eyes into the color of damp earth was exactly the same look he made before he held Alek down and fucked him the way they both liked.
“Why would you lie about that?” Ian asked. “It’s all the same betrayal to me.”
Alek wrote,Escorts imply that I had to pay for your competition, whereas matches would be more likely to make you jealous since they wanted to come to me.
Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say, because Ian glared at him with disgust, like he couldn’t believe he’d ever seen anything in him. Alek thanked himself for the last resort he’d kept in his back pocket.
I didn’t touch them. It was all an act.
Ian shot out of the chair. “Explain. Now.”
“I didn’t want to actually have sex with them. I needed it to look like I did. I wantedyou.”
Ian stared at him coldly. “That wasn’t English.”
Alek growled and wrote out the same on the paper.
“You didn’t touch them? It sounded like they enjoyed themselves.”
An angry pulse beat visibly in Ian’s neck as he waited for an answer. His fists were clenched at his sides like he was resisting the urge to strangle him. Alek would quite like to feel Ian’s hands, trembling with volatile rage, around his neck. He forced himself to focus and wrote,I paid them to be convincing.
“Why should I believe you?” Ian nearly whispered.
Alek didn’t have an answer. Ian was right. Alek was the definition of dishonest. Lies coursed through his veins and slipped into his speech like second nature.
“Everything you do, everything you say… I can’t trust any of it. There are too many lies. Why didn’t you tell me that yesterday? Were you really going to get back together with me with a lie that big between us? How many other lies are there?”
“There are so many lies, I can hardly keep track of them all and if I tell you the truth, you’ll hate me.” Alek’s voice grew louder and ended in a cough that made his head feel like it was going to explode.
“Write it down,” Ian reminded him.
I’m sorry. I know I messed up. I knew it the first night I invited someone over and saw your face when I walked him out. But I didn’t know what else to do.
Ian shook his head, like he was trying to shake Alek’s words loose before they were committed to memory.
“You could have done practically anything else and it would have been better than what you’ve done.”
But I didn’t touch th—Ian snatched the pen out of Alek’s hand and gripped it like a knife.
“You’re done talking. You can have the pen back when I’m finished.”
Ian reclaimed his seat, his back straight, his eyes flat as he stared through the window across the room. Outside, wisps of purple clouds drifted low over the early morning sky.
“I know empathy is hard for you,” Ian said. “So let me put it in a way that you can understand. Imagine the roles reversed. You’re not just in love with me. You’re obsessed.”
Really? Ian thought Alek had to imagine that.
“After three years, I still don’t tell you much about myself, but you’ll take what you can get. We move into the Victorian and when you see how much I love it, you plan for us to stay when it’s finished. You can’t wait to see my face when you tell me.”
Alek’s mouth fell open. No one ever caught him off guard, no one ever surprised him, except Ian. Alek tried to catch Ian’s eye, but he appeared to have no interest in seeing his reaction now.
