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As Bailey went to turn away, Henri reached out and took hold of his hand, knowing he needed to say something. To try to explain what had happened last night and why he was there. But his brain was too foggy.
“I’m sorry. I know we don’t know each other that well, and I shouldn’t have come here last night in the state I was in. It’s just…” Henri paused for a moment and swallowed around the lump in the back of his throat. “I had nowhere else to go.”
Bailey studied him closely, those incredible eyes seeming to see right through Henri as he tightened his fingers. “Then I’m glad you came here.”
With their hands linked, and their eyes connected, Henri felt more vulnerable in that moment than he’d ever felt with anyone in his life. He felt cut open, raw, and Bailey had barely said a word.
Bailey released his fingers and took a step back. “I’m going to go and make that coffee.” Bailey walked toward a doorway that Henri assumed led to the kitchen, then stopped and looked back. “Don’t vanish, okay?”
Henri nodded, and as Bailey disappeared around the corner, he let out a breath he didn’t even realize he’d been holding, then his eyes flicked back to the clock. It was just turning six thirty.
He got to his feet and stretched out his back and neck, as he let his eyes wander around the living room he’d only ever been in at night. He took a second to admire how peaceful the space was, with all neutral colors and bright light filtering through the windows.
Bailey had good taste. In décor, anyway, Henri thought, as he ran a hand through his hair and turned to head in the direction he’d been told the bathroom was.
God, had last night really happened? He still couldn’t believe that Victor was gone, that he was…dead. It was almost surreal, because while Henri had blocked his father from his mind, he had always known Victor was still there. Still locked up, rotting away in a prison cell with the potential to break free like Jimmy had. But not anymore. Henri could finally be rid of that life he’d once known, and it was that which he had celebrated last night. The freedom to finally breathe for the first time in all these years.
Henri stepped inside the bathroom, flicked on the light, got a good look at himself, and groaned. He looked like shit. How the hell he was ever going to replace this image in Bailey’s eyes, he had no idea. But as he looked at the shower over his shoulder, he figured he could start there.
He shut the bathroom door and turned on the water. As he quickly stripped down to nothing, he thought what a shame it was that he was taking this shower alone this morning, when he really wanted to share it with the man several rooms away.
If Henri had any hope of changing Bailey’s opinion of him, it was now, and the best way to do that was to get his ass in gear. So with that in mind, Henri stepped inside the shower and tried to think of a way to repair any damage he may have done the night before.
WHEN BAILEY HEARD the shower turn on, he ordered himself not to imagine how good Henri would look standing under it. Not an easy task, considering he’d spent the entire night sitting in a recliner watching over the guy.
He still couldn’t believe what had happened last night when Henri showed up at his door. Talk about being thrown for a loop. Here he’d been thinking about all of the hot, sweaty sex they’d have at the stroke of midnight, and he’d ended up with a drunk, vulnerable man passed out on his couch.
Bailey scooped some coffee beans into the grinder and sighed. Poor Henri. Bailey knew exactly what it was like to lose a parent—hell, he’d lost two—but unless Henri brought it up this morning, he wasn’t about to pry.
The two of them were in this strange predicament where they knew each other intimately, but beyond that, hardly at all, and unless Henri volunteered more information, Bailey would feed him, make sure he was okay, and then let him go with no guilt attached.
Henri had needed something last night; a friend or a fuck, Bailey couldn’t be sure. But the fact that Henri had wound up on his doorstep had emotions he hadn’t expected rising to the surface.
Shit, he knew this was going to happen. He’d never been the one-night-stand kind of guy, and this proved it, because all he wanted to do for the rest of the day was hang out with Henri and make sure he was okay. Yeah, I’m sure he’d love that. Henri didn’t really strike Bailey as the kind of guy who needed hand-holding. But last night? Last night had been a whole other story…
