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It was time for him and Henri to start talking. It was time to see if Henri had meant what he said, and whether he would want to stay by the end of it.
AFTER QUICKLY WASHING up, Henri snagged a fresh towel from the rack and wrapped it around his hips before exiting Bailey’s en suite and re-entering the bedroom.
With the curtains still drawn and only the bedside lamp flicked on, the rumpled king-sized bed was the main focus of the room and a stark reminder of how he’d spent the last five hours or so, wrapped around a man he was having trouble keeping at arm’s length.
Henri had known all along that getting involved with Bailey was going to be…problematic, when he’d come to the conclusion last night that both the cops in his life were related. But he’d figured he’d have a little more time to work out how exactly to handle that situation before it came banging down Bailey’s front door.
Henri was just plain old out of luck, though, and as he walked over to the bed to take a seat and wait, he spotted his cell phone on the floor where it must’ve fallen out of his jeans that morning. Grabbing it up, Henri spotted two missed calls, both from Detective Dick. Yeah, okay, that would’ve been helpful, oh, an hour or so ago.
Tossing the phone on the bed, Henri looked to the shut door and wondered how the conversation on the other side of it was going. Bailey had looked caught somewhere between confused and shocked at what had just been revealed to him. But there’d been no anger, no annoyance—he’d just looked completely blindsided, which was exactly how Henri felt when he finally came to the conclusion that the dick and his hot cop were brothers.
Henri could only imagine how thrilled the detective had been to turn up at his childhood home today to find his CI was there. But at the same time, Bailey was an adult, and it was really none of Dick’s business who his brother was or wasn’t dating, was it?
Hold up, Henri thought. Dating…? Shit. Since when had he thought in those kind of terms? How about never. But as he continued to stare at the door, he realized that was exactly what he’d been doing with Bailey—dating him.
In all fairness, they’d only really made it through one of those dates in full. But the fact he had preplanned, decided on a time, and actually shown up and never left told Henri that he was most definitely doing more here than just putting in the time for a one- or two-night stand.
Henri was getting in deeper with every minute, every hour he spent around Bailey, and the side of him he’d thought was forever lost to opening up to another was starting to reemerge. His heart was opening to possibilities that were both thrilling and utterly paralyzing, because him and a cop? Well, he just wasn’t sure how that was gonna work in the long run.
Henri got to his feet and began to pace. There was still no sound beyond the door that he could hear, and while he wanted to give Bailey his privacy to ask Dick the questions he might not feel comfortable asking if Henri was standing there, waiting was getting more difficult with every passing second.
I should’ve just walked away, Henri thought as he got to the door and put his ear up to it. Should’ve let Bailey go that morning he pulled me over. Then he wouldn’t be hiding in this bedroom, wondering if Bailey was going to be disgusted he’d just spent the morning with someone his brother had arrested months ago, and now used to get dirt on the dregs of society.
Henri sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Having grown up the way he had, he’d never really been ashamed of who he was or what he’d done. It’d been a means of survival in his situation, and he’d never felt the need to apologize for it, until now.
As he stood there waiting for Bailey—or Dick, for that matter—to throw open the door and tell him to collect his things and get the fuck out, Henri found himself wishing for the first time in his life that he could erase his past. That he could re-create his life and accessorize it with a middle-class family that lived in the suburbs, a mom and dad who worked nine to five and were always home for dinner.
But that was just a wish, a far cry from his reality, and when the silence crept back in and his lack of patience and paranoia finally got to him, Henri twisted the door handle and pulled it open a crack.
Much to his relief, there was no one standing directly outside the door with a scowl telling him to leave. In fact, he couldn’t see anyone. But he could hear muffled voices up the hall and decided he’d been good long enough. He wanted to know what kind of bullshit Dick was telling Bailey. At least then he might have a fighting chance at defending himself.
