His phone buzzed on the table, and he nearly dropped the watering can in his haste to grab it.
“I’m free next weekend, too,” Javier had replied. “I’ll see you then.”
Bubbles of joy fizzed in Desmond’s stomach. High-powered executive be damned. He’d been through enough in life to know what he wanted, and what he wanted was the gorgeous, bright model with a beautiful soul who had turned his world inside out with perfection over the last few days.
He sent Javier a single red heart emoji, then put his phone back on the table and resumed his plant check with a smile on his face. Things would work out, he told himself. Two days, and already Javier had made him feel stronger. He was far from out of the woods in terms of life problems he needed to deal with, but everything he’d just experienced over the weekend was like wind in his sails.
He only made it through one shelf of plants before his phone buzzed again. He felt that buzz in his chest, not to mention other parts of his anatomy. With a smile, he veered back toward the table?—
His heart plummeted and his good feelings evaporated when he saw a text not from Javier, but from Matthew.
“I see your house guest has gone.”
Rage and fear struck Desmond together. He didn’t know which emotion was worse.
“How dare you?—”
He stopped himself from replying and slammed his phone down on the table, forcing himself to take a deep breath and assess the situation before reacting. Matthew knew Javier hadbeen at the house all weekend. He knew Javier had just left. That either meant that somehow his ex had cameras or other surveillance equipment in the house, which was impossible. Des would have located anything like that when he’d redecorated. Or else it meant that Matthew was nearby.
He left the sunroom and walked through to the snug at the front of the house. It felt ridiculous to peep through the curtains like some gossiping auntie in his own house, but if Matthew was somewhere nearby, Desmond didn’t want to give the man the satisfaction of knowing he was alarmed.
It took a minute of craning his neck and studying the street, but he finally noticed Matthew’s car parked half a dozen houses down. He didn’t want to think about how long the bastard had been there.
Shoulders bunched, Desmond stepped back from the window, then turned and headed through the house to his sunroom. Matthew was emotionally manipulative and obsessive, but he’d never shown any signs of being violent. In his mind, it was probably romantic to stalk his ex, or at least it would have been if he’d ever actually been in love. Two days with Javier, and Desmond was beginning to see that his previous definition of love, which was probably Matthew’s as well, didn’t come close to what love could be.
Just because Desmond didn’t believe Matthew would physically hurt him didn’t mean it was okay for the man to threaten him. Fortunately, two could play at that game.
He grabbed his phone from the table and quickly typed out, “If you come any nearer to my house, I’ll call the police.” He hit send before he could talk himself out of it or make more excuses for Matthew’s behavior.
Almost right away, three dots appeared, and a few seconds later, Matthew replied with, “You wouldn’t do that. You’d be too embarrassed.”
Desmond huffed out a breath through his nose and almost started typing a reply. Anything he said would be pointless, though. Matthew still believed he had some sort of hold over him, and honestly, up until the last few days, he did.
“No more,” Desmond said, exiting out of messages and navigating to his contacts. He scrolled until he found Matthew’s name, then did what he should have done a long time ago, he blocked Matthew’s number.
seven
. . .
Everything was chaos from the moment Javier walked through his office door on Monday and it stayed that way through to Friday, but he felt like he was walking on air all the same. The daily text banter with Desmond might have had something to do with that.
“The plants miss you,” Desmond texted on Monday, causing Javier to smile in the middle of trying to figure out how they would be able to afford rent and to pay his and Maisy’s salary for the month.
“Are they not getting wet enough without me?” he texted back, memories of the taste of Desmond’s body distracting him completely.
Desmond replied with a blushing emoji.
On Wednesday, Javier texted, “Have you kept your closets neatly arranged?” in the middle of the day.
Desmond replied with, “Yes, but if you’d like to come over and rearrange something else for me at some point, I wouldn’t mind.”
Javier had needed to excuse himself to take a walk and cool down after that exchange.
By Friday, there was no escaping that Desmond had claimed a massive piece of him, and that wasn’t going to end anytime soon.
“I don’t know why you’re smiling so much when we’re about to have our arses handed to us,” Maisy said as the two of them rushed to prep for the meeting they were already late for in Canary Wharf. “I’m not being Chicken Little when I say the sky is falling.”
“You don’t need to worry about a thing,tía,” Javier told her, grabbing his satchel off his desk and slinging it over his shoulder like he was dancing along to some secret soundtrack. “We’ve got this. How’s Melanie doing? Did you two kids have a night last night?”
