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It felt good having talked about what happened to me with Rocky. It felt like I had given him a key and he’d used it to lock up all the demons that haunted my dreams, to then grab the locked box and throw it overboard, letting it sink down to the bottom of the sea where they’d never touch my dreams again.
Was I being a little dramatic? Sure.
Was I feeling so much better? Hell yeah.
Was I lip-syncing the entire lyrics of “Heart to Break”? You damn well know I was.
Rocky pulled down a street, one I recognized. It was the one my uncle lived on, which meant it was the same one Rocky lived on. I remembered how nervous I’d been driving down it, looking for the mailbox Rocky had mentioned. A manatee with a top hat. My heart had been beating inside of my throat when I pulled up to his place, but not in the same way it was now.
I felt nerves, but they were different. I wasn’t walking into the unknown anymore. Even though I’d barely scratched Rocky Hudson’s surface, I felt like the unknown was no longer an issue.
The heavy black gates opened for us. Rocky drove up his driveaway and parked just in front of the door, the lights of his front porch clicking on and bathing the area with clarity.
Of course I wondered where he got the money for this. Unless he moonlighted as a dermatologist or a Fortune 500 CEO, I really couldn’t imagine that his detective salary could cover all this.
But, as I was coming to learn with Rocky, things took time. And I was fine with that.
Time seemed like an infinite resource when Rocky was in my orbit.
Inside his home, we walked to the kitchen, where Rocky opened his wine fridge and pulled out a chilled bottle of expensive-looking champagne, the wrapper a gold and pink, the bottle a jet-black. As he walked around his kitchen, his socks and shoes already left abandoned by the door, I couldn’t help but drink him in, admiring his beauty. Everything about the man had me wrapped up in his six-foot-something web.
The way his strong shoulders sloped down to biceps that pushed at the fabric of his dark black shirt, his tattoos lighting him up in a way that felt surreal, like I was watching a living piece of art gliding around the room. I could see his chest pushing at his shirt the same way his arms were, making me wonder how it would feel if my hands glided up and down, skin on skin. I could even see his nipples through the fabric, making it even easier to imagine myself leaning down, kissing and sucking and touching.
I moved behind the massive marble island, hiding the growing boner.
“So,” Rocky asked me, holding the bottle of gold-wrapped champagne in the air along with two champagne glasses. “Want to open this upstairs? The view from my balcony should be a great backdrop right now.”
It was kind of him to ask. I had noticed he wasn’t one to push without asking, even from our pool fiasco, from the time I had my first ever kiss.
He had asked me if it was okay. He didn’t push in or force things. It felt as if he could sense my fear and did everything in his power to soothe me. I appreciated that more than I thought I ever would.
“Let’s go check out that view, then.”
Rocky led me through his kitchen, my eyes dropping to his firm butt, the light jeans he wore highlighting his body perfectly underneath the soft, warm lights of his hall. I was so distracted, I almost missed a peculiar sight as we walked.
It was in the upstairs hall, a wide space with beautiful gray wood floors and walls displaying beautiful works of art, but it wasn’t the art that had caught my attention. There was a door, one that would have looked like any other door if it weren’t for the lock that blocked the handle. He walked right past the room, but I stalled, cocking my head. He must have realized, stopping a short way down the hall and turning on his heel.
A flush of sudden nerves came over me. My cheeks burned red. Had I made a mistake? What the hell would be behind a door like that?
“I’ve played plenty of video games, and locked doors usually mean treasure or a zombie boss ready to tear apart some limbs. Sometimes both.” I swallowed. “Which one is it?”
“Treasure,” Rocky said. “I swear.”
He came over to the door. The screen on the lock turned on, and his fingers glided over the numbers. A heavy lock unclicked. I looked to Rocky, and for the first time since meeting him, I picked up on something. Nerves. He wasn’t making any eye contact, and he seemed to be thinking hard about opening the door.
