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I sucked a breath through my teeth. “I just wanted this school shit to be smooth sculpting. That’s all.”
Austin’s face scrunched together. “You wanted to be a sculptor? I thought you were into wildlife?”
“No, it’s a saying. You’ve never heard it?”
Austin’s face scrunched even more before realization clicked in. Duh, of course he’d heard the sa—
“Smooth sculpting… do you mean smooth sailing?”
“No, I mean—oh no. I’ve been saying it wrong this entire time, haven’t I? Oh fuck.”
Austin started to crack up, and I stood, wanting to explain myself. “Wait, but what if I’m right, man. Who the fuck likes rough sculptures? I thought it made so much sense. Smooth sculptures. Like marble and shit. Fuck.”
Austin was still laughing but standing now, holding his stomach. Damn, how did he always look so good? The guy was in a white tank top and paint-stained gym shorts, and still he looked like the models you see on those underwear packages at the mall.
Not that I ever looked at them for too long or anything.
And his eyes. Something in Austin’s eyes always did me in, no matter what I was feeling or how frustrated I was with class or rugby. One look into those hazel eyes and my engine would immediately rev, sending sparks straight to my dick.
“I like smooth sculpting better, even though it sounds like something you’d buy on Groupon to handle the extra Thanksgiving pounds.”
I started laughing then, and soon, I had forgotten all about my failed exam and my scholarship and disappointing my parents. All I cared about was spending the day with Austin, naked and hooking up in every corner of the dorm.
“Holy shit, I remembered,” I said, looking into Austin’s eyes and seeing the same man I had fallen so hard for back then. “The smooth sculptures day. It all came back to me. About my bio test and how you were there and how we did nothing except hang out together that day. It was perfect.”
Austin’s eyes were wide, almost looking as surprised as he’d been by the message still outside. “That’s incredible. It means you can get even more memories back.”
I leaned in for a kiss, a renewed well of hope springing up in my chest.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said, echoing Austin’s words and actually believing them. “It’s all going to be smooth sculpting.”
23
Austin Romero
I rested my head on my desk and let out an exhausted sigh. Houston, perched on the end of my desk, stepped over and started to preen my hair.
These last couple of days had been a roller-coaster ride, and I fucking hated roller coasters with a burning passion. The threat on my wall kicked off a flurry of panic and stress and fear, which only made it harder and harder to focus on the shit I actually needed to do. Instead of working on the case, I had to make sure Charlie was okay and safe.
I spent the day after the threat turning my home into a fortress. I installed cameras along every corner of the exterior as well as adding barbed wire to my fence, which completely tanked the aesthetic of my property but was much better than blood dripping down my walls. I swapped out all the locks for even stronger ones and reinforced the doors and windows so that someone would need a tank to break through them.
It was far from ideal, but it gave me a sense of comfort, however false it might be. I knew there was no way to protect Charlie around the clock. He still had to go to work and go grocery shopping or to the gym or to his parents’. It didn’t matter where he needed to go; all I could think of was vulnerabilities. Ways I could lose him.
Same way I had lost Dean…
No. Don’t go down that path.
But it was too late. Images flashed into my brain with the same force as a lightning strike. Dean’s body, broken and bloody, unmoving, gone.
I was the one to find him, lying on his back in my living room. His eyes staring up at the sky, lifeless and empty.
It was an accident. A tragic one. Dean died because of a heartless asshole running him over. One second he had been sitting in the living room and playing a video game, getting ready to walk to the bodega; the next, he was dead.
I couldn’t go through that again. I couldn’t lose someone else. No one else.
It would break me, I was sure of that. There’d be no recovering from another loss like that, not after I opened myself up again and allowed Charlie back in. Devastation wouldn’t even be the proper term for how I’d feel.
I picked my head back up, Houston giving a cluck and a swish of his wings. I gave him a few chin scratches and then turned my attention back to the computer screen. The only way I’d be able to secure Charlie’s safety was by locking up the psycho behind the threats and murders. Someone in Blue Creek wanted Charlie dead and me gone, and I wasn’t going to allow either of those things to happen.
