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All I wanted, in that moment, was to make Kev stop hurting.
“That’s not possible,” I said firmly. “Maybe he’s busy at work.”
“Not to diminish the importance of his job, but he can’t be working at a pet store twenty-four seven. How long does it take to send a chat message? No, I think I probably did or said something that offended him. I’m kind of awkward sometimes when I’m trying to make friends.”
I sat up and nearly bumped his chin with my head. “You’re the best friend a person could have,” I said with a little too much growl. “There’s no chance in hell you did or said something that offended him. It’s not possible.”
He gave me a weak smile. “That’s nice of you to say, but what I really want to know is… how do I fix it? Do you have any advice for what I could say to find out what’s wrong?”
I took his hands in mine while frantically thinking through what I should say. I wanted to punch myself for not coming clean a long time ago. For trying to rectify the mistakes I’d made as HogMaster last summer by becoming someone new, like the challenges of building up a new game avatar from scratch were a good substitute for apologizing and trying to be a better player moving forward.
“Just… tell him you miss him, I think. Ask him how he is. Give him a chance to explain. And then… when he does explain, I really hope you’ll listen to his explanation and forgive him, if you think he deserves it.”
Because I would explain. I owed him that much, and he deserved the truth. But he didn’t deserve to have the memory of this night ruined by the discovery that someone he thought was trustworthy had been lying to him. Not while things between us still felt so fragile and new.
Kev peered at me curiously, but after a moment, he just nodded.
“Thank you,” he said with a sweet smile, pulling me down onto his chest again. I fell asleep feeling like the lowest scum of the earth and knowing without a shadow of a doubt that Kevin Rogers deserved better than Jasper Huxley.
The following day started off much like the last time we’d ended up naked together, though fortunately without the rude predawn wake-up call. Instead, we woke up naturally, still cuddled together in the bed, and I got to kiss his drowsy form for long moments while the light coming through the curtains brightened the room. I washed his body in the hotel shower with the kind of attention a brain surgeon would use while operating on a world leader.
In the process, I found several tickle spots and even more surprising erogenous zones. I could have stayed in there with him under the hot spray for days if we hadn’t had a job to do.
But we did. So we dressed and packed and joined the rest of the team for breakfast before heading back over to the boys’ school to gather the Horn data from our target.
I was getting sick of this damned mission, to be honest. I wanted this Horn of Glory situation off our backs once and for all, and if I felt that way, I could only imagine how Champ was feeling about it. I knew he’d been having regular phone calls with Jacob Horn and that he emerged from each one looking grimmer and more concerned. He had to be stressing big-time about leading his company’s largest client into a PR disaster and potential criminal complicity in a massive money-laundering scheme.
When we got to the school, our target was working alone in his Spanish classroom deep in a basement where our surveillance tech wouldn’t reach. Fortunately for us, getting into the school was as easy as five of us throwing on utility worker uniforms—the secretary not only failed to ask for proper ID but offered us coffee, for heaven’s sake—but I had half a mind to call the parents paying exorbitant tuitions and warn them of the security nightmare at JollyBrook Residential School for Boys.
Kev and I would be providing OPSEC—essentially acting as backup in case of communication failures—so we needed to huddle together in a supply closet next to the Spanish classroom and monitor comms, while Champ and Riggs created a distraction in the hallway to lure the professor away from his Horn long enough for Jordan to sneak in and download the data.
Getting into position was simple enough. But the blueprints of the school I’d found hadn’t prepared me for just how snug the little room would be.
“Here we are back in the closet in high school,” Kev snickered.
He wasn’t trying to start anything, but his breath tickled my ear anyway, just due to his proximity. That, combined with the vanilla-and-coffee scent that seemed to be infused in his pores, made me want to grab him and kiss the fuck out of him.
