AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It made Eric think about how in that sense, Kojo and Adrian werealike. While Kojo happily camped out at Eric’s London flat, his what’s-yours-is-mine attitude went both ways when it came to sharing clothes, and though he liberally raided Eric’s fridge, it was to whip up delicious food for both of them. Kojo had once put it as,‘You’re cold? Take my jumper. You need a place to sleep? Here’s my sofa. But if you need money, well, that’s what the bank is for.’
“Me too.” Eric sent Kojo a significant look.
“Sap,” Kojo said softly.
“I’m a songwriter. It comes with the territory.”
“Well, and I’m a chef.” Kojo nudged their feet together. “Which is to say that time’s up because there’s a sauce I need to check on.”
“Thanks for talking to me.”
“Anytime, mate.”
Eric sent him a smile before he turned to leave the room. There was no need to point out that it went both ways—of course it did.
‘Hey.’
Eric stared at the word. Too flippant? It had been more than a year since he’d been in touch with Lucas. In fact, their last message was from the day Lucas had walked out on Eric because he’d had a better offer. Well, Eric needed to start his message with something, so…
‘Hey. I wouldn’t usually do this, but I think you and Max owe me one.’
Aggressive, maybe, but not untrue. Eric left it as it was and considered how to phrase the next part.‘Can he find some way to casually mention a particular hotel, give it a little publicity nudge?’
He wasn’t usually the type to call in favours. But Lucas and Max did owe him one, didn’t they? And desperate times meant desperate measures.
Eric sent it.
He tucked the phone into his pocket and went to help with the dinner setup. When his phone buzzed some five minutes later, heresisted the temptation to check it immediately. Instead, he focused on Adrian.
Usually, it was Adrian who grabbed Eric by the waist and pressed him against whatever solid surface was closest; now Eric took the lead, drawing Adrian in for sweet, easy kisses in between folding napkins and laying out cutlery. By the time they split up, Adrian seemed in slightly better spirits.
If Eric had held any doubt about whether he was in love with Adrian? Yeah, he’d lose it at how fuckinggoodit felt to make him smile, even if it only lasted for a second.
Back upstairs, Eric finally pulled out his phone to check. Lucas’s response was a simple,‘Which hotel?’
It wasn’t a no.
‘The Gletscherhaus,’Eric replied.‘Near Seeheim in Switzerland.’
This time, Lucas’s response took only seconds.‘Why?’
Because maybe I wasn’t in love with you after all.
Eric didn’t write that. He stared at his phone for a moment before he settled on,‘It’s personal.’
Several minutes slid by without a reply. Eric got up from the sofa and walked over to the window, daylight almost gone, only the faintest glow of brightness still edging the mountaintops. The view had become achingly familiar, perhaps more so than the one from his flat in London.
He startled when his phone buzzed against his thigh. A deep breath before he checked the screen.
‘And would the youngish guy who’s pictured in the website’s about us section have anything to do with it?’The question came with a winking emoji, and shit, Eric had never even thought to check the website beyond what Kojo had initially shown him. He pulled the page up on his phone and found the picture in question—Adrian framed by his parents, all of them smiling with the hotel in the background, the family resemblance obvious.
If Eric had seen this picture before arriving here… Well, Adrian’s identity would have been less of a shock. No—as a matter of fact, Eric would have cancelled the trip.
God, he wouldn’t have met Adrian.
Eric let the thought go.‘He’s the owner,’he wrote back.
‘I take that as a yes.’A smiley followed Lucas’s message.
