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She was silent as she mulled over my words. We didn’t often talk about her sexuality, but it wasn’t something we ignored either. I hid my personal life from my workmates every day, so it wasn’t like I didn’t understand where she was coming from. Difference was, I’d never had to confess my sexual preferences to my family. My dad died long before I reached that stage in my life, and my mom just
knew
—I never had to tell her a thing. My sister didn’t give a shit, so the only people I’d ever really had to tell were Mick and Ash. If Ellie ever came out, she’d have to turn her whole world upside down—a daunting prospect given her sister’s choice in boyfriends.

Ellie laced her fingers with mine, her eyes thoughtful. “Sometimes I think I’m being silly for keeping it from them, but then something like this happens and I know I have to.”

I squeezed my arm around her. She was a tiny little thing. I felt like I could crush her with just a flick of my wrist. “I know, babe, I know.”

“I’m glad you hit him,” she muttered darkly. “Did you get him good?”

Despite myself, I laughed quietly. “Is there any other way?”

Ellie smirked, but then she peered over me at Ash and her smile faded slightly. “I don’t really remember yesterday,” she said sheepishly. “I had a little too much tequila. Is he okay?”

I gave her the same vague shrug I’d fobbed her off with the night before. I knew she wanted to talk, but I really didn’t, especially not with Ash asleep beside me. The look in his eyes the night before was all I could think about, and it was the last thing I wanted to talk about. “You look tired, little one,” I said instead. “Do you want to hang here for a bit?”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?”

I cast my eyes over Ash again. He was breathing deeply, his body slack with sleep. “I don’t think he’s going to be up anytime soon.”

Ellie smiled and snuggled closer to me. “I still can’t get used to that. He was always so jumpy when he stayed with me. You must be like a sleeping pill to him.”

I rolled my eyes, moving to make more room for her as she climbed over me and deftly maneuvered her small frame between Ash and me. She lay on her side with her back to him and pulled his arms around her. I watched her with a pang of envy she’d probably never understand, because even though he didn’t sleep so well with her, he’d never lie with his back to me like that with me. He’d made it clear from the beginning that spooning, either version, was just never going to happen. We never spoke about it, and he never explained—we just didn’t do it, ever. It went hand in hand with a bunch of strange quirks he had, and it was just something I’d learned to live with. I tried to ignore the sting of seeing him content to do it with someone else. There was no comparison between me and Ellie, and deep down, I was glad he found comfort in her.

Most days, that was enough.

I sat up, wincing slightly, and pulled the comforter over my two bed companions. Ellie was uncharacteristically silent as I shifted around, and it took me a moment to realize she was staring at my bruises. She opened her mouth to speak, but I quickly shushed her, tapping my finger to her lips.

“But, Pete,” she protested. “You’re black and blue.”

“Not now,” I said softly. “Close your eyes, babe.”

She glared at me, but it didn’t take long for her heavy night to catch up with her and soon she was fast asleep. I watched them for a while before I slipped from the bed unnoticed. Three in the bed was cozy, but I wasn’t going to be sleeping anytime soon, and I couldn’t remember the last time I ate.

E
LLIE
went home around ten. She’d been summoned to her parents’ house since it seemed while the rest of the world had been sleeping, Megan had been doing what she did best—manipulating a situation to be all about her. It meant Ellie had a
lot
of explaining to do.

I felt bad that Ellie had to deal with the repercussions from the party. She’d played no part in the whole bullshit drama, and yet I knew she’d take the brunt of the fallout. Charlie and Megan had a strained relationship—they pretty much ignored each other—but Ellie genuinely loved Megan, despite how much she hurt the people around her. I didn’t get it. My relationship with my own sister was indifferent at best, and at times, it had been much worse. She went to college in Canada when I was fourteen, and after my dad died, she quit coming home. The bad feelings had faded over time, but I still couldn’t grasp Ellie’s perseverance with someone who clearly didn’t give a fuck about her. Why waste your time?

Despite all that, though, I didn’t feel bad about thumping Sean. In a weekend filled with things I’d rather forget, punching him out was the only thing that made sense. The prick had deserved it, and I couldn’t bring myself to regret it.

After Ellie left, I moped around the apartment for the rest of the morning, living up to her teasing accusation that I was becoming too broody. According to her, it was no wonder Ash was in a funk, because I was too. She said it as if his state of mind revolved around mine, but I didn’t quite agree with that. He was perfectly capable of having his own bad moods. But it did make me think that perhaps I wasn’t helping either. I’d worked a lot of doubles in the past month, and that always turned me into an asshole. Maybe it was a mutual funk.

The morning wore on, and eventually I got fed up with myself and ventured out to the corridor to nab the newspaper from the apartment next door. The place had been vacant a month, but no one had told the paperboy. I glanced out through the window on my way back. It was snowing, which helped make up my mind that my newspaper-stealing expedition was about the limit of my excitement threshold. Despite not drinking much the night before, I felt like crap. A day lounging around on the couch was definitely in order.

I was nursing a coffee in the big chair by the window when Ash finally emerged. He sighed when he saw me. “Do we ever sleep at the same time?”

“Not when you sleep all day.”

His eyes flickered to the clock. “It’s only eleven.”

It was half past, but I let it slide. “You okay?”

He turned away and headed toward the kitchen. “How’re the bruises?”

“Bruised,” I said shortly. “According to Ellie, anyway. I think I gave her a shock this morning.”

Ash came back into the room with a glass in his hand. “Ellie?”

I eyed him as he swirled his orange juice around. “Yeah. She came over and slept for a bit. Didn’t you notice it wasn’t me you were cuddling?”

He chuckled. “Nope. Didn’t feel a thing.”

I looked him over as he leaned against the doorframe. He was grinning at me over the top of his glass, barefoot, dressed in my ratty old sweats like he didn’t have a care in the world, but I wasn’t fooled—not for one minute. The nonchalance was complete bullshit and it pissed me off. Was he really going to ignore everything that had happened the night before?

For a moment I wanted to shake him, but my frustration ebbed away as he came and perched on the arm of my chair. With him so close, I was suddenly too tired to think; I just wanted to touch him.

I leaned against him. He put his arm around me and peered at the newspaper in my lap. Seeing nothing of interest, he turned his gaze to the TV. I tossed the paper to one side and noted the pure luck of his timing. If he’d gotten up just a few minutes earlier, he would have caught the news and seen the face of the man responsible for the darkening bruises on my back. Given his reaction the day before, that would
not
have been good.

I rubbed a hand over my face in an attempt to quiet my neurotic brain. “What are you doing today?”

Ash shrugged and took a sip of his juice. “Whatever you’re doing, if that’s okay with you.”

Some company on the sofa sounded good to me—
really
good. It was my favorite way to spend any dark winter day we both had free. I grinned. “Sure, if you can keep up. Any minute now, I’m going to move to the couch.”

“Any minute, huh? Don’t strain yourself, old man.”

“Fuck off.” I pushed him off the chair to back up my retort. There were only three years between us, and while sometimes it seemed a lifetime ago that I’d been twenty-two like him, that didn’t make me old.

He backed away from me with his hands held up. “Whatever you say. You sure seem like a grumpy old man.”

And with that, he ambled off to the bedroom. When he came back, he was dressed and holding his boots. I frowned, because I’d kind of been counting on him staying with me. “Where are you going?”

“To the store.” He shrugged into my coat. “We need food if you want to veg all day.”

Oh. Well, that I could live with. “Can you get Cheetos?”

He checked his wallet for cash and rolled his eyes. “Okay, I changed my mind; you’re actually a big fucking kid. Anything else you want? Twinkies, maybe?”

“Black Jacks?” I said hopefully. Candy wasn’t really my thing, but I liked those weird aniseed sweets we could buy at the bizarrely diverse grocery store at the end of our block. It was owned by a Bangladeshi family, and they stocked everything from shark meat to hard-core porn.

He shook his head, as I knew he would. “They’re disgusting.”

“It’s all disgusting,” I said dryly.

The conversation was irrelevant anyway. Ash hated shopping, even for junk food, so I knew he’d come home with the first thing he found. Probably the only reason he was going in the first place was because he wanted to go out in the snow. Fresh snowfall always got him strangely excited.

He left. I hauled my ass to the sofa and was half-asleep by the time he came home with pizza rolls, pretzels and Pop-Tarts, all the stuff closest to the door.

I called him out on it. He flipped me off, carefully sliding beneath me and replacing the cushions of the well-worn couch with his warm, firm body. He didn’t let me up for a while but that was fine by me. Lying around with him was one of my favorite things to do, and it had been far too long.

I
T
WAS
dark by the time I woke up. I sat up and groggily rubbed my face. The last thing I remembered was putting a movie on and Ash drawing pictures on my belly with his fingertips. He liked doing that; sometimes I thought he used my skin as a virtual sketchpad.

I raised my arms over my head and stretched carefully. It hurt like hell, but that was no surprise. Ash snickered from somewhere in the room. Lazily, I cast my eyes around, and I didn’t have to look far. He was next to the couch, settled on the floor with his night-school books and sketch pad. I looked over his shoulder at the notes he was carefully writing, but they meant nothing to me because I didn’t know shit about art.

Ash was different. Somewhere underneath all the crap he carried around with him, the dude had some big-ass brains. For as long as I’d known him, Ellie’s parents had offered to fund him at the city’s art school. They even went as far as to pull strings to get him a place, but he’d refused their offer and chose instead to attend adult programs and pay his own way. It took a long time for him to believe he was even good enough for that. It took him months to enroll, and then even longer to actually attend his first class, but now, a little way down the line, he seemed to like whatever he was studying. To me, that alone made him pretty fucking clever, but I’d learned long ago it was pointless trying to tell him so. Ash was Ash, and he had to figure these things out on his own.

I understood his need for independence. Figuring out what I wanted to do with my own life hadn’t been easy either. After a few tough years with just me and my mom, I’d needed a job as soon as I finished high school. I didn’t want to work construction or retail, so I enrolled in EMT training. It was only by chance that I turned out to be good at it. Three years later, I was a fully licensed paramedic with a degree to match. On-the-job training and a full class load nearly broke me, but I got through it. If I could do it, Ash surely could.

“Sleeping with your eyes open again, fucker?”

I tore my bleary eyes away from his work. “Sorry. What happened to
Blade Runner
?”

Ash put his pen down and rolled his shoulders. “It finished an hour ago. You’ve been asleep for ages.”

I watched, slightly mesmerized, as the muscles in his back coiled and popped. “You should’ve woken me up.”

He turned his head slightly, cocking a flirty eyebrow. “I thought about it, but I could only think of dirty ways to do it.”

I leaned forward and brushed my lips against his. “So what stopped you?”

There was a moment of silence while he returned the kiss. He pulled away with a soft smile. “You’re hot when you sleep. I like watching your face,” he said. “And I didn’t want to disturb you because you don’t get enough of it.”

“I sleep plenty,” I protested mildly.

He peered at my face and traced my eyes with his thumb. “So why the dark circles?”

I shrugged. “You said it yourself. I’m old.”

I tugged on his hand until he twisted his body around and I could reach him properly, but despite kissing me until I couldn’t breathe, he resisted my attempts to pull him on top of me. “Not here,” he said. “I want you comfortable. Come on.”

He helped me up, and we made our way down the hall to the bedroom. Along the way, his shirt landed on the floor and mine snagged on the bureau. The rest of our clothes littered the hardwood floor until we finally made it to the bed. Ash eased me onto my back and slid a pillow under my head, keeping our lips fused together until he pulled away to straddle my waist. I gazed up at his naked form, trying and failing not to stare at his dick. Ash was beautiful—all lean muscle and pale skin—and the best thing about it was he just didn’t know it.

Obviously, he caught me staring at his cock, though. He smirked and placed his hands at either side of my head. “Forget about my dick. I’ve got plans for yours.”

I swallowed and flicked my tongue over my suddenly dry lips. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said lowly, his eyes fixed on mine. “I don’t want to hurt your bruises, though, so you have to stay still, okay?”