turned away, his defenses rising in response to that don’t-fuck-with-me look Colby was so good at giving. “Like you’re going to give me five hundred bucks for nothing.”
“The house alarm is on,” Colby said, sounding tired. “So I’ll know if you try to leave. I don’t make a habit of holding people captive without their consent. But tonight, you gave me that right when you took my offer. I bought your time. Now it’s mine until morning. So take a shower, put your dirty clothes out here, and go to bed. You do that, and you’ll get the money you were promised. I don’t break my word.”
The way he’d said mine until morning had Keats’s traitorous brain spiraling down a forbidden path. He pushed the ridiculous reaction down and replaced it with a safer one—sarcasm. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? You keep people captive often?”
The corner of his mouth tipped up, revealing a dimple hiding beneath the scruff. “Never mind. Good night, Keats.”
Keats watched him stroll back down the hallway and grimaced. So much for his brilliant escape plan.
Colby leaned against his kitchen counter, sipping coffee and watching bacon fry. This was normally the time he’d be getting in to school to start his workday. But he’d apparently entered some other dimension. Not only did he have no job to go to this morning, but now he had a smart-mouthed houseguest sleeping the morning away in the other room.
Fucking Keats.
Colby had been so goddamned relieved to find out Keats was alive. But seeing this hardened version of him was difficult to stomach. The kid he’d known had been a gentle soul—smart and a little shy, talented as hell. The songs he’d written in high school had shown a depth and ability that Colby hadn’t seen in anyone that young since. But all of it had gone to shit because of stupid mistakes. Mistakes by Colby with how he’d handled things, how he hadn’t seen the warning signs that Keats was reading more into their time together than he should. Mistakes by Keats’s jackass father, who’d made it his mission to make his son feel worthless. And mistakes by Keats, who had run away instead of trusting the people who were trying to help.
Now where that gentle soul had been was a world-weary, angry guy who seemed to barely be getting by but was too mistrustful to accept any help from anyone. The whole thing made Colby want to punch something.
He flipped the bacon and heard movement behind him. Keats shuffled in, wearing only the shorts Colby had lent him. The sight jarred him for a second. He kept expecting to see the boy but kept finding a grown man there instead. The tattoos he’d noticed on Keats’s forearms last night went all the way up—full sleeves of colorful ink, framing a lean but defined torso. Colby cleared his throat and looked away. “Mornin’.”
Keats’s bare feet smacked over the ceramic tile and he pulled out a chair at the bar. “You’re going to burn that bacon. Heat’s too high.”
Colby glanced back at Keats and lowered the flame on the burner. “Bacon expert?”
He shrugged. “I worked the griddle at a breakfast joint for a while. You ruin enough bacon, you learn the tricks. Low and slow.”
Colby grunted and turned back to the pan. “I usually microwave it, but I’m out of paper towels.”
“Microwave?” Keats’s chair scraped the floor, and he walked over to Colby, putting his hand out for the tongs. “I got it. You have any eggs?”
Colby was surprised to have his formerly hostile houseguest offering to take over breakfast, but he wasn’t going to complain. Cooking wasn’t exactly his strong suit. He handed over the tongs, grabbed a carton of eggs and some butter from the fridge, and dug a skillet out. Keats got the other pan going in no time, cracking the eggs one-handed.
Colby slid into the spot behind the bar to sip his coffee. Watching Keats from behind, his face obscured, made it easy to forget who was standing there. The tattoos alone were something to behold. They weren’t rush jobs; they were art. Expensive shit by the looks of it. From this distance, he couldn’t tell what all of it was, but he could see trailing music notes and scrawled words—probably lyrics if he knew Keats. Colby’s gaze traced over the words and lingered on the way Keats’s shoulder muscles moved as he shifted his attention between the pans—efficient, almost elegant. Colby forced his attention to his cup of coffee.
Having a half-naked guy in his kitchen wasn’t a new occurrence. Even though Colby tended to gravitate toward women more often than not, he’d figured out pretty early on in his life that he didn’t fit into a narrow lane when it came to sexual preference. It took him a little longer to figure out that besides attraction he only had two true requirements when it came to his bed partners—submissive and tough enough to handle what he liked to dish out. What was below the waist mattered a lot less to him than what was in someone’s wiring above the neck. That was what got his blood pumping.
But none of that mattered right now. Beyond the fact that Keats had declared he wasn’t into guys last night, this was Keats. A twenty-something-year-old guy he’d pulled off the streets. A former student. Off-limits.
Keats dished up a plate of eggs and bacon for them both and then stood at the counter to eat instead of taking the chair next to Colby.
“Thanks,” Colby said, stabbing a piece of scrambled egg with his fork. “This looks great.”
Keats poured himself a cup of coffee and dumped in sugar and a little cream. “No problem. I figured someone who microwaves bacon can’t be trusted.”
Colby smirked. “Are you still working as a cook?”
His gaze shifted down to his plate. “Nah, I quit the diner a while back when I got a gig at a tattoo shop. That was a good job—decent pay and the owner did my ink on the house. But then he got sick and they had to shut down, so lately I’ve been doing construction.”
They ate in silence for a few moments and Colby was trying to figure out how best to approach that looming elephant in the room when Keats pointed his fork at the window behind Colby. “So what’s with your neighbor?”
Colby glanced over his shoulder to see Georgia in her yard, picking through the remnants of the toilet paper he hadn’t gotten to yesterday morning. “What do you mean?”
He swallowed his bite of eggs. “Nothing, just saw you hightail it over there last night, figured I’d interrupted plans or something.”
“I was supposed to help her finish cleaning up, and I was going to bring burgers over but … got sidetracked last night.”
“By me?”
“Eventually by you. But by whiskey first. Had a shitty day at work.”
“How come?”
Colby pushed at his breakfast. “A student attempted suicide over the weekend.”
Keats flinched. “Sorry. He okay?”
Colby blew out a breath, not sure why he was sharing any of this with Keats but unable to stop. “Yeah, thank God. But I’ve been put on leave since I was the last one to counsel him. His parents want an investigation.”
“Counsel?”
Colby took another long sip of coffee. “Yeah, I’m a school counselor now. I went back for my master’s after … after I left Hickory Point.”
Keats’s head lowered and he picked at the food on his plate. They stayed quiet for a few more minutes until Keats shifted on his feet and cleared his throat. “You lost your teaching job because of me.”
Colby leaned back in his chair, the past pressing down on him with that, smothering him in the bright, airy kitchen. “No, I resigned. I knew the rumors wouldn’t stop. And really, I didn’t want to be there anymore anyway.”
Colby wouldn’t tell Keats that he’d been physically sick