Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 40484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 202(@200wpm)___ 162(@250wpm)___ 135(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 202(@200wpm)___ 162(@250wpm)___ 135(@300wpm)
El glanced up the sturdy chest clad in a band T-shirt, all the way up the strong neck, the jaw covered in dark scruff, and eyes that met his so incisively he ended up looking away. El needed to get away from here all right, but what had Trig been up to in his attic? They hadn’t as much as spoken to each other since the painful night of their breakup.
“Thank you. I appreciate it,” Trig said into the earpiece before ending the call and turning the key, which El had left in the ignition. “There’s a friendly surgeon in a hospital close by,” he said, adjusting the seat and mirrors to his own, larger form.
El stayed quiet, torn between relief, joy, and rage. Five years was a damn long time, but in his heart he’d always hoped to see Trig again. Every time he heard the buzz of a chopper, he’d stop and glance over the shoulder, still clinging to the silly hope that it was the man who’d cast him aside in order to join a biker gang. And if his life with the Coffin Nails proved to be a disappointment, maybe he’d want to reconnect and—
El bit the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted blood.
What the fuck was wrong with him? Trig had chosen his path and hadn’t cared that it had ripped their relationship apart, so why would he hope for a reunion after so much time had passed?
“Friendly to who? And how much will that cost me? I’m not getting indebted to your club!”
Trig exhaled and drove past the truck, back on the single-track road between the fields. The headlights of El’s car licked up the potato plants growing close to the asphalt and turned the potholes into gaping voids that might swallow them up along with the vehicle.
“I’m not gonna let that happen.”
El’s arm ached more with each passing second, and the carnage they were leaving behind would inevitably backfire on him, but Trig’s calm demeanor felt reassuring, like a lighthouse promising safety to a ship lost at sea. El needed his help now, to get away from immediate danger, but he’d been through enough shit to know he couldn’t let himself be lulled into a false sense of security.
He could trust no one but himself.
“Okay, so for the last time, while I appreciate you not letting me die, what were you doing in my attic tonight?” he barked, distracted by the golden rings in Trig’s earlobes.
Trig swallowed and pushed back his hair. “Well. I was around and thought I’d see how you were doing.”
El stared at Trig’s infuriatingly handsome profile. “So you crept into my house? What the fuck, Trig?”
“It was for the better, wasn’t it?” Trig asked, speeding up despite the car creaking like a ship in the middle of a storm. “They would have hurt you. I can’t believe you got yourself into that kind of situation!”
El sunk into his seat, too weak to fight back. “Would have happened sooner or later. You know me—always the fuck-up.”
He saw Trig’s jaw twitch in the faint glow of the headlights. “You should have just stayed with me then. I can’t protect you from afar.”
El curled his forearm closer to his body. It now pulsed with constant pain, as if invisible hands were tearing at it with needles. “I can handle things myself! And that means if I die, I die.” Not that he wanted to. Trig had come to his aid like some dark angel. El would have made a joke about Hell’s Angels if he hadn’t been so tired and angry.
“I’m done with this,” Trig said, as if he’d been holding that sentence back for a while. “You’ll get patched up, and then you’ll come with me. I won’t watch you destroy your life out of stubbornness!”
Dusty cogs moved in El’s head, and the enormity of his discovery made his stomach clench. “This isn’t the first time. You’ve been… staying in my house, and I thought it was haunted. You’re sick! How long has this been going on? I had… people over, Trig!” His face went aflame at the thought that Trig might have seen him accept money after sex with a few of those strangers.
He wasn’t a rent boy, but sometimes… opportunity arose, and when cash was particularly tight, he’d take it. Who wouldn’t?
“What else was I supposed to do? You told me you never wanted to see me again.” Trig’s voice rose as he squeezed the wheel so hard the veins on his hands became more prominent.
Follow me, El thought to himself bitterly.
In some twisted way, it seemed as though Trig had done exactly what El wanted.
“Let’s just get this doctor over with. It hurts like a motherfucker,” he mumbled and looked away, because the sight of Trig was making his heart bend out of shape.