Pretend You're Mine (The Protectors 12.50)

I watched him limp through his sliding door. My fingers itched to grab him and do something… anything… to put that easy smile back on his face. But the sadness in his expression, in his every movement, seemed too overpowering to overcome.

And truth be told, I was really fucking confused as to why it bothered me so much. I wasn’t someone who typically got overly emotionally invested in people unless they were close friends.

Or, of course, my family.

But Sebastian was a stranger.

A kindhearted, sweet, gorgeous stranger, but he was still, in fact, a stranger.

Oh yeah, and a guy.

Why the hell did I keep forgetting that one particularly important fact?

And why the hell did it suddenly seem like the least important obstacle to overcome at the moment?

Chapter 2

Sebastian

Don’t even think about crapping out on me tonight, Sebastian, or I’ll—

I hit the delete button on my phone before any more of the message could play. There’d already been half a dozen more like it that I’d only partially listened to because they were just repeats of the conversation I’d had with Rick that morning.

The sad thing was that I’d listened to those other messages in the hopes that they’d somehow start off with different words.

Like, I’m sorry, Sebastian.

Or, I messed up, Sebastian.

Hell, I would have even been glad to hear him call me Seb, a nickname that I’d hated from the moment he’d started using it. As long as it would have been paired with some kind of statement about missing me or needing me or wanting me, I would have been dialing his number before the message even finished playing.

And wasn’t that just a sad commentary of what my life had become?

My phone buzzed in my hand, but I didn’t look at it because I knew who it was. Rick was the only one who ever texted me.

Anymore.

It hadn’t always been like that.

But sometime between the night Rick had searched me out backstage after a performance and introduced himself, and the party two years later when I’d met Rick’s long-time partner, Darren, I’d managed to alienate the few close friends who’d tried to warn me off the just-a-little-too-charming Rick. By the time I’d seen news of Rick’s wedding to the prominent, older, very successful and very wealthy attorney, there hadn’t been anyone left to throw my own words about Rick’s devotion to me back in my face.

And I’d no longer been the same naïve young man who’d fallen so foolishly down the rabbit hole of blind trust and unconditional love.

But telling Rick I was done and actually being done with him had been two very different things. Truth be told, during some of my weakest moments when I was dealing with the loss of my dream or the memory of the act that had stolen that dream away from me, I pretended Rick was still mine. I pretended that he was just a phone call away.

Sadly, there’d been a few times where he had only been a phone call away.

I wasn’t sure what the worst part of letting Rick come back into my life those times was… the fact that he’d turned me into the very thing I’d promised I’d never be, or that I’d let myself believe each time that things were different. But the formula was always the same. Rick would show up, fuck me into the mattress or couch or floor or wherever we ended up, and within seconds of pulling out of me he was patting my ass, telling me how hot I was and then saying he had to get home.

Home.

To his husband.

Rick’s wedding should have been enough to push me off the cliff I’d been balancing on the edge of for more than two years, but ironically, it’d been the clueless Darren who’d finally woken me up. I’d nearly choked on my own tongue when I’d run into the man at a department store. We’d both been shopping for a gift for Rick, though Darren hadn’t realized that fact. In some strange desire to prove to myself that everything Rick had told me about Darren was true, I’d made conversation with the older man. But there’d been nothing controlling or unkind or disingenuous about the man. In fact, I’d liked him.

A lot.

And that had made me feel like the lowest form of life on the planet… until the kindhearted man had told me what kind of gift he’d been looking for to give Rick.

There’d been no way to describe how low I’d felt after that.

As soon as I’d gotten home, without a gift for Rick, I’d started looking for a place to rent outside of the city. When Rick had shown up that very night for a booty call, I’d told him we were through and I’d meant every word.

That’d been six weeks ago.

Fortunately, I hadn’t succumbed to the inherent loneliness that had followed, and Rick’s booty calls had gone unanswered. I’d thought for sure that denying him the only thing he’d ever wanted me for would have been enough to send him back to his husband, but it had seemed to have the opposite effect. Rick was calling me more now than he ever had in the two years we’d been together, and even though I hadn’t given him my new address, he’d clearly had no trouble tracking it down. I was half tempted to tell Rick that if he didn’t stop calling, I’d tell his husband about us.