The Truth Within (Pelican Bay 3)

Whatever was bothering him wasn’t my problem.

He wasn’t my problem.

My mind repeated that statement over and over, but my body refused to budge. I watched as Ford practically assaulted the wall in front of him with angry swipes of his brush, then his fingers as he tried to fix something with the color. I didn’t know shit about art or what an artist went through during the creative process, but I did know that whatever had been eating Ford earlier tonight seemed to be alive and well within him.

As if on cue, Ford let out an anguished shout and slashed his brush in a long streak of dark green and black across the blank wall, then turned and flung the brush across the room. The little board in his left hand that he’d been using to mix several colors together was thrown in the same direction. Ford slammed his hand against the wall as he let out what I could only classify as an agonized cry and then he dropped to the floor and ran his paint-covered fingers through his dark hair.

I couldn’t remember ever seeing Ford lash out physically or verbally, so his aggressiveness startled me a bit. But it was just further proof that whatever shit he was keeping locked up inside of him was insistent on clawing its way out of him, whether he liked it or not.

I didn’t bother calling his name because I could hear the music blaring through the headphones that were still on his head. He had his face buried against his bent knees so he didn’t see me approach him. His sobs tore at my heart. I knelt down in front of him. I reached out to gently touch his knee but not surprisingly, he jumped as if I’d burned him.

He’d had absolutely no clue I was there.

I put my hands up as Ford scrambled to his feet and moved away from me, his back still against the wall. He knocked the headphones off his head, not caring that they fell to the floor in the process. The music that I could hear coming through the soft earcups suddenly stopped. But Ford didn’t seem to even care that his expensive-looking headphones were broken.

“What… what are you doing here?” he blurted. His breaths were coming in short, sharp drags.

I wondered briefly if he’d thought I was his brother because it was a whole lot easier to think that Jimmy would be the cause of such a fearful reaction, not me.

“We were worried about you,” I murmured.

God, this had been a really fucking bad idea. Why hadn’t I just left when I’d seen he was physically unharmed? Being this close to him in a place where there were no prying eyes was the purest form of torture. Even now, my dick was hardening at the sight of Ford’s muscular chest and bulging biceps.

I needed to get the hell out of here.

“You left dinner so suddenly that I thought… we thought…”

“What?” Ford asked. “You thought what?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

I turned to leave, but his next words stopped me.

“You wanted to make sure I was okay? Or they did?”

I knew who “they” was, of course. Maddox and Isaac and them. I didn’t know why he was asking the question, but I ordered my brain to say “they.” The word was right there on the tip of my tongue, but my lips refused to speak it.

“You or they, Cam?” Ford whispered. I sucked in a breath when I realized what it meant that I could hear that whisper. He’d moved closer to me. With his bare feet, it was impossible to know how close.

Until about three seconds later when I felt his front brush my back. He didn’t touch me otherwise. He just seemed to hold his body there so I could feel the heat of it against my own. My body was raging… demanding I turn around and take what was mine. He’d been mine from the moment I’d laid eyes on him and I wanted to tell him so. I wanted to make him admit that he knew it. The need to claim him was obliterating all the reasons I wasn’t supposed to put my hands on him ever again.

“Cam, I just need to know—”

I whipped around before he could finish the sentence. I tangled my fingers in his hair and used my other arm to wrap around his waist. “You already know,” I growled. “You already fucking know!” I swore I heard him let out a little sigh of relief, which just ratcheted up my frustration and desire even more. His eyes were huge blue pools of lust and I could feel his hard dick pressed against mine, despite the layers of material separating us.

Some sliver of sanity managed to keep me from covering his mouth with mine, so we just hung there for several seconds. I shook my head as uncertainty began to crawl up my spine. I couldn’t do this. It spelled disaster… for me.