Gone for You (Wild Side 1)

Best friend. New York City. The guy who’s letting me stay with him. Matt was leaving. He was really fucking leaving. And he hadn’t told Oliver until now. He had plans, a place to stay, bought a bus ticket—all without telling Oliver.

They were supposed to get an apartment together, party, enjoy their fucking lives, and Matt was leaving? “Why didn’t you say anything earlier? I could have planned to go with you. We both could have planned to go to school out there instead. Maybe after a semester or something, I can transfer.”

He pulled away to look at Matt. The porch light shone on Matt’s face.…On the soft curve of his jaw, the roundness of his lips, and the dimple beneath his mouth. Jesus, he was fucking beautiful.

His brows pulled together and he darted his eyes away. Oliver realized like a punch to the gut that Matt didn’t want him to go. He hadn’t told him because he wanted to leave Oliver behind.

“I just…I wanna do it on my own, ya know? I want to take this adventure on my own to see if I can do it—without you fixing things for me.”

Oliver nodded, but he didn’t know. He really fucking didn’t.

Eight Years Earlier

Oliver’s professor gave him the evil eye as he snuck out of class early.

He shrugged but kept going. He couldn’t help it. Traffic was a bitch, and he needed to get his ass on the road so he wasn’t late to pick up Matty at LAX.

Oliver looked forward to visits from Matt. Oliver, Chance, and Miles still got together often. It wasn’t always easy, but they did it. With Matty being in New York, they were only able to meet up with him once a year. That was a whole hell of a lot more important to him than studying the Revolutionary War.

He’d missed Matt while he was away. It didn’t matter that they talked all the time. It wasn’t the same, and as much as he loved spending time with Chance and Miles, that wasn’t the same either.

Like he knew it would be, LA traffic was hell on Earth. It took longer than expected to get to the airport, but even with his stop to grab Matt his favorite coffee, he still made it before Matt’s flight landed. He’d planned ahead to give himself plenty of time.

Oliver had the whole week scheduled out. Matt would stay with him; they’d go to all their favorite places. He’d made sure to clear his week to spend much needed time reconnecting with his closest friend. They’d get together with Miles and Chance too, of course, but he hoped to get a lot of one-on-one time in as well. Maybe then he would be able to talk to Matt about school. It had been two years, and he wasn’t doing anything with his music. Oliver got it—shit like that was hard, but he knew how much Matt wanted to compose. Matt deserved to have his dream.

He finally made it into the airport, cold coffee in hand. He should have waited until after picking Matt up.

Oliver leaned against the wall. A good half hour passed before he saw the dark head of hair he would know anywhere. “Matty! Hey!” Oliver made his way through the crowd and toward his friend. Matt looked up and smiled the smile that nearly knocked him on his ass every time. Yeah, he was so totally fucked where Matt was concerned.

“Hey! Oliver!” Matt made his way to Oliver and pulled him into a hug. He smelled like cologne that Oliver didn’t recognize. Still, he held tight, happy to have his friend back, even if it was only for a week. “It’s good to see you,” Matt told him.

Oliver closed his eyes, held tighter and said, “It’s good to see you, too, Matty.”

When they pulled away, Oliver looked over to see a blond guy watching them. Um…what the fuck? Oliver was about to ask the guy if he had a problem when Matt glanced over and smiled at him. “Oliver, this is my friend Jeff. Jeff, this is Oliver, the guy I told you about.”

Oliver’s gut twisted. This was a new development. He’d never heard of Jeff but apparently, Jeff had heard of him. He sure as shit didn’t expect Jeff to be here—what? For the week with them?

“Hey, man. Nice to meet you.” Jeff held out his hand and an immature part of him wanted to ignore the man. But that wasn’t his style, so he gritted his teeth and held out his hand when he would much rather have punched the guy in his smiling face.

“Nice to meet you too.”

“Thanks for letting me crash your visit at the last minute. I appreciate you being willing to let me stay with you.”

It took everything inside Oliver not to whip around toward Matt and ask him what the fuck this was about. “Yeah. Sure. No problem,” he said between tight lips.