He looks like he’s about to shit a brick when I pull into the parking lot near the therapist’s office.
“Want me to come in with you?” I ask.
“No. Just getting me here and knowing you’ll be waiting when I’m done is enough.”
I hold up my full coffee from Starbucks we picked up on the way here. “I’m all set.”
I watch as Saint disappears into the building and just hope the session goes well. For the first time since I joined Mike Bravo, when Trav called this morning with a job for me, I asked him to get someone else to cover it. It only took him a second to realize why.
“Tell Saint we’re all here for him.” He’d ended the call before I could respond.
Now I have an hour to kill, and it takes all of three minutes for me to get bored.
I sip my coffee and take out my phone, tempted to watch some porn, but there’s no doubt CCTV is all over this lot. Instead, I pull up good ol’ Facebook and search for Brock Harlow’s profile.
We’re not friends. How offensive.
His privacy settings are pretty tight, but he has some photos up and must not have privacy on ones that he’s tagged in because there are more pics posted by other people than himself.
The first couple are some pretty dorky selfies, mostly of him in full gear. There’s one where he’s in a Humvee wearing a helmet and sunglasses. He has this wide smile on his face, and it’s so different from the smiles I’ve seen since he came back into my life.
He looks untouchable in this photo. Now, there’s a new trepidation to him.
I keep scrolling, pausing on one with him and another dude. They’ve got their arms around each other’s shoulders, and Saint is leaning in to kiss the guy’s cheek, but the guy’s hand is pushing against Saint’s lips.
When I see the tag, I realize the person is Tanner Parsons. Saint’s missing teammate.
I must stare at the photo for at least five minutes, trying to work out the body language between the two. It seems playful, but … how playful, I can’t tell. Parsons could be pushing Saint away legitimately, but the way Parsons is smiling, I’d say they were messing around. I assume GenNex had strict rules about fraternizing, much stricter than Trav’s. Still, the photo doesn’t sit right with me.
I know Saint has a past, and maybe if it was anyone else other than this missing person, I wouldn’t even blink, but I can’t help making the connection between Saint’s problems and him losing this particular guy.
Surely, he would’ve said something. Maybe?
I force myself to scroll away from the photo, and that’s how I end up diving so deep into Saint’s life that I don’t know which is the real him. And I mean real deep. Like, scrolling back a few years deep.
I like the man he is now—the one who is still confident but not cocky. He’s more humble than the man in these photos, but also, maybe these pictures only capture the man he was projecting himself to be.
There’s one his sister or maybe his sister-in-law has posted of Saint in his army fatigues with his two brothers and father dressed the same. All lined up like the picture-perfect family of soldiers. Then there’s a photo with Saint and his nieces. He seems so happy in all the family pics.
It hurts that he doesn’t have them anymore for selfish reasons on their behalf. I don’t have family either, but none of mine were taken by choice. His family have turned their backs on him purely because he’s gay, and I can’t get over that after everything the LGBTQ community has fought for, there are still assholes out there who think they have the right to hurt us.
Okay, I need to stop looking at his profile. If it’s not making me suspicious with jealousy, it’s making my chest ache for him.
I scroll back up to get one more look at that photo of him with Parsons when—
The car door opens and Saint throws himself in the passenger seat. “Hey.”
I jump so high, I fumble the phone, and it falls between my legs to the footwell of the car, but before I can reach for it, Saint takes his out of his pocket, and a line creases his brow.
Then his smug face turns in my direction, his blue eyes shining in amusement. “Have you been Facebook stalking me?”
“No?” My voice breaks. “What makes you say that?”
He turns his screen toward me. “Oh, nothing. Just that you liked one of my photos from eighteen months ago.”
“It wasn’t me. It was my stupid phone.” I pick it up off the floor, and yep. There it is, open to that photo with a big blue thumb on it.