The Pool Boy (Nashville Neighborhood 2)

It was because he hadn’t seen my breasts since my surgery.

His stunned gaze flicked away from mine and landed on Troy, and his voice was hollow and powerless. It was as if he were shell-shocked. “This is a surprise.”

And as suddenly as he’d appeared, Clark turned the corner and vanished from our sight. I scooped up my drenched bikini bottoms as Troy did the same, reaching for his shorts.

Hurried footsteps crunched over the pebbles in the rock garden as Clark fled.

“Fuck,” I spat out. “Wait.”

My hands were flustered and clumsy. Putting on a swimsuit in a hurry was hard, but a wet one was impossible. Why the hell hadn’t I brought a towel over? My cover-up was basically a useless accessory. Something cute I’d added to my cart when buying the swimsuit because it was on clearance.

Troy had it much easier than me and had finished doing up his fly when I reached for my top.

“Should I go after him?” He asked it in a hurried voice, but it couldn’t hide how desperately he did not want to do that. Troy actively disliked my ex-husband, and surely saw this as another unwanted intrusion into my life. If anything, he’d want Clark gone as fast as possible.

What would Troy even say to him anyway?

I hesitated long enough that the gate crashed closed, making what I wanted irrelevant. Best case scenario, Clark would be backing out of the driveway by the time I made it to the fence.

“No, let him go.” I struggled to put my top back in place as he shut off the shower.

“What was he doing here?”

I snatched the cover-up off the hook and jammed an arm into it. “Besides trespassing? No clue. I don’t know why he would think it was okay for him to come back here without permission. This isn’t his house, it’s mine.”

I marched out into the sun and to the end of the pool deck, peering down the slope of my lawn to spy the backend of Clark’s BMW as he sped off. Frustration tightened inside me. He hadn’t called or texted to ask if—

Shit.

I wouldn’t know if he had because I’d blocked his number.

Troy stood beside me, the air between us tense. He watched me cautiously, not sure how to react or what to say, and it only grew more intense as time dragged on.

Finally, he broke the silence. “You okay?”

He had his hands on his hips, and water droplets clung to his bare chest. It dripped from his trunks and sluiced down his legs. The concern in his eyes nearly broke my heart and compelled me forward into his damp arms. Was he worried I was ashamed? I wasn’t. We hadn’t done anything wrong. That was all on Clark.

“I’m fine, just pissed at him.” There were towels in the cabinet on the patio, so once I had some pulled out, I passed one to Troy. My heartrate was still up from the shock, and it disabled my filter. “Guess we’re even,” I said in a humorless joke. “We’ve both caught each other with a dick in our ass.”

The moment I stopped speaking, all the air whooshed from my body.

Troy had been toweling off, but paused mid-wipe. “Wait. What?”

“Nothing.” I couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “Forget I said that.”

A skeptical look crossed his face. “That’s . . . doubtful.” He straightened as he tried to figure it out, but he only looked more confused. “Okay, so Clark is—like—into pegging?”

Oh, God. I pressed my lips together.

I’d kept his sexuality private as Clark had asked me to. I hadn’t told a soul, outside of Derrick’s wife, even as his affair had shaken me to my core and left me questioning everything.

Yet my ex had no problem violating my space or privacy. Why was I protecting him again?

Troy had proven he knew how to keep a secret, and I was desperate to share it with him. “I haven’t told anyone because he asked me not to, but it’s not fair for him to ask me to lie.” I phrased it as a statement, when it was more of a question. “I can trust you.”

His eyes widened. “Yeah, of course.”

“When I caught him having sex,” I sucked in a breath, “it was with a man.”

There was no reaction from him. It was proof of what a great performer he could be. He schooled himself not to show any emotion. There wasn’t unease, or pity for me, or suspicion about why my husband had turned toward men.

“I . . .” His shoulders lifted and his eyebrows pulled together. Then, he simply said, “Wow.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

He was about to say something else when a song full of synthesizers began blaring from the lounge chair beside the pool where he’d dropped his stuff.

It cut through the heaviness, and my lips wanted to quirk in amusement. “Your ringtone’s ‘The Final Countdown?’”