Lance looked between me and Remington. “Right. None of my business.”
Remington looked ready to pull a gun on his brother. The tension was getting to all of us. “I’m sorry I disturbed whatever you were doing down here.”
“It’s not your fault,” Remington said. “Why don’t you go back upstairs and see if you can get some more sleep? I’ll join you in a little while.”
“Sure. Yeah, I’ll do that.”
“Bye, Henri,” Lancelot said in a seductive voice.
“Bye. Um… Nice to meet you.” I scurried back upstairs, even though part of me wanted to stay. I wanted to know about the tension between the brothers. I could certainly see why Lance would piss Remington off, but I had to admit he seemed like a lot of fun.
19
Remington
I waited until Henri had closed the bedroom door before turning to scowl at my brother. “Don’t ever pull a gun on a guest in my house again.”
“How was I supposed to know he was a guest?”
“Do you really think a red-haired twink dressed in pajamas broke into my house to do me harm?”
Lance frowned and seemed to consider this. “I guess it’s unlikely, but you told me I should always be prepared for the unlikely.”
I had told him that, and he knew I was jumpy with everything going on. He was trying to keep us safe, but if he’d harmed Henri… “I told you to wait when you went running out of the kitchen.”
“If there’s someone breaking into your house, I’m not going to stand around and wait. How would that help us?”
“It would help because we would have the advantage of thinking clearly and not shooting someone we shouldn’t.”
“Nobody should be wandering around your house.”
“You mean like the way you were wandering around outside looking in through the windows?”
“I’m your brother, and speaking of, if you’ve got a thing going with this boy, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wasn’t aware you expected me to inform you about every man I sleep with.”
“This is something different than a usual hookup for you. You never bring men back here. This is like your sanctum.”
“Yes, and you’re in it when I wish you were gone.”
He ignored me as I’d known he would. “What’s up with this guy? Where did you meet him?”
I wasn’t about to tell him that. I didn’t need the lecture, which I was sure I would get. Impetuously picking up a man the way I’d met Henri was more Lance’s style than mine. “I met him when I was out the other night, and he is… very talented. I decided to keep him for a while.”
“So this is the same guy who was here the other night?”
“Yes.”
“How do you—”
“I had Blackjack do a background check, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore. If it weren’t for Tony, you wouldn’t know he was here now.”
“But I do, and if you like him enough to want to keep him a secret, then—”
“It’s not like that. This is a temporary thing.”
Lance shook his head. “I just don’t get it. You like him. He’s cute. He seems nice, and he likes Tony.”
“He did not say that he liked Tony.”
“I could tell he did, and Tony likes him too.”
I ran a hand over my hair. “Why are you like this?”
“The blessing of fortune?”
I sighed. “Is there anything else you need to tell me?”
“If there’s a chance Henri could be the one, don’t fuck this up. Don’t do what Pop did.”
“If Pop hadn’t done what he did, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Or maybe we would, and Marjorie would be our mom. Who knows? That’s irrelevant. Don’t fuck up something that could be special.”
“It’s not like that.”
Lance studied me, and I felt like he could see far too much. “Are you sure? Because something is telling me it is.”
20
Henri
I lay in bed, unable to sleep. I was tempted to creep back downstairs to find out what Lance and Remington were saying. Would Remington tell Lance how he’d met me? I’d chosen to work the streets, but that didn’t mean I wanted that broadcast to Remington’s family. Still, if he wanted to tell his brother about our business arrangement, there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I was doing what I needed to do to secure a better future for myself. It wasn’t even that I was ashamed about what I did for a living; it was more that I wished this time with Remy was more than that.
I walked over to the window and looked out, contemplating whether or not I could climb down and escape. There was a drainpipe near the window, but I wasn’t some agile cat burglar from a movie. I was reasonably sure I’d fall, and even if I managed to climb down, I would certainly make far too much noise. As alert as Remington was, he and Lance would no doubt investigate even the smallest odd sound.