Havoc (Tattoos and Ties 1)

“Yeah, I do. The clubhouse’s shit to sleep at. I could take over the payments,” Keyes offered.

Dev dug into his jeans pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He wiggled one off the ring. “Cool. Rent’s due by the third. When the lease runs out, we can decide what to do with my shit. It’s mostly junk, but I got some things in there I still want.” Dev tossed him the key. He caught it midair before leaning back in his chair, tipping the seat back on two legs to pull his keys from his pocket. “So maybe we could go out on a double date?”

That thought horrified Keyes so much that he jerked in Dev’s direction as if Alec was standing right there ready to go, then he had to hurriedly lean forward to keep the chair from tipping backward. Keyes busted out a laugh at his idiocy. Alec and Holly might actually get along, but there was no way even Dev would think the DA connection was a coincidence.

Dev had an instant look of hurt feelings. “You can trust me. I’d keep it on the down low.”

“Nah, that’s not it.” Except that totally was exactly it. “Mine’s not gonna last. We ain’t got nothing in common. He’s slummin’ it.”

“You never know,” Dev said, his expressive face turning doubtful.

“I fuckin’ know.”

Luckily, Holly came through the back door, holding two cans of beer in one arm and a glass of wine in her other hand. She left the door open.

“I wanna be able to hear the kids,” she said, moving close to Dev so he could take the cans from her arm. Dev extended one to him as he bent down to place a sweet kiss on her lips.

“Thank you.” He was back to feeling like he’d landed in the twilight zone. He wondered if anyone in either his or Alec’s life might think the same thing after watching the two of them together like that, because that was the way they were. Lots of touching and kissing, all those shared quiet looks.

When Dev tried to deepen the kiss, Holly moved away, patting his ass before turning back to Keyes. “I thought we’d eat out here this evening. We have about an hour before they’re out here, so enjoy the quiet. It won’t last.” Holly moved a chair closer to Keyes’s and took a seat. “Dev’s told me all about you, but I can’t imagine all those great things are real.”

“I called you a thug,” Dev stated quickly, lifting his fist for another bump. Keyes laughed and shook his head to refuse that tap. “Listen, you might as well talk. She’s persistent.”

“Damn,” he grumbled playfully.

“We’re thirty days out. You committed?” Blaine questioned in his normal I-won’t-believe-you-no-matter-how-you-answer tone.

“That’s in mid-April, right?” Alec asked, taking a deep breath before glancing down at the monitor on his treadmill. He was winded as hell and had only jogged four miles. He used to run that meager amount in his sleep. He’d been slacking off, doing the bare minimum amount of exercise. At least that was what the waistband of his slacks had alerted him to as of this morning.

“Yes! And you know that. You sound like you’re backing out,” Blaine accused, his tone making it clear he was ready to jump straight into Alec’s shit. He might as well tell the truth and let Blaine have his fun.

“Yeah, I probably am gonna back out,” Alec said, out of breath.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t have heard you correctly with all the pounding you’re doing… What are you doing?”

“I’m running. Not successfully, I might add.” All the talking made breathing that much harder. Alec spoke in heavy gasps with sweat dripping off him at an alarming rate. He reached out, pushed the stop button and slid off the back of the machine. He went far enough backward to land against the wall. He let the sheetrock hold up his tired body, then he bent over, anchoring his hands on his knees.

“Sounds like it. Your biker likes fat guys?” And that was classic Blaine.

“Ha. You’re such a dick,” he said, pushing himself forward to grab his phone, praying his spaghetti noodle legs would hold him up to walk down the stairs.

“You don’t talk about him. That still going on?”

Alec didn’t talk about Key, not with anyone. What they were building was too precious—at least to Alec, and he suspected to Key as well, but damn, the guy was hard to read. He kept his emotions so locked up. Well, except his expletives. Those were used freely all of the time. Alec found himself close to uttering the word fuck all too often. At some point, it was going to slip out at exactly the worst possible moment. That was totally his luck.

“We’re still seeing each other.”

“Like he’s voluntarily coming to you or are you being you and forcing things like you do?”