“I’ve never pretended to be gay before,” I remind him. “I doubt the public will believe it.”
“You’ll do fine. You always do well.”
“Complimenting me doesn’t help,” I say.
Deacon smirks.
“Dating Archer Bremen…” I say more to myself than to him.
“I’m sure you’ll be the best boyfriend the man has ever had.”
“He’s recently been forced to come out. I doubt he’s ever had a true boyfriend before.”
“Sounds like your job is easy already. Keep me updated.”
It’s been a very long time since I’ve been truly challenged in my job. I live for this shit. I realize I’m actually smiling when I stand from the chair and make my way to the door.
“One last thing,” Deacon says. “Archer Bremen is kind of a spoiled hothead. From Wren’s research, he seems to feed off attention and tends to act out when things aren’t going his way. I imagine you can get that under control pretty quickly.”
“It’s never been a problem before,” I remind him.
Famous last words.
Chapter 2
Archer
“You stupid piece of shit,” I hiss when the light on the machine keeps blinking instead of working the way it’s supposed to.
I smack the side of the machine, wondering if brute force is enough to get it to act right.
Fun fact—it’s not.
Pulling out my phone, I search for help, but Google isn’t playing nice right now either.
“I don’t need a goddamned unboxing and product review. How do you make it work?”
I’m nearing the point of throwing my phone across the room, but doing so would force me out of the house to get a new one and avoiding people has become my favorite thing in recent days.
A whimper comes from beside me. I look down with a genuine smile on my face.
“It’s okay,” I say, bending down to run my hand over the top of Princess’s head.
It’s actually not okay, but my dog doesn’t need to worry about my lack of caffeine.
Maybe throwing the overpriced espresso machine is a better outlet for my anger, but upsetting the dog keeps me from unplugging the stupid thing and turning it into trash.
“I miss Zoe,” I mutter, earning another whine from Princess.
Apparently, she misses her, too.
Zoe O’Brien was a godsend. She managed the house, the cooking, and was an expert at making me a decent cup of fucking coffee, but just like everyone else in my life, she abandoned me, too.
I can admit to being a surly bastard the last couple of days, but I never thought everyone I could depend on in my life would just run for the hills at the first sign of trouble.
I blame the asshole who leaked the photos of intimate moments between Fletcher and me. For weeks, I was caught up in that man, trying my best not to think of the only way things with him could end. As one of my oldest friends and Lucid Unrest’s drummer, I thought I was safe, that my secret would never come to light. Although it killed me a little inside to hide the truth about myself, I knew it was eating away at him more.
He’d tried more than once to convince me that people wouldn’t care if our relationship came to light, but being bisexual wasn’t the problem. Admitting half-truths was the issue. Fletcher was all in, saying things about our future that I just didn’t feel.
I couldn’t tell the world I was more into guys than I was girls because of the caveat that the two of us were together, implying it was more than it was. See, Fletcher was in love with me, but I didn’t feel the same way about him.
It makes me a total asshole, just one thing on a very long list of shitty character flaws because I was with Fletcher in that way because he was safe. He’s hot as hell and has a mouth on him that was made for cock.
I was more afraid of being forced to stay with him than anything else. People may have had a problem with how I like to spend my private time, but they’d be less likely to have an issue with two men in love.
Love was never part of the equation for me where he was concerned. Fletch, on the other hand, had this image of the two of us all mapped out.
“I love you,” he said. “Why would you do this to us?”
The pain in his eyes that day nearly gutted me. It made me want to be who he needed, but I just couldn’t do it. The thought of loving someone makes my skin crawl. It speaks of a vulnerability I’ll never be able to handle.
I should’ve known better than to get tangled up with him, despite how easily we’d fallen into bed together, but sex doesn’t equal love. It’s a release, a way to pass the time, a mood booster when I wake up feeling like I can’t face another day of the grind required to stay on top of the rock charts.