NINE
Roman couldn’t get it out of his head—seeing Leo again after all this time. Touching him, kissing him, seeing the man on his knees for him… “No.” He shook his head. How had he managed to get to Roman so quickly? To make him want something he hadn’t wanted since he and Leo were sixteen?
He held some kind of power over him that Roman didn’t understand, and it pissed him off. He wasn’t that same poor, fucked-in-the-head kid he’d been when he met Leo. It shouldn’t be so easy for him to get swayed by being with the person who’d had everything he didn’t.
Roman had everything he wanted now. Had the life he wanted. He’d created it for himself.
Yet, the man was still on his mind. The differences in Leo now compared to the Leo he used to know. He wasn’t who Roman thought he would be. From the job, to where he lived, to not owning a car…the way he’d confidently dropped to his knees, taken Roman into his mouth. Kissed Roman when he had Roman’s come on his tongue.
“I’m always down for a quick fuck or a blowjob if you’re feeling especially gay. I’ve had a whole lot of experience since we were teens, and I make sure to practice my skills often.”
Was he a fucking whore?
Roman’s gut clenched, a foreign protective instinct he hadn’t felt in years igniting a wildfire inside him.
The men he’d seen Leo talking to that first night…the way he’d obviously flirted with them…what he said and offered and the fact that he’d been so willing to suck Roman off after all these years…
And Roman had let him. Faggot, queer, his father’s voice sounded in his head.
“Mr. Cipriani?”
“What?” Roman snapped at Polly, and her eyes went wide. Shit, he was losing his fucking mind. He never treated his employees badly. Never. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lash out at you. I have a lot on my mind.”
A strand of blonde hair fell out of her bun as she gave him an unsure smile. “I could tell. I said your name numerous times before you responded.”
She had? He hadn’t realized she’d come into his office. “This Marsden account has me ready to lose my mind,” he lied. He hadn’t opened the file since he walked away from Leo last week.
“That’s understandable. You’re late for your one o’clock meeting. Did you need me to reschedule it?”
“Fuck,” Roman cursed. “No, don’t cancel. I’ll go right now.”
“Are you sure? It’s not a problem. Maybe I could call Amy, and the two of you could have lunch together instead. I know it’s not my place to say this, but things have been a little off with you all week.”
Because I had my dick in a man’s mouth. Because in some strange way, I cared for him years ago, even though I know I shouldn’t have. Because I want to see him again, even if it’s only to make sense of it.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s okay,” Roman cut her off. No, it wasn’t her place, and he didn’t like the fact that he made it obvious he had something on his mind. He’d been good at hiding those things as a teenager, and he seemed to have lost the knack along the way. “I don’t need Amy. I’m fine. I’m going to my meeting.”
Roman stood and walked out of the room. His head wasn’t in it while he sat in his meeting either. Afterward, he called it a day and left early.
The anger never left him—anger at Leo for all those years ago, anger at himself for the things he did, and anger at both of them for what happened now as well. He shouldn’t have let Leo do what he did. He shouldn’t let it affect his life. He was finally the Roman he wanted to be, yet seeing Leo twice suddenly fucked that up.
Roman wasn’t surprised when he heard the front door to his apartment open. He knew who the footsteps coming down the hall belonged to. Amy stepped inside his room as he stood beside the window, looking out at the city below.
“What’s going on with you, Ro?”
“Please…please don’t call me that.” He’d only ever allowed Leo to use the nickname.
“What’s going on with you, Roman?”
“Did Polly call you? It’s inappropriate. I could fire her for that.”
“But you won’t.” Her voice got closer. “You won’t because you’re a good man and you know she’s worried about you, the same way I am. Now tell me what’s wrong before I go find the gentleman from the club and ask him.”
Roman whipped around at that. “Don’t threaten me.”
“It’s not a threat. Jesus, what’s going on with you?” Her shoulders rose and fell. “You oozed confidence when I met you. You were strong and brave and kind. Most people, they aren’t all three of those things, Roman. They lose the kindness for the others. Yes, I’ve always known you have things in your past that you don’t share, but I thought I knew who you were. Even when we broke up, I thought I knew who you were. I don’t feel confident in that anymore.”
He ground his teeth. “I’m the same man you’ve always known.”
She sighed. “Then I guess it was all a lie and I never knew who you were.” Amy’s slender lips pursed together, and her eyes looked sad. “Who is he?”
“No one.”
“Who is he?” she asked, louder.
“He is a lie!” Roman shouted. He couldn’t hold himself back anymore. Adrenaline rushed through him. His heart pounded against his chest. His head swam until he couldn’t make sense of anything, an ache coming from the scar on his eyebrow.
His hand shot out, and in one violent swipe he knocked everything from his dresser onto the floor. “He is a lie!” he yelled again. “I was young and stupid and lost. I needed comfort and love and normalcy so fucking badly, but I had nowhere to get it. Home was violence and anger and rage. I didn’t want to be that, not anymore.
“And then I met him and lied to myself that he could give me what I needed. I could pretend to be someone else when I was with him. I was blinded by who he was, and what he had, because he was every fucking thing I wanted to be.”
He couldn’t believe he was saying all this, but now that he’d started, he couldn’t stop. The words rapid-fired in his brain, needing to escape because saying them made him acknowledge them. “We created our own world that was so fucking far from reality, it’s not even funny, but I didn’t see it. I was blinded by what I thought I wanted, and then everything changed, and I felt like my whole world came crashing down. I swore I would never let myself feel that again, and I won’t now, Amy. Not for him, or you, or anyone else.”
That Roman died the second Anthony saw them in the park, only he hadn’t known it until they’d confronted him in the yard that day. He couldn’t let himself go back there. Not for Amy or Leo or himself.
Amy held a hand to her mouth…and it shook. “Oh, Roman…you were in love with him.”
Yes. “No.” He shook his head. He hadn’t been. Couldn’t have been. It had been a mistake. He wasn’t the boy who thought he loved Leo. Wasn’t the guy his father wanted him to be. Roman was the man he’d created himself.
But then he added, “I thought I was.” Because Leo had made him feel important for the first time in his life. Leo had made him want things he hadn’t dared want before. Leo had taught him to dream for more just by caring about him.
Roman looked over at her. “You said you don’t know anything about my life before college, and that’s because there’s close to nothing worth knowing. I had nothing. I came from nothing. I was raised by a hateful man to be a hateful man.”
His chest felt as though it was cracking open, pulling apart and showing all the ugly parts of him. The things he wanted to hide and pretend had never existed.
He walked over and sat on the edge of his bed.
“And then he changed that, didn’t he?” she asked. Damn Amy for loving him. Damn her for being his friend. Damn her for making him feel safe opening up to her.
Now, it was as if he could actually hear his chest being broken open, his ribs shattered, this big gaping hole inside him revealing: This is the real me. The one I buried. The one that died, and now he’s being resurrected. But he wasn’t sure if he wanted that. Things were a whole lot easier when he didn’t have to risk the organ thumping wildly in his chest right now.
“No one can change things for us, Amy. We are who we are. We create our destiny, not anyone else.” But then, a truth was there too, sitting on the tip of his tongue, and Roman couldn’t swallow it down. “There was a short time in my life when I thought he changed it.”
And then, he wasn’t sure what this compulsion was that came over him, but he had to tell her more. The truth shoved at the walls he’d built around himself, needing to escape. “What you and I had was real. As real as anything I’ve had, regardless of my past or what you knew about me.” It was true. He did love Amy, even though he wasn’t in love with her. He cared about her, and he could have been happy with her. As happy as he ever really was, he guessed.
“I know.” She gave him a sad smile and then walked over and knelt in front of him. “I also think there’s more going on in here”—she touched the side of his head—“and in here”—this time she touched his chest—“than you even realize. You’ve got an emotional block inside you. Hell, maybe a mental one. I’ve always known it; I just didn’t realize how vast it was. You care about me, I know that, but I also know you cared about him, maybe more than you see, because that wall inside you won’t let you see it.”
Amy stood up. “I’ve always seen you as such a strong, brave man. You’ve overcome a lot in your life. Don’t you owe it to yourself to try and get back some of what you lost? Even if it’s just a friendship, because whether you realize you loved him or not, I have no doubt his friendship impacted your life. Find your truth, Roman, no matter what it is. You deserve that.” And then she kissed his forehead and left him alone.
His truth.
Those two words were there, in the back of his mind, after Amy left. Roman didn’t know what his truth was, not really. In some ways, he did. He was good with numbers and in financing, but there was obviously some confusion that lived inside him too. His past with Leo still ensnared him somehow.
Amy was right in that he needed to figure it out. If he didn’t, how would he ever leave it in the past where it belonged? How would he ever move forward?
Just like that time so many years ago when he’d seen Leo again for the second time, Roman was drawn to him.
Just for answers, he told himself. He’d get answers and then go back to his life before Amy brought him to that bar where he saw Leo again.