Thank god I was finally warm because that meant I was back home in our too-small, too-stuffy, too-loud apartment in Atlanta’s East Point neighborhood, and the nightmare had only been that… a nightmare. Georgie would be asleep in her room, my foster father, Kirk, would be sleeping off his bender, and I’d have a few more minutes of hitting the snooze button before I had to get up and make my sister breakfast before walking her to daycare. I snuggled into the pillow I had tucked against my chest and inhaled the sweet scent of… cotton candy?

No, that wasn’t right.

The fabric softener I used was unscented because Georgie had sensitive skin. Kirk always told me I spent too much money on stuff like that, but he wasn’t the one who’d noticed the little girl scratch herself raw because of it. Or who’d taken her to doctors, or made tough decisions to alleviate her discomfort.

Like moving to an apartment building that didn’t have mold.

And learning all about the different chemicals and additives that could cause a flare-up.

No, Kirk just wanted things to be easy. And if something became too difficult and interfered with his time at home drinking beer or hanging out with his asshole friends, he always knew how to fix it. Simply threaten to send Georgie to Social Services the way he had the day she was born.

Admittedly, I had to give Kirk credit for knowing how to use my weakness against me. There was nothing I feared more than losing my little sister to the very system that had dumped me on Kirk and Gloria Frasier when I was ten years old. The second Kirk would start to lament about being willing to give up his baby girl to keep her “happy,” I’d give in to whatever he was asking for, whether it be cash or for me to pick him up a six-pack or whatever. I’d hand over what he wanted, and then I’d mentally tack on the number of hours I’d need to add to my work that week to compensate.

Maybe it made me a selfish asshole, but the truth was that Georgie was all I had, and I couldn’t bear to lose her. We might not have shared any blood, but from the moment I’d held her tiny body in my arms and saw her deep blue eyes look right at me, I’d felt a level of joy I’d never known before. And when the doctor had told Kirk that Gloria hadn’t survived the delivery, Kirk had responded by asking how the hell he was supposed to raise a kid by himself.

I’d been one month away from my eighteenth birthday—my freedom—but I’d turned to him and done something I’d never thought I’d do: sworn to him I’d stay and take care of her, make sure she had everything she needed, including a biological parent. Because if there was one thing I was missing in this life, it was true family. And I’d be damned if the beautiful baby girl in my arms was going to suffer the same fate.

Just like that, I’d become the breadwinner for the family as well as the primary caregiver. Four years later I hadn’t once regretted my decision… not once.

Though, in truth, I’d had times when it’d become too hard, and I’d wanted to ask for help.

There just hadn’t been anyone to ask. It wasn’t like I had my own biological family to lean on.

Not true.

I shot down my inner voice and snuggled up against my pillow. That particular door had long been closed, and I wasn’t going to open it again for all the money in the world.

I inhaled deeply of the cotton candy scent and decided I’d just go with whatever little dream my semi-awake mind was letting me have before my alarm went off again. I rubbed my nose against the soft fabric and gave the pillow a little squeeze. I frowned when a sharp pain invaded my lovely little dream. I waited for it to pass, then carefully snuggled against the pillow again.

My morning wood was demanding attention, and I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to wait until I made it to the shower to jerk off. Hell, I might not even need to use my hand with the way my cock was throbbing. I began shifting my hips back and forth to see if the too-soft pillow would help ease my discomfort. I ignored the tinge of pain that slithered up my side again as I began slowly grinding on the pillow. A memory of gentle hands on my thighs and soft lips on my cheek sifted through my head, and I cursed the fact that I couldn’t remember the details of that particular dream.

Fuck it, I’d just make new memories.

I moved my lips until the fabric turned into hot skin. I practically groaned when the cotton candy scent mixed with the perfect amount of man and sweat. Heat exploded in my belly as lust took over, wiping away all remnants of the pain I was feeling. I began undulating my hips against the pillow as I opened my mouth to take a taste of my dream lover.

“Fucking Christ,” I heard a grumbly voice whisper.

“Nah, just little ole me,” I responded drowsily as I began humping my pillow desperately.

“Ben, you have to stop.”

I shook my head. “Not yet… alarm,” —I groaned mid-sentence as a wave of pleasure consumed me— “…alarm won’t go off again for a few more minutes…” I dug my fingers into the pillow hard and closed my teeth around a corded muscle. God, this had to be the best fucking wet dream I’d ever had.

“Ben…”

Since when had my subconscious become so damn mouthy? And not in a good way?

“Just a little more—” I practically begged.

“Ben, wake the fuck up now!”

The angry voice jolted me back to reality.

To my very ugly reality.

There was no pillow, no cramped twin bed in a too-warm room, no dream lover who tasted even better than he smelled… just one pissed-off straight guy who was about to go off on the pathetic, horny little homo who’d been humping him like a tree.

“Oh god,” I cried as I tried to scramble away from Reese. I flinched when he reached for me. “I’m sorry!” I shouted, hoping that would keep him from pounding me into dust, but it didn’t stall his movement at all. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see the punch coming as I instinctively tried to escape him. It took me a long second to realize the reason I couldn’t back away from him was because his arm was beneath my shoulders. Before I could even make sense of why that was, his other arm closed around my waist and he tightened his hold so I couldn’t move at all.

“Don’t, please, I’m sorry,” I said. “It was an accident! Please let me go!”

“Ben—”

I kept my eyes squeezed shut because I was terrified of what I’d see if I opened them. I’d once had a supposedly straight classmate kiss me when I’d been fifteen before he’d gone ballistic and screamed at me that it had never happened and not to tell anyone. He’d punched a locker next to my head but hadn’t actually hurt me. But this was soooo much worse than that. And Reese was soooo much fucking bigger.

“I’m sorry, Reese, I didn’t mean it…I was—”

“Ben, open your eyes right this instant and stop moving.”

This time, there was no question about the tone in his voice. It was pure order. I opened my eyes and held my breath. My body stilled completely before I even had to force it to. Thankfully, my hard-on had eased considerably. And none too soon because Reese was lying half on top of me.

“Did you hurt yourself?” he asked, his voice going all soft. His left hand skimmed suddenly along my side and I nearly bit my tongue in half when his fingers pushed up my shirt and the hospital gown so he could feel my ribs.

“Did you?” Reese asked again, his blue eyes darting from my side to my face.

“W-what?” I croaked.

“When you jerked away, did you hurt yourself?”

Hurt myself? Hell, I didn’t know what the fuck I was feeling at the moment. Scared, confused, hot, cold, sweaty… really confused.

“Ben?”

I nodded my head, then shook it.

“Is that a yes or a no?” Reese asked, his brow drawing tight in confusion.

“Um, it’s an I don’t know. I, uh…”

I paused as I tried to take stock of my body and what exactly I was feeling. I pulled in a breath. It hurt but it wasn’t a blinding pain like it had been the day before.

“My side still hurts but not as bad as yesterday. Is it still yesterday or is it today?”

“What?”

I shook my head as I repeated the question silently back to myself. “What day is it?” I asked. “My head is still fuzzy.”

“It’s still Thursday. It’s just after lunch time. I had you take some more pain pills this morning and they helped you sleep a bit longer.”

There were a million questions I needed to ask him but the one that came tumbling out wasn’t one of them. “And then you got into bed with me? I mean, it’s okay, but I only did that to you because I thought you were my pillow and I—” I felt heat slide into my cheeks. “God, I don’t mean I do that to my pillow or anything, okay sometimes maybe I do, but I’m asleep when I do it… or half asleep I guess… and so I was doing that to my pillow and not you because even though you’re insanely hot, I’d never do that to someone while they were sleeping and—”

Stop talking, Ben. Stop talking right now!

“I mean, you’re not hot, you just smell good, and I was dreaming about you… not you exactly, okay, yes you, but I didn’t know it was you—”

STOP!

TALKING!

“God, why the hell do you smell like cotton candy and why are you in my bed?” I practically shouted.

I bit down on my lip hard to shut myself up. I looked away from him as tears of humiliation smarted behind my eyelids.

I absolutely would not cry in front of this man.

I. Would. Not.

“So which is it?” Reese suddenly asked.

I slowly turned my head. “Which is what?” I asked as I tried to figure out which route of verbal attack he would take.

“Do you think I’m hot or not?”

I was sure my mouth fell open wide enough to catch flies, but when I saw a smile tug at the edges of his mouth, I knew he was just messing with me. The fact that he was still lying on top of me was making it hard to answer, both because my body was reacting to his weight which had me thinking all sorts of delicious thoughts, and because I was caught up in the fact that he wasn’t pissed.

And that he was trying to crack a joke to make me feel better.

But fuck if it wasn’t that little bit of a smile playing over his wide lips that had my insides doing somersaults.

I tried to answer, I really did. But something in the air around us changed, and Reese went very quiet. The smile disappeared and the expression that stole across his face both confused and excited me. Was he feeling whatever it was that was simmering between us? Was there a chance he was gay? A straight guy would have put as much distance between us as he could by now, right? Especially after I’d pretty much outed myself by calling him hot.

“Reese?” I whispered as the tension in my belly grew to excruciating proportions. I needed him to either kiss me or get the hell off me.

I really wanted it to be the first one.

“Technically you’re in my bed,” Reese murmured as his eyes fell to my mouth.

“Huh?” I asked. I shifted slightly and felt his left hand tighten just a little on my side.

Like he was trying to prevent me from moving.

We hung there again, neither speaking, as the room around us seemed to disappear. All I heard was what had to be my own heart pounding in my chest, all I felt was his skin against mine, all I smelled was that damn cotton candy smell and man and… fuck, arousal.

I was about to say his name again when there was a slight vibrating sound. Since I didn’t have my phone anymore, I realized it had to be Reese’s.

And just like that, the spell was broken, and he released his hold on my side, carefully easing his arm from beneath my head. The warmth disappeared as he moved away from me. I expected him to go for his phone, but instead, he reached for a pillow on my side of the bed—the one I’d clearly abandoned to use his arm instead—and put it beneath my head.

“Just rest for a few more minutes to make sure you’re not feeling light-headed,” Reese said gruffly, all the warmth from earlier now completely gone. It wasn’t until he went to reach for his phone that it finally registered what I hadn’t noticed before.

The mattress was on the floor instead of on the bed.

“Why is the mattress on the floor?” I asked as I struggled to sit up. Reese was there a second later helping me. The mattress was close enough to the wall so that I could lean against it. Reese fussed with the pillow at my back for a few seconds before settling it behind my shoulders.

“Because I didn’t want you to sleep on the floor.”

He said the answer like that in itself should explain everything. Before I could ask him anything else, Reese turned his back to me and began looking at his phone.

“So why not just let me have the bed?” I asked, since I still had no clue why we’d slept together.

“I did. Only you didn’t seem keen on staying there.” He still had his back to me.

“What do—”

Reese sighed impatiently. “You were in the bed, I was on the floor. You kept getting up and coming to lie down next to me on the floor. You seemed pretty out of it so after the third time, I just let you. But then I started to worry that you would hurt yourself even more by sleeping on the hard floor so I got the mattress off the bed.”

I stared at his back in disbelief because I couldn’t remember doing any of that. And I wasn’t the kind of guy who even liked to cuddle with another guy… well, okay, I’d never really had the chance to find out if I liked it or not. Most guys I ended up in bed with didn’t stay long once the deed was done.

“Why didn’t you just sleep in the bed with me?” I asked. It stung that Reese was still ignoring me, though I didn’t know why it hurt.

“I’m… I’m not big on beds.”

“Why not?”

“Fuck, do you always ask this many questions?” Reese asked as he looked over his shoulder at me and then climbed to his feet.

“When I end up in bed with a complete stranger, yeah,” I muttered. All the kindness he’d shown me just moments ago was gone. “Never mind,” I whispered as I dropped my eyes to my hands. The one that had been scuffed up when I’d fallen a couple days earlier was sporting a bright white bandage that hadn’t been there the night before.

“Ben—”

“Don’t worry about it, Reese,” I said quietly, since I knew what was coming. The apology that wasn’t really sincere… it was just a way to shut me up. I knew I shouldn’t be comparing him to any of the other guys I’d had physical relationships with in the past, but I couldn’t help but put him in that bucket. Maybe because, like with them, I’d had this brief, fleeting hope that there was something else there. The last thing I wanted to hear from him was all the same explanations I’d heard before when I’d made the mistake of trying to get to know someone for more than the few minutes it would take for them to fuck me. And what the hell was I even doing lying around indulging in a pity party? I needed to get moving so I could find Georgie. Maybe I’d at least managed to scare off my would-be rescuer.

I kept my eyes down as I heard Reese shuffling around the room. I half-expected the front door to open and close at any moment, but it didn’t. I looked up just a little and saw Reese’s jean-clad legs pacing back and forth in front of the foot of the mattress. That made me curious enough to look up at his full form. As he paced, he kept messing with his shirt sleeves. Occasionally, he’d run his fingers through his hair but then he’d be right back to the sleeves again, tugging them down even though they weren’t rolled up at all. I actually felt sorry for him when I saw how distressed he looked. Where had all the anger gone?

“Reese—”

“I don’t like sleeping in beds,” he suddenly said. He came to a stop and faced me. He was clearly agitated as he spoke, but not exactly angry. “I got hurt last fall, and I ended up being laid up in bed for a really long time, okay?” He dropped his hands to his sides but his fingers kept rubbing over themselves. It was like he was incapable of being completely still. One hand went back to his hair as he added, “And I smell like cotton candy because my father’s stepdaughter… or future stepdaughter… I’m not really sure what to call her… she would help shop for stuff for me while I was laid up, and she liked the shampoo that smelled like cotton candy and thought I would too. When I got better, I just kept buying it because I knew it would make her happy to know I was using it.”

Before I could respond, Reese hurried to the bathroom and shut the door behind him. I stared at the panel of wood separating us and marveled over what he’d just told me. Exhaustion and confusion settled around me as I tried to make sense of everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours but all it did was make my head hurt.

We’ll get her back, Ben. We’ll get her back, I swear it.

I’d thought I’d dreamed those words, along with the kiss to my cheek that had come with them, but what if I hadn’t? What if he really wanted to help me? What if I could actually trust him and I wouldn’t have to do this alone?

I found myself sinking back down so I was lying flat on my side. I reached for his pillow instead of my own and snuggled up against it as I considered what it would mean to ask the complete stranger on the other side of the wall to help me get my sister back.

Desperation had me on the verge of giving myself permission to believe he was different… that he was someone I could temporarily lean on.

And then I felt the brush of cold metal beneath the softness of his pillow.