CHAPTER EIGHT
Derrek’s apartment was like stepping into a fantasy. Being a professional driver must have paid handsomely—I had never stepped into a place that felt so expensive. The walls were a rich gray, like storm clouds heavy with rain, but the room felt large despite the dark color.
I slipped my boots off and Derrek ushered me out of the foyer and into the large, open space of the living room and kitchen. The wall opposite the mirrored closet was lined with a combination of professional photos, news articles and awards on tiny shelves. Most of the photos were of Derrek and his team—I recognized Diana—with celebratory expressions.
“So she does understand joy,” I muttered under my breath, trying to mask it with a cough when Derrek turned around, head tilted. I waved it off and he continued forward, stopping in the middle of the room.
Walking past him to the kitchen, I turned my back to the fridge and stretched my arms, leaning over the pristine island that separated the kitchen from the living room. Everything, from appliances to cabinet doors to the leather of the grand L-shaped sofa, was a crisp white against the gray of the walls. Derrek walked over to me and reached into a cupboard for a glass, pouring himself some water before coming to lean over the island beside me.
“Well, this is it,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and staring at me.
I looked over the room from where I stood. It was a great place. Spacious, clean—Derrek must have done a thorough job before I arrived—but something felt…off. My eyes scanned from one corner of the open space to the next, resting on a sliding door that led out to a large balcony, a few stray leaves resting gently atop heavy furniture covers. My eyes stopped on a door left slightly ajar in the corner, between the balcony and the large wall-mounted TV.
“It doesn’t feel very…lived in,” I said.
I turned to steal Derrek’s glass of water, taking a long drink. He frowned and waved me to follow him toward the couch. I put the glass down on a small table flanked by high-backed chairs—the same white leather as the sofa—by the floor-to-ceiling windows that revealed the balcony. Derrek practically dove to lay across the couch, and I laughed as I lifted his feet to rest them in my lap, making room for myself to sit. My eyes must have widened enough for Derrek to notice, because he started to laugh, too.
“This is way more comfortable than it looks!” I said, surprised to find the leather sofa practically swallowing me as I sunk into it, the material of it cool against my skin.
He turned to lie on his back, wiggling his feet in my lap as he pulled a cushion under his head and made himself more at home. I got the feeling that Derrek wasn’t the most comfortable in the apartment, either, and I couldn’t help but laugh aloud as I thought about him sitting in a cramped car with all his belongings, feeling perfectly at peace.
“What’s so funny?” he asked as my body shook under his legs from suppressing laughter.
I clutched a hand to my stomach, the laughter coming harder as the image of Derrek sleeping against a steering wheel, surrounded by blankets and wearing a tiny sleeping cap, became clearer in my mind.
“You’re a lunatic,” he said, grinning as he spun his legs off me to stand and circle the sofa.
The laughter nearly caught in my throat when I saw his arms reach around in my peripheral vision, pulling me into a warm hug against the sofa. Derrek’s breath teased against my neck as his face sprang into view, his head resting on my shoulder.
“Is my apartment that much of a joke? I even cleaned for you!”
I lifted a hand to squeeze his muscled arm, my laughter subsiding into a deep, happy exhale as I composed myself and turned to face him awkwardly.
“It’s a great place! It is, really, but—”
“But it’s not what you were expecting, right?” he finished for me.
I offered a sympathetic smile.
“Not exactly,” I said.
I gave Derrek’s arm a gentle pat and turned to kneel on the couch to face him, our noses practically touching. I leaned in for a quick kiss before backing off the couch and picking up my glass of water, walking over to a half-closed door near the balcony.
“But I feel like the real Derrek is probably somewhere in there,” I joked.
Derrek’s grin grew into a bright smile as he continued to lean over the couch, resting his elbows on the white leather.
“He just might be,” he started, “but I don’t know. You just got here and you want to see my bedroom already?” His smile turned devilish for a moment, and my throat went so dry, I was glad to have a glass of water already with me. I did want to see Derrek’s bedroom, but I didn’t want to force my way in, no matter how charming it seemed.
“Fair enough,” I said, hoping to change the subject.
I downed the rest of my water, prompting Derrek to play the gracious host and take my glass back to the kitchen, and I followed. As he pressed the glass to a tab on the refrigerator for ice, I leaned back against the island counter, admiring the few magnets littering the freezer door.
I pointed at one—an old photo of a laughing child with bright brown eyes and a tangle of dark, curly hair, sitting on a tricycle between a man and a woman, both crouching on either side of the little boy. The longer I looked, the more it seemed like the child was the perfect blend of both adults.
Derrek followed the line of my finger to the fridge, surprised to find the photo at the end, as if he had forgotten it was always there.
“Wow,” he breathed, “I haven’t stopped to look at that in a while. It’s my only copy and I’m not in the apartment if I can help it. Those are my parents,” he said, “and that’s me when I was around three.”
He handed me my newly-filled glass and pulled the magnetic frame off the fridge, catching the photo as it slipped toward the ground.
“Oh my god, seriously? Your hair!” I exclaimed. Derrek raised a hand to ruffle his considerably shorter dark locks, nothing like the storm of hair in his baby picture.
“Yeah, seriously! My mom was so proud of my hair she didn’t let me do anything but the occasional trim until I was almost ten.”
He held the photo up, a thoughtful look to him as he walked back toward the couch, beckoning me over. I could almost swear he was trying to hold back quiet tears.
“I haven’t been home to see my parents in too long,” he finally said after what felt like a long silence. I walked over and put my water down, taking the photo from his hands as I rolled onto the couch, resting my head in his lap.
“They don’t live in the city?” I asked, hoping it didn’t feel like I was fishing for information about him. In response, Derrek shifted on the couch cushion and brushed a hand gently through my hair, sending a wave of heat rocking through my body. I craned my neck back to look up at him, frozen in place until I met his eyes with a silent smile that begged him to keep brushing.
“They still live in Mexico,” he said. “Diana’s all about appearances. She’s been trying to get me to move them out of their small town for years, but they love it there. It’s their home. The team needs me available to test changes to the car’s setup from race to race, anyway.”
I shifted on the couch, moving closer to the cool leather and the warmth of Derrek’s body. I crossed my arms and began tapping a foot against an armrest as he continued.
“The last few major races have gone so well, I told Diana she has nothing to worry about for promo ops. I’ve just been ignoring all her huffing about it,” he said with a laugh.
“So…just a few weeks, right?” I asked tentatively.
Derrek’s mouth seemed to work in uncomfortable silence as he thought carefully about his words. It was sweet of him to worry about me, but I didn’t want him to feel bad talking about his passion with me.
“Derrek,” I finally said when he opened and closed his mouth several times, ending in a sheepish grin. “I won’t have a panic attack talking about racing. You can still talk about it with me. I…can’t come. Not yet. But I’m not going to crumble if you say the word ‘car’.”
“Three weeks, max,” he finally said. “Are you sure? It’s not too much?”
I frowned again, swinging my body to sit up and face him properly.
“I’m not made of glass, Derrek. I pass cars every day when I’m on a bus or out for a walk. We can talk about them.”
“Wait, that’s a good point,” he said. “You see cars all the time.”
“Yeah,” I replied defensively. “The accident was almost twenty years ago. When one of those cars decided to floor it down the block, it used to be a really bad time. It’s gotten a lot better since then.”
I crossed my arms again and sunk as far into the soft leather of the couch as I could, my brow furrowing. Derrek stood up and leaned over me, pulling one of my arms to lift me into a hug that made my neck burn against his light stubble.
“Aiden, I—”
“No,” I interrupted. “It’s one of those things I hear all the time when someone notices me struggle in public. I know you didn’t mean anything by it.” I moved to wrap my arms around him, but he pulled away and began walking toward his bedroom.
“But I did. I was going to ask exactly how you handle being near roads every day, and I didn’t even realize you’d be mad about it,” he said, exasperation clear in his voice. He paced back and forth in front of his bedroom door a few times before I walked over and grabbed one of his arms mid-swing.
“Time,” I said. “Therapy, mostly. Right now, I think there’s something else we need to talk about,” I said. I lifted an arm and pointed through the barely-open door to Derrek’s bedroom, where I could just barely see a giant poster on the wall. “Isn’t that right, Speed Racer?” I mocked.
The color nearly drained from his face as Derrek whipped around, threw the bedroom door the rest of the way open, and dropped his jaw, clearly embarrassed. I laughed as I walked past him and into the bedroom, glad to have changed the subject.
“So that’s where the name Speedracer88 came from, huh?” I mused, crossing my arms to take in the room around the giant framed retro poster of Speed Racer, from the 60s TV show, covering the expanse of wall on one side of Derrek’s closet. He practically dove over the bed to stand in front of it; too little too late.
Derrek’s bedroom was nothing like the rest of the apartment. It had none of the kitchen’s hard edges, none of the living room’s stony façade. There was a pile of clothes spilling out of a laundry basket in the corner by the door, and a small desk where a laptop sat open, scrolling through photos of cars, races, and Derrek alongside his team and pit crew. Floor-to-ceiling windows made up an entire wall, looking out across the city, and there was a trail of even more clothes from the desk to the closet.
Derrek’s king-size bed looked comfortable and lived in, with its tossed black silk sheets and mountain of pillows in various sizes. He had given up trying to hide the Speed Racer poster and resigned himself to the bed, craning his neck to look at me upside down. He stretched his arms towards me, lifting his shirt just high enough to reveal the taut muscles underneath, and I grinned.
“So I’m not the only secret nerd in this relationship, huh?” I said as I turned and mimicked Derrek’s pose from the side of the bed near the door.
We both turned to look at each other, our faces side by side, and he curled his lip into something between amusement and disapproval.
“Aiden, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you being a nerd is not a secret. I’ve seen you at work,” he said firmly, all smiles. “I’ve never known anyone to get so excited about urban fantasy.”
I scowled before staring blankly at the ceiling, gently biting at my lip.
“Hold on,” I said slowly. “The day you came into the store, I didn’t have any customers asking about urban fantasy.” I shuffled my body to prop myself up on an elbow, my feet still dangling off the side of the bed. The silk sheets were cool against the hand still resting between us. “That was—”
“A few days before,” he finished for me. “I, uh, kind of saw your profile on Knight and it said you own a bookstore, so I searched for ones nearby and yours was the only hit. I guess you don’t check who’s viewed your profile.”
He turned to prop himself on an elbow, too, confidence clear in the way he held himself up with little effort. It was ridiculous that someone could look so hot doing literally nothing.
“No, I don’t,” I admitted.
I could have met Derrek days sooner if I had. If he wasn’t such a secret sweetheart, I’d have cared more about it being kind of creepy.
“I remember the customer I was talking to, though. It was that same guy you saw me on a date with the night we met.”
Derrek stifled a throaty laugh at the near mention of my dating disaster, and I collapsed forward onto the bed, filling the space between us with my head buried in a tangle of bedsheets.
I felt a weight over me as Derrek climbed over my body and pulled me into a hug from behind, turning until we were both resting on our sides looking out through the large windows at the head of the bed.
“Yeah, I guess it was dumb to think I’d be the only guy trying to flirt with you through books,” he admitted.
“You have no idea…” I said reluctantly.
It was basically every guy’s go-to when I got hit on at my store.
“I’m kind of glad you didn’t, even if the alternative was being kind of a dick in line,” I teased. I heard the crinkle of sheets behind us as Derrek reached a hand over his head for a pillow.
“Confidence isn’t a turn-on for you?” he said, and I practically snorted in response.
“There’s confidence, and then there’s whatever you were,” I shot back. “I was so mad that night I thought about your stupid trip to Iceland and wanted you to have the worst time.”
“My what?” he asked, surprised.
“Your trip. Why else does anyone need a tourist’s guide?”
I shook with the force of Derrek’s muscled body against mine as he chuckled and let out a long, slow breath.
“There’s no trip to Iceland. It was the first thing I grabbed so I could talk to you in line,” he said.
I could feel him holding his breath behind me and squeezed his arm, my mouth dropping open. He really was all show. I bat at his arm until he let me go and I turned around, gripping whatever hair I could on the back of his head and pulled him into a deep, heavy kiss.
He made a sound before settling into the rhythm of it, our lips parting and our tongues meeting as hands searched bodies to get underneath each other’s clothes. The soft brush of lips and tickle of tongues meeting quickly turned to playful nips and firmer hands, and soon Derrek was kneeling behind me, our shirts lost to the piles of laundry already on the bedroom floor, his breath hot on my skin as he bit into my neck and pinned me to his toned body with one strong arm, his other hand tracing the scar on my back with a gentle touch.
I pushed myself against him, twisting and turning as we met again and again in several positions before he finally loosed a deep, rumbling growl and pulled away. For a moment, I imagined the intensity of our sex, and my pants grew increasingly tight. Derrek planted a scratchy kiss on my cheek before leaping off the bed and sauntering out of the room. He returned quickly with two glasses of water.
Had I done something to make him stop?
He must have noticed my eyes dim—my poker face was terrible—because he set the glasses down on the nightstand and crossed one leg onto the bed underneath him.
“Things have never happened like this for me before,” he finally sputtered after several minutes of starting and stopping his words. “It’s been a long time since my last real relationship. I, uh, I’m just not used to the idea of someone still being around when I wake up,” he said, a hopeful glimmer just beneath his words.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh.” I scrambled to my feet, downed my glass of water, and fumbled over laundry to find my shirt. “I, uh, I don’t have to—”
“Yes,” Derrek interrupted. “You do. You do have to be here in the morning. I want you to be here in the morning,” he said, making his way across the bed to kneel in front of me, a firm hand tugging my shirt out of my grasp and back onto the carpet. His eyes were almost pleading, and I dove at him with outstretched arms, tackling him backwards onto the bed to kiss him again.
“The deal’s off if I find out you have gross morning breath,” I joked between kisses, and he laughed as he nudged me to the side and stood up, heading toward the bathroom.
“I guess you’ll find out soon,” he said, sticking an arm out of the bathroom, two toothbrushes gripped firmly in his hand. “I travel enough to have spares if I need to pack a bag,” he clarified when I gave him a pointed look, convinced that more boys had been in Derrek’s bedroom than he was letting on. I moved to sit on the edge of the bed and watched Derrek shuffle through untidy drawers under his bathroom sink.
There, under bad light, topless and barefoot in dark blue jeans, looking like the most ordinary boy in the world, he seemed perfect. I stood up and took one of the toothbrushes out of his hand, setting it in an empty cup on the counter, and kissed his cheek. We both looked up into the mirror, half-smirking at each other.
With an unspoken tension, we went about our evening routines until we were side by side under cool silk sheets and a warm, heavy blanket, my skin hot against his in nothing but our underwear.
We tossed until we were comfortably nestled face to face on our sides, a mountain of silky cushions threatening to bury us alive, our legs a tangled mess. With the blinds down and the lights off, the room was incredibly dark, and I could feel the slow exhale of Derrek’s breath on my lip as we drifted off to sleep.
“Aiden?” he said, a gentle rasp to his words as sleep began to take hold.
“Yeah?” I said, moving my body closer to his.
Several minutes passed. I could feel the tension in Derrek’s muscular chest as he struggled with his words. I lifted an arm to nudge his head upwards, asking him to meet my eyes, and could barely make out the strength of his face in the dark.
“This is different.”
“Yeah,” I said, my lips pulling into a soft, invisible smile.
Derrek leaned forward just enough to touch our noses together, his breathing heavier than it had been moments before.
“I think I’m falling in love with you,” he mumbled, his body practically vibrating beside mine.
I sank deeper into his mattress, a balmy heat rippling through my bones as I moved my hand from Derrek’s chest to the side of his face, goosebumps settling into my skin when the heatwave passed.
“Me, too.”