Adam scoffed. “Nope. It’s you. You’re just too cute for me to let you outside. Those big brown eyes. Those fucking freckles. It's too dangerous out there for you.”
“One, I can take care of myself. Two, I’m dating a murderer. How much more dangerous could it get? I could be one of those fucking weirdos who dangles off towers and bridges for YouTube likes, but I’m not. For me, I think I’ve hit maximum danger levels.” Noah placed his hand over the butterfly on Adam’s chest.
“I just don’t like the idea of you being free out in the world where anything could happen to you,” Adam said sleepily. “You could get hit by a bus, or a plane engine could drop on your head, or you could be kidnapped by a vicious biker gang.”
Noah snickered. “Were you drinking at your dad’s house?”
“Definitely not.”
“Your brothers were mad because there are pictures of us online?”
Adam sighed, his arms tightening around him. “No, they’re mad that I’m dating the son of somebody I killed. They said it makes things messy.”
Noah’s heartbeat spiked, a shock of fear ricocheting through him. It was a gross overreaction given how little time they’d spent in each other’s presence but Noah couldn’t stop the strange sense of panic welling inside him. “What did you say?”
“I told them to fuck off and that you weren’t going anywhere and they could deal with it.”
“You told a group of psychopaths to ‘deal with it’?”
“I told my dumbass brothers to deal with it. Then I talked to my dad who said he’d talk to them,” Adam clarified.
“But your dad is okay with this? Us?”
“My dad trusts my judgment. My brothers don’t. He knows I wouldn’t do anything to hurt the family and I promised him you wouldn’t either.”
Noah had no interest in harming anybody in the Mulvaney family, but there seemed to be an underlying threat in Adam’s casual statement. Maybe Noah was just being paranoid.
“What do we do with the stuff we found tonight? The hard drives?” Noah asked, needing a change in subject.
“I gave them to Calliope to try to decrypt. It’s going to take some time, though, especially since we didn’t get the whole hard drive from the laptop. But if anybody is going to find something, it's her. I also have her working on figuring out who our mystery guy was at Gary’s house tonight. In the meantime, I think maybe we should try to rundown the weird key. It could be nothing, but it could be everything.”
“I have to work tomorrow,” Noah said, heart squeezing at the thought of dealing with another night of Gary’s physical and verbal abuse.
“Why not just quit?” Adam asked.
Noah frowned. “Because I have bills to pay.”
“You could work literally anywhere else and make more money.”
Adam wasn’t wrong. He had worked other places, better places. He’d given it all up to get close to Gary again. And he was so certain that Noah remembered nothing of his abuse that he’d accepted him back in without a second thought. No. He wasn’t leaving until he made Gary pay for what he’d done. He couldn’t. “I need to keep close to him. As long as I’m watching, he can’t surprise me or anybody else.”
Adam carded his fingers through his hair. “If he hurts you, I’ll put him through a meat grinder. Alive. Slowly.”
“If he hurts me, I’ll help you,” Noah promised before a yawn overtook him, jaw cracking loudly in the quiet. “Can we go to sleep now?”
Adam kissed the top of his head. “Yeah. But I’m the little spoon tonight.”
“We’ll look ridiculous,” Noah mused.
“To who?” Adam asked.
With that, he flipped over, shoving his ass back against Noah, who snorted, shaking his head. He leaned forward and rubbed his nose against the spot between Adam’s shoulder blades, dropping a kiss there and letting his eyes fall shut, surprised when, once more, he started to fall asleep.
“Are you sure you have to go to work?” Adam asked, leaning across the center console to give Noah his biggest puppy dog eyes.
He didn’t want Noah to go. Waking up with Noah in his arms had been like waking up and finding somebody had left him a chocolate cake. The best kind of sweet surprise. They’d spent the morning trading lazy blow jobs before getting in the shower where they’d gotten each other off once again. Adam had taken Noah to lunch afterwards, without the fanfare this time. And now, he had to drop him off to get changed for his shift. But he was having a hard time letting him out of the car.
Noah just snickered, unfazed. “Yes. We can’t all live off our trust funds.”
They were parked in the lot of Gary’s club, just outside Noah’s rusted little Airstream trailer. At night, it was hard to notice anything but the flashing sign and the neon outline of a ten-foot naked woman in a cowboy hat. But in the harsh light of day, The Landing Strip looked like the last stop in some post-apocalyptic wasteland. Its garish brick-red paint peeled from the moldy walls in strips, the film on the windows bubbled and warped. Even the lot itself was a minefield of potholes and broken wheel stops.
Adam did not like the idea of Noah living there. Even the strip mall that had once held a bail bondsman, an attorney, and a gun store had long since closed up shop, leaving Gary’s as the sole survivor. How bad did a place have to be for a bail bondsman to leave?
Still, Adam grinned, nuzzling behind Noah’s ear. “I mean, several people could live off mine. But you’re the only one I’m extending the offer to.”
Noah moaned as Adam’s tongue traced the shell of his ear. “As much as I’d love to be your sugar baby, I can’t just quit the day after we break into Gary’s house.”
“He’s not going to notice we were there,” Adam assured him. “A broken picture doesn’t equal a home invasion.”
Noah tilted his head, letting Adam’s mouth explore the column of his throat. “I can’t risk it. He already accused me of stealing his backpack full of cash and guns.”