Almost Just Friends Read online

  Piper said something, but Gavin couldn’t have repeated it because he didn’t hear a word of it. He couldn’t talk either. Or breathe.

  CJ, the only person outside of his family whom he’d ever loved, and also the only other person besides Piper on his list of people to make amends to.

  Which he wasn’t exactly doing a bang-up job of.

  He hadn’t seen CJ since they’d been, what, twenty years old and on top of the world? For one thing, he’d not come home often, and for another, CJ had left Wildstone for a while too. They needed to talk, but knowing what a prick he’d been, he’d felt uneasy and awkward about doing so.

  Vaguely, he realized Piper had made some excuse to leave them alone and was gone. CJ still stood in the doorway, looking neither uneasy nor awkward.

  Made sense. Gavin had been the one to screw up. He’d made a lot of mistakes, and he was here to own them. But as it turns out, saying that to himself and actually doing it were two very different things. “Are you hungry?” he heard himself ask. “I’ve got breakfast. Well, minus the toast. There’s more than enough. I could make you a plate—”

  CJ was already shaking his head and turning away, without a single word to the guy he’d once claimed to love, and Gavin died a little inside.

  “Ceej.”

  He stopped but didn’t turn back. Tall, leanly muscled, tan on top of his Puerto Rican coloring, all of it stealing Gavin’s breath.

  “I’m . . . sorry,” he said.

  That got CJ to turn around, his dark gaze looking . . . haunted and sad, which didn’t match his carefully distant tone. “For?”

  Okay, so he was going to make Gavin say it. Fair. “For leaving. For staying gone. For not returning texts or calls. Pick one. Or don’t. Whatever, it’s your choice.”

  CJ took that in a moment. “When I say whatever, I really mean screw you.”

  “Sometimes me too,” Gavin said, relieved because they were at least talking. “But right now it means I really am sorry, and I don’t know how to make you believe that.”

  “That’s because I don’t give a flying fuck.”

  But see, that had to be a lie, because CJ always gave a flying fuck, about everything, and it was that, the sarcasm and lie combined, that gave Gavin his first little bubble of hope since the day he’d left rehab. “Okay,” he said, nodding. “Understood. But you used to give a whole bunch of fucks, at least about my homemade breakfasts, and I have to tell you, I’ve only gotten better.”

  CJ’s gaze slid past him to the stove, and Gavin bit back a smile. Gotcha. “I can hear your stomach growling from here,” he said softly.

  “That’s because I’m just coming off a twelve-hour shift.”

  “So you’re starving. Why make yourself suffer when it’s me you’re mad at? Here.” Gavin stepped back, giving CJ plenty of room and space to enter on his own terms, like he’d have done for a hurting stray animal. Meanwhile, he piled up a plate with food and set it at the table, gambling on the fact that CJ wouldn’t spite himself just to snub his long-ago ex.

  After a long hesitation, CJ took the bait. He came in and sat heavily, like maybe he was exhausted. Probably for the same reason Piper always was. Budget cuts had caused hiring freezes, leaving the police, fire, and other emergency response agencies far too understaffed.

  CJ began to inhale his food, and when he caught Gavin watching, staring really, because he couldn’t seem to help himself, he quirked a brow. “What, you’ve never seen a guy eat before?”

  “You look good, Ceej.”

  CJ looked away, but not before Gavin caught the slight color to his cheeks. “You forgot the crepes,” CJ said. “We always had crepes for dessert.”

  Gavin’s breath caught at the memories. “Crepes were your specialty.” Crepes and tacos. There was just something about the way CJ put his heart and soul into anything he cooked, but especially those two things. “I haven’t had them since . . .” Gavin trailed off, feeling a shocking desire and longing for that time in his life. Back then, everything had felt so complicated, but had really been the simplest—and best—years of his life.

  Without another word, CJ rose, and Gavin thought that was it, the guy was out. But instead, CJ made himself at home at the stove and began to make crepes.

  Watching him move in the kitchen like he’d been born to it brought back a whole bunch of memories. It’d been CJ who taught him how to cook in the first place. He could probably run any kitchen in the world and yet . . . “So. A cop, huh?”

  CJ froze for a single beat and then kept whipping the eggs and flour. “You’re just surprised because you have authority issues.”

  Yeah, he did. Serious ones. He watched CJ carefully pour the first crepe into the pan, wait until it bubbled and got to the perfect color, before using nothing but the pan handle and a flick of his wrist to flip the crepe.

  Four minutes later, it was CJ’s turn to hand Gavin a plate, with a rolled crepe stuffed with the raspberries and blueberries he’d found in the fridge, topped with powdered sugar.

  Gavin took one bite and moaned.

  CJ’s gaze went straight to his mouth.

  “And I’m surprised,” Gavin said quietly, picking up their conversation where they’d left off. “Because I seem to remember the both of us running from the cops. More than once.”

  CJ’s eyes hardened. “We were two feral kids who thought that nothing could stop us. We were dumbasses.”

  True. Gavin had been grieving for his loving parents and seeking ways to forget his pain. CJ had been kicked out of his house for being gay. No warning, no anything, just forced out with only the clothes on his back, leaving him to the streets.

  Luckily, his older brother had taken him in, and Gavin had been grateful. Even then he’d known he was going down the rabbit hole, feeling lost and completely unable to help CJ, because he himself had been so troubled. And he’d found his trouble, often. The memories gave him the opening he needed. “I screwed up.”

  CJ nodded. “Yeah, you did.” He turned to go.

  Unable to let him leave, not like this, Gavin pressed him up against the door to stop him, but something else happened. A bolt of not-so-forgotten hunger and desire coursed through him.

  And given the way CJ sucked in a breath, he felt it too. Slowly he turned to face Gavin.

  “I was young and stupid,” Gavin said, looking him right in the eyes.

  “And now you’re . . . not young and stupid?”

  Taking heart that CJ hadn’t shoved him away, he shook his head. “Well, I’m working on it.”

  They stared at each other, the air crackling between them. Yeah, the spark was still there. And by spark, Gavin meant out-of-control, raging wildfire.

  But CJ shook his head. “Not going to fall for that again, Gavin. Or you.”

  Gavin tried not to react, because he knew that was hurt talking. And yeah, he had a lot to make up for. He’d known what CJ’s family had done to him, how they’d turned their backs on a sixteen-year-old kid, leaving him to fend for himself in the world. And then, several years later, Gavin had done the same damn thing. He didn’t deserve forgiveness, but he wanted it anyway. “You don’t feel anything?”

  “Didn’t say that.”

  Gavin looked at him, really looked. CJ had changed, going from lanky kid to one hundred percent man, and Gavin was shallow enough to admit that the new muscles and rugged, tough look was hot as hell. But besides the superficial shit, there was more. CJ’s eyes weren’t as cold and unfeeling as they’d been at first. The cop had given way, making room for his old best friend and first lover.

  And like Gavin, CJ was most definitely not having coplike thoughts, because his eyes darkened the way they always had when he’d been aroused, and relief and hope filled Gavin. “You know if thought bubbles appeared over your head, you’d be screwed, right?”

  CJ snorted. “Yeah. But luckily I no longer act on my impulses. You should try that.” And then he shoved Gavin away and walked out the door.

  Chapter 12