Page 103 of Steady Stroke
The first contestant onThe Price Is Rightwas about to come on down when Roxy’s phone rang. She glanced at the screen. “Hey, you. Yeah, he’s right here.” She held the phone out. “Talk to my brother.”
Lincoln took it. “Dom?”
“What’s wrong?” Dominic asked.
“How long do you have?”
“As long as it takes.”
“Hold on.” Lincoln took the phone into his room and shut the door. Instead of sitting, though, he started pacing. “What did Roxy tell you?”
“That you had a migraine yesterday but were acting way more snarly and irritable than usual. Plus no Emmett.” A pause. “Did you two have a fight?”
“I’m not sure if it was a fight or not. But it’s not good.”
“Tell me.”
Lincoln held a breath, then let it out long and hard. “I guess it all started Memorial Day weekend.”
“The weekend I bailed.”
“Hey. No. Nothing that happened is your fault, okay? Nothing.” He started talking, an epic stream of word vomit that began with Tom, wove around meeting Emmett, their slow dance as Emmett began to accept himself, falling in love with him, how scared he’d been to get tested, and how amazing he’d felt dancing with Emmett at the wedding. And then he dropped the anvil and detailed yesterday’s confession, all the way through spending most of the night awake on the couch.
“Christ, babe,” Dominic said, after being mostly silent the entire last twenty or so minutes. “Fuck me.”
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel right now, Dom.”
“I’ve probably got enough rage going for both of us.” His voice betrayed the truth of that. Angry Dominic was not pretty. “Fuck. Okay. First of all, how are you about Tom? That’s what had you tied up in knots when I saw you last month, right?”
“Yeah, it was. And I’m better. I told Emmett, and talking it through with someone helped. I needed to get the poison out, you know?”
“Yeah. I know. I also know it means a hell of a lot that you told Emmett first.”
“He knows all my bad stuff, and he still wants me.”
“Do you still want him?”
Lincoln had no idea what he wanted. “You don’t fall in love overnight, and you don’t stop loving someone overnight, either. I had to walk away and figure this out. Try to get my head around it all.”
“I get that. It’s hard to imagine that the guy I met who makes you smile so big is the one who drove us off the road. Drunk and high.”
“I know. The whole thing is a mind fuck. I mean, how can I trust that his feelings for me are real? That he didn’t stick with me because he felt guilty for my condition? How can I not look back and see our entire relationship as one giant pity fuck?”
“Do you think he’s that kind of guy?”
“Well, two days ago I’d have said no way in hell.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because he’s too genuine. Too nice. I doubt he’s ever set out to deliberately hurt another person in his life.”
“A genuine guy who lied to you about his real name?”
Lincoln shrugged at the wall. “That was different. I totally get why he wanted to change his identity. He was protecting himself, and it didn’t hurt anyone.”
“So then the car accident. Was he protecting himself by lying, or was he protecting you from getting hurt?”
“A little of both, I guess.”
