Designing Hearts

Pine Point Fixer Uppers #2

Alex Danvers

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons is entirely coincidental or beyond the intent of the author.

Designing Hearts © Alex Danvers 2024

Cover Art © David Steele 2024

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author.

Requests to use the material will be considered and may be directed to:

Raven de Hart at: dehartslist@gmail.com

This book, neither in whole nor in part, may not be used for the training of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Large Language Models (LLMs) without explicit permission from the author. The author reserves all rights, now known or hereafter defined, to all uses of AI or LLMs in regards to this book.

Contents

Dedication

Also by Alex Danvers

1. Chapter 1

2. Chapter 2

3. Chapter 3

4. Chapter 4

5. Chapter 5

6. Chapter 6

7. Chapter 7

8. Chapter 8

9. Chapter 9

10. Chapter 10

11. Chapter 11

12. Chapter 12

13. Chapter 13

14. Chapter 14

15. Chapter 15

16. Chapter 16

17. Chapter 17

18. Chapter 18

19. Chapter 19

20. Chapter 20

21. Chapter 21

22. Chapter 22

23. Chapter 23

24. Chapter 24

25. Chapter 25

26. Chapter 26

27. Chapter 27

28. Chapter 28

29. Chapter 29

30. Chapter 30

31. Chapter 31

32. Chapter 32

33. Chapter 33

34. Chapter 34

35. Chapter 35

36. Chapter 36

37. Chapter 37

38. Chapter 38

39. Chapter 39

40. Chapter 40

41. Chapter 41

42. Chapter 42

43. Chapter 43

44. Chapter 44

Epilogue

Dedication

For Sugar

Also by Alex Danvers

A Teaspoon of Desire

Blizzards & Brews

Hammering Hearts

As Raven de Hart

Prior Commitment

Prior Affair

Prior Engagement

Heart of a Pirate

Swarm

Silverfall

The Christmas Interlude

Write Time for a Second Chance

Freshman Magic: Spellbooks and Tangled Sheets

These Thieving Hearts

Chapter one

Ozzy

Three Rivers, Michigan was not exactly a cultural hub. Ozzy hadn’t expected much, but he was still disappointed by how little the town had to offer. It reminded him way too much of home back in Pine Point, but without the lovely mountain ambience of the Cascades to soften the rougher edges. The eponymous rivers were nice, at least, but those were the only thing of interest that drew his attention, and they passed by them entirely too quickly for his liking on their way to the hotel.

Maybe I’m not being fair. It wasn’t as if he was in the best mood. They’d just wrapped the job down in Springfield, which took fucking forever thanks to Jake and Quinn’s teenage-style romance shenanigans. Jake still had a big, goofy grin on his face as they all stood in the meeting room of the local hotel they were staying at, though that wasn’t completely out of the ordinary for him when he wasn’t smitten. He was a Golden Retriever made human. Sweet. Great guy, much as the endless joy grated on Ozzy. No one could legit be that happy all the time.

Anyway, Ozzy couldn’t be too upset with anyone else. He’d played his own part in delaying their progress on the last house. It was a lot easier to blame everyone else, though, especially when he was annoyed. He’d needled and picked at Quinn and Jake both. Flew too close to the sun and burned himself along with everyone else.

Which was why Ozzy kept his complaints inside rather than letting them loose. His way of taking responsibility for his part in the whole mess. Jake passed him a box of donuts, which Ozzy set in the center of the semicircular table in the middle of the room. When Jake stepped back, he caught his ankle on the leg of one of the chairs and fell back on his butt. Still smiling, and he waved as though it was all part of the plan.

Amazing he still has fingers. A carpenter so accident-prone should have been down at least a couple digits after so many years. As he got up and bowed, Ozzy smiled in spite of himself. Jake was just so damn good-natured…most of the time. Ozzy’s jaw was still sore from where Jake had smacked him around. But yeah. That one was on me.

Mason and Robinson walked back through the door. Mason was large and smiled almost as much as Jake. His eyes always sparkled, and dimples cut into full, rosy cheeks. Pure charisma. It was why he made such a good spokesperson for the Pine Point Fixer-Uppers crew.

Robinson was almost the exact opposite. He’d never been a happy-go-lucky sort of guy, but he was especially drawn and downtrodden lately. Hands stuffed into his pockets, smiling tautly at whatever Mason was saying, a depth in his eyes that was honestly a little hard to look at sometimes. He’d done time and hadn’t exactly lived the most pleasant life before that. He also didn’t share very much with Ozzy, so any specifics were guesses and secondhand rumors. He was still a solid plumber, and when it came to the show, that was what mattered. Not that they weren’t friends, just not BFFs forever.

“You just going to stand there or take a seat?” Aras was all angles, from his sharp nose to his peaked eyebrows to his elbows as he sat with arms crossed over his chest. He fixed heavy-lidded eyes on Ozzy and pressed one eyebrow even higher. “Earth to Ozzy?”

Ozzy sighed as he took the chair next to Aras. “You’re just annoyed because this job’s going to be a nightmare for you. Don’t take it out on me because you decided to be an electrician.”

“Last thing you’ll hear me complain about is doing my job. Some of us don’t need to be martyrs.” He mockingly raised his hands to his chest and opened his mouth in a mock wail. “Oh, woe is me. I’m Ozzy. I get my hands dirty doing landscaping. I’m an extra special boy.”

Ozzy rolled his eyes. “Have you considered a new personality? I’d recommend it. This edgy asshole shit went out of style in the mid two-thousands.”

“So did frat boy douchebag, yet you don’t show any signs of changing.”

Before Ozzy could get another barb in, the door to the meeting room opened, letting three figures inside. Eliza was the show’s producer, a young, slim woman with oversized eyes and shiny black hair. She cast a brief smile around at everyone, then set some papers down on the table and took her seat.

Then came Evander. Ozzy could deal with everyone else just fine—in spite of any evidence, that included Aras—but Evander knew him too well. Years of on-again-off-again dating had revealed way more of him than Ozzy was comfortable with, now. He was constantly changing up his look. Back when they all went their separate ways, he’d been all heavy eyeliner and foundation five shades too light that made him look like he had some horrible illness. His family had come from Mexico several generations back, and he either spent plenty of time outside or had regular appointments at a tanning salon because his skin was a deep bronze, almost copper. He had a pair of sunglasses perched on top of his head and wore a halfway open Hawaiian shirt, showing off the cut lines of his chest.

I always did have good taste. Physically, Evander was a damn fine specimen. Ozzy could admit that.

Personality-wise…if they didn’t have to talk, the relationship probably would have lasted a lot longer.

Evander took a seat, thankfully not saying anything to set Ozzy even more on edge, and the third person walked in. She was heavyset with a heart-shaped face, and a pronounced widow’s peak. She was rather on the short side and wore a loose, flowing blouse over a tight tank top, both in shades of black, with white harem pants. Melanie Trang was their client for this job, and as she walked in, her eyes widened. Ozzy followed her gaze and realized she was looking at the cameras tucked off to the back of the room. Ozzy had spent the last three weeks with them, and had worked on their VideoHead channel before that. He’d already forgotten they were there.

Mason held out his hand. “Melanie. Don’t worry about the cameras. They’re harmless.”

She nodded and sat gingerly on one of the two empty chairs left in the room with a nervous chuckle. “I’m sorry. There’s just a lot going on right now.”

“Well, we’re all ready to help.” Aras of all people responded and leaned forward. “If Bunny ever shows up?”

She was usually Johnny-on-the-spot for everything. Jake already had his phone out before anyone else could ask. He tapped her up, then set the phone down to ring on the table.

She picked up after two rings. “Hey, love. I’m almost there. Marv was missing his momma, so I had to call and handle some big feelings. I’m just slapping on some blush and I’ll be downstairs.”

“All right,” said Jake. “We’ll hold vigil until you arrive.”

He hung up and Mason leaned toward Melanie. “Well, we had a video chat last night to just make sure you know everyone’s faces. Need a refresher, or are we all good?”

“I’m good.” Another nervous laugh. “I really appreciate this.”

Evander grinned. “Doll, it’s what we do. I’m so excited about this already, just from looking through your file.”

Bullshit. There was almost nothing worth paying attention to in the brief packet of information they’d gotten about her and her house. Mr. Honesty my ass. He could pretend all he wanted.

Chapter two

Evander

Once Bunny got downstairs, wearing pink overalls and a white T-shirt and handing out apologies left and right, they could all get started on the initial interview. Led by Mason. He always made such a good impression, had the charisma and likability hardcore in his column If Evander was pressed, he would have said Mason was probably the least essential part of the entire operation, but no one would ever press that. Least essential didn’t mean they could function without him. They’d tried that once back when they were doing the channel, and without Mason to wrangle them, the job took three times as long.

And he and Ozzy had broken up and gotten back together on no less than five occasions during that job. Two of them in the same day. That won’t be a problem now.

Mason shuffled his papers, but didn’t look at them, instead giving Melanie his full focus. “So we haven’t made it out to the house to look things over quite yet. You wanted to wait until the kids were off to school and your husband was off to work, right?”

“Yeah. I just figured it would be a little easier to get you and a whole camera crew in there without four kids running all over and Jack looking for his keys.” She smiled tightly. “But it should be okay once we’re done here.”

Mason nodded. “And you’re not looking for work on your actual house. This is getting the small outbuilding in the backyard set up for your parents?”

“Right. They’re getting older, and neither of them will say as much, but they’d really prefer to not live alone at this point. And I’d prefer it if I was around in case something happened.” She scratched the back of her hand as she spoke. “The problem is, it’s basically just a box sitting in the back yard. The idea was always for a mother-in-law apartment, but Jack’s parents live across the country and travel most of the year anyway. My parents never acted like they wanted to live with me until recently. So it’s kind of storage and half-finished and probably not suitable for anyone to live in.”

“That’s why we’re here.” Mason moved through a few pages. They all had the same paperwork and Evander couldn’t think of anything they had he would need to pull up. Probably just looked good for the camera. Or keeping up appearances so Melanie felt like they had more of a handle on their shit. The whole social thing was Mason’s department. Doubly so since Homescapes TV had taken over a lot of the tech stuff that he used to handle.

Once he arrived on whatever page it was, he smiled at Melanie again. “You gave us a little info on your parents, but you want this to be a surprise for them, right?”

Melanie nodded and she seemed to relax a little bit. “They’ve both dropped enough hints that I know they want to move in, but they won’t admit it. So if I spring it on them and make it into a big deal, it’ll give them permission to say yes.” She chuckled softly under her breath.

Evander forced his face to stay still. Otherwise, he would have rolled his eyes. A bunch of tricks and manipulation just so someone could feel comfortable doing a thing they already wanted to do? Stupid and a whole waste of time. They could have done a much better job on the house if they could have talked directly with Melanie’s parents.

Mason tapped a few spots on the paper. “So you said your dad loves gardening and your mom would really want a place to host guests, entertain, that kind of thing.”

“Right. I don’t want them to miss out on anything just because they’re on our property. They’ll have direct access to the backyard without having to go through the main house if they don’t want to.”

Mason looked over at Ozzy. “Think you can handle that?”

“I think I can handle landscaping and gardening, yes. That’s the whole reason I’m here.” He shook his head, then looked at Melanie. “Do you think it would be good to give your dad a place to start, or would he want to build up the garden all the way from scratch once he moves in?”

She scratched her hand a little more vigorously. “I don’t want to be insensitive, and maybe this part doesn’t get put into the edit of the show or whatever?” She glanced to Eliza with a laugh. “They’re both older. I don’t know how much time he would have to build a new garden up from scratch.” She shook her head rapidly, squeezing her eyes shut. “God, that sounds terrible.”

Bunny reached across and rested her hand on Melanie’s. “It’s not terrible. Just facing reality.”

Evander tuned out, waiting for some keyword that might draw his attention back in. Like his name, or somebody mentioning paint colors or something. It was a little early in the process for that, but those sorts of details could pop up anywhere. Instead, Evander looked around at the group, picking up vibes. Mason was his usual self. Bunny seemed normal too, in spite of her showing up late. Melanie was a visible wreck. She was going to wind up bleeding if she kept up her nervous scratching tic. Robinson and Aras were both quiet, though on opposite ends of the spectrum. Robinson seemed to be listening intently. Aras looked like he wanted to find the nearest window and jump through it to get out of the meeting. Jake was stuffing a donut into his mouth, smearing maple frosting on his knuckles and chin with no regard for anything. Evander smiled. At least Jake was always himself.

Ozzy tapped on his phone and Evander’s body tensed. He couldn’t even pretend to give his full attention? On the one hand, it was honest. Ozzy wasn’t trying to keep up pretenses. On the other hand, Evander had the self-control to just tune out, not turn straight to doomscrolling or whatever.

“Well, I think we’re at a point where we probably need to actually see what we’re working with.” Mason smiled and tapped all his papers on the tabletop, neatening them up. He looked over to Eliza. “We good?”

She nodded. “We’re good. Crew should be starting the setup as we speak. Not nearly as much for them to do without us around this time.”

I would hope not. The last place had been a hoarder house with a burned-out back deck, a collapsed fence, water damage, and a rotten front porch. The contractor crew that Homescapes had brought in spent a good amount of time on site just hauling garbage out to the giant bin out front.

The cameras flicked off and the crew started talking to Eliza. Vince, the director of photography, leaned in close to her, gesturing broadly around himself.

Ozzy walked by and Evander stuck himself right in front of his ex. “Anything good happening on your all-important social media, Oswald?” He knew Ozzy’s full name got under his skin. Evander couldn’t understand why. It was charming, and he could live up to a big name. Evander was just as big of a name.

As expected, Ozzy tensed. “Not any of your business what I do on social media, Ev. You want to put your nose somewhere it doesn’t belong, might I recommend shoving it up my ass?”

“Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.” Evander stepped aside. “Stay off your phone during consultations, yeah? Show a little respect for the clients.”

“I was taking notes for the job.” He strode past and flipped Evander the bird over his shoulder. “Jackass.”

Chapter three

Ozzy

Three Rivers may not have been Ozzy’s kind of town, but as they pulled up to the Trang house on the outskirts, he had to admit he was a little enamored. And also insanely curious what they did to make this kind of money. It was on easily a couple acres, with a huge lawn out in front of the house. Two stories, very sleek and modern, gray siding with maroon trim. What looked like a three-car garage sat to the right side of the structure, although the production trailers had set up in front of it, taking up a good amount of the space in front of the doors. The driveway was black and white gravel, and wide enough for two cars to pass each other on the way to and from the road. All notions of there not being enough space for the crew to set up vanished as their SUV pulled to the front and they all piled out.

Aras, of course, had something to say, although he did keep his voice low. “Are these the kind of people who need our help? I’m sure they could afford to hire a crew.”

Ozzy couldn’t disagree, but it also wasn’t their place to question the choices of clients. Not when they were getting the better part of ten-grand per episode to work on the show.

“Keep that talk to yourself.” Mason also kept his voice low, leaning in with one hand on Aras’s shoulder and one hand on Ozzy’s. “Client’s here. We’re not in the business of judging, yeah?”

Melanie walked to the front door. She unlocked it, then gestured them all in. “You can head on back through here, or go to the gate to the left, there.”

Everyone looked to Eliza. She bobbed her head side-to-side before answering. “Think they can just head around to the gate. We’ll get some pickup shots of the inside of the house. Should make good juxtaposition.”

Ozzy didn’t wait for anything else. He headed left, checking out the landscaping as he went. It wasn’t bad by any stretch. Lots of evergreens, gravel, and grass. All well-maintained. The white fence around the back yard was in good shape, and the latch didn’t squeak or catch as he flipped it to let them into the back yard.

Ozzy froze. Well fuck me.

Melanie chuckled softly behind him, then cleared her throat. “We let this area go a little bit.”

“You don’t say.” Ozzy whispered it, but if she heard it or the mic picked it up, oh well. What little grass he could see was mostly dead. Tumbleweeds had clearly blown up and over their nice fence and made a sea to wade through. A path had been cleared, leading to the other side of the yard where a crew was busy setting up. When he breathed in, Ozzy got a lungful of something rotten, like fruit had been left out and fermented. There were no fruit trees, from what he could tell.

The building they were actually supposed to be working in sat to the left of the gate, opposite the clearly neglected patio off the back of the main house. At some point, they’d be able to get there and take stock of the situation.

Ozzy sighed. “Looks like I’m pulling my weight for sure on this one.” He looked behind him at Eliza. “Can I have a chat with you about what this is going to need? So you can get the ball rolling.”

She nodded and gestured down the path carved into the tumbleweeds. While the others sort of meandered, vaguely making their way in the direction of the soon-to-be mother-in-law apartment, Ozzy kept up a good clip until they were separate from everyone, standing at the opposite end of the lawn, but as far away from the current crew as possible.

Then he raised an eyebrow. “No offense, but does this look to you like they’re pretending to need this outbuilding done so they can get their yard fixed up?”

She planted her hands on her hips. “No. It looks like some people who let things get out of hand and now they have a new motivation to try and get things done, but it’s a lot of work and they want some help.” She nodded, apparently agreeing with herself in his stead. “I know it’s a lot, but we got a contractor with great reviews on landscaping to come in for this. We saw the pictures and knew it was in bad shape. We’re playing the story up as a ‘look at the dark secret this family is hiding’ sort of scenario. It’ll be good TV.”

“I’m sure it will.” It was just a job and he shouldn’t care about need or anything like that. Even though he did, apparently. Even though he was suddenly firmly in Aras’s camp. “Make sure one of the crew is on hand to smack the crap out of me if I start complaining about how lazy and shallow this family is.”

“I’ll do it myself.” Eliza pointed toward the outbuilding. “Now stop making assumptions and go make TV. Put that brain to work on how to fix this.”

“Flamethrower.” When Eliza’s eyes widened and her jaw tightened, Ozzy held up his hands in front of his chest. “Not being a jackass with that one. I don’t know the ordnances in this area, but with this much vegetation to clear out, a propane torch is going to be our best bet. As long as we have access to water and fire extinguishers. Can’t give you a much better answer until I can see the whole canvas cleared off.”

She frowned, but nodded. “You done complaining?”

“No.” He grinned, and Eliza returned the expression, however tightly, so he headed back to join the rest of the group. They’d pushed through the weeds to the door of the outbuilding. Once Ozzy got close again so he was actually in the shot, Mason pushed the door open with his shoulder. It ground and slid, but they got it to open all the way up. Ozzy stayed back, since the interior wasn’t his deal, and instead looked at the outside of the structure. It seemed like it was probably built at the same time as the house. Had the same style, same siding and trim colors, and the windows seemed to match up. It stood a few feet away from the fence in the back, but the right wall was mostly a sliding glass door. He toed a few tumbleweeds aside and, sure enough, there was a concrete slab. A patio for this space, too.

In spite of his annoyance at the state of things—how the fuck were they taking such good care of the front yard and pretending the back was just fine?—the gears in Ozzy’s brain chunked forward, gathering up ideas. He’d need a lot more input to finalize them, but a start was better than nothing.

Chapter four

Evander

The interior was barebones as hell. The floor was covered in a thick layer of dust, which was especially bad since someone had made the bold decision to put carpet in there. The walls were all contractor white. Some of the windows still had protective plastic over them from the install.

Mostly, it was just crowded with a bunch of stuff. Neat stuff. Tidy stuff. Labeled stuff. But stuff that the Trangs pretty obviously weren’t using. It might have been a bit of an assumption in most cases, but several of the boxes had dates written on them in blocky permanent marker. They’d been there for a few years, and had the layer of dust to match.

The production crew was with them on this walk-through, of course, but they had carte blanche to make commentary as necessary during their first look. Eliza assured them that this part of the process would be done with voice-over, basically just to show off where they were starting. So Evander didn’t worry too much about being presentational when he spoke. “Need to check on the weatherproofing on this place. Some dust makes sense, but if people are going to be living here, want to make sure that’s up to snuff.”

“It’s already on my list,” said Bunny.

“Once we get things cleared out, I’ll make sure there are no gaps around the windows.” Jake craned his neck as if he was trying to see a gaping hole around the nearest window. He stumbled into the wall in the process, catching himself on his shoulder. He grinned back at Evander when he righted himself. “No gaps there, I think.”

Evander sighed and moved on. It wasn’t the easiest to piece together the space with so much stuff there, but he had plenty of experience mentally clearing out houses to get the lay of the land. The front door let out into an open concept living room and kitchen combo. A short hallway led to a bathroom, although there was no toilet or sink, only a combination tub and shower and some capped fixtures. Across from that was a bedroom packed with so many boxes and totes that it was notably hotter when he stepped into the tight corridor spaced between the boxes. Having so much stuff in a room, they would hold onto the heat more effectively.

The best feature of the basic house was definitely the sliding glass door that led outside. That would rely a lot on Ozzy and what he did with the space outside, but he was good at what he did. He’d make an outside space worthy of this kind of view and access, that much Evander knew for sure. He could also already see the struggle incoming. With such limited space, it only made sense to treat the patio space as an extension of the house. Evander could design a much better living area for Melanie’s parents with that extra space.

On the last job, Ozzy argued with him about the color of a door because it was outside, even though it was on a covered porch and attached to the house. A fully outdoor space…he wasn’t about to give up control easily.

Evander would have to be particularly annoying to get his way. Which wouldn’t hurt his feelings. A real excuse to give Ozzy a hard time? Wonderful.

Aras grumbled about the light fixtures—mostly the fact there were none, just capped wires and holes in the wall and ceiling—and Robinson frowned slightly when he looked at the bathroom, but it simply wasn’t a huge space, so it wasn’t long before they wrapped up. Melanie saw them inside, past the tumbleweeds and into the back door of the main house. As it closed behind them, the contractor’s crew buzzed back to work, collecting up the weeds into theoretically more manageable piles.

Melanie seated them all in a dining room with a high ceiling, next to the open concept, black and gray kitchen. “Coffee? Water? Snacks?” In her own home, she seemed a thousand times more relaxed, but Evander couldn’t miss the fact she seemed to move in a way that avoided looking out the back windows or the sliding glass door.

Once they were all beveraged up—from the sidelines, Eliza nixed the snacks to save the editors from unnecessary chewing sounds when they went through the audio—Melanie sat down. Back to the windows, of course.

Mason spread his papers out again, then flicked through to some blank sheets. “Okay. So clearly, there’s some outdoor work.”

Ozzy rolled his eyes. “I noticed that.”

Melanie sighed. “I know it looks pretty bad. It just got away from us. With Jack’s schedule and managing the kids, it went on the back burner. Nobody seemed to want to move into the house back there, so it was easy to just stop using the backyard. Then we had a rough year for wind. Then another rough year. Filled up with weeds and…” She spread her hands out, palms up. “Yeah.”

Mason nodded. “No judgment, all right? We’re here to help.”

That was a lie, but Evander let it stand. Clearly, there was judgment. Ozzy was openly judging. Evander was definitely judging, even if he knew better than to run his mouth. After a couple drinks, Mason would probably be more than happy to judge. Once the cameras and mics were off. He was charming, but catty as hell in private. Or maybe not? Haven’t hung out with him in private in a long time. Maybe he’s changed.

“This is going to be hard if we can’t talk to your parents about this.” Aras clicked his tongue. “No idea what style they actually want besides your dad gardening. Should we just be modeling it after this?” He gestured around at the house, but his movements were angular and harsh enough it seemed dismissive and annoyed. Which…yeah. That was Aras.

Melanie nodded. “I have plenty of pictures to show you their style and everything.”

Nobody jumped on that as a great option, but nobody said anything about it. So Evander spoke up instead. “I think we’d be in much better shape if we could actually see their place. Any way we could arrange something like that? Take them out to dinner or take them out of town for a day?” If he wasn’t being so willingly diplomatic for the cameras, he would have just told her there was no god damn way to get a house worth bothering with if they couldn’t spend at least some time and energy figuring out what her parents liked or needed.

“Soon, if possible.” It wasn’t quite Ozzy agreeing with him, but still surprising to hear him jump on the bandwagon with Evander like that. He nodded at his own suggestion, which irrationally annoyed Evander. But he said nothing and let Ozzy continue. “I’d like to get an in-person look at the landscaping your dad has too.”

“It’s a good idea,” said Mason. “Bunny, Jake, and I can probably stay here just fine to do what we need. The rest of you put together a cohesive design idea, bring it back, and that should get us a lot more comfortable with the renovation.”

Melanie nodded, then pulled out her phone. She tapped and flicked around on it. “Let’s see. I can probably…would it be enough time if I got something by Saturday? My folks are always up for a day trip up to Kalamazoo. I could take the kids and make it a whole thing. Give you my spare key.”

“I could stay busy until Saturday.” Ozzy stretched and groaned. “Going to be plenty of work in that back yard until then.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Mason rapped his knuckles on the table. “Sorry for the extra difficulties. We just want to do the best job we can for them. And get your yard in order.”

Chapter five

Ozzy

It wasn’t often that Ozzy had occasion to use a propane weed burner, but it was always way more fun in his head than it was in practice. He always forgot the annoyance of hauling around the propane tank, the blowback from the ash filling his nose and eyes, and the heat. Somehow, the heat of the fire always escaped his memory. The main thing about fire.

But after he jumped so hard on the chance to be the one to use it to clear out the sea of tumbleweeds, he wasn’t going to bitch out and pass it off to someone else. So even as he was pretty sure he lost part of his eyebrows, he kept on. And in his defense, he had been right when he told Eliza this was the solution. They had to devote three of the contracting crew to stand on safety duty, two armed with hoses and one with a fire extinguisher, and they’d already soaked down the fences and the bare spots on the ground from raking up the weeds, but the fire made quick work, snaking through the skeletal jumble.

Still, after almost two hours, Ozzy was ready for an actual break. Which wasn’t normal for him at all. He sat in one of the neglected Adirondack chairs on the back patio and took in the state of the yard around him. Without the tumbleweeds…it still looked bad. Really bad. The char and ash didn’t help, but even taking that aside, there was so little grass, now also largely blackened, and so many swaths of exposed soil, it looked like an abandoned property. It still got under Ozzy’s skin. It got away from them or whatever their excuse was. They could have taken care of this.

He sucked in a harsh breath, then pushed himself to his feet. There was no point in getting annoyed about it. Even though, after helping Quinn out of a bad house situation with the first job—his grandfather had been a hoarder and left the property in a state of disrepair—this felt like a waste of their efforts. But if he kept up that line of thinking, it would impact the work. He didn’t want this to impact his reputation or his results. Moving around and doing something, even if he was tired and it was stupid busy work, would help distract him.

He headed for the outbuilding where the crew was working on the basics. They’d gotten a box truck and pulled it as close to the side gate as they could manage. With Melanie’s direction, they lugged boxes and totes out of the house-to-be. Most of them went to the truck, but she seemed to have at least some idea what was in all of them, since she directed a few of them toward the house without actually opening anything up.

“Oswald.”

Ozzy’s back tightened at the voice and the name. Only one person called him by his full name. Even his parents shortened it up, and they, frankly, sucked. Not Evander, though. He insisted, even when they were dating. And I didn’t see that as a red flag. When they’d be in the on-again parts of their on-again, off-again relationship, it had been cute and charming in a way. A fun bit of needling.

He turned and saw Evander standing in the sliding glass doorway of the outbuilding. He smiled tightly. Ozzy knew that expression. He wanted something. But of course he did. He didn’t tend to single Ozzy out anymore if he didn’t want something.

But they were on a job and on camera. He wasn’t going to completely ignore his fellow host, even as the urge to walk away washed over him. “Evander. Can I help you?”

He walked over, hands held up in front of his chest. “Don’t be mad. I just want to have this conversation now instead of a big fight about it later. I know how territorial you can get on the job site.”

“And I know how vague and annoying you can get when you’re trying to be supplicating. Considering how much you harp on about honesty, seems like you don’t want to spit out what it is you want to say.”

“It’s not dishonest to engage in some diplomacy.”

Ozzy snorted. “I pretty distinctly remember you refusing diplomacy when I asked you not to stir shit up with my parents.” And on several other occasions.

“Your parents are rich assholes and they suck gnarly old balls. If they didn’t want to be snarked at, they shouldn’t have made themselves such ample targets. Also, you got drunk and told me it was brilliant one night.”

He had. Because it was. It was horrifying, having Evander lay out to them why all of their political and socioeconomic policies were kind of evil. But it was all shit Ozzy had told him about in the first place, so he couldn’t very well pretend any of it was off-base. Plus, it limited the amount of times he had to go for dinner parties with his parents, at least while he and Evander were in an on-again stage. Cut down on a lot of awkward conversations and offers to hook him up with some woman they thought was more appropriate for him.

Evander sighed and shook his head. “Fine. I’ll be direct.” He spread his arms out to the sides. “The patio space they have here. It makes sense for this to be part of my purview on this job. They’re going to have so little space—”

“No.”

Ozzy walked away, but a hand landed on his shoulder. He turned and Evander frowned, eyes bright. “Oswald, you’re being ridiculous.”

“If you can tell me how to set up proper drainage and make sure the lighting and electrical are all safe, and how to do outdoor plumbing, and what kind of plants to put in—”

“Oh, cut the bullshit. We’re part of a team. We don’t all know everything. That’s why we don’t each have our own show.”

“I do landscaping. This is part of the landscaping.”

“Yeah. And one of the only things we know for sure is that the dad likes gardening and caring for plants and shit. Oh, and that the mom wants an entertaining space.” He spread his arms again. “It makes sense for me to take the lead on this so it’s usable.”

Ozzy scoffed. “Right. I don’t know how to make a usable outdoor space. By the way, how’s that gazebo I built for you?”

“That you built.” Evander’s face darkened a little as the blood rushed up and he balled his fists. “I couldn’t get out of bed for two days because I was hauling lumber for your little pet project—”

“Well if you don’t appreciate it, I can come light it the fuck on fire!” Ozzy’s voice carried and he cringed as many pairs of eyes landed on him. Including Melanie’s. He didn’t need to be the focal point of another fight. “We can talk about this later. Good luck changing my mind away from objective reality, though.”

He strode off to grab some boxes before Evander could keep the conversation going. But like hell he was going to let Evander swoop in and take over the biggest, most important part of the backyard. They had their own territory marked out, and that was plainly in Ozzy’s wheelhouse.

Chapter six

Evander

Even though they couldn’t make any solid plans without seeing Melanie’s parents’ house and getting an idea of their style, Evander still sketched and brainstormed out every night when he got back to the hotel. So he carried his journal full of ideas as they drove through Three Rivers proper to reach their home. Aras and Robinson were in the back seat of the SUV with him, and Ozzy was in the front, with all the leg room he could possibly need. Going to have to relegate him to the back when we head out.

Her parents didn’t actually live in Three Rivers, but it wasn’t too far. They lived in a somehow even smaller town. Not a town, actually, if the internet could be believed. A village called Burr Oak, about half an hour away. So it still wasn’t too long before they pulled up in front of a small cottage-style home in the middle of town. It looked like it had seen better days, the white paint peeling up to reveal grayed, damaged wood siding, and the pink trim faded almost completely. However, if there were any doubts at all they’d arrived at the correct house, the bushes and trees spilling out over the short, chain link fence banished them. Evander didn’t recognize a single one of them, but the leaves were all healthy and full, in deep shades of green and red and umber.

Maybe most important for their current mission, none of the neighbors were too close. Hard to have a surprise in a town with a population less than one-thousand if everybody was living on top of each other.

As they climbed out, Ozzy whistled low, hands on his hips. “God damn. I’ve got my work cut out for me to keep up with this.” Even as he said it, a smile pulled at his lips.

In spite of himself, Evander’s chest fluttered and buoyed. The passion was never the problem with them, and that expression was Ozzy fully engrossed in the landscaping. There was never a time he was sexier than when he gave something his all.

He just didn’t do it enough. Too closed-off, too careful, too worried. He put up one too many walls and Evander just got tired of cracking through them, but in moments like that, it was easy to recall exactly why they worked.

When they did work.

Evander snapped himself from his thoughts and let the single cameraman get into position. There’d been a little back-and-forth about the process. Evander was firmly on the side of ‘it’s weird to film in someone’s house without their permission,’ along with Melanie, but they’d landed on a single camera and the caveat that, after the surprise was all done and over with, they’d talk with her parents and get their permission to use the footage.

Once they got a nod from the cameraman, they all headed in. Like the actual house walk-through, this would be covered in voice over, so everyone seemed as relaxed as they could be, going into someone’s house without explicit permission.

As Ozzy slid the key into the lock, a throat cleared from the back of the crowd. They all turned to see Robinson, red in the face and scrubbing up and down, from his jaw to his temples and back again. “I’m sorry, guys. I thought I’d be cool with this. It’s just…a lot more than I thought.” He reached into his pocket to pull out his phone, fumbled it, and barely caught it before it crashed against the ground. Then he handed it up to Aras. “Take so many pictures of the fixtures, and all the angles you can of any bathrooms. This just…sorry.”

Ozzy sighed. “Drop the drama. No one’s mad at you for dipping.” He turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open, then stepped back. “Why do you think I’m not going in? Let them get weird about it. You can chill with me in the yard.”

Evander rolled his eyes. Ozzy couldn’t just be real about this shit. He had to couch everything in that stupid veneer of edgy douchebag. Another wall, which made it a lot easier for Evander to nudge past him and forget that passionate look that had crossed his face not a minute or two earlier. “Have fun with your grass, Oswald.”

Then he and Aras headed in, along with the cameraman. Ozzy grumbled something, but Evander was already walking into the house, stepping carefully so as not to disturb anything. The polite word would be ‘maximalist’ to describe their decor. It worked for Evander just fine. He loved his stuff and patterns and bright colors. The details were a little dated, with far too many lace doilies and weird tchotchkes with giant creepy eyes, but it was better than the minimalist hellscapes that used to festoon every town in America. So few people had the means or the wherewithal to make minimalism actually work, yet everybody wanted to try it out.

Aras left Evander alone almost immediately. They crossed paths here and there—it was a two-bedroom, one-bath house without much of a footprint—but mostly, they were on their own. Evander almost felt bad for the camera guy, trying to capture anything useful with them split up. Almost. They were still traipsing around someone else’s house and, in spite of his flippant responses to Ozzy, it felt weird.

He pulled out his journal as he walked, making notes on a clean page and dogearing pages that had designs he would need to axe. The maximalism was key. He wasn’t sure he could bring himself to go quite so old-fashioned, but he would make sure to leave ample room for them to fill in.

Mostly, he wanted to pull in the colors. They were more muted than what he used in his house, lots of pastels and washes. He pulled out his phone and started snapping photos. He’d confer with Melanie to find out if there were any major pieces she knew they would want to keep. Couches, chairs, that sort of thing. The TV was…well, he was sure no one would complain about them getting a new TV handed to them, even if the Trangs could clearly afford to furnish one themselves.

He didn’t linger in the master bedroom, but did make sure to get several detailed pictures of an embroidered quilt stretched across the bed. It was stunning. Black with gold and red stitching, showing off a peacock on a branch of delicate flowers. He wasn’t sure what to make of it, or if it could somehow be woven into the future design, but anything that captured his attention so completely, he couldn’t just leave alone.

All-in, it took them about half an hour to tour the little cottage. The biggest things, at least for Evander, were the large windows showing off all the plants around the house, as well as the well-appointed patio in the back. Clearly, they were big on using the outdoor space, and on connecting the two. Which was ammunition for Evander’s argument.

As Aras and Evander headed out, they saw Robinson leaning against the SUV. Alone. Evander waved at him. “Oswald run away?”

“Looking at some…I don’t know what kind of rose bush. Big. Around the back. Kind of shitting himself over it.”

Aras waved his hand through the air and headed for the SUV to stand with Robinson. “Go fetch him if you want. I’m not paid enough to listen to him prattle on about flowers.”

“I’m immune to the prattling, so I’ll take the bullet.” Evander bowed to them, then flounced off around the corner of the house. “Oh Oswald. We’re all done inside. You and I still need to have a talk about the patio space.”

Around the second corner and he saw Ozzy, gently running his fingers along the petals of a pale pink and yellow rose. It was easily the size of his entire hand, and there were similar blooms all over. Based on Evander’s mental map of the area, these rose bushes would have been along the side of the patio, hemming it in for privacy.

Ozzy lifted the blossom to his nose and inhaled deeply, a smile spreading across his face, and once again, Evander remembered all the good shit about him. All the passion. All the reasons they worked so well and got so fiery.

He walked up and rested his hand on Ozzy’s shoulder, keeping his voice low. “You need more time to commune with nature?”

“No.” Ozzy was still smiling as he turned around, fixing bright, wide eyes on Evander. “He’s maintained these roses very well. Peace roses, Barbara Bush roses, Grand Dames. The man’s not afraid of pink, which I appreciate. It’s a shame to leave these here after all the hard work he must have put into them.” His smile faded and his back stiffened. “Guess that’s the job, though. Rich motherfuckers always feel like they know what’s best, even if it means leaving your dad’s life’s work in the hands of some nimrod who buys this house just to tear it down.”

Evander shook his head, then stepped away. “Come on. Let’s get going.” It was a touch heartwarming to hear him so concerned about the plants and the work that Melanie’s dad had put into the gardening, but of course he shut it down and pulled on that damned veneer again. “We have a patio to discuss, still.”

“There’s no discussing it, Ev. “He walked side-by-side with Evander, back around the corners of the house. “The outdoor area is mine to deal with.”

“We’ll see.” It felt almost like they were normal together again. Standard couple needling and sniping.

Which almost made Evander stumble over his own feet. Is that even something I want?

Chapter seven

Ozzy

It was nice being able to meet up in the house, Ozzy had to admit. They didn’t have to use up so much time traveling, which meant more time to get work done. Especially considering they’d had to come late after everything that went down in Springfield, the extra time buffer was nice. Also, much as it ground against him a bit, the Trang house was pretty nice. Even with the extra bodies around. It was the weekend, so the entire family was there. Four kids and the husband, but they mostly stayed upstairs. Not like they were being impolite or anything. Any time they came downstairs, they were all nice enough. The kids were teenagers, so it wasn’t like they were desperate to talk with a bunch of strange men. Her husband, Jack, offered to help any time he was in earshot, and Ozzy made note of his eagerness.

It would do his heart a little good to break the man a bit. Make him get out there and fix up his own yard. Something his family certainly would never have done. They had the money and they used it to ensure their property stayed in good shape at all times. Even though Ozzy was a professional landscaper. Even though they had passive income out the ass and hence had the time and energy to do it on their own—

Ozzy stopped the train of thoughts before it derailed and lit his whole brain on fire. None of his personal bullshit mattered. Everyone was gathered around the dining room table, including Melanie and three different cameras. Vince was there as well, positioning and repositioning them. Apparently the lighting was weird with all the windows or something. Ozzy wasn’t paying much attention to any of that. Vince got paid the big bucks to handle all that, and even when they were working on the Pine Point Fixer-Uppers channel, Ozzy was banned from touching the cameras. Not his wheelhouse at all and it always led to bad results, up to and including him apparently somehow deleting an entire day’s worth of footage, which sent Mason into the bottom of a bottle of rum.

Once they got dual nods from Vince and Eliza, Mason sat up a little higher and nodded to Melanie. “This is a little bit of a weird situation, given everything we had to do to keep the surprise, so you’ll have to work with me a little.”

“Of course. Thanks for working with me.” She chuckled softly. “I know I’m being difficult with all this.”

“Not at all.” Mason was a dirty liar. She was definitely being difficult about this. Hope the surprise factor is worth it.

Mason tapped a few keys, then turned his laptop around to face Melanie. “We use this as a way to help get the best possible idea of what our clients are looking for. Usually, we’d do it whole cloth, but this time, we went through as a team and selected a few things that we were pretty sure belonged after looking at your parents’ place.”

Which had been a protracted ordeal. They’d gone back and forth on how much they should leave up to Melanie and how much they should fill in, whether a certain light fixture was important enough to be considered indicative of their style or if it just fit into the milieu of their various decorations. That was Ozzy’s vote, and luckily they landed collectively on that, in spite of Jake’s insistence that no one would use an art deco horse lamp without it being significant to their taste.

The only things Ozzy had really insisted on for the landscaping section of their design app were the flowering bushes—he had roses in mind, of course—and a lovely, enclosed entertaining space. The patio at their house was mostly hemmed in by bushes and vines, with a pergola over the top to support some outdoor lighting. It was hard to translate all of that directly to the app—it was made for people to pick from a selection to help with defining their tastes, not to fit pre-existing information in—but they’d all done the best they could.

Melanie blinked a couple times looking at the screen, then shook her head. “This is intense.”

“There’s no pressure,” Mason assured her. “There’s a lot to it, but it’s just to make sure we’re giving you the best result we possibly can.”

Ozzy let his attention wander as Mason filled her in on the specifics, and Melanie eventually started clicking around on the app. Ozzy hadn’t gone into the parents’ house, but from what he’d seen in photographs, the Trangs didn’t furnish their home in anywhere close to the same style. The landscaping clearly wasn’t on the same level either. A single rose bush in the back yard would probably send them all into convulsions.

Outside, the basic landscaping work continued. In Ozzy’s opinion, at least half of it was busy work. Did they really need to clean the patios and the fences? They were just going to fucking get dirty again when they dug up the ground and brought in the sod and all of that. Hell, the actual useful work they were doing out there, tearing up the dead grass and leveling the ground, was actively spraying dirt and muck everywhere that they’d just have to clean up again. Around the actual outbuilding, they seemed to be doing a little more meaningful work. Sweeping, opening windows, pulling up carpet—everyone agreed on that, and Melanie signed off on it before they started—and all that basic preparatory work.

The crew around the table seemed mostly turned off like Ozzy was. Robinson was staring around at the house just like Ozzy was, although when he caught Ozzy’s eye, he smiled and nodded before going back to his wandering gaze. Aras was scribbling something down in a notebook, scowling, crossing things out, then scribbling more. Ozzy tried to crane his neck to see what Aras was actually writing, but it got him his own scowl in return, and Aras shifted so his arm halfway blocked the notebook.

Bunny and Mason were both in conversation with Melanie as she continued going through the design app. Jake had gotten up and somehow found himself in conversation with the Trangs’ oldest son, a lanky teen with a buzz cut. Ozzy was a little surprised to see the two of them laughing together—he remembered being a teen and would never have been caught dead doing something so thoroughly uncool as having a real conversation with an adult—but they were too far away for him to hear what was so damn funny.

Evander was buried in his phone, mouth slightly open so Ozzy could see his teeth and his tongue. When Evander slipped his tongue out across his lips, Ozzy’s crotch pulsed. Against his will. It doesn’t mean anything. Not like the two of them ever had physical issues. Far from it. Hell, half the value of getting into so many fights was the absolutely wild animal sex they got to have when they made up. When he was all alone and really horned up, he still turned back to the day-long fuck session they’d had after Ozzy apologized for dipping out on the movie marathon they’d planned. It still seemed like a stupid thing to get so upset over, in Ozzy’s opinion, but Ev had been righteously angry over it.

And once they were on even footing again, he took all that anger out on Ozzy’s ass. A deep, rough fuck. When he got exhausted, he bottomed, and they kept it up all day until neither of them could even shoot a load.

And then Evander had put on the first movie in the series they were supposed to watch in the first place and told Ozzy to order some pizza. They hung out naked and, in spite of Ozzy’s initial reservations, Body of Hatred was some schlocky good fun to watch. Gory-ass horror with halfway decent monster makeup. He wasn’t convinced there needed to be eight of them, but in that sex-glazed fugue, munching on pizza, they’d been pretty entertaining.

His cock throbbed and brought him back to the present, where Evander had locked eyes on him. Ozzy cleared his throat. “You staring for a reason?”

“You tell me, Oswald. Not that I can stop you from checking me out, but maybe close your jaw when you do? Don’t need you drooling on Melanie’s nice table.”

Before Ozzy could snipe back, Mason’s voice cut through. “All right. Let’s compile this together.”

“While we’re waiting, I wanted to run something by you.” Evander turned his attention and his full smile onto Melanie. “I think this’ll be a good idea.”

Chapter eight

Evander

He knew it wasn’t the most diplomatic choice, but putting everything out in the open was Evander’s best bet. The patio space was so important. This was the right call for Melanie’s mom and dad, giving them a nice, usable space. Which was true, but if he had to take some truth serum or something, he’d also have to admit that he wanted one up on Ozzy. Especially after catching him with that goofy, cum-brained look on his face. It was the one he’d always given Evander when they were about to have the best sex of the entire month. Which was saying something. Ozzy was good in the sack.

Plus I’ve never had any complaints.

That wasn’t a fruitful path, so he refocused totally on Melanie instead of his memories of Ozzy. “I was thinking about that patio. It’s perfect for your mom’s entertaining space that she would want, at least when it’s not the dead of winter. Looks like it’s set up like that at their place now?”

Melanie nodded. “Yeah. Even before they downsized. We were the neighborhood barbecue family.”

Evander nodded, smiling wider. “And I know your dad is going to take amazing care of the yard and all the plants out there. I was wondering what you thought about basically…including that patio as another room. Totally decorate it out, make it an extension of the house instead of an outdoor little spit of nothing.”

“It’s not going to be a spit of nothing.” Ozzy stood up, hands on the table. “Evander. I think we need to have a little talk about this.”

“I don’t see why we can’t talk about this now. I just want what’s best for this house.”

“So do I. But I don’t appreciate the implication that I would somehow neglect the patio space.”

“I hope I didn’t make that implication. I just figure, since designing living spaces is my specialty, I should probably take a pretty large role in that patio. As long as Melanie thinks that’s the kind of space her parents would actually use.”

Melanie nodded. “Absolutely. If you think you can integrate it that well.”

“I definitely can.” Evander smiled at her, pointedly not looking at Ozzy as he spoke. “It’ll be like the house is just flowing right outside. Ozzy will be a great help.”

“I don’t mean to nitpick, but I don’t know that you have all the experience necessary to totally kit out an outdoor space.” Ozzy still hadn’t sat back down, and the tension in his voice gave away his frustration. At least to Evander, who knew him that well.

Evander sighed, putting on his best airs of innocence. “That’s why you’re going to be such a valuable resource in helping me out, Oswald. Couldn’t even attempt to do this without your advice.”

Ozzy’s face tightened. “We’ll talk later. To hash out the details.”

“Of course. Once we get through all this, see the final results of the design app.”

Ozzy said nothing else, finally sitting back down, but he was still staring at Evander. No more slack-jawed horny expression, either. Glaring may have been a more accurate word, but Evander stopped giving him any attention. He had everyone else on board, in public, on camera. Ozzy couldn’t do anything about that.

In the end, it didn’t look like Melanie had made too many changes when the final mood board generated. It was only the second time they’d gotten to use the all new, redesigned app, and it functioned mostly the same way as Mason’s original from all those years ago, taking all the design choices a client made and compiling them together, but he had to admit it was a step up in polish. Melanie had kept the style maximalist instead of trying to conform it to her own design sensibilities, which led to the template throwing her other choices into windows of all different shapes and sizes. Stars, hearts, squares, triangles. The colors it showed were a bit more saturated than Evander had in mind, but not outside the realm of reasonability.

The furniture designs were simple, which Jake would probably be happy for. The lighting and plumbing fixtures were just what they’d seen in her parents’ house. Or at least, as close as could be spat out by the app. The landscaping as well. The only real changes that stood out as Evander craned to see the screen were in the finishes. The house they’d toured was mostly wood and fake stone, with some very basic fabrics in the mix, save for that quilt Evander had snapped pictures of.

What Melanie picked was all across the board. Exciting, to be sure, but all different finishes of metal in all different colors, mostly dark woods, but with a couple toward the paler end. Stone and laminate and tile. Ribbed fabrics and fake leather and silk. It was a mishmash if ever Evander had seen one, and while it was definitely going to provide enough options…he had to speak up. A little. “I like the direction this is going, but is there anything in the various finishes that really stands out?” He gestured…sort of all over the screen, but tried to keep it where clusters of wood or metal were displayed. “Just one or two to hang the rest of the design on so we know which of these should really get the most focus.”

“I’m sure you can figure it out.” Ozzy came up behind him, somehow unnoticed, and clapped a hand down on Evander’s shoulder. Hard. “You’re great at this. If Melanie thinks of anything, she’ll let us know.” He gave another hard clap, then took his hand away. “I mean, if I can see a perfectly reasonable design, I’m sure you have a ton going on. Of course, if you’re not able to—”

“Oh, it’s not about my ability Oswald.” He smiled, but didn’t actually turn full-on to face Ozzy, instead offering most of his attention to Melanie as his shoulder throbbed. “When it comes to the kind of design work I do versus what you do, it’s just better to give people some more choice in the matter. I know your landscaping doesn’t need as much knowledge.” That had been a snipe if he’d ever uttered one, but that hit on the shoulder stung. Plus, it was true. At least in this case. Evander was at a bit of a loss with how to actually structure the design. Freedom was good, but creativity needed borders to really thrive.

“Well, if we’re all finished for now?” Mason inserted himself between the two of them, turning the laptop back to face his now empty chair. He smiled at Melanie. “If you don’t mind, I think we’re going to head back to the hotel. Have to work on some of these designs in private so we have something to surprise you with when we start kicking ass tomorrow.”

“All right.” She darted her eyes back and forth between Ozzy and Evander a couple times, then nodded to Mason. “Are you sure you have to go all the way back out there? I know it’s probably a hassle.”

They continued to hash it out, but new pressure appeared on Evander’s sore shoulder. He looked behind him and saw Ozzy, no hint of a smile. He jerked his head toward the back door, sending his bangs flying for a second. “Let’s go have that talk.”

The growl in his voice was clearly frustration, but it hearkened back through Evander’s memories. All of Ozzy’s frustration sounded the same, whether it was with some annoying client or with the job…or because he had blue balls and needed a hardcore bang session. It was the growl that he had when they would come back home after a tough job and just needed to unload.

And in spite of himself, it thrummed through Evander and quaked his knees. He straightened up immediately, but wasn’t sure he got quite the same level of condescending sweetness in his voice as he intended. “I think we should talk back at the hotel, don’t you? I know you and your temper. Melanie will hear when you can’t face a reasonable argument.”

He snorted, but nodded, then moved clear to the other side of the room. And once more, in spite of himself, Evander caught his gaze wandering down to Ozzy’s ass. Even in grungy old work jeans, he had a good ass.

Not an ass I need. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, like he could make the unbidden thoughts fly out of his ears. They broke up for a good reason, after all. A dozen good reasons.

Even if none of them presented themselves as Evander checked him out.

Chapter nine

Ozzy

As soon as the elevator opened up, Ozzy moved himself in front of Evander, blocking his path for a second as the others filed out to their hotel rooms. Bunny was the only one who didn’t take the hint, staying close as Evander eventually walked out with a sigh and a stretch.

She raised an eyebrow. “What is going on with this dick-measuring contest between you two?”

Ozzy shrugged. “Evander seems to have forgotten that I’ve got an inch on him.”

“Yeah, Ozzy’s memory is bad. So we need to go measure.”

Ozzy hated how much fire that rose up in his belly, just thinking about actually whipping their dicks out together. In his hotel room. Alone.

Bunny, thankfully, didn’t press too much. “Just don’t murder each other during your talk or measuring or whatever. I still like both of you.”

She walked off and Ozzy gestured around the corner the opposite way. “My room’s here.”

“Oh, so this is on your home turf? Seems unfair.”

Little shit. “I don’t care where we do it. I just want to hash this out before it becomes a problem.”

Evander shrugged, then followed along as Ozzy led the way. The rooms here weren’t anything crazy, and definitely hadn’t been redesigned since at least the early two-thousands—even Ozzy’s untrained eye could make out that much—but the bed was comfortable and the air conditioning kept the temps down nice and cold, like Ozzy liked them.

Made it a great place to have an argument, since he was about to break a sweat and get all kinds of pissed off, if he knew anything about Evander.

As soon as he shut the door, Ozzy grabbed Ev’s shoulder and guided him to the flimsy office chair at the desk in the corner. With a shove, he knocked Evander into it, sending him rolling back. Not much, but enough that Ozzy could take him in. “All right, cut the crap. What is this all about, Evander? And what’s it going to take for you to get off my balls?”

“I got off your balls a long time ago, Oswald.” Evander crossed his ankles and grinned up at Ozzy. “And I’m not doing anything. I’m trying to make the best house possible for Melanie’s parents. I need the extra entertaining space the patio offers if I’m going to do that. Unless you think her mother is just supposed to host her meetings of the Ladies’ Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society in that cramped little outbuilding, or beg her daughter to let her in to use the house every time she wants to have guests.”

Ozzy rolled all that around in his head, but the question that came out was…it felt important, but not useful. “Ladies’ Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society?”

“My grandma had some pins and shit from it. Pacific Northwest feminist organization. You should bone up on your local history.”

Ozzy rolled his eyes. “What makes you think that you should have carte blanche with any of the outdoor space, if I can be so bold?”

“Oh, you can be as bold as you like.” Evander rose smoothly and strode, closing the distance in a couple steps. He was right up against Ozzy, less than an inch between them, and although Ozzy had a slight height advantage, it didn’t seem to chill Ev out in the least. Not that he’d ever been intimidated by Ozzy. “It doesn’t change the truth: it makes sense to use that patio as a living space.”

“And you won’t hear any argument from me. But you’re not going to encroach on my territory again without a fight.”

“Oh, Oswald. You and your ego.”

Ozzy gripped his shoulders and shoved him a step back as his ire rose, hot and acid. “This isn’t ego.”

“Yes it is. You want the entire outdoor space to yourself even when it doesn’t make sense or make a damn bit of difference. You have some notion that I’m against you.”

“You are against me. Don’t piss on my face and tell me it’s raining.”

“I think the phrase is boots. Unless you’re propositioning me with a new kink. The answer would be no, since we’re not dating, but I would retract my correction if you meant it that way.” He sighed. “Listen, I would love to play this game with you, but we do have to figure something out for this job. You think you can put your big boy pants on and actually talk this through?”

“You think you can stop being a condescending asshole and actually be honest with me?”

Evander’s face tightened, just like Ozzy knew it would. He hated when anyone called him out on his honesty crap. But if he wasn’t willing to admit this was stupid, petty bullshit, Ozzy wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

Evander backed off and sat on the foot of Ozzy’s bed. “Don’t accuse me of lying.”

“Then be honest: you’re being unreasonable because you’re still bitter about the breakup.”

“I could say the same about you.”

Yeah, you could. Ozzy wasn’t unaware. When they were a couple, he probably would have let it go. Even though the landscaping was his area and Evander didn’t know what he was doing and there was zero point to sacrificing this—

Ozzy closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. When he opened his eyes, Evander’s brows had knit together as he looked up at Ozzy. It was a familiar look, one of concern. Used to precede him checking in, and almost always when Ozzy was actually in his own head. Or up on his own ass on a few occasions.

A familiar warmth filled Ozzy’s chest, followed by a rise of panic. He needed to cut this off, just in case Evander did decide to follow that expression of concern up with that old check-in. They did not work well together, and this was not the time to give it another experiment. That urge was way too prevalent in that moment.

As Evander opened his mouth to say something, Ozzy shouted over him. “All right, compromise.”

Evander’s brows unknitted, but he frowned. An exaggerated one, clearly fake. “You must be pretty sick if you’re willing to compromise.”

“You’re right. I’m being ridiculous. You can get bent.”

“All right, I’ll shut up.”

“Do you know how?”

Evander rolled his eyes. “What’s the compromise?”

Ozzy sighed and considered pulling out of the offer entirely. Homescapes could pass judgment. But he really didn’t need that reputation, and it wasn’t like this would be the first time he and Evander had worked in conjunction. Just the first time when they weren’t dating. “Design it together. You really want it to be the best possible space for them, it makes sense to have the both of us in there instead of just you.”

“I’m sure you mean instead of just one of us.”

“Whatever you need to believe.”

Evander looked him up and down, a sparkle in his eye. “Can I state the obvious first?”

“Since when do you want my permission to say something?”

He shook his head. “In spite of whatever concept of me you have, I’m not…” He closed his eyes. When he opened them back up, that spark was back, and he was wearing a real frown. Slight, but familiar to Ozzy as a genuine expression. Something was actually on his mind.

“You and I are historically bad at not winding up giving this relationship another go. Can we really work together any kind of closely and…not to say that I hated our time together or whatever, but—”

“Keep calling me by my full name and be as sanctimonious as possible.” Even Ozzy heard how unnecessarily snide that was, so he tacked on, “I’ll be an insufferable prick and stomp around like I hate everything.”

“How is that any different than when we were dating?”

Ozzy shook his head. “Don’t make me regret this, you little shit. I’m still not happy you forced my hand on this.”

It took a few moments before Evander responded. “All right. We can be reasonable.” He extended his hand. “We’ll work on it together. I bet the TV folks will absolutely shit at the chance to show how we can still do a good damn job in spite of the breakup.”

“Or I’ll end up mounting your head on a stake and call it a yard decoration.”

Evander shrugged, keeping his hand out. “That’s more effort than the Trangs put into their back yard, so probably still an improvement.”

Ozzy couldn’t help but smile at that. He took Evander’s hand, and that smile faded. An actually shock passed between them, ending the handshake early. Fucking sparks. Like the universe hadn’t figured out not to bother.

Chapter ten

Evander

“You’re sure this is a great idea?” Bunny was in there priming the walls with Evander, and he’d filled her in on the clandestine deal.

“I’m not. But Oswald is good at his job, and so am I. It’s better than the alternative, where we scream at each other for the next three weeks and get a substandard product out at the end.”

“Sounds great on paper.” She finished rolling over the wall at the back of the bedroom, skirting just along the edges of the painter’s tape around the window. “Get back to me when you’re rolling on the grass and screaming at each other.”

“We never get physical.” At least, not the way Bunny was suggesting. Evander’s mind slipped back to that intimate hotel room negotiation. It had taken everything in him not to run his hands up Ozzy’s shirt and whisper suggestions back and forth. They had a history of being very hotheaded with each other, but there were plenty of times they were more than reasonable as well. Evander sighed and planted the butt of his roller against the floor. “Besides, there’s no grass out here to roll on. Anything like that would have to wait until they can get the sod down, which is apparently going to take, like, a week more? For some reason?” Much easier to ignore the heat between himself and Ozzy when he was complaining. Even about stupid shit. “Honestly, he wants total control of the back yard and can’t even put the yard part in?”

“He’s laying out everything, and talking with the Trangs about how much time they’re willing to put toward maintenance.” She rolled up some more paint, then shrugged. “Last I heard about it, anyway. Made sense to me.”

It did. It made sense when he explained it to Evander at a tense little tête-à-tête that same morning. Evander had plenty to do to keep himself busy in the interim, too, but he needed that crutch of sniping and backbiting.

Especially when he could see Ozzy lugging bags of topsoil around in those damn overalls with nothing underneath. Well, probably underwear, but no top. Just rippling muscles and sun-bronzed skin.

Ev couldn’t find a proper reason to complain about that, so he moved his attention to the house. To the windows in the bedroom. “You can tell they didn’t think about this for a second. That’s definitely the view I want every time I wake up: fence on one side, slightly more distant fence on the other.” He gestured to the one with the worst view, the back wall with barely a footpath between it and the fence. “This could at least be short enough for them to see something.”

Bunny laughed out loud. “Jesus, Evander. I can’t recall a project where you didn’t want to redesign the entire thing.”

“Not the entire thing. But come on, you have to admit this placement is tragic.” He gestured vaguely toward the door of the bedroom. “If this had been on that side, they could have at least seen the biggest part of the yard. Could have done a sliding glass door from the bedroom out to a second, private little patio. Or done a big door along the whole wall—all right, I’m starting to hear it.” He slid his roller back through the tray, picking up more primer, and grinned at Bunny. “You can’t honestly tell me I’m wrong, though.”

“I’m not sold on a wall-sized door connecting the bedroom and living room to the outside. But the rest, sure. It would be nice.” She smiled back over her shoulder. “Where’s the challenge if everything works out exactly like we want?”

“I’m a gay Hispanic interior designer from a small town. I’ve had enough challenges. My life goal is to live as much of my life reclining as possible. Like that romance author. Barbara Cartland.” He threw his arms wide and sighed, putting on a big, fake smile to drive it home. “She wrote seventy-five billion novels or something. All dictated while she stretched out on a divan, petting her dogs.”

“I await your magnum opus. Until then, stop flinging primer around.” She gestured with her toe to spots of off-white on the plastic-covered floor.

They fell into a comfortable quiet while they finished up the last bits of the bedroom, including touching up some spots on the ceiling that made themselves known as the primer had dried. Then they moved out and into the bathroom. They were using a moisture-rated primer on the whole house. Partially because it was so small, steam from the shower or the kitchen could easily reach every other part, and partially because the local hardware store that was donating supplies for the job—one of the best perks of doing this kind of work for Homescapes TV, since they never got anything like that when they ran their own VideoHead channel—had delivered nothing but the moisture-rated stuff. Probably easier to grab all the same thing for them instead of snagging two different primers. Or they thought it would make a good impression.

“Yo, Evander!”

He turned. Ozzy stood in the door to the bathroom, his face and arms streaked with dirt, sweat shining on his exposed chest and shoulders. It plastered his light brown hair to his forehead, and he was a bit red beneath his ever-present tan.

Evander definitely didn’t take stock of anything about that, definitely didn’t feel a familiar tingle in his pants as his breath caught. He leaned against the pole of his roller. “Yo? Is it ninety-three all over again?”

“Forgive me your fucking majesty.” He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “Need some consult on something out here. Unless you’ve seen reason and are willing to give me control over the patio.”

“Lead the way, lawn-monkey.” He nodded to Bunny as he leaned his roller against an unprimed section of wall. “I’ll be back as soon as I solve his little problem.”

Ozzy scoffed, but said nothing else, just leading the way back out. In spite of Evander’s complaints and sniping, there was a lot of visible progress on the outdoor space. Beyond just having cleared it all out, which was a massive improvement on its own, Ozzy and the crew had already laid out a lot of the basic shapes. Flower beds lined the back wall of the house proper. Some thin, staked-out lines appeared to form the rough outline of a pathway from the side gate to the front door, with a branch that went to the sliding glass door into the actual house.

They followed along that and toward an inset frame of lumber near the garage. A few of the contractor crew members were there, digging out dirt and tamping it down. Jack was there, sponging off his forehead with a damp cloth. He was in a pair of loose jeans and suspenders over a green T-shirt.

Ozzy stopped next to a red cooler and pulled out two bottles of water. He handed one to Jack and cracked the other one. He swigged half of it down, some of it spilling across his bare chest.

Evander cleared his throat to break everything apart before he got caught staring. This is bad. He’s way too hot for my own good. “You need a sippy cup so you don’t spill?”

Ozzy snorted, but that was all the response. “Jack, need to talk with Ev a little bit. You can hold down the fort on this?”

“If not, I’ll scream.” He took a swig from his bottle and waved Ozzy away.

“Okay, Evander.” He walked a little way away, just enough that they might have been out of earshot of Jack. “Need an opinion on privacy here. I have permission for whatever I want to do.”

“Sounds dangerous. You going to put in a greenhouse full of exotic, temperamental fruits?”

“Tempting, but no. I care if they can use the space.” He gestured around the edge of the existing patio. “How do we feel about completely closing this area off? No line of sight out into the yard, but also no line of sight in.”

Evander followed the train of thought right away. “Safety concern. Not that I think they’re going to fall and break a hip, but if they do—”

“Exactly.” Ozzy clicked his tongue off his teeth. “So I’m not sure. I want them to get as much privacy out of this as possible. Nobody wants their kids cramping their style, and it’s bad enough that they’re supposed to be living out here in their back yard.”

Evander looked at the space and put it together in his mind. Not with specifics, but if he was designing it in his own style, with their needs. He talked it out as the picture came together. “Back side open, privacy wall with slats on the side closest to the house, and some railing or hedges or something on this side, with a walkway?”

Ozzy turned around and looked at the house proper. “They’d be able to see from the kitchen window, and if there were gaps in the privacy wall, it would at least be some safety. Plus it would help deaden the noise in case they get too raucous.” He turned back to Evander and nodded. “Thanks. My head was a bit buzzy with all the ideas.” He opened his mouth, like he was about to say something else, then closed it so fast and so tight his teeth clacked and walked back to Jack.

Evander couldn’t help himself. “I know being nice to me hurts. Don’t strain yourself.”

Chapter eleven

Ozzy

Where did that even come from? As Ozzy walked his happy ass out of that scenario, he heard Ev saying something behind him, but the words didn’t penetrate. He was too tight and anxious.

He said his head was buzzy, then almost transitioned it into a joke about head. With Evander. A line they weren’t going to cross again. Ozzy was happy in his life without Evander, and Ev was happy without him. Their last big blow-out fight had ended things for good reason.

They’d been out with everyone at a restaurant in Seattle. They’d rented one of the back rooms so they could all have some privacy and were getting absolutely hammered. Jake was hanging on Robinson, Bunny and Mason were dancing to some random electronic music on his phone, and even Aras had a wide grin on his face.

“Don’t drink too much,” said Evander, running his fingertips along Ozzy’s neck. “I want your dick to actually work tonight.”

It stung. Everyone dealt with liquor dick at some point. Except, apparently, Evander, who was always raring to go, even when he was three sheets to the wind. That didn’t mean Ozzy wanted it advertised to all his closest friends.

The others heckled him over that comment before slipping back into their individual conversations or dancing or whatever. Ozzy leaned his head into Evander’s chest. “You know I’m going to have to spank you for talking like that in front of my friends.”

“Ooh, I’m so scared.” He patted Ozzy’s cheek. “You really want to punish me, threaten to take me home to your parents again. I think I’d rather jump out of a moving train.”

Ozzy laughed, but it stung again. He didn’t have the best relationship with his parents, obviously, but there were still some things that belonged in the privacy of a relationship. He didn’t want his personal business spread all over to every single one of their friends.

Evander sighed. “Or better yet, why not regale me with more stories about how terrible they were while you pack up for one of your visits. That’s really the awful part.”

Ozzy stiffened and raised his head up. “That’s enough, Ev.”

Evander kissed him on the forehead. “I’m just saying, you need to stop pretending they were so bad. If they were, you’d cut them out of your life and piss on their doorstep. Hell, I’d help you. Your family sucks.”

Ozzy shook himself free from the memory before he let it consume him. That wasn’t the beginning of their collapse, and it wasn’t the final straw, but it stuck in his mind. It was the threshold for him. Once it got crossed, he was in a different place. They were in a different place.

Which meant no talking about sex with him, even in a snide joke. How the hell was just proximity making Ozzy into this? It wasn’t like they got along out of nowhere.

He couldn’t worry about it at the moment. A glance over his shoulder confirmed that Evander had already headed back inside. There was at least one wall between them. He could refocus on what mattered: the job.

He stood next to Jack and looked at the framed-out hole in the ground. “Last chance to change where we put the shed. Although I’ll kill you if you make us move it now.”

He shook his head. “This is perfect. Annoying there’s no door in the back of the garage. Would make it a lot easier. But this should get the job done.” He sighed and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “You work this hard on every job?”

“Harder. Don’t always have the extra assistance.” He clapped Jack on the back a couple times. “We’ll let them set the foundation. You and me can go look at the sheds on offer. You look like you’re about to keel over if I don’t get you some air conditioning.”

He laughed and waved the concern off. “I’m tougher than I look.”

“Right.” Ozzy gestured toward the fence. “If that’s the case, let’s get to tilling up some of this ground for planting. Should only take a couple more hours to prep the ground for the shrubs I want to put in.”

“Point taken. All right.” Jack gestured instead to the back door of the house. “Let’s go look at sheds.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Ozzy let the shower pound into his muscles, as much as it could. This wasn’t a high-end hotel, so it wasn’t like he had a massaging shower head or a rainfall or anything like that at his disposal. But for a small town hotel with a noticeably cheap-looking shower head, it did a fine enough job with his sore shoulders and back. It really hadn’t been that rough a day, but every time he saw Evander come too close, he tensed up like he was about to get punched.

He leaned his head against the wall and turned the cold water all the way down. Within about ten or fifteen seconds, the water heated up, searing away at him. Ozzy sighed and repositioned so it washed over his hair, his scalp, down his neck. He twisted a bit to keep it from stinging his junk, but other than that, he let the heat burn at him for a good five minutes before finally turning the shower off and stepping out onto the tiny hand towel he had in place of a mat.

He dried off just enough so he didn’t leave a trail across the tile and carpet, then headed over to his bed and flopped down. His mind spun around and around different ideas for the yard. In spite of all his work on the layout, the details were still a blur. What colors of gravel and pavers should he use? What about the stain for the concrete, since both patios had seen better days and needed some sprucing? The filler flowers, the bushes, the logistics for the privacy wall and the lighting setup for the outbuilding patio.

He also kept tripping over those damn rose bushes. Melanie was tied down to this idea of surprising her parents and she was the client they were working for. Well, technically. As far as Ozzy was concerned, they were working for Homescapes TV. It just so happened that Homescapes was ceding all control to Melanie.

It all amounted to Ozzy not seeing any realistic way to get those rose bushes transplanted. Best case, he would have to leave a spot for them and then hurry to uproot them and get them planted after the reveal. Worst case, he’d leave information on who to call to get them moved and hope like hell everyone involved decided it was worth the money and effort.

Ozzy cringed at the thought of those big, beautiful bushes being left behind. Some of the loveliest rose bushes he’d seen in the years he’d worked in landscaping. Before that probably, too, but he had much more exposure to well-maintained plants after he started work.

Knock knock knock.

It was quiet, but definitely a knock at his door. Ozzy groaned and waited. Maybe they’ll go away. He really didn’t want company. Or to move.

Knock knock knock.

A little louder, more forceful. Ozzy groaned louder, then rolled off his bed. He pulled the sheet with him, yanking it free from the edges of the bed. Once he had it out, he wrapped it around his waist, leaving it to trail behind him. He only tripped on it a little.

Knock knock knock. “Oswald?”

He froze. The fuck is he doing here? One more time, Ozzy almost didn’t bother answering the door. He couldn’t think of anything worse to do than talk to Evander. With only a sheet around his waist.

But Evander wouldn’t just go away on his own, so Ozzy opened the door in spite of knowing better and raised an eyebrow. “Can I help you?”

Chapter twelve

Evander

Whoa . Evander swallowed hard as Ozzy filled up the doorway. The overalls were one thing, but it had been a long time since Evander had seen him shirtless…naked. He had definitely been naked before Evander knocked, otherwise he would have had something better than a sheet to cover his bits. His belly was flat, nipples dark and pert—no shock, since even opening the door, it felt cold as fuck in that room—and he looked every bit as gorgeous as he had when they were dating. It was almost like stepping back in time.

Even that damn raised eyebrow. Ozzy loved to bust it out when he thought he was being fun or clever. The smile before he spoke also gave it away, if Evander hadn’t been so familiar with his expressions. “Can I help you?”

A dozen sexy, innuendo-laden answers played through Evander’s mind. He pursed his lips tight to prevent any of them from flying out until he could get control of himself. It wasn’t as if this was the first time he’d seen Ozzy shirtless. Or wrapped in a sheet. Or naked and grinning in a hotel room. Vegas. Do I still have those shot glasses?

He sighed. “Oswald. Took you a bit. I hope you weren’t busy.”

“Just jerking it.”

Does he know what the hell he’s doing to me? The blood rushed out of Evander’s body and downstairs, in spite of his best efforts to will himself out of getting a hard-on. He definitely felt some thickening going on, but he put on his best face. Plus, being a little bit of a brat gave him a good excuse to stare openly down at Ozzy’s crotch. He frowned and clucked his tongue. “Really? I guess you’re not as big as I remember. Have a whole Ken doll vibe going on as far as I can see.”

Ozzy rolled his eyes, the smile dropping. “What do you want? I want to get back to my night.”

“Too bad.” Evander almost excused himself. They could meet up and talk about the damn patio later. When they were all dressed. But he’d come all the way there, so walking away would honestly just make him seem like a dick. Plus, why lie? They could be professionals. Just because his cock throbbed against the inside of his underwear and his knees quaked at the prospect of getting any closer didn’t mean he had to act on any of the desires now scraping at the back of his skull. “We need to hash out some specifics.”

“Now? During my jerk-off hour?”

“Oh, Oswald. It’s just us here. We both know you’ve never lasted an hour in your life.”

Ozzy stepped back. “Good night, Evander.”

“Wait.” Ev held his hands up in front of his chest. “Truce. It’s actually important. If you really need to finish up, I’ll take a walk around the lobby for a bit. Just promise me you’ll crack a window or something. I don’t need to smell your cum while I’m trying to focus”

“Get the fuck in here. Just let me put on something more socially appropriate. Unless you want to change into a sheet yourself.”

Evander slipped into the room, taking care not to breathe too deeply when he got close to Ozzy. With everything else in that surreal moment, if he caught too deep a whiff of Ozzy, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep himself in check. Once he was out of the tight entryway, toward the bed, he sighed. “Is this all just a ploy to get me naked?”

“Like I need a ploy.” Ozzy stepped toward the bathroom and reached in, flicking on the light. With his arm stretched like that, showing off his armpit and his rib cage, and the top edge of the wrapped sheet sliding down to show off a bit too much hip…

He’s not wrong.

Thankfully, Ozzy walked into the bathroom and closed the door, which gave Evander a chance to catch himself and breathe. I have real things to discuss. No matter how hot he’s making himself look. Or how much his stupid, douche bag schtick is turning me on. For some fucking reason.

Ozzy came back out of the bathroom after a couple minutes, the sheet slung over his shoulder and a pair of gray boxer-briefs on. With nothing else.

Jesus. Maybe he really is doing this on purpose. It was a terrible idea to open the door again, but Ozzy was pushing every boundary. Could it actually be intentional? It seemed like it had to be. There were only so many coincidences that could reasonably pile up.

Ozzy walked past him and bent down, which of course Evander looked at. The thin material stretched taut over his ass. And damn, what an ass. At the very lowest point of his bend, his waistband slipped just a half an inch lower, showing the very top of his crack—

Ozzy pulled a pair of black sweats out of his suitcase and stepped into them.

Of course Ozzy wasn’t using this as a chance to proposition Evander. Why would he? And even if he did, Evander wouldn’t take him up on the offer. The two of them getting back together was a terrible idea, even if it was just a one-night stand.

Ozzy plopped down onto the bed. “You going to make me put a shirt on, or can you contain yourself in front of all this goodness?”

Evander scoffed and rolled his eyes. “I’ve seen all that goodness covered in puke after a hard night out. I think I can manage.”

“Good.”

Evander grabbed the office chair and pulled it over to the foot of the bed, then sat down. “Don’t know how you can stand being shirtless in here. It’s like the fucking arctic tundra in here.”

“God, you’re still such a little bitch with the cold. This is a reasonable temperature for sleeping. Which I was going to do until you knocked.” He spread his arms wide, showing off every god damn beautiful inch of his muscled torso in a very inconvenient way for Evander. And he grinned. “Complain again and I’ll turn it down more.”

“You want your nipples hard enough to tear a hole in the sheets, more power to you.” Evander made a good show of looking for his phone, although it was mostly to buy himself time. Ozzy was pushing all his buttons in the right way, and that was very, very wrong for them.

Once he got his phone out and navigated to his notes, he could focus on his screen. “Okay, so I want something with vines. A big trellis over the top with crawling flowers to help shade things. But they need to be the kind of thing that someone this guy’s age is going to be able to maintain.”

“Honeysuckle. Easy. It’ll grow just about anywhere, smells wonderful, and doesn’t really take any pruning.” Ozzy shrugged. “If we were in some hellish armpit of the country down south getting heat stroke, I think Chinese jasmine would be better, but it would die in an instant this far north.”

“What, you can’t work that landscaping magic to get it to grow? Thought you had a green thumb.”

“Shove it up your ass. You can’t make something that’s supposed to grow in Zone Nine survive in Zone Four.”

Evander only sort of understood that whole growing zone thing. But it did sound like a big difference. He knew the numbers could be fudged a little, and Ozzy had done it before, but probably not that much. Wouldn’t stop Evander from picking at him. “Well, we can settle for honeysuckle. Even if it’s boring. Does that need misters or anything?” He shook his phone. “Making a shopping list.”

“If it needs misters, I’ll handle it.”

“I know that, Oswald. We’re partners on this patio project. Which means I need to know about the watering situation so I don’t buy the wrong table design and have a big trough or something.”

Ozzy rolled his eyes. “Here’s a suggestion. If you’re anywhere with weather, don’t buy outdoor furniture with any stupid designs that are going to hold water.” He mimed an explosion around his head. “Crazy, I know. This is why I didn’t want someone else getting involved in this.”

“I’m just minding my Ps and Qs.”

“You’re wasting time instead of thinking.” Ozzy shook his head. “Come on, what’s next? Let me save you again.”

“God, you’re insufferable.”

“Pot meet kettle.” Ozzy sighed. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Let’s pick it up tomorrow when we have an audience. Maybe that’ll temper things.”

Evander rolled his eyes. “Hasn’t worked so far.” He got a spark of an idea and did a quick search. When he found what he was looking for—it was hardly an original idea, he was sure—he grinned and turned it around. “I found the table for out there. With a trough in it.”

It was just a design, didn’t appear to be for sale, but they had Jake. He’d be able to make it into something awesome. It was mostly a flat tabletop, but a channel ran around the edge. A leafy plant grew in the center, and in the other pictures, it had arrows with the water flowing from that trough into the soil.

“Wow. You were that desperate to be argumentative with me.” He sighed. “It should work if that’s really what you want. Just hope you’re giving them the best results, not trying to get one up on me.”

“A table with a self-watering planter built in. It’s a perfect conversation starter for an entertaining space like I’m building.” It was mostly because he wanted to poke and prod at Ozzy, but that didn’t nullify his point. It was a cool design, and it would encourage some conversation and interest. “I bet you’d be in a better mood if you weren’t so cold.”

“Fuck you, Evander.”

“Is that a sincere offer?”

Ozzy stood. “Jesus. You came here with a mission, now you’re just screwing with me? What the hell, Ev?” His eyes sparked with flame. “If I was going to do anything, I’d put your mouth to use to shut you up.”

Tingles raced down from Evander’s head, across his chest, and down to his crotch. He swallowed, and before he could thing properly, his mouth opened and he chimed in, “You need a blow job? Would that make you easier to work with, Oswald? Relieve some fucking tension?”

His voice cracked on “fucking.” Just a little. Just enough that he was sure Ozzy would pick up on it. Isn’t that just great?

Chapter thirteen

Ozzy

Ozzy hated how good the words ‘blow job’ sounded coming out of Evander’s mouth. He hated how the memories of that mouth flooded back into his mind. He hated how Evander wasn’t writing it off as a joke immediately.

And he really, really hated how he was fighting to get himself to shoot down the suggestion out of hand. And how he was losing that fight.

He was pretty hard-up lately. His hand did a reasonable job, and the internet was a wide and varied landscape of porn. He could open up an app and find out exactly how many feet away a given fuck was from him. He’d certainly opened that app while they were in Springfield, and a few times since they made it to Three Rivers.

The problem was, the closest guys to him on there were all on the crew. They traveled together, they stayed in the same hotel, they worked together. Not like they had any reason to avoid being on there, and not like they had anything to hide. Over the years, they’d seen each other in various states of undress. On at least one memorable occasion, everyone else had walked in to see Ozzy balls deep down Ev’s throat, both of them butt-ass naked.

Evander, of course, was the problem. His profile pic was entirely too tempting, him naked, one hand covering his junk, light and shadow twisting over his torso. Ozzy didn’t trust himself enough with that picture taunting him every time he opened that app, but he’d also never quite been able to get himself to block Evander’s profile. He shouldn’t have needed to. He wasn’t interested in hooking up with Ev again.

Which made the whole internal struggle all the more annoying. Why can’t I just say no and kick him out on his ass? The obvious answer sat right in front of him. Evander was god damn sexy. Ozzy’s cock stirred just looking at him fully clothed, hearing him talk about blow jobs. As if they hadn’t discussed them with each other on numerous occasions.

Ozzy popped his neck to one side, the crack deafening in the silence that followed Evander’s question. “What would you even do if I said yes? I can say plenty bad about you, but you’re not stupid. This doesn’t end well.”

“What doesn’t end well? Not to toot my own horn, but my blow jobs tend to end very well.” Evander sighed. “Look, this wasn’t like a plan I came here with. But I have to work with you, okay? If tickling that little pickle of yours gets you to chill out so we can actually work together, that’s hardly the worst thing I could think of.”

“Do I need to point out that it was your idea to have us work together? Could have left the entire patio to me.”

“You’re still stuck on that?” Evander shook his head. “Don’t dodge the question.”

“Why are you asking the question?” Ozzy’s voice raised and roughed on the edges. He heard it, so he lowered it. A bit. Not entirely. “What is going on with you? You want to push and push and push, then offer to blow me?” He scrubbed his hands up and down his face, trying to find some footing in logic and reason. And trying even harder to convince himself that the offer wasn’t god damn tempting. Evander had a hell of a mouth on him, metaphorically and literally, and it wasn’t unappealing for Ozzy to put it to use.

“I’m just being honest.” Evander shrugged. “There’s no point lying about anything between us, as far as I’m concerned. You’ve seen me puking naked in a bathtub, and I’ve sat there with you getting black out drunk in your parents’ basement.”

It was enough of a sting to deflate his growing hard-on. Another reminder of Ev’s constant pushing and prodding on his relationship with his folks. Way past the point when he should have just shut up about it. “Okay, fine. You want some honesty? You need to learn when not to say every fucking thought that goes through that pretty little head of yours. A little less hair gel and you might be able to think properly. I know appearances are everything for you, but consider it.” Ozzy pointed toward the door. “You can go. Anything important, we can talk about tomorrow. And if you need a dick to suck, look somewhere else.”

Evander rolled his eyes, but said nothing else as he rose, marched to the door, and stepped out.

Ozzy flung himself back on the bed, stripping off his sweats and tossing them on the chair in the corner. He was still half-hard, and a stupid little voice in the back of his head told him he could have at least used Ev to get off before tossing him out on his ass.

Ozzy wasn’t going to listen to that voice. They might not have any future together—at least not one where both of them were emotionally healthy—but that was about Ozzy. He wouldn’t just use Evander as a hole.

No matter how intense the fantasy was that flashed through his head. Washing Evander down, pressing him to his knees in the shower, guiding his head forward…

“Fuck.” Ozzy closed his eyes and tried to think of anything—gore videos, the tax code, getting slivers under his fingernails—to put that stupid, horny part of himself back where it belonged: in a locked box far away from any notion of Evander.

Chapter fourteen

Evander

Ev wandered around the local hardware store with three cameras behind him and a couple random production assistants keeping other customers back out of his way. He didn’t love pushing anyone aside for their show, but they apparently had to do it for safety with the big, professional cameras and lighting equipment they used. Didn’t worry about that when we were recording pickup material on our shitty fifty dollar camcorder back in the day. It just drove home his desire to get everything right as quickly as possible. Everyone else deserved to go about their day, and the store needed to actually get paid.

He moved to the wall of color chips. He’d already picked out what he was going to be bringing back to the house for samples and walked through so he knew where to find them, which made it go quickly as he talked for the camera. “We obviously want to stay as true as we can to our design inspiration, which means we’re sticking with a lot of pastels, and lot of washed out and muted colors. That’s nice, since it’ll help keep the space lovely and open.” He plucked a few long cards of colors out of the display, then turned back to the camera. “I also want to give it a little impact. There are a few design choices I want to really highlight, which are going to take a bit more boldness.” Which was when he pulled out the two truly intense ones. The one card had an almost-black blue at the bottom, and the second was a true carnelian. “We’ll take these home and see which ones are going to work in the space. Lighting’s always different inside a store like this than it will be on site. Especially with the big sliding door letting in so much brightness.” He waited a couple seconds, then looked at Marina, the assistant director of photography handling this part of the shooting.

She nodded. “We’re good. Might have to do ADR on some of it later, but I think the visuals are solid enough.” She circled her finger above her head. “Donny, Simon, go ahead and break down and pack up. Nat, stick with us to get some extra footage. I assume you still need to pick stuff up?”

She didn’t look at Evander, but he answered anyway. “A few things. Mostly supplies.” He looked over Marina’s shoulder to the manager, a short, square-jawed Hispanic man with a bald pate. “Paint samples are ready to go, right?”

He nodded. “They’re up front. We packed up some tarps and rollers, paintbrushes, masking supplies. Everything we could think of. It’s ready to go.”

Ev nodded, then looked at Marina, who was finally glancing his way. “We can get some shots if you want, but it sounds like he’s already got everything I’d be picking up right now.”

She clucked her tongue a couple times, then nodded and pulled out her phone. “Sounds good to me. Go ahead and pack up, Nat.” The last camerawoman made her way out as Marina pulled out her phone. “I’m going to touch base with Vince and Eliza, see if there’s any reason for us to stick around or stop anywhere else. Give me five.”

Another circle of her finger and the lights flicked off. The production crew stepped away, opening the store to actual shopping, and the manager’s shoulders dipped in clear relief. Evander walked up to him and extended his hand. “Appreciate it. I know this isn’t what you want to be dealing with.”

“Hey, no worries.” He shook Ev’s hand, then pointed toward the counter at the front of the store. “Everything’s in a couple boxes. You want us to haul it out for you?”

Evander opened his mouth, ready to tell him not to worry. His phone buzzed and he pulled it out to see…Ozzy. Ozzy was calling him? “If you don’t mind. I would, but I need to take this.”

The manager nodded and waved a couple clerks over to him as Evander walked away.

He answered the phone and raised it to his ear, ducking into the spray paint aisle. “Can I help you?”

He got static over the line. It lasted long enough, he almost hung up, assuming it was a damned butt dial. Then, finally, Ozzy’s voice came over the line. “I was a dick last night. I didn’t need to be that much of an asshole to get my point across.”

Evander almost dropped his fucking phone. “What exactly are you buttering me up for?”

“Fuck you, Evander. I’m apologizing because I know when I cross a line. Didn’t need to be that insulting. So…yeah. There’s your apology. We’re going to have to work together pretty close for this job. Keeping emotions tamped down is the right call.”

“Glad you’re able to be so practical. And good job, avoiding telling me to my face.”

“Well, last time we talked face to face caused the problem. You’re easier not to get pissy with if I’m not in the same room. And I don’t need you trying to jump my bones like you did last night.”

“Let’s not be hyperbolic.” Although Evander had laid awake way too long after leaving Ozzy’s hotel room, wondering what exactly the fuck had gotten into him to make him offer a blow job. “But fine. Apology accepted. All that good stuff. We can be civil?”

The silence from the other end of the line lasted a touch too long before Ozzy finally responded. “I will do my best. I have a lot of practice being snippy with you. Might be a hard habit to shake.”

“Well try. I’ll keep you on the not-quite-straight, but still narrow.” Evander couldn’t help the smile that pulled at the corners of his mouth. He pushed it off quickly and sighed. “All right, Oswald. There’s some poor clerks loading up my car.”

“It would help if you stopped using my full name.”

“Bye.”

Chapter fifteen

Ozzy

Ozzy leaned against the back wall of the outbuilding they were working on. Well, that everyone else was working on. He was in the backyard, spreading dirt and rolling out sod. It was ridiculous how heavy that shit was, even when all you had to do was push it out to cover some bare ground. God forbid you misalign one of the rolls and have to try and adjust it on the fly. He’d throw his back out at least three times in the past, trying to manhandle a length of sod around where he wanted it. Luckily, that hadn’t happened on this job. So far. He wasn’t as young as he used to be, so he took extra care with that kind of hard work.

Which was why he made a point of taking a break. Tucked into the little space between the back of the house and the rear fence. He didn’t want to look like this was wearing him the fuck out, but it was. Partially because he hadn’t slept so well the night before. He’d fumed at Evander for a while. Then the guilt crept in. Fitful sleep. Going back and forth between being pissed to being annoyed—at Ev and at himself—to being frustratingly turned on. When he did catch an actual hour or two of sleep, his dreams were all hot mouths and moans and warm, russet skin.

He dumped half a bottle of cool water over his head, then took a hefty swig before setting it down next to him.

“That’s not how you drink, you know.” He heard the voice before he saw the figure walking up. A familiar figure. Especially from his cavalcade of sex dreams the night before. Evander walked up, then actually sat down next to Ozzy. Awfully close. “I can give you lessons if you need.”

Ozzy grabbed his water bottle and splashed it onto Evander in response, soaking down a swath of his hair and getting a disgruntled gasp, which Ozzy couldn’t help but grin at.

Evander shook the water off from his hands. “What would you have done if I had a hundred dollar bill outstretched?”

“Well, I have working eyes, so I would have seen that, taken the money, then sprayed you down.” Ozzy swallowed the last mouthful of water from his bottle, then crumbled it up and tightened the cap down.

Ev shook his head, but he wasn’t pissed. Not unless he’d completely changed all his old, familiar tells. He had a glint in his eyes, and maybe most importantly, he hadn’t gotten up and run off.

Evander sucked on his teeth, emitting a high-pitched sound. “What do you think about this fence?”

“What? It’s a fence.”

“Yeah, but it’s a fence.” Evander pointed vaguely over his shoulder. “This window is a fucking waste. The fence here just totally blocks off any view they might have, which makes this window an absolutely dumbass decision.”

“I don’t disagree, but what do you want me to do about it?”

That spark in Evander’s eyes intensified and Ozzy saw that he’d fallen right into Ev’s trap. This is what happens when I don’t sleep. Another day, he might have called him out for the tactic—it was hardly a testament to his honesty—but they’d just agreed to work better together. Which Ozzy had brought up in the first place. He couldn’t exactly turn around and start backbiting immediately.

Evander sighed. “I’m so glad you asked. I wanted to discuss that with you last night, but…” He bobbled his head, then shrugged. “Well, you were there. You know how that went. I have some ideas I found, though. Might need Jake to step in on them, depending if you think it’s reasonable or not. I would bow to your expertise on that. But I think we can at least improve the view beyond some crusty old wood.”

“It’s actually decent wood.” Ozzy clucked his tongue. “Fine. But if we’re doing this, we need to do this. Get as much as we can hashed out as possible, so we have a good baseline to work from.” They could focus on the job, not on their own bullshit, and not on…whatever the fuck had been going on with Evander the night before. “Dinner. Plans. That whole thing.” It would be easy to tack Jake onto that get-together—Ev had brought him up specifically—but Ozzy couldn’t quite bring himself to add another party to their potential meeting. We need to learn to get along with each other without a buffer.

Even though he didn’t voice it, that was a good excuse. He still heard Evander saying “blow job” in the back of his mind, and sitting so close, old memories and sensations crept up, all radiating from Evander. So it was a bullshit excuse, but it sounded good on paper, and would get him through. God willing, anyway.

With a groan, Ozzy pushed up to his feet, water dripping from his hair and down his nose into a little puddle on the dirt where they hadn’t yet done any real work. Bare soil. He brushed his ass off, then offered Evander a hand.

He didn’t take it, instead pushing himself to his feet and shaking his head. “Don’t need your butt stank all over my hands.”

“Never heard you complain about it before.”

He rolled his eyes. “Watch your tongue, Oswald. I can still make this a painful process if I want.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who started things on this—never mind.” Ozzy was half charmed by the bastard and half annoyed. “Meet me in the lobby at six tonight. Don’t keep me waiting.”

Evander didn’t respond, but that was on him. It was his idea to meet up. He could take or leave the offer.

Ozzy really hated how much he wanted Ev to take the offer. Exposure therapy. I spend more time with him, I’ll get rid of this nonsense. Shake him off. It’ll be good for both of us, and we can actually get some work done. Another line of BS, but if he didn’t focus on it too hard, Ozzy could sort of make himself buy it. There was at least a possibility things would work out that way. But given his dreams and everything, it was very important that they had their meeting somewhere public.

Without a bed.

Where everyone was wearing their clothes.

Because try as he might, know as much as he did, Ozzy found himself continually drawn back to that physical familiarity with Ev. In spite of their feelings toward each other. Although do we even feel the same way anymore?

Chapter sixteen

Evander

Ev stepped onto the elevator and headed down at six-fifteen. He couldn’t help himself. Ozzy would be annoyed, but fifteen minutes could be excused.

It wasn’t as if Evander did nothing with the time. He spent most of it getting himself showered and primped and probably putting too much effort into finding an outfit he felt good about. It was stupid to bother, but he couldn’t very well go down looking disheveled. He’d settled on a bright-colored Hawaiian shirt, with one too many buttons open at the top, and some acid-washed jeans that had no place on the job site, but made his ass look great.

Not that my ass needs to look great.

The elevator doors opened onto the lobby and he stepped out. Ozzy was right there, arms crossed so that his biceps bulged under the tight black T-shirt. His eyebrows quirked upwards a moment when he saw Evander, then they came together in the middle. “I’d given up on you.”

“I was fifteen minutes late.”

“What, was there traffic?” He stepped aside and let Evander step out of the carriage.

“Terrible. I barely made it down the hallway alive, and now I need a stiff drink.” He bounced past Ozzy and headed toward the quiet, wood-paneled bar set off to the side of the front desk. The sign out front said to simply seat themselves, so he found them a table—there were all of four other people in the bar, so it wasn’t hard—and sat. “This should be enough space, don’t you think?”

Ozzy took the chair opposite him, but did finally unfold his arms. “This is your plan. I don’t know how much space you need.”

The server, a middle-aged white woman, walked by and laid down two menus for them. “We’re quiet tonight, so you boys just wave me down when you’re ready for drink orders.”

“Actually, I’m ready.” Evander smiled up at her. “I just want a Long Island.”

“We can do that.” She glanced to Ozzy. “You need more time?”

“Tequila soda.” He nodded to her. “Thanks.” Once she was gone, he sighed and flicked open the menu. “Food first or work first?”

“Food. It’s almost like you’ve never even met me.” Evander scanned through the menu, but there wasn’t much that caught his eye. Well, not in a good way, anyway. “What do you suppose Nancy’s Special Chicken is?”

Ozzy’s eyes narrowed and he cocked his head to the side. “Well, it says to ask your server, so I’m guessing it’s how they use up leftovers. Sounds like an exercise in bravery.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop, eyes staying on the move. “Split appetizers? They’re probably mass-produced so there’s some level of quality control.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time we had apps for dinner.” Ev scanned back to the top of the menu, then nodded. “Two app platters?”

Ozzy closed the menu. “Sounds about right. Then we can focus on work instead of figuring out how special the chicken is.”

Ev snorted, then reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “Okay, so here’s what I was thinking about that fence. While they get drinks together.” He flicked over to his saved pictures. “I grabbed a few inspo pics. Not saying they need to be exact.” To his surprise, looking for ‘fences with windows’ had turned up a bevy of options.

“I understand the concept of inspiration.” He held his hand out and Evander pressed the phone into his palm, then waited as his eyes darted around the screen. Ozzy flicked to the next picture and nodded. “I like this one. I’m not sold on anything with actual glass in it. Think that’s going to defeat the whole purpose in the winter time. But these framed cutouts are actually a nice idea.” He flicked again, then shook his head.

Evander got up and took the chair next to him. “It’s hard to argue with you about how wrong you are when I can’t see which pictures you’re looking at.” He leaned in close, then reached out and flickered his fingers over the screen to get back to the first picture. It showed a thick white fence with a foot-wide pane of glass embedded into the wood. “So not this.”

“Not that. If the goal is to open up the view, they’re going to lose their purpose when they ice over. May not be super far north, but you’re still looking at a Midwest winter.”

“Didn’t consider that.” Ev sighed. “You can go forward.”

“Thanks for the permission to do what I came here for.” Ozzy flicked through more pictures, until he got back to where he was. “What about trellis? Would that be a decent compromise to keep their privacy?”

Evander tutted his tongue, then snagged the phone back and started searching until he found something that seemed close. Then he placed it back on the table and scooted in closer so he could point as he spoke. “I like the framing. Maybe a bigger section? I don’t know how hard the fence is going to be to cut, but you and Jake can figure that out, right?”

Ozzy bobbed his head side to side. “I think it wouldn’t be too bad. I’d like a trellis with bigger gaps, otherwise it seems like it defeats the entire purpose of opening it up. Still won’t ice up like glass.”

“Hey, I’d be good with leaving it wide open. Unless you think they’re going to be putting on a display for the neighbors.”

“Shit happens. You remember the duplex job back home?”

“Oh. God yes.” It had been one of their first jobs, fixing up one half of a duplex for the local high school English teacher after her husband passed. The older couple next door had no interest, but the walls of the duplex were not thick. And they were an active couple. In the middle of the day. “What the hell was the excuse she used for her son to explain the noise?”

Ozzy snorted. “Old people basketball.”

“That’s right.” Evander chuckled. “You think the kid ever figured out it was just old people fucking, not old people basketball?”

“Had to have, right? Or he will at some point, if he’s not old enough yet.”

Evander lowered himself into his chair again and slid his phone back across the table. “Well, I hope my sex life is that active when I’m in my seventies or eighties or whatever.”

Which was, of course, when the server came back over with their drinks. Ev put on his most charming smile to try and disarm any awkwardness. “Imagine how loose my lips are when I’ve actually had a drink.”

She chuckled and passed the two glasses over, then took their order for the appetizer platters and headed away. A little quicker than before.

“You have to chill around the small town folks.” Ozzy sipped from his tequila soda, and only grimaced a little bit. “They tend to like their gays sexless and quaint, not mouthy and overly honest.”

“I’m not that mouthy.” Ev took a drink. It was hard to screw up a Long Island Iced Tea, but he was still pleased with what he’d actually gotten. “Unless you just mean I’m a loud lay. Then yeah, sure. No disagreement from this quarter.”

Ozzy said nothing, just buried his face in his drink and gave the slightest shake of his head.

Chapter seventeen

Ozzy

He wouldn’t admit it, of course, but Ozzy was having a decent time with Evander down in that little hotel bar. Probably more than decent. Being three drinks deep into the evening was certainly helping things move a little more smoothly between them. And he had to admit, in spite of his usually careful control over his diet, he was enjoying all the frozen, deep fried appetizers. He even thought the wings might have been made in-house.

Evander was either much drunker than him, or cared much less about expressing himself. Probably the latter. He was continually bouncing between his phone and his journal, jotting down notes, crossing more out, and flashing different inspiration pics to Ozzy. “I know this is completely too much to actually do, okay? So don’t go off and assume I’ve lost my shit here. Just think about the vibes on this one, okay?”

He shoved his phone over and went back to his journal, but his eyes kept flicking back up.

Ozzy looked at the picture and actually smiled. It was a garish patio setup to be certain, all bright, floral-patterned pillows and pale woods, lots of wicker, and little crystalline lampshades that broke the light up into a rainbow of colors that washed over the picture.

“I’m going to need an explainer on the vibe you’re talking about because this looks almost exactly opposite of everything we’ve been working with.”

Evander rolled his eyes and shuffled closer. Very close. Right up against Ozzy, almost leaning into him as he pointed to his screen. “Ignore the colors and shit. But don’t ignore the patterns totally. Just imagine they’re better patterns with deeper colors. But lots of lights all around, and a really intimate layout with the furniture and the potted plants and everything. Turns it into a little oasis, almost.”

Ozzy tilted his head to the side. “I guess. I might need to see it in person before I can really make heads or tails of it.” He stared a little longer, trying to ignore the fact that Evander had never backed up, instead just sliding his journal over and chicken-scratching some more notes to himself. Instead, he really tried to imagine the picture translated into something that would work on this project.

“Damn.” Ozzy shook his head. “Double damn, actually.”

“Double damn. Don’t strain yourself, there.”

Ozzy just snorted.

Ev sighed. “What is it?”

And maybe it was the drinks, but Ozzy was just okay enough with letting him know the problem that it spilled out. “The first damn is because I think you might have a point, and it’s not something I would have thought of.”

“How terrible. Can’t imagine a worse outcome.”

Ozzy pushed forward without response. “The second damn is because of those fucking rose bushes.” He gestured to a row of small bougainvillea bushes helping to hem in the outdoor living space in the picture. “They would be absolutely perfect here, but because of all this secrecy and surprise nonsense…we have to put out a worse product just to appease the whims of these rich sons of bitches, and I can’t say anything because that fucks up the job for everybody, and I may be a douche, but I’m not that big of a douche.”

Ev grabbed his hand and massaged it. “If it helps, I don’t think you’re, like, an irredeemable douchebag or anything.”

Ozzy pulled his hand away because it was too nice, and they were both too drunk for anything that felt so nice to be okay. They couldn’t do this stuff sober because of the consequences, so they damn sure wouldn’t be even flirting with the edges of it while they were impaired.

But he also gave Ev’s hand a pat before full pulling back. “Thanks. You’re not irredeemable either. Just a pain in the ass. But a tolerable one.”

“Oh now you can tolerate a little pain in the ass? Are you into spanking now? I think I brought that up when we were dating and you pretty summarily shut me down.”

The liquor almost let Ozzy’s tongue slip—he had actually acquired a bit of a taste for some light spanking along the way—but he caught himself. “I think we’ve had as fruitful a meeting as we’re going to. You are drunker than a skunk and need to get to bed, and I need to work off all that greasy-ass food we just scarfed.” He caught the server’s eye and waved her over.

Evander closed up his notebook and grabbed his phone, almost dumping both of them to the floor in the process. Actually, he would have, if Ozzy hadn’t caught them.

Ev nodded. “Thanks. Maybe should have had one less Long Island.”

“Luckily the drive’s not too long.”

Evander snorted a laugh, but before he could say anything, the server came over. He dug out his wallet and handed her his card.

Ozzy did the same, and she made quick work of taking their payments. Probably happy to get us out of her hair. He’d left her a good tip, since she’d put up with their drunken nonsense the whole night.

As they walked back out into the lobby, Ev stumbled, arms wheeling and feet slipping.

Ozzy reached out for anything he could get a hand on. His fingers latched onto the back of Evander’s belt and pulled him back up…for a second. Then Ev’s weight and momentum carried Ozzy down too. They’d slowed, but they both hit the floor and skidded, a tangle of arms and legs and not nearly enough space between the two of them for Ozzy’s comfort. Evander smelled like liquor, and like fry grease, and more than a little like lemon, but his cologne broke through that as well, floral and bright.

They stayed in the weird, drunken knot for a few seconds. Then Evander laughed. Loud, as if he wasn’t directly in Ozzy’s face and deafening him. “Shit. That was embarrassing.”

“We can agree on that, too.” Slowly, careful not to touch Ev more than was necessary, he extricated himself from the tangle and got to his feet. “You think you can make it back to your hotel room intact?”

“Honestly?” Evander sat up, but only made it to being cross-legged, not fully upright.

“Yeah. Honesty is supposed to be your whole schtick, right?”

He nodded with a grin. “I’m not making it back to standing on my own tonight. Back to the room is out of the question.”

Ozzy tried to work his mind around the problem any way he possibly could, but there was really no other option. He begrudgingly offered Ev a hand and hauled him up. They almost collapsed again until he got his feet back under him.

Then Ozzy wrapped his arm around Evander, supporting him beneath his armpits, and headed for the elevator. They were entirely too close for Ozzy’s comfort.

His stupid, traitorous body was sending blood to his cock, like this would actually go somewhere.

Chapter eighteen

Evander

Ev had to insist they stop by a convenience store on the way to the job site. He’d been too hungover to bother finding his sunglasses, but he’d also known he would need them. And some pain pills. If he’d thought he could get away with it, he would have picked up a tall boy and had some hair of the dog too.

As it stood, he was in his sunglasses, wobbly on his feet, edging out the walls with paint so he was sure they had nice, crisp lines. Bunny was with him. They’d call the contractors in once they had the detail work done, but even hungover, Evander trusted himself more than some people he’d never really met before.

They were actually making damn decent progress on the baseline work for the interiors. It helped that the house hadn’t been in such bad shape as their last one. It wasn’t clean, but not a hoarder house. No one had actually lived there, so it didn’t have any of the damage that came from regular use. And it was newer construction, so age hadn’t really gotten to it. The flooring had been the biggest thing, tearing out all that carpet and replacing it with vinyl plank, but the subfloor had been in good shape. Plus, there straight up weren’t as many rooms to worry about as there had been in the Springfield job. A smaller footprint made for less work, all else being equal.

After about ten more minutes, Evander finished up the edges of the walls and sighed, dropping his paint brush into the tray, then heading for the door of the bedroom. A few members of the crew had already moved into the large, open living-room-kitchen-combo and were filling in the walls with the Breezy Sky color Evander had settled on, a muted gray-blue. It wasn’t so dark that it closed in the space, but it wasn’t pure, contractor white or eggshell or something boring like that.

He approached the nearest of the workers and cleared his throat to get her attention. “Hey…” In spite of the pain pills, his own voice was just a little too loud in his ears, so he tried again, more softly. “Hey, when you get a minute, could use some extra hands in the bedroom. Paint’s all set up in there and everything is masked off already, so should be easy peasy.”

She nodded, then headed for the sliding door and stepped outside.

Evander was ready to follow behind and head for the main house to get some water and cool off—and maybe go somewhere totally dark until his head stopped throbbing and his limbs stopped aching—but before he could, Ozzy and Jake walked through the front door, each carrying a heavy wooden end table.

Jake wiggled his fingers around the edge of the furniture in some semblance of a wave. The end table slipped a bit, but he jammed his knee up into it to catch it. “Shit. I should put this down.” He and Ozzy both set them down in the middle of the floor, well away from where painting was happening. Jake popped up on top of his table and took a seat, grinning. “I think these look pretty nice, but tell me what you think.”

Evander begrudgingly removed his sunglasses, squinting and cringing as his eyes adjusted. He shot a glance to Ozzy, but as per usual, he showed absolutely no sign of a hangover. It was always one of his more annoying skills. He could get drunk off his ass, then go work for twelve hours outside in the dead of summer and be fine.

Finally, Ev’s vision adjusted. “It might help if you got your butt off of them. Unless you plan on staying here as part of the decor.”

Jake jumped up and managed to not trip, although it looked like he was about to take a face plant. Then Evander moved in close and looked at the two tables. Once he got a good look at them, he recognized them from Jake’s rough sketches. “Nightstands. All right.” They were thick and square, with stain so dark they looked almost black. Jake had added some detailing on the drawer and on the cabinet face on the front. Nothing major, but the geometric patterns gave it a little something extra to the eye, plus probably also kept the weight down to make the drawer and the cabinet easier to open. A bulky, heavy look, but a little friendlier to manage on the day-to-day. “I think they’re great. You sure I can’t convince you to custom-build a bed frame to match?”

“I’m pretty sure.” Jake, still smiling, rolled his eyes. “Do you know how much work a custom bed actually is? I’m pretty efficient with my time, but that’s not an option this go-around. Just no time.”

Ozzy cleared his throat very pointedly and stuffed his hands into his pockets, then stepped up so he made a little talking circle with Ev and Jake. “About the time. We were talking last night and had something we might need your help with.”

“Oh, the fence. Yeah.” Evander wasn’t planning on broaching the subject quite then, but if Ozzy was going to bring it up, no reason to let the opportunity pass by. “I’m annoyed that they have a window facing the fence. Total waste. So I was looking into framing out some look-through spots in the fence. At least one, there by the window, but I don’t think that’s quite what Oswald has in mind for the yard.”

“You’re right, I don’t want one random weird hole in the fence. If we do this, I would want them all down the length.” He pulled out his phone, flicked over the screen a few times, then handed it to Jake. “Something like this, but we can go over more specific details before we install anything.”

Jake looked at the phone, tilting his head to one side. He clicked his tongue a couple times, then nodded. “Shouldn’t be too bad, but I’ll need to enlist some help from the contractor crew.” He pushed the phone back toward Ozzy. “Think you can spare one or two of them from all the yard work?”

“Take them.”

“Bunny and I finished up our part of the painting in here, so she should be free too,” said Evander. “If you need the extra hands.” He reached out and rested a hand on Jake’s bicep. “Thank you. I think it’ll really help with the whole design.”

“You know what?” Ozzy’s voice was entirely too boisterous, and he had a real gleam in his eye. “I bet Evander would be able to spare a little time today to help you out. Don’t want a bunch of people crowded in here while they’re trying to paint. And that way he’ll know for sure that it’s what we’re looking for.”

Evander suppressed everything he wanted to say in that moment. They’d agreed to be civil, after all. “I don’t think me crowding in the woodworking tent would be any better than me crowding things up in here. Don’t want to just stand around supervising, and I probably shouldn’t be trusted with power tools.”

Ozzy waved that concern away. “I’m sure Jake can decide if you’d be in the way or not. And I know you can use tools.”

That was a damnable lie and Ozzy knew it. Evander didn’t even own his own drill.

Jake shrugged. “It wouldn’t hurt to have you there. This is kind of coming together out of nowhere, so someone who knows exactly what they want would be pretty good.”

Evander’s entire body tensed. He was barely keeping himself held together with the aid of pain pills and avoiding light and loud noises. But Ozzy was challenging him. Plus, with the hangover taken out of the equation, it did make sense for one of them to lend Jake a hand, and Ozzy was undeniably the busier of the two of them.

He was still going to try and save himself a bit of heartache. Headache. Skin ache. Limb ache. Whatever the hell else woodworking would make hurt on his body. “No offense, Oswald, but the two of us are already on very tentative terms with this whole job. Are you sure you trust me to make judgment calls on your precious yard?”

“I’m positive. We’re working together, right?” He clapped Evander just between the shoulder blades, rocking his whole body and making the room spin. “I trust your judgment. You’ve always been good at your job.”

Which removed the easy way out of it. Ev stood up a little taller, then plastered on his best smile and nodded to Jake. “I guess I could at least provide some input. You head out. I need to visit the little boy’s room real quick, then I’ll be there.”

Jake nodded and strode out.

Ozzy sighed. “I’m glad we’re going to have some eyes in there. I would do it, but we’re getting some big shipments in for the garden beds. Kind of an all hands situation.”

“Right. I buy that.” Evander flipped him the bird. “I’m going to get you back.”

“For what? You could have said no.” Ozzy waved his hands in front of him, shooing Evander. “Scoot. Maybe drink some water. You look a little green around the gills.”

He chuckled as he slipped around Evander and headed out the door.

Chapter nineteen

Ozzy

The first little bit, any time he got the chance, Ozzy would head around to the woodworking tent they had set up and spy on Evander, just to get a look at what he’d managed to arrange. He knew Ev wouldn’t be able to take the hit to his ego and admit that he got too drunk and just needed a break to deal with his shit.

By the time the sun was heading down, the amusement had faded and—although he would never admit it if asked—Ozzy was starting to feel a little bad about his decision. Ozzy didn’t get hungover very often—and the night before hadn’t really impacted him much once he got his first cup of coffee down—but he certainly had suffered more than a little after a night of excess. He just hid it better than the average person. The thought of dealing with that and all those loud power tools, in the heat…maybe he was feeling more than a little bad.

When they were wrapping up—the camera crew had packed everything away and the mic packs had already been taken to be recharged—Ozzy headed into the house and flagged down Melanie. “Hey. Could I bug you for something?”

She nodded, wiping her hands off on a tea towel. “What can I help with? I’d love an excuse to order in instead of cook.”

Of course she would. He’d done a decent enough job of just avoiding them and all their rich tendencies, except when he was putting Jack to work, but that sort of plan sounded entirely too much like his mother. If his mother was a bit kinder and wouldn’t have seen being asked to do something as a horrific imposition.

“I don’t know if you’d have anything on hand, but I figure I’ll give it a try. Can’t get you out of cooking, unfortunately. Just need a sports drink. Something with electrolytes.”

“Oh, of course. Always keep some on hand for hot days, marching band practice, for the gardeners out front. Just a nice thing to make sure we have.” She trundled past him toward the fridge and flung open the double doors. “Flavor preference?”

He looked inside and almost whistled. He wasn’t much for the attitudes of the perpetually wealthy, but he couldn’t help but love the aesthetic. If any refrigerator was ever going to be described as aesthetically pleasing, it was this one. The fridge was huge, for starters, and entirely too neat, with two pitchers of fruit water tucked in there, cans of soda, lots of pickles and preserves that looked way too spendy for Ozzy to bother buying, and clean, matching containers of leftovers. None of them even had that red tomato sauce stain, which was practically a canonizable miracle.

Melanie pointed to the collection of brightly colored bottles. It wasn’t a brand he recognized, but judging by everything else, they were probably the world’s most expensive sports drink.

Ozzy reached out and grabbed a pink one. “Dragonfruit and pineapple. Sounds nice. Thanks.”

She nodded and closed the doors. “I can make sure we have some more on hand for the crew if you need. Just let me know.”

His first instinct was to take her up on the offer, but the answer stuck in his throat. “We’re okay. We can pick some up if it turns out this one’s a hit.”

Melanie opened her mouth a second, then closed it and shrugged. “Let me know if I can help out with anything.”

Ozzy nodded, lifting up the pink drink in a wave as he walked back out. He could do all this just fine on his own. They all could.

The yard was quieting down, tools packed away, lights turned off, and sprinklers set to make sure the sod got plenty of water. Easier to do it overnight than have them running with everyone out there. It would need a full week of heavy watering to make sure the grass took proper root. Melanie and Jack seemed to have been turning it off on time every night to make sure the yard didn’t flood.

Evander stumbled around the corner of the house, still wearing his sunglasses and barely picking up his feet. And not wearing a shirt. Ozzy really noticed that and paused, taking in the way the light played across his tawny skin, how the sweat sparkled on his light smattering of chest hair, how the V-lines cut so harshly downward beneath the white waistband of his underwear, just peeking up over the top of his jeans.

Then he took a bottle of water and poured it over himself, slicking his hair down to the top of his head. It trickled along his torso, darkened his pants and hugged them tighter against the curve of his ass, his thighs…his bulge.

Before Ozzy lost himself in a haze of hormones, he strode over. Evander had wiped his face and hair with the shirt, wetting it down, so as he slid it back on, it did almost nothing to hide his musculature.

Ozzy came right up behind him and dangled the bottle of pink in his face. “Peace offering. Electrolytes.”

He grabbed the bottle. “That’s supposed to make up for subjecting me to power saw noises all day?”

“I didn’t pour the Long Island iced teas down your throat last night.” Ozzy considered raising his voice, but there was still enough guilt in him that he didn’t want to be a total dickwaffle. Plus he still found himself a touch tongue-tied, so close to Evander being so damned hot. “Also, I recall helping you up off your drunken ass so you could get back to your bedroom. That should count for something.”

Evander grunted, then spun the top loose from the bottle and took a healthy swig of the pink. When he pulled away, he glanced over the label. A moment of quiet as he smiled softly. “Dragonfruit and pineapple.” He chuckled lightly, then put the cap back on and looked over at Ozzy. “You trying to get lucky?”

“Pretty sure that only works with real pineapple.” Ozzy’s first instinct was to push back, remind him that they’d gone down this road already and decided not to do the flirting, casual sex comment thing. It wouldn’t quite get off his tongue as his cock throbbed to life, swelling at the mere suggestion of a blow job.

Evander laughed loud. Louder than he probably should have, with a hangover. His face split into a big grin and he shook his head, walking past Ozzy. “I meant what I said before. I can help you out. But if I do, you should probably be the one downing pineapple, not me.”

Before Ozzy could say anything back, Jake walked up, one brow raised, his eyes sparkling blue. “Eating pineapple? Do I want to know what’s going on with you two?”

“Not a damn thing.” Ozzy stiffened and clamped himself back into his normal state of control. “I got him a stupid sports drink and he insisted on being a dick about it. Big shock.”

Jake nodded, swiping a sheen of sweat from his forehead. “Well, try to keep us in the know. If you two get back together, we need to sound the alarms.”

“Fuck off, Jake. Not everyone sluts themselves around on these jobs.” He squeezed his eyes shut. He knew he should apologize—Jake’s relationship with Quinn was new, but that didn’t mean it was inherently temporary or casual—but he stepped away instead.

Jake was right, of course. Them in a relationship again was the kind of thing that needed a sign-off from…everyone who might get caught up in the crossfire if things turned sour.

When they did. Again.

With how much this new job and Melanie’s family were scratching at the memories of his family bullshit, they might need government sign-off if they got back together now. The kind of anger that put into play was thermonuclear in nature.

Chapter twenty

Evander

It took the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, but Evander finally felt somewhat human again. He showered and kept scraping sawdust out of his ears, out from under his fingernails, even out of his nose. The snot rockets in the shower were definitely not cute.

I’m going to get back at Ozzy for that shit.

The product that Jake managed to put together was good, at least. A decent bonus. Not quite a salve to the throbbing pain in his skull, but it softened his annoyance. Also, a decent reminder how good Jake was. Intellectually, Evander knew they were all good at their jobs, but it had been a minute since he’d seen Jake work up close and personal. He didn’t even need to make any adjustments to the design, basically plucked out a perfect trellis pattern and a frame, then repeated it over and over until they had exact copies of framed out openings that could be slotted into the fence. Then Jake laid out the plan for how to put them in. It was retrofitting instead of building a new fence from the ground up. They needed to consult with Ozzy on the finish for the trellis sections, see if they should match it or make some kind of contrast, but Jake and the contracting crew had knocked out the bulk of the work without breaking a sweat.

Well, with a sweat. Evander’s hungover senses had picked up on the sweat. There was only so much deodorant could do in the face of hours of outdoor carpentry work. Evander wasn’t spreading blame around. He knew he’d also overpowered his cologne and deodorant while barely doing anything out there. Just lucky I didn’t sweat pure vodka and gin.

He ordered in a Caesar salad and downed a ton of water…and some more of that stupid sports drink Ozzy had brought over for him. He usually wasn’t much for that kind of thing, but it was damn good and seemed to have made him feel better. It could have gone wrong. Evander’s tastes could have changed since the last time he and Ozzy broke up.

But they hadn’t. Dragonfruit tasted like basically nothing, but the pineapple…Evander’s favorite. Top five, at least. If he had to pick one fruit, it would probably be passion fruit, but Ozzy had clearly made the choice deliberately.

Because underneath all the bullshit between them and his brusque demeanor, Ozzy was a decent enough guy. At his core. Buried down deep.

Evander closed his eyes in the dim room, listening to the air conditioner hum, and let his mind wander. Away from work, away from his hangover, away from everything else. He just breathed in and out in the faintly chilly room. The cool air played over his bare chest, perking up his nipples.

He ran his hands down his chest and his belly, down into his trunks. When his mind was left to wander, with the taste of pineapple still on his lips, it flickered to Ozzy. He still remembered the roughness of Ozzy’s hands scraping across his body, the feel of his muscular arms wrapping around Evander’s back and lifting him up, the sharpness of his teeth as he nipped at Ev’s earlobe and his nipple and his belly button.

There was no one living in his head or reading his mind, so Evander didn’t care. Fantasy was fantasy, and even after a couple years, Ozzy was still the only serious relationship Evander had ever held down. Also by far the best fuck, which was what drove his hand lower, cupping his balls, rubbing his taint. Every time he touched the sensitive little bundle of nerves, fire licked up his body, combating the cool from the air conditioner and forcing shuddering breaths past his lips.

It was insanity and he knew it. Repeating the same actions and expecting a different result. Einstein said that and he was smart. Or Heisenberg. Or Feynman. Some famous physicist, but he was pretty sure it was Einstein.

Whoever they were, they were smarter than Evander. Smart enough to know that he definitely shouldn’t get back together with Ozzy, even just for a hookup.

But in a fantasy where no one had any emotions, he could just let imaginary Ozzy trace hands down his body. He hadn’t hooked up with anyone for a hot minute. He’d been in some self-imposed celibacy—too many random one-night stands were sucking his soul dry instead of just his balls—for a couple months before Mason emailed all of them. Then, with all the preparations for the show, he hadn’t exactly been burning up his bed sheets. Then they were on the job. He’d become very familiar with his hand again, that was for sure.

But even being that hard up didn’t explain how vivid this fucking fantasy was. If he kept his eyes shut, he could feel Ozzy laying on top of him, all muscle and warm skin, smelling of damp soil. Evander’s hand was his hand, teasing his cock higher and harder, milking precum out into a wet spot on the front of his underwear.

Evander bit down on a pillow to keep his moaning to a minimum. They were in a hotel, after all. Nobody needed to hear him getting pleasured by his own imagination. His hips bucked, thrusting his cock up into the warm, tight grip as imaginary Ozzy’s hot breath washed over him, briefly counteracting the air conditioning.

He could feel it coming…the cum. His body tensed and he laughed in his own mind. I’m about to shoot my load after five minutes of playing with myself. Jesus.

He tightened his grip as imaginary Ozzy flicked his right nipple over and over again.

Knock knock knock.

Chapter twenty-one

Ozzy

Ozzy knocked, then knocked again. His stomach tossed and turned the longer he stood there, threatening to upend out his throat and onto the floor of the hotel hallway. Or more likely, into the toilet back in his hotel room when he lost his nerve and ran.

He hadn’t been able to get fucking Evander out of his head the whole evening. Figuratively and literally. After sitting there, caught in agony and ecstasy for so long, he’d finally gotten up and gone to the store to pick up some pineapple. His face had burned when he bought it, even though there was no reason for the cashier to put the pieces together. Eating pineapple didn’t actually do anything, and plenty of people who didn’t have their hopes set on a blow job bought containers of pre-cut pineapple. It was just that Ozzy knew he was buying it as some roundabout way of flirting.

Plus, maybe the fact that he’d caved to his own stupid cock and decided to go through with this stupid plan. Yes, Ev had brought it up in the first place. But Ozzy was supposed to be more level-headed than this.

He knocked for a third time, already leaning back to get away and lick his wounds.

The door opened a crack, just enough to see a sliver of Evander peeking through. Shirtless, hair wet, face flushed and eye bright. “Ozzy. Hi. I didn’t…can I help you?”

That hit like a lead weight. “Did you just call me Ozzy?”

Evander shut the door instead of answering. A tiny spark of anger flared in Ozzy’s stomach, but it died when the door reopened. All the way that time. Evander was standing there, one hand up on the door jamb, resting right by the little thingy that you flipped to keep the door closed. Definitely shirtless. Definitely wet, like he’d just taken a shower.

And if the bulge in the front of his boxer-briefs was what Ozzy assumed it was, then they were apparently on the same wavelength.

Evander sighed. “I was a little busy.”

Last chance to bail. Ozzy cleared his throat. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Ev’s shoulders slumped a little. “Between the hangover and….this.” He gestured down to his crotch. “My bitch powers aren’t at their full strength right now.”

“So you admit you call me Oswald to be a bitch.” Ozzy took a step forward, stopping just before crossing the threshold into the hotel room.

Evander swallowed, and it was hard enough and Ozzy was close enough, he heard it. He also heard the quiver in Ev’s voice. “Of course I do. I thought you were smart. That’s why I dated you, however briefly.”

“Briefly?” The hormones raged. Every breath Ozzy took was filled with the smell of Evander, and his body heat radiated against Ozzy. “I wouldn’t call it brief.”

“Well it couldn’t have been that long, if you have to wonder whether I’m purposefully being a bitch. Oswald.”

Ozzy shook his head. He had nothing else to say, so he pulled the container of pineapple from behind his back and displayed it, raising one eyebrow.

Ev’s tongue darted out over his lips for a moment. He swallowed again and shifted his weight so he leaned more against the door jamb. “Pineapple?”

Ozzy nodded. “You mentioned it.”

“Is that a thing we’re doing now?”

Ozzy couldn’t help but laugh, restraining himself just enough that he wasn’t blasting his breath straight in Evander’s face. “That’s the million fucking dollar question, isn’t it.”

Ev chuckled, then took a step back. “Well come in and maybe we can figure out an answer.”

He turned and walked in and Ozzy followed, letting the door click softly closed behind him. “You sure you’re not too busy for this chat?”

“This chat is why I was busy.”

“All that for me?”

Ozzy was joking, trying to keep things light so he didn’t let his snark and attitude ruin the whole thing. He didn’t expect Evander’s face to further darken as the blush intensified.

Ozzy plopped down into the office chair, in part to get himself off his feet and in part to give him a place to cross his legs. He was in jeans, so it wouldn’t be nearly as obvious if he was sporting a hard-on as it was for Evander in just his underwear, but he didn’t need to take any chances. Not until they’d worked things out and made a decision.

It was surreal, just sitting there in some hotel room in some town neither of them had ever heard of a couple weeks prior, with a container of pineapple sitting between them, waiting to figure out if they were stable enough with each other to get naked and roll around.

Evander cleared his throat. “I thought this was a terrible idea.”

“It is. But no one ever claimed I always made good decisions.” He scrubbed a hand up and down his face, more to buy himself some time than to relieve any stress or anything. “Ever since you brought up a blow job, it’s been stuck in my craw. Then you stumble around yesterday, wet and shirtless. “

“You’re really so hard up that just seeing my nipples makes you change your mind?”

Ozzy rolled his eyes. “Keep running your mouth, I’m sure I’ll come back to my senses.” He exhaled sharply. “We’re working together without murdering each other, right?”

“So far. Although I did get close back in Springfield. Jake beat me to it.”

Ozzy caught himself shifting his jaw side-to-side. “Don’t remind me.” Not that Ozzy couldn’t take a hit, but Jake had seriously laid him out. Deservedly so, but still.

Evander leaned back, arms to the side, exposing every inch of his bare abdomen and stretching his chest and shoulders taut. Also basically putting his bulge on display, as though Ozzy needed a reminder. “Point is, no murder yet. But you know I was only partly serious about giving you head, right?”

Ozzy shrugged. “Say no if you want. I’m a dick, but it’s not like I’m going to force you into anything.”

Evander cringed and leaned back forward. “I wasn’t implying anything like that.”

“I know. Just…say no if you were joking.” Ozzy’s chest tightened, but he forced his voice to stay even and mellow. “If not, I think we’re in an okay enough place that one BJ isn’t going to throw the entire production into absolute chaos. As long as we don’t let it go past that.”

Ev closed his eyes and sucked in a deep, slow breath that expanded his chest and pushed out on his belly. Then he nodded. “You’ll reciprocate?”

Ozzy snorted. “Did I ever leave you without cumming?”

Evander’s eyes sharpened and it was like the past slamming straight into the present. Ozzy had walked into something old, but before he could cut the conversation off, Evander jumped into it, a smile playing at his lips. “Seattle trip for our one year anniversary.”

“Yes, when I had food poisoning. I remember. I told you not to bother blowing me because I couldn’t risk going down on you and triggering my gag reflex. You didn’t listen.”

“Of course not. If I listened, I wouldn’t have had something to hold over your head forever.”

Ozzy couldn’t help but laugh, warmth blossoming across his chest and, at least for the moment, burning away at the edges of his anxiety. “I’m not sure that holds water. Considering I paid for the hotel room. And the fucking scallops that got me sick. And I did you the kindness of not puking all over your cock.”

Ev nodded. “Plus we’re not a couple anymore.”

Right. Ozzy nodded. “This is just business. And of course I’ll take care of you if you take care of me.”

Evander sighed, then walked over and grabbed the pineapple container. He popped it open and bit into one chunk of bright yellow. He spoke around it as he chewed. “So, I know what I get out of this. But if you’ll forgive me being a little too honest—”

“I don’t want to dive into anything deeper than physical.” Ozzy had already planned for this, knew that Evander would want to unpack reasons for him to ask for head. As though he needed more than just horniness. Nothing I want to touch on. “Suck some dick, slap each other on the ass, then don’t mention it to anyone. I just need something better than low-definition porn and my hand.”

Evander stood quietly a moment. Two moments. Then he grabbed another piece of pineapple and closed the distance with Ozzy, holding the fruit out in front of him.

Chapter twenty-two

Evander

He knew it was a ballsy play, but if Ozzy was serious about this, then a little foreplay was in order. Not to mention, Evander had barely torn his eyes away from Ozzy’s lips the entire time he’d been sitting there in the office chair. It wouldn’t hurt his feelings at all to get up close and personal with them.

Ozzy leaned forward, red creeping up his cheeks, and parted his lips. Gently, he wrapped them around the pineapple, and around Evander’s fingers. He sucked back hard, tongue grazing over the edges of Evander’s nails as he worked the pineapple back into his mouth. Ev hardened all the way back to full mast.

In part because, the entire time, Ozzy held eye contact. His eyes always felt like a secret to Evander. Brown to look at them, but when you managed to really inspect, the liveliness came to light. Flecks of gold and brass and green that gleamed like tiny shards of gemstones.

When he fully pulled back, Ev had to breathe deeply to get control of himself. He backed away, not wanting to break eye contact and shatter the moment, until he got to the light switch by the door. He jerked his head to the side and, in equal silence, Ozzy nodded.

Hotel room dark wasn’t like normal dark. It was complete blackness that fell in an instant. Evander shuffled forward, not wanting to stub his toes. It would be a little bit before his eyes adjusted, and shouting and swearing and falling on his face might put a damper on the mood.

A bright star gleamed and, after a moment, he saw it was Ozzy’s phone. He was grinning broader than before, almost like when they were a happy couple. “A little light. At least until we’re both safely laying down.”

“Good call.” Ev’s voice came out rough and low.

Ozzy moved to the bed and toed off his shoes, then shimmied out of his pants and tossed his shirt to the side. The phone light in his hand moved, illuminating and shadowing different parts of the process. Evander got a flash of an armpit here, the bumps on Ozzy’s spine there, the outline of his ass, with his underwear riding up his crack just enough to give his cheeks full definition beneath the fabric.

Get yourself together, Evander. This didn’t need to be some weird, breathless thing. If Ozzy could handle this without freaking then so could he. Evander was already down to his underwear, so he waited for his moment. Ozzy bent down to take off his socks—he’d always said that wearing socks during sex should have replaced that whole ‘honor they father and mother’ thing on the Ten Commandments—and Evander came up behind him. “So I’m curious about something.” Ev ran his fingers down either side of Ozzy’s spine until he felt the rough texture of his waistband. “Is your ass still blindingly white or did you ever figure out how to handle those tan lines?”

“Those tan lines get me more trade than a wallet full of hundred dollar bills during happy hour.”

Evander had no doubt that was true. In his experience, guys went wild for tan lines down below…Evander included himself in guys, but he was contractually obligated to give Ozzy the business, at least a little. “Well then let’s see that milk-white butt.”

“I thought we were just blowing each other.”

“I’m not saying we should fuck.” My cock is saying that. Loudly. “I just want a peek. It used to be a great ass. Want to see how the mighty have fallen.”

Ozzy snorted. “Nothing’s fallen. It’s as perky as ever. At least it better be with all the damn time I waste on squats.” With the angle of the light, Evander could only see a little movement. Then Ozzy’s underwear dropped to the floor and he turned, legs spread. Ozzy sighed. “Well?”

His phone was on the bed, so light came up from above. Ozzy had divots on either side of his ass, and his balls hung low enough they could be seen between his legs. Still white as hell down there, and still with a little mole on the left cheek.

Evander forced himself not to grab on and squeeze. “It’s all right. For a washed up VideoHead star.”

Ozzy grabbed his phone, whipping the light up to eye level. Then he lowered onto the bed, legs spread. “How about you use your mouth for something useful instead of pretending you can insult me?”

Ozzy was half-hard already, jutting up from a pale brown bush. His balls draped onto the edge of the bed. Precum glistened at his slit.

It was giving in, but it was the kind of giving in that Evander could allow. They both knew why they were there. Evander stepped up and placed his hands on either side of Ozzy, then slowly lowered himself down to his knees. He blindly fumbled around until he gathered up Ozzy’s shirt and underwear to use as a cushion. He didn’t think Ozzy would last forever, if he was hard-up enough to come asking Evander for a helping pair of lips, but in the past, Ozzy usually took a while to finish. Better safe than sorry.

When he was down, he looked up the hard, muscled plane of Ozzy’s body and locked eyes with him. “Light off. You’re not getting this show for free.”

Ozzy rolled his eyes, but obliged, flicking off his phone and letting the darkness fully envelop them again. Somehow, it was easier for Evander to go ahead if they couldn’t see each other. I guess I’m as nervous about getting reattached as he is. If they couldn’t see each other, maybe it wouldn’t bring up any emotions.

Blind, feeling with fingertips and his face, Evander slid forward until he found the wet tip of Ozzy’s cock. He stroked his thumb along the slit and drew the drop of precum to his lips. Salty and musky. Lightning shot straight down Evander’s body, pooling just behind his navel and arcing off to his crotch. Just that taste drew his cock higher. I can’t cum just from sucking his dick. I’d never live that down. Unfortunately, given how close he’d been when Ozzy knocked, that was far too distinct a possibility.

Pushing all that aside, Evander parted his lips and extended his tongue. When he enveloped Ozzy’s tip, a shuddering groan sounded from up above, followed by a new gush of precum that coated Ev’s mouth. He swallowed that back, then dove forward, not hesitating at all, taking Ozzy as deep as he could. He always liked that.

And apparently still did. Ozzy’s hips bucked, forcing himself a little deeper. Evander struggled not to cough until the spasm of ecstasy faded and Ozzy lowered his butt back onto the bed. Then he pulled back a little, running his tongue around the edge of Ozzy’s cockhead before diving back down, burying his nose in the sweaty perfume of Ozzy’s pubes.

Ozzy always smelled so damn good.

“Shit.” Ozzy’s voice strangled up from up above. “You’ve been practicing.”

Not as much as I’d like to. Evander didn’t disabuse him of the notion, though. His mouth was otherwise occupied. He bobbed up and down, picking up speed until he reached a steady rhythm. Then he let his hands wander over the soft skin of Ozzy’s thighs, down, down, down until his fingers grazed his target. He took Ozzy’s balls in one hand and gently rubbed them, lifting them out of the way.

Then he pressed the fingers of the other hand against Ozzy’s taint and massaged.

“Fu-u-uck.”

Chapter twenty-three

Ozzy

Try as he might, Ozzy could only hold back the wave of desire for so long. Once Evander went to work on his taint, he was cooked. His balls tightened, but their natural desire to pull up just rubbed them harder against Evander’s palms. Soft, warm palms.

His cock throbbed and he stopped breathing, stopped thinking, stopped existing beyond the inside of Evander’s mouth. That was the only thing that mattered, pulsing and firing off spurt after spurt of cum into that warm, wet hole. His fingernails scraped and scratched at the bedsheets. His throat tightened. His head went light and fuzzy until, finally, everything snapped inside him. He dragged in a heavy breath, his shoulders bobbing, then thrust it out again. Panting, trying to find himself as his softening cock slid slickly out of Evander’s mouth and landed on his thigh.

“Jesus Christ.” Ozzy flopped back on the bed, heart pounding in his ears and lungs burning as he tried to catch his breath, fit himself back into actual reality instead of the otherworldly pocket dimension between him and Evander.

“That didn’t taste anything like pineapple. Shame.”

Ozzy snorted. “Get up here.” He was waiting for post-nut clarity to fall around him, make him realize exactly what he’d done—sucking off his ex when they both knew they didn’t belong together anymore—but that moment never came. Instead, something deep in his core throbbed and ached to have Evander in his mouth. “I want to see if you taste any better, since you’re going to be such a judgmental little son of a bitch.”

“Gee, such a good way to entice me.” Evander climbed across Ozzy, running his hard cock along Ozzy’s thighs, up his belly, then finally straddling Ozzy’s chest, positioning the glistening tip of his cock just in front of Ozzy’s lips. A drop of precum flowed down from Evander’s foreskin.

Ozzy darted his tongue out and took that shiny bead of dew. Bland, a little salty.

Ozzy leaned his head up and took Evander’s tip into his lips. He pushed into the foreskin with his tongue, gently sliding it back and thrilling at the too familiar little whimper of pleasure that came from Evander. He looked up and, for a moment or two, it was easy to remember why they’d been together. At least on the physical side. Ozzy knew from experience that he was in better functional shape than Evander—big, heavy landscaping work built stronger muscles—but Evander was no slouch at the gym. He was stunning, even in the sparsest bit of light creeping into the room, as his eyes adjusted slowly to the black. That probably even helped, fuzzing out the edges, hiding anything that could have been perceived as a flaw. He still couldn’t see well enough in the dark to see Evander’s face, just the outlines of his musculature, the hard planes of his stomach and the bottom of his chest. Ozzy knew from experience, there was a light dusting of hair across Ev’s chest. Ozzy had run his fingers over it countless times over the years. It was always soft. Evander actually conditioned his body hair to keep it nice.

Ozzy pulled himself from his memories and forced his focus back to the cock in his mouth, the taste of sweat and salt and sex coating his tongue. He shifted up just enough to get a bit more into his mouth, then a bit more still until Evander’s tip touched the back of his throat. He gagged briefly, then relaxed and swallowed him back. He didn’t take Evander all the way—they weren’t at the right angle for that—but enough to turn the whimpering from Evander into full-throated moaning. He felt Ev’s butt cheeks clench, rubbing across Ozzy’s chest, then loosening. His thighs tightened, squeezing around Ozzy’s torso.

Ozzy hummed and rubbed his tongue in a spiral from Ev’s tip, down as far as he could as he sucked it back into his throat, then to the tip again. He raked his fingers up and down Evander’s hot, muscular back, stopping just shy of scraping his nails across the top of Ev’s ass before gliding back upward.

Evander’s hips thrust. He leaned forward and Ozzy could finally make out his face. Mouth open, eyes unfocused, sweat dripping down the tip of his nose. He bit his lower lip, started to say something, but it didn’t make it out as an actual word, just a hiss of air as he humped into Ozzy’s mouth, faster, harder, putting that gag reflex to the test.

He pulled most of the way out and, before Ozzy could move or say anything, he tasted spunk on his tongue. It flowed as Ev’s cock twitched in his lips, coating the inside of Ozzy’s mouth. He had to swallow once just to avoid choking, there was so much.

After what felt like it must have been a full minute, Evander pulled back and flopped onto the bed next to Ozzy. A few seconds later and the table lamp burned to life, almost blinding Ozzy for a moment. After a little more adjustment, he looked over at Evander.

Then the clarity hit him. Ozzy’s body tensed, but he didn’t allow himself to freak out. Not completely. Instead, he nodded to Ev. “Thanks.”

“Same. Pretty fucking weird, but thanks.”

And just like that, the ratcheted tension leached away from Ozzy’s shoulders. That little jolt of honesty, instead of pretending. “Fucking weird is right. You must have been holding out for a long time.”

Ev laughed, loud and clear. “Jesus, yeah. It’s been a hot minute, but I definitely didn’t expect that much. You always had a nice throat, though.” He patted Ozzy’s chest, then got up and trundled naked to the bathroom, his ass swaying side to side.

Ozzy took in the view without any shame. Not like checking out his butt was going to be any bigger risk than trading cum.

Chapter twenty-four

Evander

“I am in love with this wallpaper.” It was definitely partly the lack of a hangover and definitely partly the fact that he’d blown his load in such a spectacular manner, but it was mostly the wallpaper itself. They’d gotten the entire accent wall done in the bedroom. It took Evander a lot of finagling to get that pattern in a timely fashion, but the large, watercolor peacock was a focal point to his design. It was a night scene, so it took heavy inspiration from the quilt Ev had become so enamored with at Melanie’s parents’ house. A full moon in one corner, a pond the peacock was drinking from, and little speckles of whitish stars above a willow tree. It was a lot to be certain. Big swing, which meant the possibility for a big miss, but it felt like some part of his vision was finally coming to life.

He threw his arms around the two contractors who’d put it up and gave them a little squeeze. “Thank you thank you thank you. It looks amazing.” A big pattern like that, there was always a high risk that something got misaligned. It had taken a lot of trust on Ev’s part to let someone else handle the install, but it hadn’t been misplaced. And it let Evander get on a call with Robinson, Aras, and the folks from the countertop place to get the rest of the kitchen squared away. With only minimal shouting from Aras, which was a win.

When the contractors headed out, Bunny walked in. She whistled low, eyebrows raised. “Damn. That is one hell of a feature wall.”

“I know, isn’t it great?” Evander clapped his hands a couple times. “I’ll center the bed here, so the feature isn’t blocked off, but they’re not staring directly at it when they try to sleep. I know that would be too stimulating. But I think it’ll be really nice and calming when everything is set up, as long as it isn’t the main focal point of the room.”

“Good luck making that anything other than the focal point. But if anyone can pull it off, it’s you.” She sat down on one of the two nightstands that Jake had built and folded her hands in her lap. “So, can you confirm some hot gossip for me?”

“Doubt it. Haven’t heard anything juicy since we got here.” Ev took a seat on the other nightstand. “Also, cameras.” Because they were full-on being filmed and recorded, and the cameraman in the room wasn’t even pretending not to focus exclusively on them. Such was apparently the life of a TV personality.

Bunny waved that away. “They’ll cut it if it’s boring. And if it isn’t, we saw that Eliza still affords some privacy, with the whole Jake and Quinn thing.”

Evander nodded. She had handled that pretty tactfully, as far as he’d been able to tell. “Well, fill me in on the chisme.” Evander rarely slipped in Spanish, but chisme always felt more accurate than gossip in his head. He remembered his mom and aunts having chismosa get-togethers every time something big happened. They’d get drunk and spill tea until three, four in the morning. That was chisme. Not gossip.

“A little birdie mentioned that Ozzy might have the hots for you again.”

Evander’s stomach tightened. He raised an eyebrow, trying to keep calm. “Where’d you hear something that crazy?”

“Jake said he was eye-fucking you like crazy yesterday.”

You couldn’t control yourself for a second, Ozzy? “You’d have to ask him. I feel very thoroughly un-eye-fucked.” It had been dark in the hotel room, so it wasn’t a lie. There’d been very minimal eye fucking going on.

“Well, keep watch. I want to know if you two are finally going to hook up again.”

Evander’s focus fully shifted away from the prospect that they might have been found out. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “You two are happier together than you are apart. Keep waiting for you two to realize it.”

Evander couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.” She inclined her head to one side. “Figured you’d be able to see that.”

“We were so toxic with each other, we blew apart the entire channel.” Not the only damaging part of their relationship, but it was the one that spilled over to others the most.

“Yeah. You broke up, and then things went wrong.” She stood and raised her hands up in front of her chest. “But it sounds like you’re not thinking about it, so forget I said anything. But keep me up on the gossip if anything changes.”

She walked back out of the room and Evander just sat there. He couldn’t blame it on the hangover anymore. What Bunny had said just struck him and settled in his chest. He started to file back through everything that went down when they had their big breakup. Things had been brewing between them for a hot minute. With a little distance, Evander could admit he hadn’t been as supportive a boyfriend as he should have been. Ozzy didn’t need him weighing in on his family drama, and certainly didn’t need him talking about it in public like that. Not everyone was as lucky as Evander, didn’t have the kind of acceptance he’d gotten on coming out. His situation wasn’t sunshine and roses—he lost plenty of cousins and it took a long time for his relationship with his dad to be anything other than frigid—but at least everyone acknowledged that he was actually gay.

When Ozzy brought Evander over, his parents still acted like he was straight as could be. Very pointedly.

Everything had collapsed when they broke up, though, hadn’t it? Evander tutted his tongue. If he was really going to stay committed to his honesty, then yeah. It had. He couldn’t lie about that.

“Fuck me.” His face heated up as he considered the implications.

If they really were happier and better together, did that mean it was time to try and pursue it?

Before last night, Evander would have said a big, stinking, flashing “NO” to that. But as much as they might have sworn it was all physical and about convenience…they both had access to the internet. They were both good-looking guys—especially Ozzy. Both of them could have found a willing mouth, even in a smaller town like Three Rivers, if they just wanted a way to get their rocks off.

Instead, they’d drifted back toward each other. Ozzy had broached it.

Evander scrubbed his hands over his face and repeated, “Fuck me.”

Turned out the patio wasn’t necessarily going to be the biggest problem to solve.

Chapter twenty-five

Ozzy

The yard was actually starting to take shape after all this time. The sod and the mulch were all basically in place and rooted down, and most of the plants had been delivered. It still rankled Ozzy a little bit to be doing this work for the rich family when they were supposed to be putting together a house for Melanie’s parents, but he could mostly push past that as long as he kept working and moving.

Which was a problem with how many contractors were there in the yard with him. Several more had peeled away to work in the actual in-law suite, but he still had more than enough hands to get all the outdoor work done, which meant he had to muscle his way into any of the actual gardening he wanted to do, just to feel like he wasn’t standing around supervising.

“Ozzy!”

He turned to see Jake jogging over to him, his shirt clinging to his chest with sweat, smiling broad. “Hey. Ev wanted final approval from both of you on the fence cutouts before I fire up the circular saw and start taking apart the fence.”

“Wow. I get final say.” Maybe blowing such a massive load had really improved Evander’s mood. He looked around to see that he really wasn’t needed as the rest of the crew dug holes and started hauling in bushes and potted flowers, so he gestured over Jake’s shoulder. “Let’s get going, then.”

He followed Jake toward the house and around the back. There were a couple sawhorses set up with a plywood sheet laid across them, and the now-stained trellis sections stacked up. They’d gone with a deep, reddish brown stain that would help warm up the general palette without clashing. Or something. It looked nice, and that was what mattered.

Evander also looked nice, but Ozzy wasn’t going to say anything about that. He was smiling and looked relaxed, wearing a black tank top that showed off his arms and his pits and a little flash of his chest when he moved just right…

“Well, what do you think?” Jake pointed to a white, penciled-in rectangle on the fence, then to a series of similar rectangles spaced down the length of the back fence. “This is them equally spaced, but there’s still a chance for adjustments. Or we could strip the finish off of these if that’s what you all decide.”

“I’m okay with the look, and I think the spacing’s good.” Evander raised an eyebrow to Ozzy. “Thoughts? I don’t know if this is going to do some weird shit with the sunlight or whatever. Plants need stuff.”

It was a damn sight more consideration for the landscaping needs than Ozzy would have expected. He didn’t linger on that, just looked at the spacing and considered, all the while pointedly not looking at Evander in case that consideration tried to bloom into something new. Or something old, more concerningly. “I don’t think it should cause any trouble.” Which he knew, of course. Little cutouts in the fence weren’t going to expose anything to too much sunlight, but it was a good idea to stall a bit and play along. “I think we’re good to go. I like the colors.”

Jake clapped loud. “All right, then I think we should get a move on.” Jake went to the other side of the makeshift table and came back out with a teal circular saw. He slipped some safety goggles on, then grabbed another pair and offered them around. “Anyone want the first cut?”

Evander took a big step back, hands up. “I had plenty of power tool time for the rest of my life.”

Ozzy snorted a laugh. “You have another hangover you need to worry about?”

“I was traumatized. If you want to get your hands dirty with it, be my guest.”

Ozzy just held up his hands, nails to the front. “They’re already dirty. Going to get back in there and dig up some more soil.” He’d finagle a spot in one of the flower beds. He needed to keep busy then more than before, presented with all those inviting muscles Ev had on display.

Jake shrugged. “I like power tools. Let’s get to cutting.”

The couple of other contractors there clamped some scrap wood around the top edge of the fence, holding it in place so it wouldn’t fall out of alignment when Jake made the cut. Ozzy walked away before the buzzing could start, but not fast enough.

“Hey.” Evander grabbed onto his upper arm and turned him around. Up close and personal, there was no way to ignore the expanse of hot skin and ripples down Evander’s arms. And the smell. God, his cologne was heady and wonderful.

Ozzy forced himself to focus, and not on the memories of the previous night. He forced his attention toward the buzzing of the saw, since it was firmly in the present and was not Evander. “Something wrong?”

“No. Nothing wrong. Just was hoping to chat with you for a second.”

Ozzy nodded. “Walk and talk. And if you stick around too long, I’m putting your pretty ass to work.”

“Keep talking like that, I might get the wrong idea. Unless that was the right idea.”

Ozzy almost tripped over his own feet, did in fact stumble partway into the middle of the yard where he barely missed catching his toe on one of the hoses and face-planting. He glanced over his shoulder at Evander. “Why would that be right?” Shouldn’t have done it at all. Should have hated him forever and never talked again. Danger Will Fucking Robinson.

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“Ev, what’s going on?”

He chewed on his bottom lip a second or two, then stood up taller, shoulders pinned back, and spilled out whatever it was he had to say without making eye contact. “I don’t know if this makes any sense, but I’m wondering if we shouldn’t try again, and this isn’t just about that whole thing yesterday, I just am starting to have some questions and maybe we should talk about them.”

It was only once he finished up that Evander finally looked at him. No sign of that little glint like he was screwing with Ozzy. Not that he really would. Honest to a god damn fault.

Fuck.

Chapter twenty-six

Ozzy

The rest of the day, as much as he could, Ozzy avoided Evander. He gave no real answer, other than agreeing to talk after the work was done. He was pretty certain he got a lot of plants planted, but it blurred together. Hours of time that disappeared beneath the wave of worry and confusion.

How had he fallen into this? How the fuck had Evander fallen into it? Neither of them were stupid. They should have both been able to avoid the obvious pitfall of getting back together, yet if Ozzy was reading this whole situation the right way, that’s exactly what Ev seemed to be angling at.

I could be wrong. This could be innocent enough. I’m jumping to conclusions.

“Earth to fucking Ozzy!”

He snapped from his thoughts and stood up to see Aras behind him. He was scowling—when wasn’t Aras scowling?—and brandishing a bright orange extension cord like a whip. Ozzy brushed off his knees as he stood. “What’s going on?”

“I was hoping to get your advice on some lights. I’m having a disagreement with these idiot contractors, so I need someone who actually knows what they’re talking about to weigh in.”

Someone else’s problem. Sounds like a great idea to me. “I see you’re winning friends and influencing people as usual.”

Aras rolled his eyes. “Not my fault they brought in a bunch of morons.” He turned on his heel and headed toward the patio, so Ozzy followed. His stomach tightened until he saw that Evander wasn’t a part of this particular confrontation. The cameras were absolutely a part of it, though. Two pointed into the center of the patio, where a wiry, older contractor guy stood, arms crossed while he chewed on his cheeks.

“All right.” Aras stomped back in, stopping slightly too close to the cheek-chewer. “I brought in an actual expert.”

“I am an expert.” The man’s voice was reedy and taut, blue eyes unblinking. “I’ve been doing outdoor lighting work for twenty-five years, kiddo.”

“Then you owe a lot of clients a lot of apologies. You’re being insane about this.” Aras turned to Ozzy, gesturing a touch too wildly with the extension cord. “He wants all of the outdoor lighting for this place run off a single outlet, and just use these fucking things to stretch them out.” Aras tossed the extension cord down at his feet. “Taking the laziest god damn way out of this and making it less safe. Your boss should run you the hell over.”

Ozzy stepped in before either of them could say anything more. “Okay. I’m with Aras unless you give me a good reason not to actually wire everything in.”

“How about the fact that the couple is old as sin and when they die, the Trangs might want to do something else?”

Aras took a step forward and Ozzy shoved his arm out, catching Aras in the middle of the chest and holding him back. Barely. Didn’t keep him from shouting, though. “You don’t get to be a waste of space just because someone is old, you ageist piece of dogshit!”

“All right, all right, what’s going on?” Eliza scurried onto the scene, slipping in on the opposite side from Ozzy. “Why are we screaming, why are we about to murder each other, why can’t this all just be normal?”

Neither of them said anything, and before Ozzy could fill her in, a voice came from behind. Meek, but there. “A disagreement on the lights. Aras had the harder, but probably better, option.”

Eliza peered over Ozzy’s shoulder. “Dane?”

Ozzy looked behind him. Dane was on the shorter side, even shorter than Eliza. A redhead, with a mohawk that flopped to the right. He wore baggy black and, after a moment of looking, Ozzy realized he was part of the production crew. Lighting? He thought maybe lighting.

Dane’s gaze darted side to side. Then he stepped forward, his shoulders sucked in, fiddling around with something in his pocket. But he did keep talking. “Yeah, um. I was here for filming this bit, so I heard it all.” He shrugged. “Don’t really like what this other guy was saying about the clients.”

“At least we’ve hired somebody reasonable.” Aras stepped away from Eliza and Ozzy, shaking his head. “Talk to your contracting crew. I don’t want someone on this job who’s going to half-ass his work just because we’re putting together a house for senior citizens.” He scooted past Dane, patting him on the shoulder a couple times. Hard enough that Dane looked like he was a bout to buckle under the weight. “Thanks for speaking up.”

Then he marched out of sight. Eliza sighed, then nodded to Dane. “You can fill me in.” She pointed to the wiry guy. “You can go talk to your boss. I’ll confer and get over there as soon as I can to sort things out.”

“Oh, sure. Like you’re not going to automatically side with your host when he’s getting up in arms—”

“Maybe I will and maybe I won’t. This is a TV show. Like it or not, Aras is in charge of the electrical work. He gets final say.” Eliza stood at her full height and shooed him with both hands. “Go before I just decide it’s not worth my time and energy. You can get moved to another job, I’m sure.”

His mouth pinched down to a white line, but he said nothing else, just walked away toward the trailers.

Eliza sighed and looked up at Ozzy. “Don’t suppose you saw anything about that?”

He shook his head. “I just got called over to try and weigh in on the problem.”

“And is it a problem?”

Ozzy waited a moment, then nodded. “Don’t know the whole story, but I wasn’t thrilled with what I saw. He was making the wrong call for the project, if you ask me, and then going off about how Melanie’s parents would be dead soon anyway—”

“That’s enough for me. He’s gone.” She patted Ozzy on the arm. “Thanks. I know I haven’t been super present. Don’t want to get in the way, but the yard looks amazing so far.”

“I do what I can.”

“Modest as ever.” Another pat on the arm, then she slipped around him and gestured for Dane to follow her out of the yard and off to whatever they had to do. Dane actually caught Ozzy’s eye and gave him a little smile. Is it supplicating somehow? Or sad? Guilty? It didn’t seem totally happy, but it was over too fast for Ozzy to get a proper read on it. It stuck in Ozzy’s head, though.

At least until he saw Evander carrying a plastic-wrapped sofa in through the fence. Then, Ozzy darts off. This is so stupid.

But he couldn’t quite handle Evander. They had a scheduled time to talk, and Ozzy needed every second of that to straighten out his shit.

Chapter twenty-seven

Evander

Somehow, Ozzy managed to avoid getting pinned down for even the briefest of conversations the entire day after he agreed to talk with Evander. Not that Ev didn’t try to get to him. He tried like hell, but Ozzy proved incredibly sneaky, somehow, able to hide out in spite of the confined space. He also muscled his way into the front seat of the SUV on the way back while Evander was caught in the back. Not that Ev would have brought anything up there, in front of God and Eliza and everyone. He wasn’t insane.

Well. Maybe. There was a little insanity in even suggesting the two of them could…what, get together? Try to get together? Bounce off each other endlessly forever like they used to? All based on a couple blow jobs and a comment from Bunny. But he was aware of it, so that couldn’t be a real problem.

They piled out at the hotel and Ozzy was gone in a flash. How the fuck he was disappearing…it wasn’t like Ozzy was particularly small and nimble. Someone like Robinson could disappear into any little nook or cranny. It was what made him so good at getting into those tight spaces to do all the plumbing work. Ozzy was a block of muscle. He shouldn’t have been able to vanish.

I have his room number. Evander hung back so it didn’t look like he was rushing to get away too fast. Besides, there was still an hour before Ozzy had agreed to have a chat. No good to push the issue too hard, in spite of the incessant itch under his skin.

“You look twitchier than usual.” Aras has his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans as he came into view. “Freaking out for a reason or just too many cups of coffee?”

“I’m not twitchy.”

“Right. I’m just imagining it.” Aras shrugged. “Not my business if you don’t want to share. Forgive me for trying to give a crap.”

“Aras!” It was at least some kind of distraction until they had their meeting. If he could keep up. Aras was already heading inside, shoulders bunched up close to his ears. Ev had to jog to catch up, but when he did, he looped his arm through Aras’s and pulled him to a stop.

He snorted. “What?”

“Well, I may be twitchy, but you’re in an even more foul mood than usual.”

“Gee. Exactly the kind of thing to make me more amenable to chit-chat.” He unhooked his arm from Evander’s and took a step away. Then stopped and reached up to massage the bridge of his nose. “Sorry, I guess. Pissed off. Not your fault.”

“Want to talk about it?”

Aras frowned. “No. Wouldn’t mind beating the shit out of some of the pillows up in my room, but no talking.”

“Seems healthy.”

“Healthier than punching that stupid contractor in the face.”

Evander nodded. “I heard about that. Didn’t have nice things to say about Melanie’s mom and dad?”

“No. He didn’t. As though you can just decide whether it’s worth putting in the actual work for a client.” He shook his head. “Don’t get me started on the whole thing again. It’s not good for my heart.”

“Right. Because you usually run so chill and calm.”

A tiny smile pulled at Aras’s lips before almost immediately vanishing. “Anyway. Shouldn’t be taking my shit out on you. Doesn’t mean you’re not obviously twitchy and worked up about something.”

Ev wanted to push back on that again, but if Aras was still pounding that drum, maybe there was actually something to it. “You haven’t gotten significantly chattier over the last couple years, have you?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’ve always been pretty stable and probably haven’t had a major personality shift.”

“Bingo. If you’ve got some secret, may as well spill it here. Take my mind off this bullshit from today.” He jerked his head toward a couple of chairs tucked into a corner of the lobby. He headed that way and, after a brief hesitation, Ev followed. Once they were both settled, Aras crossed one leg up onto the other. “So, you ready to answer the question that started this whole stupid mess, now?”

Ev really wasn’t, but this was no time to stop being honest. Especially not with one of his oldest friends. Didn’t mean they had to go straight for the core of the issue. “You have any opinions on me and Ozzy? When we were together?”

“Tons. I have opinions on everything.” He raked his gaze up and down Evander, then smiled again. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking about trying something again already.”

“Got found out quick.” It was somehow a lot easier for Aras to say it rather than Ev having to admit it himself. “Bad idea? Honest opinion.”

“I was just hoping it would take you another couple weeks. Now I owe Mason twenty bucks.”

Evander raised an eyebrow. “You were betting on the two of us… Do I need to comment on how supremely fucked that is?”

Aras rolled his eyes. “Suddenly you’re all bashful and demure? No room to be catty? Since fucking when?”

“That’s not what this is about.”

“Yeah it is. You don’t have to think so, but this isn’t any more scandalous or awful than when you helped me make a bunch of sock puppet accounts to trick my ex into outing the fact he was cheating on me, or when Mason and Robinson strung those Mormon missionaries along so they could keep checking them out while they worked around the house, or when Ozzy and Jake would get drunk and—”

“All right, I get your point. Still don’t love it.” Evander sighed and ground his teeth a bit before catching himself. No good internalizing, and especially not if it put his smile at risk. “How many people are in on this betting pool of yours?”

“Me. Mason. Robinson. Jake and Bunny both refused to put up any cash for it. I really thought it would take a while for you guys to drift back together.”

“We’re so predictable that all of our friends knew we’d be idiots.”

“No one’s allowed to wander around calling everyone idiots except for me. And I only get away with it because of my striking, aquiline features.”

Ev snorted. “And the fact you actually mean it.” Honesty always lent itself to authenticity. Duh.

“Of course I mean it. I’m a horrible, unpleasant man.” He grinned madly, a genuine smile that Aras honestly didn’t pull out all that often. Evander had his theories over the years—his biggest one was that Aras simply hated crowds and did better one-on-one—but it was always a treat to get to see that half-crazed grin. Even when he was being self-deprecating.

Then Aras leaned back. “You’ll notice I’m not calling anyone in this situation an idiot.”

“Getting me and Oswald back together isn’t stupid?”

“God no. You two are miserable fucks when you’re not with each other. At least, if you’re spending time around each other while you’re broken up. Always sniping at each other. This bullshit dick-measuring with the patio?”

“It’s not—”

Aras popped him in the forehead with his middle finger. Not hard, but enough to stop him from talking. “It’s a dick-measuring contest or some proxy war you’re fighting against your ex or whatever you want to call it. You know full well that who’s technically in charge of that one stupid chunk of concrete doesn’t fucking matter.”

“Ozzy’s not entitled to—”

Another pop on the forehead. “Nobody’s entitled to shit. And also, you clearly know his name’s Ozzy. Stop calling him Oswald. Unless you plan to start running around, deadnaming every trans person you’ve ever met too. In which case fuck you.”

Evander’s spine stiffened. “Shit. I guess I…yeah.”

“Never thought of it?” Aras sighed and rose from the chair. “Look, I think you two were good together, to answer your first question. You’re both a couple years older, a couple years more stable. You’ve got some baggage with each other. Decide if it’s worth unpacking. And preferably in a way where we don’t have to keep you two from literally murdering each other, or walk in on you fucking anymore.” He moved his hands in front of him, parallel to the ground. “Level. Steady. Grown-up time.”

“And start calling him Ozzy.”

Aras rolled his eyes. “Look at that maturity already shining through. Only took someone pointing out the insanely obvious.” Aras muttered and gestured to himself as he walked away toward the elevators.

Evander…just sat. He needed to process that. Aras had confirmed what he wanted to do in the first place, so it was good…right? But after so long, Evander struggled to really let go and believe it was a good idea.

Someone walked into the front door of the hotel. A white guy, probably about his age, with a dark mop. He glanced down at his phone, then around the lobby…and his eyes focused in on Evander. Then he grinned and walked over. “Hey. Ev.”

“Quinn?” He was the client from their last job, and probably more relevantly, Jake’s new boyfriend. Evander rose and closed the distance, offering a brief hug. “What are you doing here?”

“Surprising Jake.” He waggled his phone a little. “Bunny was supposed to send me his room number, but I never heard back from her. You don’t happen to know it, do you?”

He’d driven all the way up, across state lines. Evander couldn’t suppress a smile. “He’s going to be thrilled to see you. He hated having to go so soon.”

“I miss him. Haven’t gotten to kick his ass in any video games lately, so he’s probably getting a little too full of himself.”

“We’d hate to see his ego get out of control.” Evander pulled up his phone and flicked over to his notes. They all had each other’s room numbers, just in case something went down. “He’s in three-seventeen. But he’s probably in the shower, so I don’t know if he’ll answer.”

“I can wait. Already made the drive up here.” He shrugged. “What’s a few more minutes?” He patted Evander on the shoulder. “I hate to just run, but—”

“Go. It’s not like we’re dating.”

Quinn waved behind him as he made his way to the elevator. Evander…stood. That was all he could manage. Standing and processing. He wanted someone who would go out of their way to come see him. He wanted someone so desperate to be around him, time didn’t matter. He…couldn’t help but think of that time Ozzy showed up unannounced during Ev’s disaster trip to Phoenix. Rental car broke down, hotel cost way too much, and the concert he’d gone to see in the first place ended up cancelled. So Ozzy showed up at his hotel room and they turned it into a couple’s weekend. He even let Evander play ‘that awful shitty ska music’ that he hated.

Some more of the doubts eroded away as Evander stood in the lobby. All he had to do now was wait for their meet-up.

Chapter twenty-eight

Ozzy

It wasn’t often Ozzy took cold showers. There were a few times he had longer jobs out on the east side of Washington, and those summers were absolutely brutal compared to anything on the west. When it came to surviving hundred-fifteen degree heat, a cold shower was a hell of a boon.

And when it came to chilling out the constant engine whirring in his brain. He was absolutely positive this wasn’t going to be a fun time with Evander. This was serious, and Ozzy couldn’t muster up the ire to get acerbic with him. Maybe once I’m actually there. It would be easier to just spew venom and turn him away.

Unfortunately, there was some part of Ozzy, down deep in his core, that didn’t want to turn Evander away. He was a splinter under the thumbnail in so many ways, but spending time with him softened that impression. A lot. There was a comfort being around him, even when they were fighting. It felt like sliding into something that had been missing for too long.

Which was also scary. It felt more like codependence than Ozzy wanted. They had legitimate reasons to drift apart in the first place. Everyone else’s peace and quiet was part of it, but not the primary reason.

Why would Ev ever want to be with someone he doesn’t respect?

Eventually, the shower got to be too cold even for Ozzy’s agitated state. He cranked the water off, but didn’t bother to dry himself when he stepped out, just walked naked into the middle of the hotel room and breathed.

Talking to Evander could clear the air. It wasn’t a requirement that anything come of it…so why did it feel like, when he got there, the two of them would somehow fall back into a relationship? As if neither of them had agency and the laws of nature would thrust them into each other’s orbit?

He laid on the bed, letting the cool air play over the water on his skin, and just enjoying the chill while he reminisced. The blow-up at the restaurant had been the final straw, even though they drifted along as boyfriends for about six months after that. Habit more than anything, before Ozzy finally had to leave and cut everything off…and end Pine Point Fixer-Uppers in the process. There was no way for them to be apart when they still had a channel to uphold.

But he also remembered Evander sitting up with him and giving him space to cry about his bullshit with his parents. Even when Evander clearly thought Ozzy was in the wrong for maintaining those ties as long as he did, he let Ozzy unload on him. Ozzy couldn’t do that with anyone else. Honestly, once he was done with Ev, that made cutting ties with his family that much easier. He had no outlet for his emotions, so he had to go virtually no contact with his parents for everyone’s health and well-being. Christmases, birthdays, and funerals. That was the extent of their contact, and other than the one funeral they’d had in the last two years, it didn’t go beyond cards or five-minute phone calls.

Ev used to push him and push him until he finally got a reaction, then would talk about Ozzy’s temper. But Ozzy also used to deliberately play cooler than he was because he knew it got under Evander’s skin. But that wasn’t really that common of a thing between them. Mostly, he and Evander knew how to take and give critique to each other. Ozzy became significantly better at being honest about his feelings and not hiding behind sarcasm or aloofness. It wasn’t a complete fix—Ozzy was the person he was—but if they hadn’t been together for so long, he would have stayed totally out of touch with himself.

Which, in exactly that moment, didn’t sound so awful to Ozzy. He could handle being a lot less tuned-in on his own feelings, since they had him lying naked on his bed, soaking into the sheets and spiraling.

I can’t get back together with him. No matter what my brain keeps screaming. Ozzy closed his eyes and let the cold turn into shivers. He could just shake himself back into something that made sense. He and Evander certainly didn’t make sense.

It didn’t mean abandoning all the memories, and for the foreseeable future, he would still be around Ev. A lot. That was the only thing that helped stave off the cold. Even when they were biting with each other, arguing about stupid bullshit, it was a little spark of life compared to the cold that was trying to break in and consume him. Can’t blame the cold when I’m the asshole who didn’t towel off. But he knew it went beyond that. It wasn’t just a chill from the shower or the AC in that moment. So much of his life felt…duller.

He didn’t want to completely cut Evander out, but there was no way in hell he could inflict their romance on everyone else again. As much as they might think Ozzy was a prick—and as much as they may have been right, at least some of the time—he cared about the Pine Point crew. They didn’t deserve to get swept up in the nonsense that always, always unfolded between Ozzy and Evander.

He forced himself to his feet and finally dried himself off, rubbing vigorously over his arms, legs, and belly until he started to generate a little heat.

They could be around each other and have a relationship without dating. They hadn’t done the friend thing very often, only knew each other four months before they first started dating. But as Ozzy stared at himself in the mirror, scrubbed red from the terrycloth and otherwise looking like hell, the option firmed up as the only one that made any sense. He wasn’t apparently ready to fully cut off Evander, even if that had been practical. They were going to be working together for at least six more jobs after this one.

“Friends.” He spoke it tentatively, like it might taste too sour or bitter in his mouth. Instead, he had to suppress a giggle about it. Patently ridiculous to make such a big deal about that possibility, yet there he was.

“Friends.” He said it with a bit more force, staring down his reflection. “I’ll tell him we should just try being friends.” It made the most sense.

Plus, somewhere in the back of that decision, trying and failing to hide, was the idea that friends could become something more. This wasn’t him shutting the door completely on Evander and him. Just a reasonable place to slow down instead of the wild emotional swings they’d always navigated before.

That spark of heat in his belly dimmed, but didn’t go out, so it was at least an acceptable choice.

For now.

He pretended that thought didn’t penetrate through as he tossed his towel on the counter and went to get dressed.

Chapter twenty-nine

Evander

He was early, of course. Not good to keep Ozzy waiting when he showed up, and Evander was too excited to just sit around his hotel room anyway. Plus, since they were meeting in the bar, it gave him a chance to slam back a little liquid courage. Not enough to addle his brain, but a shot of bourbon was a good way to make sure he didn’t back out. It had been hard enough to approach Ozzy for a talk earlier. Having that talk…well, he picked the bar as a location for a reason, and it wasn’t the ambiance.

Knowing he was early and convincing himself that it was fine and Ozzy wasn’t bailing on him were two entirely different things. He sipped at his cheap-ass beer and tried not to focus too much on the empty chair across from him. But focus he did, his attention always returning to the emptiness and the lack of companionship and the gnawing worry that, when the clock ticked over to six, he would still be left alone.

He was so in his own head and up his own ass, he almost missed when Ozzy walked through the door and looked around. The tension around Evander’s belly loosened…then reappeared. Ozzy had shown, wearing a red polo shirt and a pair of dark jeans, but that meant they really did have to have this talk.

And that meant Ozzy could say no and toss him aside after Ev opened up to him.

After a couple seconds, Ozzy locked eyes on him and the corners of his mouth turned up into a smile. A tight smile. A fake smile that didn’t dance up into his eyes at all. His walk over betrayed all the nerves and uncertainty just as much, his hips stiff and his back entirely too straight. He looked less like a guy heading over to his boyfriend and a lot more like a guy heading to a morgue to try and identify his dead dad or some shit.

Evander’s stomach flash froze, but before he could sink too far into the panic, Ozzy pulled out the chair across from him. The quiet was only a couple seconds, but it stretched deep and harsh before he finally said anything. “Hope you weren’t waiting too long.”

Ev shook his head. “I said six. Still got a couple minutes before you’d even be late. Ozzy.”

The smile he got that time was much more sincere, if small. “Ozzy, huh? Pulling out all the stops.”

“It was pointed out that…well, screw that. It wasn’t cool for me to keep using a name you hate.”

“Hate’s a strong word.” Ozzy drummed his fingers on the tabletop a couple times. “But I appreciate it. I’ve been trying to shake off that stupid name forever.”

Evander forced his face to stay even and expressionless, even as he cringed inside. Of course it was wrong to call someone by a name they didn’t like. Why he hadn’t been able to pull his head out of his own ass long enough to see that, Ev couldn’t say. “Well, if I slip up, smack me.”

“Right. What we need in this relationship is an invitation to get into a fist fight.”

“Cat fight, if we’re just slapping, right?”

“Because we’re so known for our collective restraint.” He locked his eyes on Evander, and the depth in them, the chasms of blue that Ev could easily fall into…breathtaking. Literally. Evander had to make himself take conscious breaths as too many familiar feelings and memories washed through him. Not aided at all as Ozzy kept talking. “I’m never going to hit you.”

“Oh, no. I wasn’t implying—”

“I know. But let’s not even joke about it. I’m not here for that.”

Evander nodded. “Then…what are you here for?” Better to rip through it instead of lingering and dawdling. “Not to put too fine a point on it. Just…well, I think we both know what I was looking to talk about.”

“You think we should get back together.”

The statement hung a bit while Evander tried to gather himself up enough to respond. “We could try.” Ev ran his fingers back through his hair, then took a swig of the nasty, bitter beer. The kind of shit they had at high school parties because no one had any taste or culture to speak of. “I think we were good together, when we were good.”

“Which wasn’t often enough, was it?”

Ev shrugged, trying not to take that as an outright rejection. “More than we were bad together, right?”

After a moment, Ozzy nodded. “Yeah.” He closed his eyes and massaged his nose. Then, he suddenly slapped his hand down on the table, rattling the cups and silverware. Before Evander could say anything, he raised his hands up. “I’m sorry. This just isn’t as easy as I was expecting, I guess.”

Before Ev could reassure him—it was an honest emotion, he wouldn’t get pissed about that—the waiter walked up, staring not at Ozzy, but at Evander. “Everything good here?”

Ev nodded. “Everything’s fine.” He didn’t want anyone getting the wrong impression. “Honestly. But could we get another menu?”

“Please.” Ozzy sighed and looked up at the waiter. “And some coffee. Decaf, obviously.”

A moment of hesitation, then the waiter walked off.

Ozzy stared up at the ceiling. “Fuck me, this isn’t how I was planning for this to go.”

Evander forced another breath, then another, another. “Well, you can say whatever you need to say.”

“I understand that. Theoretically. It’s not coming out.” He chewed on his thumbnail, staring at something behind Ev. Or, more likely, just trying not to make eye contact for a bit.

Finally, there was no more reasoning through it. Evander could see what the answer was, and he wasn’t going to sit there and hold onto hope, lying to himself. So he broke the news for the both of them. “You don’t want anything to do with me.”

Ozzy’s gaze refocused straight on Evander. “That’s not it at all. I just…friends.” Ozzy nodded swiftly. “I think we should be friends…and sometimes friends get to be more than that eventually.”

“Friends.” As Evander said it, the talons gripping his midsection uncurled, letting him take what felt like the first full breath in hours. “That’s a lot better than I was expecting.”

Ozzy smiled again. Softly, of course, but it still wasn’t that fake one from earlier. “What were you expecting?”

The waiter came back with a single sheet menu and a white, ceramic cup of coffee, then left without another word.

Ev shrugged. “I mean, you would be fully within your rights to dress me down and toss me aside for suggesting something so stupid.”

“It’s not stupid.” Ozzy looked at the little basket in the middle of the table, then grabbed a sugar packet and dumped it into his coffee. “We have history. Like you said, a lot of it was good. But it’s the whole definition of insanity thing. If we just come off a break and jump back into dating again, why would we expect that to turn out any different?”

For a million reasons. I realized I was wrong. We’re older. We’re on TV. We’ve had a really long break. Because I hope so. Because I’ve never found anyone like you. Because I had the exact same thought about insanity not too long ago. Because Bunny was super clear that she thinks we’re better together than apart. Because I agree.

Evander nodded. “That makes sense.” Friends was a damn sight better than it could have been. Now it was on Ev to put his effort into being a good friend and make that work. He picked up his spoon and tapped it against the edge of Ozzy’s cup. “I thought you didn’t do processed sugars anymore?”

“And I’ve been so happy and pleasant ever since I went off sugar.”

“Oh, so we’re pretending you were happy-go-lucky before?”

Ozzy flipped him off, and the world seemed to settle into something that felt…not quite right, but a little more normal. A little closer to what Evander hoped.

Sometimes friends get to be more than that. They both knew “more than that” was what Evander wanted. If being friends was the step up to that, he would do his damnedest, and no one could say shit about it to him.

He raised his beer up. “To friends.”

Ozzy acquiesced with a tiny clink. “To friends.”

Chapter thirty

Ozzy

It had been a handful of days since they’d had their big sit down, and ever since…well, things hadn’t been perfect between Evander and Ozzy, but there was a lot less hanging animosity between the two of them. Evander seemed to constantly be testing the bounds of what was friendly versus flirtatious, which made their interactions always a little awkward, like he was nervous to step a toe over that line.

As far as Ozzy was concerned, it would have been a lot better if they just talked like normal human beings, but he wasn’t going to push. They needed a chance to redefine themselves as friends instead of a toxic, on-again, off-again mess of a relationship. Which was a good reason not to act the same as always, no matter how painfully stilted it felt to have a conversation with Evander.

Ozzy, for his part, had minimal work still to do on the actual job. The yard was about as far along as they could manage to get it. Aside from some work on the patio, which was more Jake and Evander’s domain at the moment, the work was at a bit of a standstill. So Ozzy had pulled up a chair at a little folding table inside the outbuilding, as out of the way as he could manage, and had a document open on his phone. It was a lot of ideas leftover for the landscaping and outdoor living spaces. Most of it was pie-in-the-sky sort of stuff, like installing a water feature or putting in an actual vegetable garden. Stuff that would need a lot of buy-in from the Trangs, and that they probably didn’t have time to implement anyway.

At the top was the damned rose bushes, which he wasn’t ready to abandon. The longer he sat with nothing to do, the more he wanted to figure out a way to get them transplanted. He had a collection of points to make to Eliza, to the rest of the crew, to Melanie. Once he felt confident enough in his arguments, he’d make them. Hopefully that would be enough.

Be better if I had a solid plan. That was the tripping point at the moment. He had no choice but to respect Melanie’s desire to make this a surprise. Even if it sounded awful to Ozzy, she knew her parents better than him. That meant he couldn’t just send a crew over there to dig up the roses and haul them away. Might raise a few eyebrows. He hadn’t, however, made any plans to fill in the garden bed next to the patio. If he did figure out a way to make this work, he’d put them in there.

Someone walked up and rapped on the table. Ozzy looked up to see Jake looming. Once he caught Ozzy’s eye, he grabbed a folding chair from against the wall and sat backwards on it. Banged his elbow a little bit, but it didn’t seem to slow him down, even as he shook his arm out. “So, are the rumors true?”

“Rumors are never true.”

“Sure.”

Ozzy sighed and turned off his phone screen. “What rumors are running through that blond little brain of yours?” He had his suspicions, and if he was right, they definitely weren’t true, but better to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

“Oh, just something about you and a certain interior designer who’ve been awfully friendly lately.”

“Shock of all shocks, I’m friendly with my friends.” Ozzy spun his finger through the air in celebration. “Amazing detective work, Jakey.”

“No, come on. You always get extra assholey when you’re trying not to be direct about stuff.” He leaned forward until he was firmly inside Ozzy’s personal bubble. “Spill.”

Ozzy sighed…but it would be good to have someone to talk to. And he’d been there when Jake was getting all up in Quinn’s business. Maybe not to anyone’s good fortune, considering how rocky that got by the end, but there was some sort of symmetry that Ozzy could appreciate.

He tucked his phone into his pocket and got up. “I’ll help you with whatever you’re working on so we don’t fall behind. Not getting much planning done.”

“And then you’ll dish?”

“Yes.” Ozzy shook his head as Jake popped up and took the lead out the door. But he did smile. They all were his oldest friends, after all. It’d be nice to have someone to talk to outside of the situation. Would he have ever assumed that person would be Jake? Not really, but who was he to question fate?

They headed around the corner and out to the little white canopy. Jake snagged his toe on a stray piece of lumber, but caught himself on the edge of a set of shelves, then pushed the wood out of the way.

Ozzy grabbed a set of safety goggles and took a glance around at the collected works in progress. Immediately, his eyes landed on the privacy wall they’d gone over for the patio. Mostly finished, from the look of it. Ozzy pointed at it. “This just about done?”

“Oh, yeah.” Jake squatted down and pointed at the four stubby legs on the bottom. “This is all that’s left. Want to make sure it’s easily removable if they ever just want to open the whole space up, but still secure. The hardware’s getting express shipped, so it should be here in the next couple days.”

Ozzy looked them over. “What are you thinking?” It was a solid plan, he just hadn’t heard anything about it.

“It’s a nifty little cross-bolt thingy.” He held his index fingers over each other by way of illustration. “Four way brackets that get drilled into the concrete footing, then the bolts go through the legs here at ninety degree angles to each other, about an inch apart.” He stood and pulled out his phone, apparently ready to pull it up…then stopped and raised an eyebrow. “Nice try. I’m staying on target. I want to hear what’s going on.”

It hadn’t been Ozzy’s intention to skip over it, but…well, maybe it was subconscious. “All right, fine. Where can I do the least damage here?” He’d tried to work with Jake before and basically got relegated to measuring lumber.

Jake grabbed a large, yellow can with a brush rubber banded to the side. “We’ve got a shit ton of stuff that needs staining.”

Ozzy was about to ask where all this stuff was, but then Jake pointed. On the other side of all the saws and stuff, tarps covered a huge swath stretching out into the front yard, filled with pieces of cut lumber and custom-made furniture pieces. There wasn’t nearly as much bespoke carpentry work as they had back in Springfield, but it was still a lot.

At least I’m doing something with my hands. They headed around and the cameras swiveled into place, in case Ozzy forgot this was all being recorded. He actually looked directly into the camera and spoke to whoever was going to be watching this. “You do anything I don’t like with this footage, I’ll find you. And I literally know exactly how to bury bodies so no one finds them.” Then he pried the top off the can of stain and dipped in his brush. Jake wasn’t looking at him, focusing on his own staining work. Which made it a lot easier to start talking. “We kept butting up against each other on this job, then things got weird, and…well, we’re trying just friends for now.”

Jake whistled low. “Friends with benefits, I assume.”

“Didn’t come up.” But maybe it should.

“Yeah, but I’ve met you two. You’re not going to be able to stay off each other too much longer.”

If only you knew. “Right.”

Jake looked at him, brows furrowed. Then a smile split over his face. “You already got some benefits, didn’t you?”

Ozzy rolled his eyes. “Whatever you need to tell yourself. I’ll let Quinn know that me and Ev are in your spank bank.”

“Deflecting.” Jake wagged the brush at Ozzy. “You don’t have to kiss and tell. I’ll just assume that I’m right, since you’re not denying it.”

“Look, we’re trying to break those old patterns so that we don’t fall apart again.” He stared down at the boards he was staining to a deep, warm brown. “Just friends, all right? And I’m going to leave you to do all this shit yourself if you don’t drop it.”

Jake chuckled, but didn’t say anything else. He just pulled out his phone and started blasting some kind of freaky hyperpop that Ozzy…well, he wasn’t going to admit that it was damned infectious, but he caught himself bobbing his head along to it. And it did make the tedium go by much faster. Even if the guy on vocals sounded like shit.

Chapter thirty-one

Evander

The house was really coming together, at least in Evander’s opinion. They had tons of furniture moved in, including some of Jake’s custom pieces. Most of it was the stuff they’d bought at the local stores. The bedroom was just about finished, save for a little bit of lighting work that Aras and a couple of the contractors were finishing up. Ev only peeked in to see the progress there, since he and Aras had gotten into a hell of an argument over the fixtures he wanted. Evander had won, in the end, but better not to poke the bear.

He took a stroll through the house just to make sure he had eyes on everything that was going on. He’d chosen to actually do minimal furnishing, since Melanie’s folks had their own large collection of decor items they’d be bringing in. That showed the most in his bathroom selections. Robinson had just wrapped up the installation on the walk-in shower/tub combo. It had been a bit of a sensitive subject to bring up with Melanie, but she’d agreed that it would be good. Her parents weren’t getting more dexterous or spry with age. Her words.

But since the functional work was only recently wrapped up, the decor shouldn’t have fully gone up…but it had. They had a couple little shelving units and a towel rack, and Evander was particularly fond of the mirror. A local artist had a few for sale at the hardware store. This one was round, with an amorphous frame painted white, and scrolling carved into the wood. It blended into the white walls of the bathroom, but it was just enough visual interest to keep it from being dull.

Aside from the shower curtain and the sleek, inset light/fan combo in the ceiling, that was really all the notable decoration. It was clean and white, and when Evander had suggested a nice, plush bathmat for the floor, Melanie had said they were attached to this rug they used. Something Evander hadn’t even bothered to take a picture of when they’d toured the house for inspiration. It clearly wasn’t amazing in any way, but she was the client and they were the ones who were going to be living there.

The world would be more beautiful if I was in charge, though.

He headed out into the living room and kitchenette. A bit rougher around the edges. They had a new rolling island that Jake was finishing up that would help delineate the two spaces, and the only living room furniture they had in place was the hanging entertainment cabinet that would go under the TV. The walls were a super soft cornflower color, and Evander had insisted on warm lighting to keep that from feeling too lifeless and chilly, so it brought to mind a clear day outside instead of the dead of winter. They’d brought a refrigerator and an oven into the kitchen, but again, all the other appliances would be provided by Melanie’s parents.

The only space left that needed real work was the patio. Evander didn’t step out onto the concrete slab, just stood in the doorway and peered out. He and Ozzy had made a lot more progress when they were sniping and backbiting the entire time. In the last few days, since their little encounter in the hotel room, the patio had fallen by the wayside as far as projects were concerned.

Because of me. Ev just felt this discomfort, like things hadn’t settled. When they were fighting, he knew how to interact with Ozzy, how to talk about the project. It involved a lot of bitching and cattiness, but it was familiar. They were exes. And that was still true on paper, but it felt different.

Because I don’t want to be exes anymore. Obviously.

He pushed past that thought and looked at what had been accomplished. The patio had been cleaned up and edged. After the little blow-up over the lights, Aras and the contractors had wired in some wall sconces that would keep things warm and bright, but still cozy. Again, according to Melanie, they had some outdoor lighting they liked that they’d bring in.

Evander still had a whole list of ideas to burn through for that patio, but that meant going to Ozzy. He’d have to eventually, but it felt a bit too much like tempting fate. They were in a good enough place for the time being. What was the real value in pushing things? They still had plenty of time to work out the last bits on the patio between them. He could put off anything intense a little while longer.

“Hey.”

He turned at the sound of Bunny’s voice and saw her wandering over, pink overalls covered in dirt and sawdust and some mysterious wet splotches. Water? Oil? Wood stain? Hard to say.

Ev took one last glance at the unfinished patio, then strode over to her. “What can I do for you? I’m in a big supervisory role right now.”

“So you’re standing around with your thumb up your ass.”

“Basically.” He hoisted himself up on the kitchen counter, right next to the sink, and kicked his feet. “What’s up?”

She leaned back against the refrigerator. “Checking in after our little talk. You two haven’t been seen around each other since.”

Shit. “You noticed that, did you?” She’d already found him out. He wasn’t going to lie about it.

“Well I have these nifty things in my face called eyes. And I’ve known the two of you since we were in high school.” She popped her lips, a little bridging sound she’d used for a long time when silence threatened to be a little too heavy. “So what’s the story? Do I need to beat some sense into that boy?”

“I mean probably, but not about me.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Would you believe it if I told you this is all because things went well when we talked?”

“Sounds made up but sure. I’ll buy it. What’s the story?”

There was a camera watching because there always was, and Ev became suddenly very aware of the weight of the mic pack on his waist, but he pushed forward. It wasn’t like he was going to say anything scandalous on camera. He’d save any admission about their blow job session for later if Bunny really needed to know.

“We’re friends. Something about trying the same thing over and over again and expecting anything to change.”

“Ah, so that was Ozzy’s idea.”

Evander raised an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?”

“He rolls that Einstein quote out all the time.”

A tiny flame flickered to life in Evander’s chest. He’d gone through the same thought process…which meant he’d probably picked it up from Ozzy.

“Yeah. It was his idea. But he’s not wrong. Something was going to have to change if we were ever going to find some sort of new equilibrium.”

Bunny nodded with another lip pop. “Well, not to put too fine a point on this, but how does any of that explain you avoiding him like he’s some kind of plague-ridden zombie?”

Guess that’s not as obvious as I was hoping. “It’s complicated. I feel like—”

“All hands meeting right now!” Eliza threw the sliding door open and marched through, shouting as loud as she could. She nodded to Evander and Bunny. “In the kitchen. Immediately. Big shit coming.” In spite of that, she had an almost manic grin on her face. “Should make good TV if we can pull it off, though.”

Then she marched through the front door, repeating the message again. Evander shrugged at Bunny. “Rain check. I promise it’s even dumber than you think, though.”

Chapter thirty-two

Ozzy

In spite of the big house, it was a tight fit to get everyone in the kitchen. Ozzy was sandwiched between Evander on his right and one of the Trang boys on his left. What the family was doing there, he couldn’t guess, but apparently when Eliza said ‘all hands,’ she meant it. They didn’t have all the contractors in there, but a handful of them. The three cameras and the lighting equipment crammed in didn’t exactly make things more spacious.

Eliza pointed to Melanie. “Okay. Explain fast.”

“Right.” She spread her hands out in front of her. “My parents called. They’re dropping by today. And this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

Ozzy didn’t let himself smile, but there was some undeniable satisfaction running through him. Maybe I’ll get those rose bushes yet.

“I’m really hoping we can…maybe try to keep them from getting too suspicious? I know we’re so close, I really want it to be a big reveal for them when they see the finished product.”

Ozzy clicked his tongue. “I’m not sure how feasible that is. You’ve got all these windows, we’ve cut holes in your fence, your backyard is all put in order.”

“I have an idea on that, actually.” Eliza held her hands up in front of herself, preparing for him to apparently get mad.

This ought to be great. “Am I going to hate this idea of yours?”

“Probably.” She pointed to the windows. “Tarp up the windows, caution tape around the gate, pretend there’s a leak or something in the backyard.”

“And why do I hate that?”

“All the new plants have to be covered, the sod needs to be disguised as much as possible.” She shrugged. “We’re going to have to fling a lot of dirt around the backyard to make it look like there’s something going on and get it as close to square one as we can. Any of the bags of topsoil and stuff we have are going to need to get opened and dumped back there.”

Ozzy sighed. “And then cleaned up.”

“We’re happy to help with all of it,” said Melanie. “Please. It’s one last thing to keep the surprise going for them. They don’t come over that often, so this’ll be the only time.”

Ozzy hated the whole concept. Eliza pinned him down right on that. A waste of resources that could be sold back, taken to another job, donated, anything. A waste of time. Wrecking the whole look of all the landscaping. All to appease the desires of some rich assholes with too much time and money who were getting their entire backyard and their guest house fixed up for free. It was the kind of thing that burned under Ozzy’s skin.

Honestly, it was just the fact that her kid was right there next to him that kept him from running his mouth. Plus, he knew it wouldn’t get him anywhere he wanted, and they were on a time crunch. Eliza liked the idea of them pulling this cover up for the show, and at the end of the day, she had the final say on all this shit.

Ozzy shrugged. “Fine. But I’m going through the yard with a fine-toothed comb. Single particle of dust or rock or mulch out of place, you’re all going to hear about it. Forever.”

Eliza clapped. “Okay.” She turned and looked up at Melanie. “You say we have about half an hour?”

“Yeah. They said they were about forty minutes out, and that was ten minutes ago.”

“Okay then.” She pointed to different members of the contracting crew, getting them moving.

Mason walked up to Ozzy and clapped him on the back. Then held his hand there as he leaned in to whisper, “I’ll swing by a dispensary at the next job.”

“I don’t need a bribe like a child for behaving.” Ozzy took a deep breath, then sighed and let his shoulders drop. “A joint. I don’t need to get edible high if I’m supposed to work the next day.”

“I’ll do two.” He lowered his voice even more as people started to move around past them, heading to whatever task Eliza had assigned them. “I think it’s bullshit too, but we just have to get through this one thing. We get a good showing this first season, we can negotiate for more control on picking these jobs next time.”

Ozzy couldn’t help but grin at that. “How far ahead do you think about this stuff?”

“Five year plan. Minimum. Since I was a junior in high school.” He clapped Ozzy hard on the back one more time, then raised his voice back to normal. “I’ll show you the spreadsheets some time if you’re interested.”

“I’m really not.” As Mason walked off, Evander and Eliza approached together.

She looked up at him with a frown. “I know you’re not thrilled, but thank you for playing along.”

“That’s the job.” He popped his knuckles as he spoke. “Where am I going to be best placed here?”

“I already volunteered us for the patio.” Evander pointed to it, apparently in case Ozzy had forgotten where it was. “Figure we’ll be able to make sure nothing goes too wrong better than anyone else. And I can make sure we cover up the actual outbuilding properly. Not too many windows, but that sliding glass door.”

“Makes sense.” Ozzy turned and headed outside, trying not to cringe as he watched contractors throwing bags of soil around to each other to be spread, or tossing tarps and spare plywood over his nice new plants. They already had a mound of dirt piled to the far end of the yard. “What’s the cover story that makes that make sense?”

“Plumbing work.” Evander pulled up even with Ozzy as they reached the edge of the patio. “I think they’re working out the specifics of the story, but something with the water made the most sense.”

“Works for me.” He grabbed one end of the table—the one Evander had picked specifically to spite him—that stood in the middle of the patio and Ev grabbed the other. The sliding door was already open, so they shuffled back through it, carrying it in where it could be hidden a lot more easily.

“Hi.”

Ozzy looked at the source of the voice from the door. It was the same kid who’d been there next to him at the all-hands meeting. He was early to mid-teens, but definitely on the shorter side for that age. He barely poked himself around the edge of the door and wasn’t making any eye contact with either Ozzy or Evander. But he also wasn’t leaving.

Ozzy looked at Evander, who just shrugged. Back in my court. They had the table down and mostly out of the way, so Ozzy took a couple steps closer. “Hey. What’s up? I don’t think I got your name before.” How did I end up with the responsibility of talking to a kid? Who thought this was a good idea at all?

He stepped inside properly and finally looked up. “Jamie.” He shuffled his feet and every synapse in Ozzy’s brain fired off. He was nervous about something, and neither of them were the right people to handle whatever was going on with him.

Before Ozzy could try to change the subject or pull open the escape hatch, the world broke open. Jamie’s voice somehow cut across all the cacophony of the mad rush going on around them. “You’re all…gay, right?”

Oh god. A queerling in trouble. He looked at Evander one more time, but there was apparently no assistance coming his way. Ozzy cleared his throat, then nodded. “Yeah. Unless someone’s…had some self-discovery since last time I checked in.”

Jamie nodded and took another little step forward. “How did you know?”

You had to pick today, kid? Every instinct in Ozzy’s body was screaming at him that this wasn’t a good idea, that he shouldn’t be the person to take this on. Literally any other member of the crew would have been better. Well, maybe not Aras. But anyone else.

Yet Jamie had picked the two of them for this heavy fucking conversation. Ozzy took a deep breath, then another to try and steady himself. Real life stuff was way more important than any of this show stuff or the project for the kid’s rich parents.

He looked at Evander. “Anywhere we could go chat?”

Finally, Ev weighed in. “It’s not going to be super awesome out here. In the house or in one of the trailers?”

“Not the house.” Jamie shook his head.

Ozzy’s back straightened. Too many memories pushed through the dark little box he kept them in, trying to flood his thoughts. He remembered those nerves. He remembered that strain. He remembered the uncertainty crawling around his chest.

He grabbed Jamie by the shoulder and headed outside. “You want just us or the whole team? Your call.”

Jamie didn’t hesitate at all, in spite of his general nervousness. “I don’t want it to be a big weird thing.”

“Cool.” Ozzy looked over his shoulder at Evander. Everything between the two of them disappeared. It didn’t matter in the moment. “Get your butt moving.”

Chapter thirty-three

Evander

Ev stayed cautious as he followed along behind Ozzy and Jamie. Clearly, Jamie was questioning. He didn’t pick the most peaceful time to do it, but Evander couldn’t really blame him. Ev would have killed for a bunch of gay adults around to answer any of his questions when he was trying to figure his own shit out.

But his chest was tight because of Ozzy. They’d been together in some fashion or another for a long time. Evander knew his whole story, his relationship with his family. This had to be pinging off all his danger bells. A kid from a rich family questioning his sexuality—at least that’s what it seemed to be; they’d find out for sure soon enough—and nervous about it. Ozzy didn’t share all the details about anything in his life, but Evander knew them, and he’d gotten a front-row seat to how they still treated him for being gay.

When they got to the hair and makeup trailer, Ozzy looked at Corinne, the main makeup artist for the crew. Evander cringed in advance, but Ozzy…well, he wasn’t mean, that was for sure. He was brusque, though. “We need the trailer.”

Corinne blinked. “What?”

“The trailer. Privacy. Talking. Without you around.” With his left hand—he still had his right on Jamie’s shoulder—he waved toward the door. “I don’t want to get bitchy about this, but I will.”

Corinne didn’t move. She darted a look to Evander. When he nodded, she seemed to relax a little bit and finally headed around Ozzy. The two hair stylists and the other makeup artist followed her out.

Ozzy sighed and led Jamie to one of the chairs, then took one for himself. “Okay.” He turned off his mic pack, then grabbed for Evander’s and switched his off as well. “Nothing’s getting in or out of here, kiddo.”

Jamie nodded, but he didn’t say anything. Every muscle in his body was tense and his face was pale.

Evander pulled another chair around and sat next to Ozzy. “Hey. Jamie. Everything’s good. You don’t need to be scared right now. I know you must be pretty nervous about something to come to a couple of old homosexuals like us.”

It got a smile, which was better than before.

So Evander kept pushing. “Tell you what. You talk whenever you want. We can just put something on the TV here in the meantime, yeah?” They didn’t get cable or satellite in the trailers or anything like that, but it was better than complete silence.

Or at least it would have been if Jamie hadn’t started talking again before Ev could find the remote. “It’s just…I’m pretty sure I’m gay. Or bi. Or something. I like guys.” Jamie’s fists were balled up against his thighs as he spoke and his face was no longer pale, instead flushed a deep pink. “But what if I’m wrong?”

“Then you’re wrong.” Ozzy’s voice was as matter-of-fact as Evander had ever heard it. He looked straight at Jamie, unfazed. “Is it going to be a problem if you’re wrong and you have to change your mind, do you think?” He jerked a thumb toward his chest. “I convinced myself I was bi for a long time because in my head, that was easier to swallow. At least I could like girls. It wasn’t who I am, though. Eventually came around to that. Not that there’s anything wrong with being bi or anything else. Just not my truth.”

Ev nodded, happy to try and shore up that fact. “Plenty of bi folks in both of our orbits.”

Jamie nodded, but he wasn’t looking at Evander even a bit. All his focus was on Ozzy. “Nobody got mad about it when you realized you were gay?”

Evander’s belly tightened and it took all his energy to stay calm and even. Evander knew what had gone down. Bi, his parents had been able to grit their teeth with because, as Ozzy said, settling down with a girl was still an option. Zero question where he picked up that attitude to begin with. Gay had been a screaming match that ended with him staying at Evander’s place. When he did eventually go back, his parents pretended that they’d never heard anything and Ozzy was as straight as the day was long. Which was a stance they never budged on, even when he would bring Ev to dinners at their place.

Evander was ready to change the subject if need be, but he wasn’t going to jump in unless it seemed like Ozzy was going to lose his shit in front of a scared teenager. Have to give him the chance. Jamie’s paying attention to him, not me.

Ozzy sighed. “People got mad.” His voice stayed low and deep, body tensed up from his legs all the way to his jaw.

Then he offered a tiny half a smile and something sparkled in his eyes. “Nobody important, though.”

Jamie exhaled loudly. “What does that mean, though? Nobody important?”

“That means anyone who doesn’t accept you figuring your own shi—” Ozzy closed his eyes laughed at himself. “Your own crap. Anyone who doesn’t accept you figuring your own crap out the way you need to isn’t important. They can screw right off in most cases.”

Not perfect, but not bad. Evander finally spoke up. “Who is it you’re worried about? Or is it just kind of all over the place worry?”

Evander certainly didn’t miss the new sharpness in Ozzy’s attention, waiting for the answer. And if it wasn’t the one he wanted to hear, Ozzy would be in that house screaming faster than it would take to strike a damn match.

And maybe I wouldn’t stop him.

Jamie shook his head. “I don’t know. Everyone? The world? Everyone from school?” He spread out his arms and rolled his eyes, a bit more of the tension stripping out of his muscles. Just a bit, though. “I don’t live in some awesome, accepting, inclusive city.”

Evander nodded, but before he could say anything else, Ozzy pushed into the conversation. “I’m going to level with you. You’re old enough to hear it straight.” He smiled at himself. “Or not straight.”

And he got a smile back from Jamie, however small.

Ozzy leaned forward, diminishing the gap in height that existed between himself and Jamie so he was looking the kid directly in the eye. “I grew up in a small town too. Smaller than this, and a while ago. People had a lot to say to me about coming out. Constantly. Still the best decision I ever made and I’d do it a million more times. That doesn’t mean it’s got to be something you’re ready to do right now. Only you can figure out when it’s the right time for you. But don’t let the fear of other people’s opinions be the thing that stops you.”

Damn. Evander caught himself grinning and forced his face a little bit flatter. He didn’t want to focus this conversation on Ozzy, but it was undeniably sweet to see how he was treating Jamie. Not convincing me I want to be just friends, that’s for sure.

Jamie blew out a shaky breath. After a few seconds, he nodded. “Then…is it weird if I tell you two that I think I’m bi before I tell anyone else?”

Evander pressed a hand to his chest in mock shock. “What? I had no clue.”

“Absolutely stunned.” Ozzy leaned back, shrugging. “Going to need some time to process that. Seems like it just came out of nowhere.”

Jamie gave a real laugh, a little snort. Then he got up out of the chair. “I guess now I tell the family. Should wait until this is all done, right?”

Ozzy bobbled his head side to side. “Kind of depends on whether they noticed you disappearing into a trailer with a couple adults you barely know.”

“Who kicked out all the hair and makeup folks to get some privacy.” Evander looked pointedly to Ozzy. “I think we might have made a bit more of a scene than intended.”

Ozzy nodded. “Sorry about that.”

Jamie shook his head, even though his shoulders pulled back higher again. “It’s okay. I’m not worried about anyone here freaking out.” He nodded to Evander. “Just all over kind of worry about that, I guess.”

Evander glanced back to Ozzy and saw him lose a touch of color from his face. He almost immediately smiled, but there was clearly something in there that touched him, surprised him. Ev knew how to read Ozzy’s face after all this time.

A knock at the trailer door broke everything else. Ozzy and Evander looked at each other, then Evander nodded and headed for the door while Ozzy stood and moved behind, clearing the way for Jamie to do this the way he needed.

Chapter thirty-four

Ozzy

He didn’t know who to expect when Ev opened the door, but Mason certainly wasn’t top of mind. Yet Mason stepped up into the trailer, glancing around. “Okay. What’s the story here? Because we’re getting a whole lot of freaking out and not a whole lot of work done out there while everyone’s wondering about this.”

“My mom and dad aren’t worried, are they?” Jamie shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to freak them out.”

Ozzy put his hand on Jamie’s shoulder. “You’re fine.” He locked eyes with Mason, trying to communicate all the context necessary without taking away Jamie’s agency. “Kid needed to talk with someone who would get what he was saying. I might have been a little…gruff with Corinne and them. I’ll apologize.”

Mason nodded. “Got it.” He shifted his gaze to Jamie. “Probably want to go make an appearance. Your parents aren’t worried worried, just hoping everything’s all right. They’d probably like to hear from you.”

Jamie nodded, then looked back at Ozzy, eyes wide, but looking a lot less…horrified than he had been before. “Thanks.”

That word stung at Ozzy’s middle and he started getting that stupid prickling behind his eyes. He nodded and gave Jamie’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “Any time.”

He nodded to Evander one more time, then walked past everyone and out of the trailer.

Mason plopped down into one of the chairs, blowing out a big, long breath. “Coming out?”

“If he wants to.” Ev took his chair back, moving it a little closer to Ozzy before fully settling back down. “He wanted some advice from someone who’s been there. What he does with that is up to him.”

Mason nodded. “Well, I hope everything goes well.”

“Me too.” Ozzy hated the stupid catch in his voice. When Evander put a hand on his knee, he hated that way less than he knew he probably should. He didn’t bother to push Ev off or move away. “I’ve been there.” He still remembered the immediate cold that filled his house when he came out as bi…and the fire when he came out again as gay. It was only because he was quick enough that he avoided getting decked by his dad. When he’d eventually come back home from Ev’s place—his parents didn’t mind any of it—half his shit had been broken and left on his floor. They eventually reached something resembling calm, but it still burned the inside of his skull to even remember that moment, walking through the immaculate house only to open his bedroom door and see it absolutely ravaged.

He didn’t talk to either of his parents for days after that, and neither of them seemed particularly eager to open up conversation either.

Mason leaned back with a grunt. “Jesus. Not what anyone was looking for right now, is it?”

“I don’t think any of this is what we were looking for.” Ozzy tried so hard to bite his tongue, but the criticisms flew out anyway. “So sorry Ev and I tried to help a kid out instead of worrying about this stupid fucking surprise these rich fucks have in mind for their parents.” He couldn’t believe they were focusing on the job like it mattered. “Maybe if they were better parents, he wouldn’t have to be so worried.”

“Whoa, Ozzy.” Evander pulled his hand away from Ozzy’s knee. “He didn’t say his parents were going to be a problem.”

“Yeah, well maybe they should have raised him knowing it didn’t matter.” Ozzy pushed up out of the chair and brushed past. He couldn’t breathe in that damn trailer. He couldn’t look at any of them anymore. He needed space and he needed people who weren’t prioritizing this bullshit job and he needed to not have a total fucking breakdown around company.

“Ozzy!” Evander’s voice almost caught him as he opened the door, but it wasn’t enough. He pushed past, headed down, and marched to the opposite end of the yard, where they’d apparently sufficiently piled up the soil to make it look like it had been put there purposefully. He didn’t know or care what the story was supposed to be if they got close enough to see there was no hole. It didn’t matter. None of this stuff mattered.

A few glances shot his way, but Ozzy ignored them. He went straight for the dirt pile and stuck his hands in. Immediately, the slightly chill, damp soil calmed him. He would have preferred something to actually do. Plants to arrange, weeds to pull, anything. But he would take the comfort of the dirt for the moment. He pushed in deeper, all the way to his elbows.

As it worked on him, the tension leaching away into the ground, his head cleared. As always seemed to be the case, he saw his asshole behavior in hindsight, never in time to stop himself.

Ozzy curled his buried fingers through the dirt and inhaled the scent of earth. The calm continued to spread the longer he stayed there, the deeper he sank his arms and hands into the soil. If he thought he could have gotten away with it, he would have gone shoulder deep. He couldn’t remember where he heard about it, but there was apparently some kind of evidence that touching earth was good to help you calm down. Or it was a bunch of horse shit and he was just able to enjoy the placebo effect.

“Ozzy?”

He didn’t recognize that voice, and it wouldn’t honestly have mattered if he did. “Kind of occupied.”

In his periphery, he saw Melanie. His heart rammed up into his throat and the good vibes from the big pile of soil were no longer cutting it.

She wrapped her arms around him. “Thank you.”

The world flipped and turned. Slowly, Ozzy pulled his hands free, wiping them off on his thighs, then taking a step back from the hug. “Thanks for what?”

“Jamie just spilled out his little heart to us.” She kept her voice low. “Once he got done talking, he said you helped explain stuff to him.” She smiled at Ozzy, big and wide, pushing her cheeks up into full circles. “So thank you.”

That was fast. Or I’ve been standing here buried in dirt for a long time. The words from Melanie didn’t really sink in, just sort of hovered on the outside of his thoughts. He’d heard them, understood them, but they felt somehow distant. Fake. Like a movie he’d seen instead of something that had actually been spoken to him.

“We really need to get on and make sure everything’s ready for your parents. Don’t want to ruin the surprise.” He heard it like it was someone else speaking. Someone stilted and a little bit too cold. So he forced a little more excitement into his voice, even though it felt like dragging a horse up out of the mud by hand. “You’re welcome. Just kind of took up some time doing that and want to make sure all this effort doesn’t go to waste, right?”

“Right.” She backed away, still grinning. “I know where to find you when this is done. Really. Truly. Thank you.” She only made it a couple steps before jogging back and hugging him again. Tight.

Then she actually went inside and Ozzy stood, trying and failing to process anything.

“Hey.” Evander. When had Evander gotten to him? When had Evander grabbed his hand?

Ozzy looked over at him and saw his forehead creased with worry as they went into the out building and closed the door.

Chapter thirty-five

Evander

The mother-in-law apartment was a mess, obviously. They’d packed everything inside as hastily as they could and threw up some of the leftover masking paper from painting to cover the windows and the sliding door. Which made it dim and cramped and not large enough to hide that many people.

But they didn’t need to hide that many people. Just two.

Evander never let for go of Ozzy’s hand, clammy and dirty as it was. They weaved through all the furniture and tools, down the short hallway, and into the bedroom, which had mostly been left intact. There was a little pile of paints and stains and other half-used cans and bottles in one corner, but most importantly, there was a bed. Not fully set up, but it was a place to sit, secluded from everyone and everything else. The rest of the crew was in hiding somewhere or had headed back to the hotel. Whatever. That was their business.

Ozzy was his business.

They sat and, finally, Evander let go of his hand. “You okay?”

A long silence. Ozzy raked his fingers back through his hair. “I’m sorry. In my head. I need to apologize to Mason.”

“Later. Are you okay?”

Ozzy looked across at him, mouth slightly agape. “She thanked me for talking to Jamie. And she hugged me.” He sounded so frail and so young. A lot like he had that night when he showed up crying at Evander’s door all those years ago.

Ev reached up and grabbed his shoulders, holding him steady. “You don’t even seem like you’re all here, Ozzy.”

He closed his eyes. His shoulders vibrated. A shaking breath passed over his lips before he finally opened his eyes again. “That was hard.”

Ev smiled and slowly, carefully wrapped one arm around Ozzy. He had to take the temperature of the situation instead of jumping straight—

Ozzy leaned into the hug, resting his head on Evander’s shoulder. Ev wrapped his other arm around Ozzy and squeezed. “It’s okay. I know this must be a lot.”

Another shuddering breath from Ozzy. After a few more seconds, he pulled back just far enough to make eye contact with Evander. “Thanks for being there for all of it. I know this isn’t what you were signing up for.”

“Sure it is.” Ev held his face in his hands. “It’s what friends do, right?”

“Yeah. And I know that’s not what you wanted.” Ozzy leaned his head against Ev’s hand, pinning it briefly between his ear and his shoulder. A tiny smile pulled at his lips. A familiar smile. A smile that was reserved for the bedroom.

Evander’s body ached to go along with the old signals. They had a bed for Christ’s sake, and no one was going to be walking in on them any time soon. They had to stay in hiding at least until Melanie’s parents left. It would be so easy to let that smile turn into a kiss, then turn into feeling each other up, then turn into so much more without anyone having a clue.

When Ozzy parted his lips, Evander pressed a hand to his chest, holding him in place. “Listen. I want to. But not without talking first. We’re not repeating the same patterns, right?” Ozzy just blinked at him, so Ev continued. “I could give in right now and fuck you silly, then come back for seconds. But you and I have so much history…is it just that? Falling into a familiar routine again? Or is this really something you want?”

Ozzy sighed, mouth closing. He squeezed his eyes shut so hard his nose scrunched. “You’re right.” It was strained coming out of his throat, but he did manage to get it out. His face relaxed just enough for him to crack his eyes open. “And I know it. But maybe I like that pattern. Maybe that pattern sounds good right now.”

“Fuck, that pattern sounds great right now.” Evander mussed his hair with one hand. “But so does some ecstasy and I don’t think we should be doing that, either.”

Ozzy snorted a laugh. “You’ve never done E.”

“Ozzy, am I known for lying? We did have two whole years since we broke up. Plus all those off-again stages when we were dating. You don’t know what illicit substances I used.”

Ozzy raised an eyebrow. “Acid?”

“Nope.”

“Ketamine?”

“Once. Didn’t care for it. Lost, like, sixteen hours and swore it off.”

“Yeah. Not my favorite.” Something lit off in his eyes. “Shrooms?”

“Great the first time, bad trip the second time. It’s why I never fell in love with idea of dropping acid.”

“Damn. Maybe you are more adventurous than me.” He leaned back. “You think getting drunk would be smart?”

“Couldn’t fucking hurt, right?”

“I mean, it could. Remember the graduation party?”

“Of course I remember it. Bunny and Aras got so wasted they decided to go dancing on the roof of that house.”

Ozzy nodded. “And none of us were sober enough to try and talk them out of it.”

“Robinson was. They just didn’t listen.” A broken arm and thirty-six stitches between the two of them kind of proved he was right, though. “At least it was only a one-story house.”

“With grass. I can’t imagine if we ever did anything at my parents place, with all that concrete and the rock garden out front.” He laid all the way back on the bed, and even though they weren’t going to go further than that hug, Evander did take the opportunity to peek as his shirt rode up, exposing his abs and his waistband. He didn’t linger, but he couldn’t help himself.

“Hey,” Ozzy grumbled. “You can’t tell me to hold back, then gawk.”

Evander darted his eyes away. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”

“Not a lot of other places to focus my attention.”

Evander shrugged, then lifted up the hem of his own shirt for a couple seconds. “There. Now we’re even.” He laid down next to Ozzy on the bed, making sure to leave a little space between them. A respectful amount of space. He looked up at the freshly painted ceiling and the exposed wires, waiting for the light fixture to be installed. “So do you want to talk about it, or no?”

“No.” There was no anger or harshness in the word, but no defeat either. A simple, firm decision.

“Okay.” They would just lay in that bed and wait.

Ozzy did take Evander’s hand, though, and whisper, “Thanks.”

Chapter thirty-six

Ozzy

When Ozzy woke up, his head throbbed and his stomach lurched. He didn’t know where he was, just that it was dark and there were voices somewhere in the distance. Not home, obviously, but also not the hotel.

Ev was next to him, which clicked all his memories back into place like a thousand puzzle pieces. And led to the obvious question: how long had it been? Ozzy pulled his phone out of his pocket. His battery was in the red, but he had enough juice to check the time. Just a little after four in the afternoon.

He gently nudged Ev’s shoulder. “Hey.”

Evander’s eyes fluttered and he yawned, then looked over. “We fell asleep?”

“For, like, three hours.”

Evander grimaced. “Fuck. Seems like somebody would have missed us in all that time.”

Ozzy could still make out the voices coming from somewhere else. Inside the outbuilding for sure. “I think they might have sent a search party.”

Ev sat up, a frown on his face. “You want to act like we didn’t sleep together?”

Ozzy shoved his shoulder. “We didn’t sleep together. We had an accidental nap together. Very different things.” He considered it, though. Not for long. It was an easy answer. “Who cares? We’re friends now, right? Friends fall asleep with each other sometimes.” It sounded desperate and not fully true to life, so Ozzy pushed ahead before either of them could examine it too long. He was groggy, but had enough of his faculties left not to fall into the trap. “But we should probably head them off before they walk in on us mussing up a client’s new bed.” Not to mention, it might be harder to convince everyone that they really didn’t sleep together if they walked in and saw them in bed with each other. Just maybe. We do have a history on some of these job sites.

Evander popped to his feet and stretched side-to-side. “Might have to break in their toilet, too.”

“TMI, my guy.”

“I admitted I tried shrooms and ketamine, but you’re scandalized that I have to pee?” Evander rolled his eyes, then grinned. “Come on. Let’s go greet the search party before they call in the dogs.”

Evander walked out first. Ozzy hesitated just long enough to soak everything in. It took wading through a hell of a lot of bullshit, but they felt a lot more like they used to. The conversation was flowing better, the jabs were light and playful, and they’d done it all without getting naked and sweaty with each other. Definitely breaking the pattern there.

Ozzy quick-stepped to catch up, but it didn’t take long. The rest of the guys were in the living room, along with Melanie, Jack, some of the contractors hauling stuff back outside…and Jamie.

It was almost impossible to reconcile him with the kid he’d talked to a few hours ago. He was all smiles and bright eyes, standing with his head tall…his family had clearly accepted him. A lot better than Ozzy’s ever did or ever would.

“Finally woke up.” Aras was grinning, which wasn’t good news for anyone. Ever.

Ozzy shot a glance to Ev, who sighed. “Seems we conked out pretty much immediately. They walked in on us and let us have out little nap session.”

“Or whatever was happening in there,” said Aras.

Ozzy raised an eyebrow. “Children present. And nothing happened.” He looked over at Melanie and Jack. “Nothing happened. Sorry for falling asleep on the job.”

Melanie shook her head. “You busted tail getting all this work done for us already. I’m not bothered.”

“And I’m fourteen,” said Jamie. “I’ve heard of sex.”

That of all the things happening rushed heat up to Ozzy’s face. “I’m sure. But for the record, nothing happened.” Thanks to Evander, nothing happened. Ozzy’s chest went cold at the thought of someone walking in to see them in flagrante delicto. Again. God forbid it be one of the Trangs instead of someone who was a little more used to their nonsense.

“All right, now that we’re all up and about.” Mason clapped his hands, grinning broadly. “We’ve got most of the big stuff taken care of. Need your advice on clearing up the lawn again, Ozzy, but I think we’re in pretty decent shape.”

Aras nodded. “For being down two bodies.” He pointed to a box tucked in the corner. “Also, the light fixture for the bedroom showed up. I’d like to get in there if you two are done. I can air it out, too. So they don’t smell the sex.”

Ozzy snorted, then stepped aside. “Be my guest. Since nothing happened.”

“Not for lack of trying, I’m sure.” Aras grabbed the still-boxed fixture and carried it down the hallway. “I know how you two get. Only a matter of time, honestly.”

If not for Jamie standing there, Ozzy would have flipped him off. Yeah, fourteen was old enough to see someone’s middle finger—flipping the bird was a lot tamer than Aras’s running commentary anyway—but it just didn’t feel right to him.

As the meeting broke apart, Ozzy caught Mason’s eye and tilted his head toward the patio. Mason followed along, thankfully, and Ozzy closed the sliding door behind them. Not exactly the cone of silence, with everyone still milling outside, but it was something.

“I’m sorry for biting your head off. Not doing the best.” Ozzy massaged the back of his neck. “I’m not trying to excuse it, but—”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” Mason flashed that entirely too affable smile of his and patted Ozzy on the shoulder. “All is forgiven. Seriously. You’ve been on edge since we got to the house. Something had to give eventually, and it’s better you lay into me than lay into the family.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t deserve it.”

“I know you’re sorry. I care about you. It happened. Try not to let it happen again.” Mason shrugged and backed away. “You’re not getting rid of me just by shouting a little bit. You’ll have to try a hell of a lot harder.”

I don’t deserve these stupid fucks. Ozzy tilted his head down and grinned. If they had an ounce of common sense between them, they’d have left him by the wayside a while ago. Probably him and Aras, but mostly him. Yet even when they hadn’t seen each other at all for two years, Ozzy had zero doubt they’d stay by him.

Even Evander.

Ozzy let that sit in his chest a few moments, then rolled his shoulders back, straightened his spine, and headed out into the yard. They had a lot of mess to undo and limited time to get it cleaned up. He could bask in his friendships later.

Plus later, he’d have more time to figure out if one of them should really go past friendship.

Chapter thirty-seven

Evander

It took the rest of the night to get their farce cleared away and the yard back to something presentable. Not perfect, but close enough. The inside of their in-law apartment proved much easier. By the end of the second day, Aras had all the lighting wired and secured, and Jake was really cranking through the last of the custom furniture.

They didn’t have a traditional final walkthrough before they shunted the owner out. The Trangs weren’t the ones living there. Instead, once the crew all gave their blessings, everyone cleared out and one camerawoman did a slow, methodical tour of the place. They’d do voice over later—probably Evander, but maybe some of the others as well—and that would be the last look the audience got before all the finishing touches went into place.

Which meant there was a lot of standing around and waiting. So of course, Evander gravitated straight to Ozzy’s side. Ozzy had staked out a position at the kitchen table, involved in idle chatter with Jamie and Melanie. Evander didn’t immediately break in, took the opportunity to take in the tableau. Ozzy looked…calm. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen Ozzy relaxed, but it was rare. Rarer than it should have been. It clawed at Ev’s chest if he thought too long or too hard about why Ozzy always seemed so wound up, so uncomfortable.

Instead of sitting with that, Evander strode in and pulled up one of the empty chairs. Jamie waved at him, not taking a break in his conversation. Hard to reconcile the image of the shy, shaking boy who came to them for help with the giddy little chatterbox at the kitchen table. “Then I started looking, and there’s a whole queer youth group I can go to. I don’t think it’s very big or anything, but I didn’t think there’d be anything like that in town.”

“Well, there’s almost always something. Not always official, but it’s great that there’s something here.” Ozzy was still smiling. “You planning on going, if you can?”

“He’s buzzing.” Melanie laid out a big plate of cheese, meat, and crackers in the center of the table, then bustled to the fridge to gather up a pitcher of water and an armful of other drinks. “I’m buzzing too. It’s just good to see him so happy.” She deposited her drinks on the table, then kissed the top of Jamie’s head.

“Come on, Mom.” Jamie rolled his eyes. “It’s not like I was moping around the house.”

Melanie didn’t say anything, just went back to her hostessing duties, passing out drinks, then heading for the pantry. She came out with two large boxes of granola bars and set them on the island.

Ozzy finally got up and intercepted her, stacking the boxes himself. “You know we actually provide everything we need, right? You don’t need to feed everyone all on your own.”

“I know there’s been some…contention about you all coming in to do this work for us. Want to mend as many fences as I can.”

Evander’s breath caught as Ozzy’s spine stiffened. He didn’t want to step in unless he had to. Ozzy could do what he needed. He’d proven as much with Jamie, if there had been any doubt.

“Shit. I mean crap.” Ozzy shook his head, his voice quiet. “I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t do a great job hiding my…initial reactions.”

“It’s fine. Jack and I went over that between ourselves for months. It was ridiculous that we didn’t do anything with the back yard, or with that apartment back there. We could have. We had the money. But we just ignored it, and it got harder and harder to let anyone go back there and see that we’d neglected such a big part of our house for so long.” She shrugged. “It was embarrassing. It still is. We had to work ourselves up to even apply for the show. We were going from hiding our shame to airing it out on TV.” Finally, she lowered herself onto a bar stool. “I don’t blame anyone for being bothered by this whole situation. But I am thankful. I don’t think we ever would have found the catalyst to get started on that, so having someone come out and take charge…thank you.” She grinned, slightly red in the face. “And yes, I can do that over again if you need.”

Evander and Ozzy both followed her gaze to a camera in the corner. Ev suppressed a smile and Ozzy rolled his eyes, face turning back to that normal, dour expression, like he was ready to shout at the cameraman for doing his job and filming the TV show they were all on.

But he apparently thought better of it, which Evander loved to see. Maybe something really had shifted around inside of him. He wasn’t usually one for restraint when he was pissed off.

Evander inserted himself into the conversation before Ozzy’s resolve could break. He knew how to behave, how to handle himself, but there was no reason to push it if Evander could do something to help. “I don’t think they’d ever be able to capture that kind of real emotion again. No point trying to recapture lightning, you know?”

Melanie shrugged, rising back to her feet. “I could probably pull it off. I’m a very good actress.” She wrapped an arm around Ozzy’s shoulders again for a brief hug, then went back to collecting up snacks from the pantry.

Ozzy sighed, then looked at Evander. “Ready to talk about that patio?”

It landed with a bit more weight than it should have. That was the job, after all. But not nearly as much as it should have. After that whole thing with Jamie, comforting Ozzy, falling asleep in the bedroom, the strangeness between them seemed to have dissipated.

Evander pulled out his phone and opened his notes up. “Ready as I’ll ever be, but it’s pretty much set up already, right?”

“Finishing touches.” He looked over his shoulder at Melanie. “You want to weigh in on these plans?”

She shook her head. “I trust the professionals, and I still have to figure out what we’re doing for dinner.”

Ozzy nodded, then moved his chair closer to Evander. Much closer, almost touching their thighs together. “Maybe we should figure out something for our dinner, too.”

A trickle of heat ran down Evander’s spine and pooled in his belly. Excitement and nerves running against each other, the friction building and growing hotter and hotter. “Is this your incredibly roundabout way of asking me out on a date?”

“It might be.” Ozzy shrugged. “Unless you don’t want it to be. Then it’s just a business dinner.”

Evander shook his head right away. “We haven’t had great luck with business meetings over food. One of us got…” He glanced pointedly to Jamie, then raised his eyebrows to drive the point home to Ozzy. “…a little silly last time.”

“You did, yeah.” Ozzy grinned, and that needling spark returned to his eyes. “So that means just a date?”

Evander tried really hard to pretend the camera and their mics weren’t actually there. This was what he wanted, and Ozzy was on board, now. At least it seemed that way. No one was drunk or overly emotional, but he was still asking. Plus, their relationship would get recorded sooner or later if it went anywhere serious. So Ev nodded. “If we can finish up this planning, I’ll deign to let you take me out tonight.”

“Oh, well for that kind of privilege I guess I have no choice but to agree.” He reached over and slid Evander’s phone closer, brushing his knuckles against Ev’s in the process. “So let’s get this banged out while we can. Are you still set on that ridiculous table?”

“The one Jake already built? Yes.” Ev nudged him with his shoulder. “I think that’s staying, no matter what any handsome gardeners have to say about it.”

“Had to try and talk a little sense into you.” It was the same way Ozzy always talked, but his tone and his body language…it felt like they worked again.

Now we just have to avoid the off-again stage. Because in that moment, more than he had with any other boyfriend and definitely more than any rando he grabbed at a club or a bar, Evander felt comfortable with the relationship.

Comfortable was worth the effort.

Chapter thirty-eight

Ozzy

Three Rivers, Michigan wasn’t like Seattle. In a metropolis like that, the options for where to eat were nearly endless, and there were plenty of high-end restaurants to hit up, even at the last minute. Major holidays notwithstanding. Getting a last minute table on Valentine’s Day or something was a pipe dream. But otherwise, even if Seattle wasn’t known for its food compared to places like New York, New Orleans, or Las Vegas, there was plenty to work with.

Furious internet searches in his hotel room left Ozzy with three options in Three Rivers that weren’t fast food, casual chains, or reviewed into the dirt. And one of them—the hotel bar—immediately got axed. They’d been there and done that twice, and it was frankly nothing to write home about.

So when he met Evander downstairs, he was ready with the two remaining restaurants and they could pick one together. The problem was, when he saw Evander, his tongue kind of stopped working. It wasn’t as if Ev was unkempt on the regular, but he didn’t tend to spend too much time gussying himself up. That night, he stood in a shimmery red button-down, with the top two buttons left undone to show off his chest, and black slacks that left only the slightest bit to the imagination. Ozzy couldn’t trace the outline of his dick, but they certainly complimented and lifted his ass up. He also had a tasteful silver chain around his neck, with a matching star medallion hanging from it, landing just at the top of his breastbone.

Before Ozzy could compliment him, Evander’s eyebrows went up and he whistled. “Damn. You were serious about a date.” He closed the gap and grabbed the lapels of Ozzy’s cobalt shirt, rubbing them between thumb and forefinger. “Silk? You brought silk on the road?”

“You never know when you need to look good.” It was a silk blend, but it did feel wonderful and it fit Ozzy really well, in his opinion.

Ev kept on looking and commenting. “And the khakis. You know I like you in these light pants like this. Emphasizes the ass-ets.” He punctuated it by squeezing Ozzy’s left cheek.

Ozzy pulled slightly away. “Save that for later, if you must.” He grinned at Evander. “But yeah. I did actually pay attention when we were together. I know what you like.” He sucked in a breath. “Not trying to be a douche there.”

“Oh, you don’t need to try.” Evander winked as Ozzy flipped him off, then he looped his arm through Ozzy’s, pulling him close. He didn’t push too hard, just gave a little guiding and allowed Ozzy to close as much distance as he wanted. Ev was only a little disappointed when Ozzy didn’t suction right against him, but he didn’t pull back either.

Ozzy pulled out his phone as soon as they walked out of the front doors of the hotel. “I found a couple restaurants. Figured we could come to a conclusion together instead of me picking.” His eyes sparked. “Although since I know you, I’m pretty sure I know what you’re going to go for.”

“Oh really? What if I’ve changed?”

“Then I’ll eat my shoe.” He flicked over his phone screen a couple times, then reached over where they could both look at it. “Go on. Weigh in.”

After a moment, Ev shook his head. Damn. He’s good. It wasn’t that Evander didn’t like barbecue. It was more about how much he loved Eastern European food. That was a broad descriptor, but this was a Czech restaurant. If he was going to pick one cuisine from the area, it would be Czech.

He nudged the phone back over. “You win.”

“I figured I would. I know what you like.”

“Don’t get too bigheaded just yet I could still shock and amaze you.” Although given how the evening was progressing so far, Ozzy probably had the right read. “How we getting there?”

“It’s close. I figured we could just walk a little bit. Enjoy the small town vibes or whatever.”

“Vibes or whatever is the best kind of date.”

“You’re still a little shit.” Ozzy moved a bit closer all the same and started out of the parking lot, then turned right. The sidewalk had seen better days to be certain, cracked and mossy, the edge crumbling into the road. Not enough to be dangerous, but certainly not pretty. It cleaned up as they carried on past the hotel and into a street full of little shops. Most of them were already dark and closed, but they passed by a bookstore with warm, amber light streaming through the windows, a gift shop displaying local Michigan wine that Evander tried not to be too snobby about, and a little bakery-cafe-candy shop combo that Evander couldn’t help but point at. “If they’re open on the way back? Or are you off sugar again?”

“Even if I was, I’d be happy to spend the time with you. Unless this date is actually terrible.” He raised an eyebrow at Evander. “You didn’t deliberately sabotage this, did you?”

“Not yet, but the night is young.” Evander kept on taking in the surroundings as they moved down the street.

They took a left and Ozzy pointed to a brick building about halfway down the block. “Told you it was close.”

It didn’t look insanely busy, but compared to the rest of the town they’d walked past, the King’s Well was bustling. There was only street parking, at least from what could be seen from out front, but it was packed. All ten parking spaces.

As they got close enough to make out the details on the brightly colored canopy covering the door, Evander stopped and moved Ozzy to the side. His stomach tightened, but he did his best to keep his expression even. “So, before we go eat Czech food, how…how careful should I be about gorging myself on garlic and onions?”

Ozzy’s lips quirked upward. “You can eat as many as you want.” Ozzy brushed past him toward the door. Assuming he’d picked up on what Evander was saying, then that meant this was an innocent date. It was a good thing Ozzy had already passed him by because Ev was certain his face showed his disappointment.

“Hey.” Ozzy had only actually moved about three feet down the sidewalk before turning around, hands on his hips. It was no longer a quirked, minor smile, but a full on grin. “I have toothpaste and mouthwash back at the hotel. So don’t worry about the garlic and onions.”

The fist scrunching up Ev’s stomach released and he rolled his eyes. “You’re a mother fucker.”

“Never fucked a mother.” He draped his arm around Evander’s shoulders as he closed the gap. “A few dads. Pretty sure we were already broken up when I hooked up with Karen Dalton’s dad.”

“Ooh. You too?”

Ozzy laughed loud as he opened the door to the restaurant. “He came out and started going crazy. And apparently Karen found out.”

“Yeah, she hasn’t looked me in the eye once since it happened.” Ev lowered his voice as Ozzy walked in, closing the door behind him. “His mouth was weirdly cold, right?”

“Yes.” When Ozzy moved to his side, he pulled Evander very close that time.

Evander’s body relaxed all the way.

Chapter thirty-nine

Ozzy

The dinner had been remarkably light. He and Ev had obviously gone out for Czech food before, but it usually left Ozzy feeling at least a bit laggy. This had been lots of pickles and caraway and vegetables. Admittedly, Ozzy had chosen carefully from the menu, avoided stewed meat and potatoes, and in spite of what he said about the toothpaste and mouthwash, he’d made certain to avoid anything that seemed to be primarily onions.

On their way back, the little bakery place had still been open, although the older couple tottering around seemed to be tidying up, so they made quick choices. Evander bought three pounds of chewy caramels in all sorts of different flavors and picked up a simple drip coffee. Ozzy also got a coffee and, in spite of himself, he couldn’t resist getting a couple of the oversized pastries in the display case. A bear claw and some sort of crescent filled with pistachio and white chocolate cream.

When they got back to the hotel, there was zero question. They both kept talking, finally catching up on the last two years as they rode the elevator upstairs together and headed toward Ozzy’s room.

As they rounded the corner, they almost had a collision with Aras. He was in a tank top and sweatpants, carrying an empty ice bucket, and he scowled and sneered…until he saw who it was that bumped into him. His face went past neutral, all the way up to a smile as he looked at them. “Well, don’t you two look chummy. And dapper.” He made a big show of stepping aside. “Don’t let me get in the way of your canoodling. Just try to keep it contained for once.” He moved past them, heading for the little alcove that held the ice and soda machines. Not without his commentary continuing, however. “There are children present at the job site.”

Ozzy almost rose to the bait, but Evander took his hand and led him the opposite direction and it passed. Ozzy took out his key card and opened the door to his hotel room. He deposited his pastries on the top of the dresser and tossed away his empty cardboard coffee cup, then toed off his shoes and headed for the bathroom. He kept the door open and went straight for his toiletry bag. He didn’t look back at Evander, just pulled out his half-used travel-sized toothpaste, his toothbrush, and his backup toothbrush and laid them out on the counter. Then he turned on the water.

Evander sidled up next to him. Right next to him. Close enough Ozzy could feel heat radiating from him. Every movement he made, from grabbing the still-wrapped toothbrush to leaning in to wet it under the faucet, somehow brushed some part of himself against Ozzy. That heat and pressure collected in Ozzy’s middle, then headed down, teasing his cock harder. If there had been any doubt about Ev’s intentions—there hadn’t been—these deliberate little touches clarified everything.

Ozzy brushed his teeth, making sure to get his tongue all the way to the back, then rinsed and spit before pulling out the mini mouthwash. It was almost empty. He’d need to pick up more at their next stop. He took a bracing swig, then set it down and turned so he could watch Evander.

It was ridiculous, of course, but watching Ev brush his teeth felt so familiar, so domestic, so right and wonderful, it made Ozzy somehow harder than those little glancing touches. Maybe it was watching his mouth move and shift around something, or maybe it was just too many memories from so many years together. He could recall so many times they’d come home from a date and eyed each other up while doing these sort of normal, menial tasks. Brushing their teeth, doing their skin care routines, collecting up clothes to throw in the laundry. They’d never officially lived together, but they spent so much time at each other’s houses, they may as well have.

So often, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other when they were alone like that.

I want it back. The longer he stood in that perfect scene of domesticity, buoyed on the back of a remarkably talkative, pleasant date, the denser and more complete that desire became. He’d been clear with Evander that they needed to try friendship, that they couldn’t keep doing the same thing they’d always done.

He didn’t know if it was too soon to say if they’d broken the pattern. All Ozzy knew for certain was he didn’t want to go back to being apart. This date had been too good, and when they were on, they were on.

“So, you want to do this again?” Ozzy tried to sound cool, but his voice cracked on ‘again’ like he was a nervous teenager.

“Of course.” Ev turned around and hopped up on the counter, wiping a little streak of foam from his lower lip. “Do you? I know that wasn’t on your to-do list. No pressure.”

Last chance to back out. It was a familiar voice that spoke it out, doubt and fear and self-preservation…things that he didn’t need. Ozzy knew the risks of this, and he knew the rewards.

The rewards far, far outweighed the risks, now that he was back in them. “Yeah. I do.” Ozzy smiled. “If you’ll take another chance on a douchebag boyfriend.”

Evander rolled his eyes. “I’ve been trying to get a douchebag boyfriend for the past week. If you hadn’t noticed.” He hopped down and closed the distance, wrapping his arms around Ozzy. It felt damn good to be back in his embrace. And, when he pulled in close, Ozzy could feel he wasn’t the only one who was getting bricked up.

Ev blew out minty breath in Ozzy’s face. “Did I cover up the onions?”

Ozzy leaned in and kissed him, slipping his tongue past Evander’s lips as his hands curled up and tangled in Ozzy’s hair, holding him down into it.

When Ozzy parted, he shrugged. “I think that’ll work.” He pecked Ev’s lips again. “I do want to bring up one thing, before we get to the bedroom.”

Ev nodded, backing up just enough that Ozzy could look at him properly. “Let’s get it all on the table.”

“Well, it’s not that serious.” Though it did feel a little awkward. In spite of their history together, and the fact they’d traded head not too long ago, this felt a lot more like a fledgling relationship than he expected. But he would take a leaf out of Evander’s book and just be totally and fully honest. “I picked up a bit of a taste for spanking since we’ve been broken up. I know you brought it up when we were together before. If you’re still into it, I’m open.” More than open, but Ozzy didn’t want to push too hard.

Evander grinned, something wicked sparking in his eyes. “Giving or receiving?”

It was stupid to be embarrassed, but Ozzy couldn’t reason his way past the heat that rushed across his chest, up his neck, and into his cheeks and ears. “Receiving.”

“Well happy birthday to me.”

Ozzy chuckled. “You don’t have to. Not a deal breaker.”

Ev closed the distance back up between them. “I would be honored.” He kissed Ozzy again, and his hands thwacked down, one on each of Ozzy’s ass cheeks, driving him a little taller and flooding blood to his cock.

Ev pulled out of the kiss and whispered, “You get ready. I’ll be out there waiting.”

Chapter forty

Evander

The waiting seemed to take forever. Ev could only fret so much. He did like the idea of spanking Ozzy before fucking him. During fucking him. All that squatting and bending had firmed his butt up to something breathtaking, so really any interaction with it was good in Ev’s book. But he’d liked smacking at it a lot more than he would have expected there in the bathroom.

When Ozzy finally came out of the bathroom, he was naked and more than half-hard. Not totally stiff, but bigger than when he was soft.

Evander still had his underwear on, although they weren’t doing anything to hide his excitement. He was fully hard already, so his trunks bulged out, the material straining.

They stared at each other a moment. Two. Three. Then Ozzy marched over, grabbed the sides of Evander’s face, and pressed their lips together. His breath still tasted faintly of mint, cool and sparkling. He had a touch of stubble on his face, scratching pleasantly against Evander’s cheek and chin. His tongue was a force, hot and strong and searching, tangling with Ev’s as it probed his mouth.

Ev reached back and gave another two-handed smack to Ozzy’s ass. He grunted into Evander’s mouth, not pulling out of the kiss for even a moment. His cock hardened further and Evander felt a streak of dampness rub against his thigh, precum leaking.

Finally, it was Ev who broke the kiss. He ran his hands down Ozzy’s shoulders and chest, feeling the hard points of his nipples. He carried on down his ribs, his abs, and stopped just short of his bush. Then he looked straight into Ozzy’s eyes. “You ready?”

Instead of answering, Ozzy bent over the bed, spreading his legs wide.

It really was quite an ass, pert and strong even laying down like that. Evander ran both hands gently down Ozzy’s ass, enjoying the sensation of the muscles tensing beneath his fingers. He spread the cheeks slightly, exposing Ozzy’s hole. Downy, pale hair covered his cheeks and surrounded his hole, still slightly damp from Ozzy’s shower and prep.

“You’ll have to tell me if I’m doing okay.” Evander had a stupid, nervous pit swirling in his belly. “I’ve never been the spanker.”

“Spanker. Super sexy word.” Ozzy shot a look over his shoulder and grinned, then grabbed one of the pillows and used it to prop up his chest and head. “You can go pretty hard.”

“Yeah, you do have a lot of ass to get through.”

“Like you don’t love it.”

Evander did. He always had. He rubbed the cheeks again, then moved to the side and wound back. Ozzy’s cheeks tensed, then released, tensed, then released. On the next release, Ev brought his hand back down. The sound resonated in the stillness of the room, and almost immediately, a pink handprint bloomed to life on Ozzys’ left ass cheek.

“You can go harder than that.” Ozzy sounded breathless and ragged as he spoke, and he was softly grinding his hips down into the mattress.

Ev couldn’t help but play with him. He ran his hands gently down Ozzy’s exposed, pinkening butt again. “Maybe I will if you use the magic word.”

“You dick.” Ozzy looked over his shoulder again, his red face and smile banishing any thought that he might have been seriously annoyed. “Please spank me like you actually have muscles in your arms, not overcooked pasta.”

“And I’m the dick.” Evander pulled his hand back a little farther and brought it down a little faster, stronger. He was met with a sharp intake of breath as his hand stung against Ozzy’s ass. He started to understand why people used paddles or crops. If he kept this up for any length of time, his hand would tingle its way into numbness.

Still, he smacked Ozzy’s ass again, switching sides each time and trying to spread his impacts out so the two pale mounds reddened evenly.

After ten swats, Ozzy said, “I’m ready.” He was somewhere between growling and panting as he looked back again at Evander. “You zeroed in on that good.”

It was…strange praise. I spanked him the way he likes. Strange or not, it spread warmth through Evander’s chest. It felt good to do well, even at something like that. And it felt good to get his feast, so he didn’t bother to talk. He just dropped down to his knees between Ozzy’s legs. His ass radiated extra heat thanks to the spanking and it washed over Evander’s face as he moved closer. He spread Ozzy open, then went in tongue first, feeling the ripples and the soft, downy hair and all that heat as he probed Ozzy’s entrance.

Ozzy’s hole clenched and loosened, and he whimpered, the sound muffling its way into the sheets and pillows. Not muffled enough, though. It filled the room, flooded over Evander and filled him, drove him forward. He probed briefly inside, then circled around Ozzy’s entrance again. He repeated the pattern over and again, going deeper and pressing harder each time. Slowly, Ozzy loosened. His whimpering shifted to groaning, then finally, proper, true growling that rumbled his body. Rumbled him all the way back to his ass, and hence into Evander’s face.

Ev’s cock twitched and throbbed and, with a final circle around Ozzy’s hole, he pushed himself back to his feet. “You still ready?”

“Yes.” Ozzy didn’t even lift his head, but he did drag another pillow around, using it to roughly prop up his hips and keep his glistening hole exposed. “Fuck me.”

Evander moved into position, running his cockhead slowly down Ozzy’s crack. “Don’t need to tell me twice.”

Chapter forty-one

Ozzy

Of all his hookups and other relationships, Evander held a special place. He always had, and for too many reasons to enumerate. Evander had been there for him when they were young. He was by far Ozzy’s longest relationship, taken altogether, so they had the most memories. They had bonds as part of Pine Point Fixer-Uppers, with all the social interactions that came from a big friend group like that.

His cock wasn’t as high on the list as any of that, but it was on the list. Ozzy had never found someone whose cock felt so good as it slid inside of him. There was something to be said for experience. Evander knew from practice—a lot of practice—how Ozzy liked to be fucked. But even in their first, fumbling attempts at sex, when neither of them could last longer than a minute, there had been something about the way Evander moved that drove Ozzy into an absolute hazy mess of ecstasy.

That held true into the modern day. Ozzy’s ass throbbed from the spanking and his hips ground forward into the pillow without any conscious effort. Even when he realized it, he didn’t stop it. When he pushed forward, his cockhead rubbed against the smooth material. When he backed his hips up, it drove Evander deeper into him, rubbing against his prostate and exploding him into a million pieces in a fraction of a second before he crashed back to reality, only to start the cycle all over again.

The two of them moved in that unspoken rhythm. Evander’s fingers raked across Ozzy’s back, leaving hot trails in the wake of his nails. Sweat beaded and dripped from Ozzy. Down his ribs, along the bridge of his nose, down from his hair as it cascaded over his neck and shoulders. Each shuddering breath he drew tasted of mint and musk and man. Evander was no longer spanking him, but the sound of skin slapping against his ass filled the room all the same. Each thrust inward rocked Ozzy’s body and he curled his fingers into the sheets.

They could have sex and just be friends. In theory. Never tried it in practice. But this…wasn’t that. This was the sort of desperate, comingled passion that spoke to their connection. Their togetherness. Their belonging. This was the kind of fucking that never came from anything less than…being a couple. He couldn’t even think “the L word.” It wasn’t time for that, even as the truth of it radiated through his bones, driven deeper every time Evander impacted him, borne out with each drop of sweat and gasping breath that passed from his body.

Evander sped up. The sensations moved almost to pain, riding that edge between agony and ecstasy. Ozzy dug a hand underneath himself and grabbed his cock, stroking furiously as Evander got closer…closer…he’d always sped up just before—

Sudden emptiness. It took Ozzy a moment to piece together what had actually happened. Evander had pulled out. Ozzy could hear him stroking himself, but he couldn’t turn over in time to watch. His own body focused on his shaft and the sudden aching void Evander had left behind…then on the spray of heat across his lower back and his ass cheeks as Evander’s panting turned to groaning turned to choked off whimpers.

The cumshot pushed Ozzy over the edge. His vision fuzzed on the edges as his belly tensed, balls pulled higher. He was already slick with precum, but more poured out from his tip. His cock pulsed and he lost all conscious thought. His existence began and ended with his pulsating shaft. He shot off twice, three times, four, five before he finally calmed, could finally catch a proper breath again.

“Fuck me.” He flopped his head down against the pillow and tried to pull himself together, stop the vibrations in his muscles long enough to be a functional human being again.

“Already did, but we can go again.” Evander rubbed gently up and down his back, grazing soft touches along Ozzy’s butt. “You good?”

It was a little more loaded question than it seemed, but Ozzy picked up the meaning. “I’m good. You’ve got a hell of an arm on you, though. Probably avoid doing that until I’m through the bulk of the next job, too.” He finally managed to get his body to cooperate and pushed himself up to sitting. He cringed as he looked at the cum-stained pillow he’d had under his hips and made a mental note to leave a big tip for housekeeping.

Ev’s forehead was wrinkled with worry. “So you’re saying this isn’t over?”

Ozzy breathed deeply, then shook his head. “I thought you were smart. Of course it’s not over.”

Ev nodded and leaned into him, and the two of them fell backward together onto the bed. He whispered to Ozzy, “What if we start to get too toxic or too angry again?”

Ozzy ran his fingers through Evander’s sweat-soaked hair, pushing it away from his face and smoothing it back. “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. But for me, I think I was in a lot worse mood apart from you than I was with you. Than I am with you.” It wasn’t a solution, and it wasn’t a guarantee. They’d had these moments of euphoria all throughout their relationship before and they hadn’t been enough, hadn’t prevented the fighting and the breakups.

But that night, it wasn’t the time for that talk. They could just enjoy each other’s company and hope for the best.

Practicality didn’t need to share the bed with them.

Chapter forty-two

Evander

It seemed like it took forever, but the patio finally looked like it was the product of two people who knew what the fuck they were doing instead of a forgotten space. Fixing itself up just like me and Ozzy. There were finishing touches that needed to be put in, and Ozzy was still dead set on trying to get those rose bushes transplanted, so the one garden bed was empty and waiting. He had plants on standby, and it seemed more and more likely that they would have to get used, but he still hadn’t pulled the trigger.

The table in the middle was exactly what Evander had in mind. It also worked the way it was supposed to, which he had to give a ton of credit to Jake for. He didn’t know the details, whether Jake had tracked down a schematic or just winged it, but he’d put together a table with a trough around the edge that fed into a planter in the middle. The soil rectangle had been filled with multicolored zinnias, and the wood had been stained a pale gray, so it made a good base for all the surrounding colors.

With all thanks to Aras and that one lighting assistant who stepped up, the sconces gave it a warm glow in the evening. They’d even made a last minute call to clear everything off the patio, clean it, and stain it. A little friction over how they should do it, but nothing obscene. Nothing like how he and Ozzy used to fight things out. Ozzy just had concerns about the longevity of some of the more striking, vibrant products Ev was leaning toward. Evander still maintained that the brilliant, terra cotta orange would have been the best look, but the pale slate color they’d landed on still brought a lot of light and interest to the space.

It also smelled amazing, even without the roses. Evander wasn’t any kind of landscaper, so he didn’t know what all the different plants were around the patio, but the scent was woodsy and citrusy and of course floral, but not overwhelmingly so.

The chairs were also insanely comfortable. Evander was taking advantage of that fact when the sliding glass door opened. Bunny walked out, closed it behind her, and sat opposite him.

That look in her eye…he’d been waiting for someone to finally broach it. So Evander beat her to the punch. “You’re here to ask about Ozzy?”

“Well duh.” She gestured lackadaisically toward the house. “Aras said he saw the two of you last night and you looked…happy. And dressed up. You had a date?’

“Yeah. There’s an actual Czech restaurant here.” Not the best he’d ever had, but hardly bad.

Bunny nodded. “So…is this permanent?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? “Hard to say with us, isn’t it?” Ev had really been trying to avoid diving too deeply into those sorts of problems, but he had to consider them eventually. If someone was going to bring them up… “Have we ever been permanent?”

Bunny shrugged. “It’s not like the universe is out there dictating who gets to stay together and who doesn’t. People decide who they want to be with. Then you just keep making that decision over and over again.” She chuckled. “Times I would have killed Marv, but I decided to stick by him instead. And he always did the same for me. That’s why we’re still together.”

When she laid it out like that, it seemed so simple. Too simple for him to have missed it. A light sparked in Evander’s middle and he smiled at her. “Thanks, Bunny.” He sighed. “I’m going to do what I can to make this permanent.” Saying it out loud made him feel a little childish, a little naive. He didn’t care. He liked how he felt when he and Ozzy were together, when everything was working. So if he sounded childish, that was a small price to pay.

Melanie’s parents would be out for the big reveal the next day, so it was a bit of a mad scramble. Evander had finished up basically all the design work inside, so he was just being used as a body to haul stuff, clean stuff, and generally get everything right. Even after all these years, it amazed Evander just how much happened at the last minute on these jobs. The entire back yard was in constant bustle, and somehow Jake was still putting some last pieces together. A spice rack that would hang inside one of the kitchen cabinets, a small table to go out front that would hold a potted plant, a last minute bathroom shelf, which Evander took full responsibility for. It was just assembly—the wood had been cut and painted and stained—but it all added to the fever pitch.

So did Ozzy barking out orders for the yard. They had lots of little things that needed to be checked and checked again, so there was a near continual string of people running up to Ozzy and then scurrying off to do something else.

As Ev hauled another bag of trash out—anything that needed tossing had to get tossed before three, when they had the container scheduled for pickup—he spotted the backup plants. The ones Ozzy wanted to use if they couldn’t get the rose bushes. He still wasn’t planting them, but as far as Evander knew, he didn’t have another plan.

Ev didn’t fully understand why he was so hung up on them. Yes, Melanie’s dad had put a lot of work into those roses. Yes, they would be great in that space, both for color and for aroma. But he was basically out of time to get anything moving on that front.

Evander felt a familiar, critical tendency rise up. He could remark on how it didn’t make sense…or he could decide to be supportive and help him out. With a smile, he did in fact make that decision. What he was going to do, what he could do, Evander didn’t have any idea. But he headed for someone who just might be able to guide him.

Eliza was actually in the fray along with everyone else, hauling empty paint cans out to the trash. He waved and she strode over. “What can I do for you? Please tell me there’s not a tragedy at the last minute.”

“Not that I’m aware of.” He scratched the back of his head. “So, I wanted to ask about transplanting some roses. How we could maybe get that done.”

“Roses?”

Evander nodded and, although he was sure she knew the basic outlines, gave her the rundown for the whole thing. As he did, it sort of incidentally came up that he and Ozzy were trying the whole boyfriend thing again, which got a big smile from her that reminded him she was a fan of their VideoHead channel.

Once he laid it all out, she nodded. “I’m all ears if you have suggestions, but I don’t know what we can do at the last minute.”

Evander had taken the time he was explaining everything to roll it over in his mind, and although he wasn’t certain how good a chance they had of pulling it off, he could at least make a suggestion. “We’ll need a little talk with Melanie, and probably need to rent a box truck tomorrow, but I might have something.”

Chapter forty-three

Ozzy

Mason clapped his hands. “I can’t believe we’ve never done a surprise reveal like this before.”

“I can.” Ozzy had been instructed to take the lead with Mason, so the two of them were waiting out front for Melanie’s parents to show up. “It’s a pain in the ass trying to work around the surprise. It’s a pain in the ass being held to someone else’s schedule. Oh, and it’s a pain in the ass to have no idea if they’re even going to want to move in, or if they’re even going to like anything we did.”

“Wow. Here I thought getting back into a relationship would have bought you at least a couple days of good mood.”

Ozzy looked across at him. “This is me in a good mood.” Which was a flat out lie, but he was pretty sure they both knew Ozzy could have been much more unpleasant. He was absolutely still riding the high of getting back together with Evander. They spent each night together, had coffee in the mornings together, talked about a whole bunch of nonsense together when they caught a minute alone. That part of his day felt wonderful.

This part felt like slowly peeling off his skin. No small part of it was the row of lilacs he’d never planted. A big reminder that, technically speaking, this job wasn’t finished. His job specifically, the landscaping, was the ugly mark on the entire project, all because he’d gotten a bee in his bonnet about some rose bushes a few weeks prior. He still had no solid plan for that damn flower bed. He could get the lilacs planted before the end of the day if that made the most sense, but he was still holding onto hope that, once the actual clients showed up, he could have some flash of genius or something and solve all the problems.

In the interim, while they waited, his mood was soured.

A familiar black SUV pulled up and Ozzy took a deep breath. Cameras swarmed and he knew he needed to put on his TV face. He nodded briefly to Mason. “Take the lead. Please.”

“Ooh, I get a please.” Mason’s voice was hoarse, barely a whisper. He grinned. “Not so hot on hosting?”

“Have you ever known me to be charming and suave?”

“Only with Evander.” He stepped to the front before Ozzy could remark on that.

The doors of the SUV opened. Eliza and one of the other crew members went to the back and guided out two unfamiliar figures. The man used a simple cane that, even from a distance, Ozzy could see was worn and faded around the crook. No aid for the woman, but it did take her a bit to get up out of the car and standing, even with help from Eliza. They both had dark hair that had turned at least fifty percent gray and white, though the woman’s much more than the man’s. Both were blindfolded, which Ozzy couldn’t help but feel a spark of anger at. He was using a cane for Christ’s sake. They couldn’t have found another solution?

But they both got positioned up on the walkway to the back yard. The only thing Ozzy and the crew had actually done out front was make a cleaner, clearer path to the back, so the paving stones were basically brand new and everything was smooth and even.

Melanie walked out of the front door and made a beeline for her parents. “Mom. Dad. We have a little surprise for you.”

“I guessed.” Her mom tapped her temple, against the strap of the blindfold. “I hope it’s a good one.”

“Yeah, we want to know why you’re being filmed,” said the dad.

She raised an eyebrow even though they couldn’t see. “You knew?”

“It’s not a big town, honey.” He smiled beneath the blindfold. “Hard to hide a camera crew, and we still have friends here. They told us. Everyone wants to know what the big surprise is.”

“Including me.” Her mom set her shoulders firm. “So let’s see it. Come on.”

Melanie chuckled, then looked at Eliza. When she got the nod, she grabbed both blindfolds and clumsily lifted them up. “We got the back yard all fixed up and ready. Including the apartment back there.”

The mom smiled broad and the dad put his hand on her shoulder, and a big wad of tension unspooled from Ozzy’s shoulders, falling away. They seemed excited, and they seemed to understand what that meant. If there was any doubt, the hug they drew Melanie into banished it.

Mason waited a few seconds, then stepped up to them. “Morning. I’m Mason, with Pine Point Fixer-Uppers.”

“Anh.” She nodded and pointed to the man. “My husband, Jack.”

Mason shook both of their hands, then pointed toward the back yard. “We’d love to show you what it is we’ve been doing back here.”

He shot a quick glance to Ozzy. My time to shine or whatever. Ozzy walked over and nodded to both of them in turn. “My name’s Ozzy. I took the lead on the landscaping.”

Jack’s eyebrows rose. “Really? Color me intrigued.”

Ozzy smiled. “I heard that you had quite the green thumb.” Better not to let them know that a bunch of strangers had been traipsing around their house. Melanie could break that news to them at some point when they were all far away. Plus, then he could avoid the question of the roses for as long as possible. “Hopefully I managed to meet your standards.”

Mason took the lead again, guiding them back with the cameras following behind. How much had they been told ahead of time? They must have known something. They’d been picked up by production and outfitted with lav mics.

Melanie fell back next to Ozzy as they all walked in. She kept her voice low, but loud enough for Ozzy to pick up. “I’m glad they’re not freaking out. I called and told them to cooperate and it would all make sense, but it’s a big ask. Get in the big scary black car with these strangers and let them drag you somewhere.”

“Are you freaking out?”

She shrugged. “A little. I know they want to move in. They’ve dropped enough hints.”

Ozzy nodded. “And that reaction.”

“Right. But what if they hate everything about it? I mean, I think it all looks really good, but taste is so subjective. Are they going to just live somewhere they hate through their golden years?”

There was no time left to dive into the conversation. Ozzy was getting waved to the front, since he was supposed to be tour guiding through the outdoor areas. He gave Melanie a quick brush across the shoulder as he passed and couldn’t help but smile. It felt nice to actually like her after so long being annoyed at the whole thing. Go figure. Not being pissed off at everything all the time feels better.

Once Ozzy got up to the gate and they got the go-ahead nod from Eliza, Mason pushed the gate in. “Welcome to the new back yard.”

Ozzy could almost see the fade they’d put in there for the show. The shot of the yard all dead and full of tumbleweeds, then replaced by the new, sleeker version as it currently existed. Clearly, it looked a lot more open and vibrant. Grass stretched from the fence all the way to the back of the garage, with a stepping stone path winding through the middle and branching off to get to different places. The back door of the house, the new shed at the back end, and of course, the front door of their new in-law suite.

Ozzy focused on the landscaping and started talking and pointing. “You can see it’s a bit different.”

“I’ll say.” Jack surveyed everything, leaning on his cane. “Much more than I was expecting. And you brought it this far?”

Ozzy bobbed his head side-to-side. “Not just me. We had a great local crew come in and help us out. They did the brunt of the work, I just pointed and supervised.” Which wasn’t entirely true, but that hardly mattered. The crew did do most of the heavy lifting. Literally and figuratively.

“Takes some skill to mastermind something like that.” He leaned around, a smile breaking over his face. “And you did a fine job of it. Looks like you even left me an empty plot for that green thumb you heard about.”

Ozzy’s stomach clenched.

“Ozzy here’s a little too shy to bring it up, but he does have a plan for that.”

Ozzy glanced to the front door of the suite to see Evander, wearing a tight black T-shirt and acid-washed denim shorts that showed off his well-muscled legs. He had his phone out and a grin on his face. “You have some rose bushes you worked very hard on, right?”

Jack nodded. “I do.”

“Perfect.” Evander winked at Ozzy, then turned his full attention back to Jack. “Need your permission, but I’ve got a company on the phone. They’re professionals, and they’re ready to transplant those rose bushes from your place out here.”

Somehow, Jack’s smile grew even broader. He landed a hand on Ozzy’s shoulder. “You planned this? Good man.”

Ozzy was ready to deny it, give Ev the credit, but Evander stepped in and handed Jack the phone. “Go ahead and talk to them. Give them any instructions you need to and they’ll have them moved in here before the end of the day. I assume you can take care of them once they’ve been planted.” Then he grabbed Ozzy’s wrist and led him away.

As soon as they were out of earshot, Ozzy whispered, “How?”

“You were caught in your head about the damn roses. Once they saw everything, the surprise part was over. Had to twist some arms to get Homescapes to pay for the team to be on standby, but I think it’ll be worth it.”

So simple. Ozzy locked eyes with Evander. “You always were good at that. Keeping things straight.”

“I’m terrible at keeping things straight. But I am pretty good at keeping things gay and organized.” He pecked Ozzy on the cheek, then patted his ass—a little harder than was probably socially acceptable, in Ozzy’s opinion—and sent him on his way. “Go. I need to get mentally prepared for the house tour, and you have more work to do.”

Chapter forty-four

Evander

Once he got his phone back and triple-checked that the rose bushes were on their way, Evander had a lot of waiting to do. The back yard was hands down the largest, most in-depth part of the job, so Ozzy was giving one hell of a tour. It was easily ten minutes before the front door of the house finally opened. Jack and Anh walked in and Anh clapped her hands to her cheeks. “This is adorable.”

My cue. Evander put on his most winning smile and stepped into the kitchenette, arms wide. “I know this might be a big change in a lot of ways, but your daughter made sure we understood your style as best as we possibly could. Wanted to go with lots of light colors so nothing would clash with any decor you brought it, and to make sure that this place never felt too much like a cave. Keeps it bright and open.” He pointed around the kitchen. “New stove and refrigerator, and this island here is on wheels so you can move it wherever you need. Even outside if that works best for you sometimes.”

Anh nodded and used her toe to click the lock on one of the casters. “Perfect.”

Evander chuckled. “I heard you like to entertain, so this way, it’s easier to reconfigure your space as you need it.” He opened up a few cabinets to display the interiors. “We got you a custom spice rack installed here, plus these nice stair-step shelves so there’s plenty of storage.” He wanted to give them time, but keep them moving at an okay pace. He gestured down the hallway. “The bathroom is right down here. Robinson’s our plumber and he’ll walk you through all of that. I’ll meet you back in the bedroom, then we can show you the pièce de résistance.”

He passed them off as they moved down the hall, then made his way into the bedroom. It really had come together in his opinion. The lighting really helped make it feel intimate, and a lot less overwhelming. The dark wallpaper felt more like a mural than an assault on the eyes, with the dim LED strips embedded under the crown molding. Almost like moon or starlight on a night scene. Everything was in place where it belonged, including the second TV. It was a last minute addition when Melanie happened to let slip they watched stuff on an old laptop when they were lying in bed, but it actually helped break up what would otherwise have been a blank stretch of wall.

“Heard you got Ozzy some roses.” Bunny walked in after him, closing the door softly behind her. “Nicely done.”

“That’s one way to put it.” Evander swiped his sweaty palms off on the back of his shorts. “Remind me how long it takes to stop being nervous about these walkthroughs? It’s been a minute.”

“Did any of us ever get used to it?” She tapped the tiny, discreet air freshener in the corner of the room and, within a few seconds, the smell of jasmine and lavender lilted on the air. “You going out to the patio to show them around?”

Ev shook his head. “Aras. I’ll be there at the end, but it was the biggest lighting project in the place. Nothing super exciting for the cameras anywhere else.” It wasn’t that Aras’s work didn’t matter, just that it didn’t always play that well in a narrative. If he wasn’t fixing major electrical problems or putting in something particularly cool, he was a little more of an unsung hero of the crew.

“Well, at least stay close so they can point to you. You and Ozzy worked it together.”

“I remember. Lots of fighting.”

“And now…you’re dating?”

Evander rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to answer, but the door opened just then, cutting him off. So he just nodded. Vigorously. Then clasped his hands together in front of himself as Anh and Jack walked inside.

Jack whistled low and Anh gasped. Immediately, Jack lowered himself onto the bed and bounced a couple times. “Good mattress. Should be nice and friendly on this old leg.”

“It’s all adjustable. One of those high tech numbers. It can go up and down, harder or softer, even has some temperature control built in.” Evander grabbed the remote hanging on the opposite side and demonstrated, raising the head of the bed up at an angle, then bringing it back down.

“This wall is amazing.” Anh made a beeline for the feature wall, running her fingertips over it.

Evander nodded. “I got a picture of this gorgeous quilt you have and got inspired.”

“I love peacocks.” She turned toward him with the biggest grin. ‘This is wonderful.” She looked behind him, and he followed her gaze to Melanie in the doorway. “Plus I get all of this and more time with my family.” She turned her attention back to Evander and gently reached up, holding his face in her hands. “Thank you.”

He smiled and, if he hadn’t transitioned them out of the room quickly enough, might very well have started getting more than a little misty. “Well, you all don’t need some strange gay hanging around your bedroom all day. Let’s get you to the final little surprise. Worked really hard to get that all set up and squared away.”

Bunny led them out of the room. Eliza silently raised an eyebrow and Evander shook his head and shooed her. Then he let a couple tears form up. He looked at the ceiling and took a deep breath. Sometimes, it was easy to get caught up in the minutia, or in his own bullshit. Especially with everything going on with Ozzy. But that kind of reaction really was what made it all worth it.

Evander collected himself, then headed back out and down the hallway, just in time for them to pull the sliding glass door open. He heard Anh gasp again and Jack laugh.

He sat on the couch next to Jake and bopped the side of his head to Jake’s shoulder. “Think we did good.”

“I would say so. And you and Ozzy seem to have patched things up.” He returned the slight head nudge. “Me and Quinn, now you and Ozzy. If we’re not careful, all of us are going to get paired off before too long.”

“Well I’m already married, so here’s hoping not all of us.” Bunny leaned over the back of the couch and draped her arms around both of them. “But I’m glad you two seem to have settled into something happy.”

“Me too.” Evander said it quietly at first, as though speaking too loudly might scare off the good vibes. The thing between him and Ozzy felt…different. Before, it had felt solid. Almost inevitable. But constantly moving. Whatever was different this time, the relationship felt fragile somehow, but it didn’t seem like it was in constant flux. What they’d found for themselves needed to be tended and cared for, but at least they both seemed to know what it was. And what it would be. What they would decide it would be. So Evander spoke just a little louder. “I’m happy too.”

And damn did it feel good to say it aloud.

Epilogue

Ozzy

Everyone else had headed home, and Melanie and her family had gone to Jack and Anh’s to help them pack up their essentials so they could move right in. The rest would come in a few days. The show had a moving crew paid up and ready, but since they’d had to wait for the surprise reveal, the schedule was a little off. Mason had also helped set them up with some help if there was anything they wanted to sell or donate, since they had several new pieces of furniture already.

That left Ozzy and Evander sitting on the patio, watching as the crew transplanted the last of the rose bushes. They filled the tight space with a honeyed aroma, which mingled with the hoppiness of the beers Evander had scrounged up from somewhere.

Ev sighed and leaned back in his chair. “So now that this is done and dusted, could I bother you for a slightly more serious talk?”

Ozzy’s stomach tightened just a skosh, but he nodded. “If you want to know if I’m committed to another try, I am.”

“That’s part of it.” Evander slid his chair a little closer to Ozzy. “But we’re being honest about everything, right?”

“Aren’t you always honest? Isn’t that your whole schtick?”

“Sure. But I mean in the relationship. We’re not sticking our heads in the sand this time.”

“I’m hoping not.” Ozzy could already follow the outlines of the conversation. It was time they broached it, before things moved too far. “You want to know why I broke it off before.”

After a brief moment of shock, Ev nodded. “So we can avoid it if possible.”

“It was that dinner we had. We were all drunk, and you started going off about how I needed to either cut my parents out of my life or stop complaining.” Ozzy gripped Ev’s hand and squeezed. “To be fair, you were right about that. I don’t talk to them anymore. But it was like publicly airing my business and…we were so rocky all the time, I guess that just lined up.”

Ev blew out a long breath. “You have my word, your business is your business. No more running at the mouth for me.” He finally squeezed Ozzy’s hand back. “I want you to always feel safe around me.”

“I do.” Ozzy had no hesitation saying it. “Even then, I knew you were right. But…have you noticed I get in my own stupid-ass head sometimes?”

“Oh, the guy who screamed at Mason, then ran to bury his arms in a pile of dirt gets a little weird sometimes? No, never put it together, I’ll keep my eyes open for any signs.”

Ozzy flicked him on the bridge of the nose. “Anyway. I trusted your judgment back then. I just hated being put on blast, basically.”

Evander nodded. “Last question, then. If we’re going in all wide-eyed and aware, do we have a plan for if we start to get into a bad rut again?”

Ozzy shrugged. “I have some ideas. Don’t drink past our fights anymore. Talk to each other. Hopefully, I’ll remember what a miserable piece of shit I was when we were for-real broken up and won’t want to go back to that.”

Evander nodded, but it was obvious he wasn’t convinced. Ozzy took a sip of his beer, then got up and went to the roses. He didn’t want to damage them, but he could go somewhere inconspicuous. He pulled out his pocket knife and deftly shaved away some thorns from one of the stalks, then sliced off a pale pink Barbara Bush rose. He walked it back over to Evander and handed it to him. “All we can do is try. That’s all we can ever do. We just have to…make the decision to be together as often as we can. Over and over. It’s never one and done.” He gently pressed his lips to Ev’s forehead. “I’m deciding to be with you.”

Evander wrapped his fingers around the rose, and around Ozzy’s hand, then rose to his feet and pressed his lips to Ozzy’s. It wasn’t passion like before, raging fire. Gentle, delicate, like two of those rose petals brushing past.

Ozzy wouldn’t have traded that tender kiss for anything.

When Evander pulled back, he nodded. “Decision, huh? So did Bunny happen to talk to you, too?”

Ozzy’s eyebrows went up, then he laughed, head back. “Jesus, these motherfuckers are really involved in our love lives, aren’t they?” He ran his fingers through Evander’s hair. “Remind me to get them all gift baskets. If you decide you want to stay with me.”

Another kiss, that time on the tip of Ozzy’s nose. Evander leaned in and wrapped his arms tight around Ozzy, squeezing him so hard it felt like they might never come apart. “I’m deciding on us. Don’t doubt that.”

And that's a wrap! I hope you enjoyed Designing Hearts! Ozzy and Evander finally got their heads out of their asses, but there's still plenty of guys to go around, so keep your eyes peeled for the rest of the series..

If you want to find out just what's always got Aras in such a foul mood, you can pre-order, Sparking Hearts, HERE.

If you're a Kindle Unlimited reader and want to know when Sparking Hearts goes live so you can borrow it, you can sign up for my newsletter from my website HERE.

If you want to go back and see what happened on the first job, and why exactly Jake punched Ozzy in the first place, check out Hammering Hearts HERE.