Adam Bomb Read online

  “What’s going on?”

  Adam half blinked. “You were right… about me hiding things… some things from myself and some things from you….” Adam breathed harder than he should have and vibrated somehow, as if speaking the words winded him.

  “The thing is, Lev….” Adam’s voice lowered in volume. “I always felt responsible for you. My father was…” He swallowed thickly. “…more brutal than I ever let on. I always felt like it was my job to protect you from that.”

  Levi shook his head, not understanding. Before he could ask, Adam raised a warning hand. Like everything else Adam did, it held gravitas.

  “I protected you from something that, if you knew what it was, you would know why I said what I said yesterday. And I thought I’d get away with you never finding out… because you were going to come back to New York and I was going to tell you in my own time and everything was going to work out. And when you said you weren’t coming back, I just totally… flipped.”

  “Why?” Levi demanded, his body numb and his heart racing from the odd combination of too little sleep and too much cryptic information. It didn’t help his jitters that he’d just consumed so much caffeine.

  “Because you here and me there is never how it was supposed to end,” Adam said, with fire.

  End?

  “We can be best friends and live in different cities. Like I said last night—you won’t be in New York even 50 percent of the time. If anything, we’ll see each other more now than—”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.” Adam shut his eyes, his body more tense than Levi had ever seen. “I didn’t mean living in two cities isn’t how it was supposed to end for me and my best friend.” Adam took a ragged breath and looked Levi straight in the eyes, all vulnerability and fire and need. “I meant that two different cities is never how it was supposed to end for us.”

  Adam said the last word with emphasis, so much that it made Levi forget reality and think the stupidest of things.

  “You’re talking in code again,” Levi accused.

  “Because I’m terrified, Lev…. I’ve never had to say this aloud.”

  Say what? Levi’s mind screamed, wishing Adam would spit it out.

  “That night… after the white party….” Levi’s blood turned stone-cold at the mention. Because they’d never talked about that night. They’d been to a dozen white parties together over the years, but only one could be mentioned without clarification. The only one that mattered. The one.

  “We hooked up,” Levi finished, skipping mention of the part where Adam had broken his fragile, twenty-year-old heart.

  “It was more than that.” Levi was frozen under Adam’s intense gaze. “It should’ve been the beginning of everything. And I fucked it up.”

  Blood thrummed in Levi’s ears. Were they really going to talk about this now? After the wound had long since healed?

  “You were scared,” Levi managed, ten heartbeats into their intense gaze.

  Adam bowed his head and nodded. “I was a coward that night. But not because I was too scared to face being in love with you. I was too scared to call my father’s bluff.”

  Levi’s fists clenched in rhythm with his jaw. He didn’t know why he felt caged. He didn’t know what would happen if he spoke. He felt that if he opened his mouth, all the questions—all the sadness—all the rage would come out. Fuck Adam for dredging this back up years after Levi thought he’d buried it. Fuck Adam for proving him so wrong.

  “But that was the thing about my father.” Adam laughed bitterly. “Ben Kermansachi never bluffed. I didn’t need to test him to know what would happen if I didn’t accept his terms.”

  Adam looked up at Levi again, then responded to the question Levi was too paralyzed to ask.

  “The terms of his blackmail. If I kept things platonic with you, your dad got to keep his job and I got to keep being your friend. But if he caught us hooking up again….”

  “Again?” Levi interrupted.

  “Turned out he had his suspicions… so he had the apartment wired with cameras. He’d been monitoring us for months, just waiting. He knew what we did that night. We were asleep when he came in, in the middle of the night, and got me out of bed. He took me to the office, showed me the footage, and gave me the ultimatum. And just in case the threat of firing your dad wasn’t enough of a deterrent, he threatened to call INS on both of your parents.”

  Levi felt slapped. The specter of INS had been a ubiquitous force in his life growing up.

  “Once I made the decision,” Adam continued, looking utterly self-loathing, “I let you think what you needed to think.”

  Adam stepped toward a flummoxed Levi.

  “Even though the truth was, I was so in love with you, I could barely walk straight. And it wasn’t just the morning after that I lied to you. I tried to make you believe it every day. I made you think it was nothing—that I’d moved on. And all along I held on to the idea that I’d tell you someday. Except someday never came.”

  Levi blinked, still unable to process everything he was hearing. Adam had been in love with him?

  “Say something,” Adam breathed, half-pleading, half-miserable, as if Levi’s silence were agony.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Levi spoke it quietly and meant the question in the most earnest, literal sense. Was this an extension of their fight from the night before? More proof that the more they hid from one another, the more they hurt one another? Maybe it was a good-faith gesture: Adam showing Levi that he didn’t want them to grow apart from secrets. Maybe this was Adam clearing the air.

  “Because we had a shot once… and I blew it, and the way it was supposed to end was me getting a second chance. And if you’re here and I’m there, then that doesn’t happen… which is why….” Adam heaved a weighty breath. “…I am pulling every trick in my book to try to get you to come home.”

  Levi felt like he’d just run a marathon. “That was a long time ago.”

  After he said it, something in Adam lit.

  “Not so long that I can’t still taste you when I close my eyes….”

  Fuck.

  Levi shut his eyes, as if shutting out Adam’s smoldering gaze could stop Levi’s body’s traitorous reaction. It didn’t. From behind his own eyelids his mind conjured its recollection of a memory that had never let go. If Adam could still taste Levi, then Levi could still remember the feeling of Adam’s lips sliding slowly off his shaft that final time.

  The part of him that wanted to escape this from a sheer sense of self-preservation continued walking backward until his shoulder touched the hallway wall.

  “And I know you remember too. The way we were together….” Adam closed the final space between them and pressed his lower half fully against Levi’s. “It’s something you never forget.”

  Levi whimpered out a quiet moan, not because he had a hot, hard, gorgeous man pressed against him, but because it was the one man he’d always wanted and had never been able to have. Even as the part of him that wanted this more than anything bowed out toward Adam’s approaching body, Levi could feel his heat.

  “Deny it,” Adam growled. “Tell me I’m wrong, and I’ll back off.”

  Adam did back his body off then, pushing back a step, giving Levi space. Though he distanced his body, his imposing presence remained. When Levi said nothing, Adam set his gaze back on him and continued to do the talking. “But here’s the thing: I know I’m not wrong. Because I’d be an idiot to sacrifice our friendship if I wasn’t sure.”

  Levi immediately missed Adam’s body against his—nearly shook with need to have it back—was completely unwound from those brief seconds that Adam took himself away. But he couldn’t let himself get sucked in. Not after he’d come so far.

  “The moment’s passed,” Levi whispered, trying to hold on to whatever shreds of sense and self-preservation remained.

  Adam studied him again, shaking his head. Bullshit, Adam’s eyes said. His gaze fell to Levi’s lips. So much for
backing off unless Levi said otherwise. “Like hell it has.”

  Adam kissed like he did everything else in life: unapologetically and with passion. His hand rose to the side of Levi’s neck and held firmly. The stroke of his tongue was deep and delicious, as if he meant to devour Levi from the inside.

  “It was always supposed to be like this,” Adam whispered when he finally pulled his lips off Levi’s. “We’ve always been more than just friends.”

  This time, when Adam’s lips returned to Levi’s, so did his body. Levi had never wanted so badly to free his cock—to let every fantasy he’d ever harbored spring forth. When Adam’s kiss turned into teasing bites of Levi’s lower lip, then into teasing bites of his neck, Levi’s head lolled to the side. Between nibbles, Adam murmured salacious dares in his ear—daring Levi to stop him, to deny what they had, to say anyone else had ever made him feel like this.

  “Now we’ve got to set it right. And when you come back to New York, it will be.” Adam continued to plead his case. Both of them moaned as Adam slithered against him, pulsing a full-body roll. As Levi’s eyelids fluttered in ecstasy, the angle of his head gave him a view of the bed. It would be easy—too easy—to cross the distance and shed their clothes.

  On a delay, Levi’s brain caught up to what Adam had said just in time for him to bristle at the newer, more wicked, words.

  “We’ll be the same as we always were, but better.” Adam wouldn’t shut up. Levi had stopped moving, but Adam continued his grinding and breathless kisses. “We’ll get our second chance when you come home.”

  The confidence with which the words were spoken broke Levi from his spell. He didn’t realize he’d done some combination of pushing and dodging until he wasn’t against the wall anymore and Adam was feet away. He couldn’t form words yet. Adam was out of breath. But he’d gotten the point, or at least part of it, and didn’t advance on Levi again. Explained or unexplained, the intention was clear: no.

  “I am home.” Levi didn’t realize his whole body was shaking until he heard the tremble in his own voice. “I’m not coming back to New York.”

  When Adam got an arguing look on his face, Levi raised a warning hand to stop him.

  No.

  It was Levi’s turn now. Adam had gotten to say what he wanted to say.

  “Once upon a time, I was….” Levi couldn’t finish his sentence. “And the rejection…” A lump rose in Levi’s throat. “…it really hurt. You’ve given me a gift by telling me what really happened. Because we’ve never talked about it, and we should’ve.”

  The glisten of tears shone in Adam’s eyes. Somehow he looked defiant and defeated all at once. Levi had no doubt that Adam knew what was coming.

  “I mourned for us, Adam.” Levi’s voice lowered and he said it through a tightened jaw. Now he sprung his own tears. They prickled but remained unshed behind his eyes. “I got over you. And I’m grateful that I did. Maybe it feels different to you since you’ve carried it all this time.”

  Adam’s tears did fall then. He let out a shuddering breath, one that showed the weight of the secret and the years. It sent Levi a step closer. Two steps, then three, until Adam’s hands were in his and their foreheads were fused together. Now Levi’s tears did fall. Now they cried together, silently.

  Levi was sure that the rage would come later—the regret that he’d never told off Ben Kerr or kicked him in the nuts for every fucked-up thing he’d ever done to Adam. Maybe in an hour, or a day, that rage would hit him hard. But Adam was still alive, and Levi had to close the door that had always led to his own ruin. Levi couldn’t follow Adam into the abyss.

  “I know the ground is moving underneath you,” Levi started again carefully, his eyes still closed and his hands still squeezing Adam’s, “with your dad and Leila and Elle and becoming CEO. I know that mourning does crazy things to a person and dredges up shit that’s been at the bottom of the river for a long time. But Adam—you processing through all your shit… you being scared of things changing and wanting to hold on to me because I’ve been a constant in your life can’t be the reason why I move back to New York.”

  Adam squeezed Levi’s hands tighter, his body racked with silent, shaking sobs. Giving up on the hand hold, Levi pulled him into a hug.

  “Stay,” Adam pleaded. “We’ll nap all day and order room service and watch movies. I’ll keep my horny paws to myself.”

  How badly he still wanted to be near Adam was exactly why he had to decline the offer. That, plus it seemed unwise to be around Adam and beds.

  “Tomorrow,” Levi vowed. “Tomorrow I’ll come back, but… just give me a little space.”

  The look on Adam’s face was as vulnerable as Levi had ever seen it when he broke their hug.

  “I promise,” Levi soothed. “Tomorrow we’ll be fine.”

  Chapter Eighteen: Restless Noontime Sleep

  “FUCK you!” Levi yelled to no one, slamming his fist against tile. His elbow was level with the temperature dial, and his fist landed next to his face. He was already bowed over, forehead against the wall, rock hard, out of breath, and seething. His first thought had been to wash off Adam—his scent had been everywhere, a hazy intoxicant clouding his thoughts. But washing off anybody required a shower. This had been a very bad idea.

  It hadn’t started out to be that kind of shower. All Levi had wanted was his own sandalwood soap. A good lather or two and he could go back to smelling like himself. Levi had always preferred wood and resin scents—oud wood and cedar and benzoin and moss. But Adam always smelled a mix of citrus and warm spice.

  Levi remembered every cologne Adam had ever worn—his Molton Brown Pink Pepperpod phase, the year he’d worn Terre d’Hermès. To this day, Levi couldn’t catch a whiff of Lagerfeld on anybody without getting a little hard. Levi didn’t know his new fragrance—the one he’d worn since he came back—that complemented Adam’s delicious base scent. It smelled like vanilla and bourbon steeped in cardamom and zested with orange.

  Before what happened, Levi already had it in his mind to spy the name of whatever it was. But he knew now the scent would haunt him for life. Even now, half covered in sandalwood, half washed down the drain, Levi couldn’t wash the scent of Adam off his skin.

  Tell me you can’t feel this. Tell me, and I’ll stop.

  Levi had no sooner been able to tell Adam to stop than he was able to will himself not to breathe. It had been a delicious seduction—Adam’s lips soft and luscious, Adam’s body molding to Levi’s in sensual rhythm and holding him completely…. Adam rumbling low, satisfied sounds that started in his core and ended in Levi’s toes.

  Tell me anyone you’ve been with has ever felt this right.

  Had Levi been an idiot to stop? Because no one else ever had felt so right, or ever would. It was the curse-versus-blessing thing that had Levi tripped up. Was it a burden to know that a single person wielded so much power over your happiness, or a blessing to have found the one person who could make everything complete?

  Tell me the earth won’t tilt on its axis when we fuck for the first time.

  It was that, among other things, that found Levi standing under the spray, twenty minutes under water that might have been stone cold. He couldn’t feel temperature anymore, couldn’t tell whether he shook from cold or from rage, couldn’t tell anything but that his dick was very, very hard.

  Levi knew what he had to do, but he didn’t want to do it—the masturbation equivalent of angry sex. Wasn’t pulling the person you were fighting with out of your spank bank to pound one out just as bad as fucking when you were mad? But Levi had tried everything else that usually got him off—getting a blow job on the steps of Notre Dame in broad daylight, and a threesome with a pair of sexy twins. He’d tried, for minutes. Nothing had worked.

  “Fuccccckkkk,” he repeated, drawing out the word this time as he put his hand back on his dick. He held his breath and let his mind take him to a place it had been dozens of times before: him and Adam in his shower, Levi turned toward the wall
just as he was right then, with Adam behind him, on his knees. In this fantasy, Adam pulled him down to jerk him slowly, a bonus to the main attraction—his tongue busy and buried in Levi’s ass.

  And that was all it took—thirty seconds and an ages-old fantasy about a rim job in the shower and Levi was spewing all over his gray glass-tiled wall. He came in short, quick spurts that broke the tension and left him twitching and breathless, but that he knew would not be enough.

  Fifteen minutes later Levi was showered and dry. Within thirty, he’d fixed himself something to eat. So what if his best friend had kissed him to within an inch of his sanity that morning? People who had been thoroughly kissed still had to eat. He had pancakes because, fuck it. Exhausted from no sleep the night before and the unrelenting stress of that morning’s confessions, Levi fell into a restless noontime sleep.

  FIVE hours and one insufficient nap later, Baxter raced forth into the studio. Levi’s plan to make his studio feel like a second home to Baxter had really worked. She had her own corner in which he’d placed an identical dog bed to the one she had at home—a jumbo organic memory foam faux fur thing patterned in the manner of a cowhide rug. Some of her favorite toys were there—the colorful rope she liked tugging on with Levi and her Star Wars chew toy set. Chewbacca—who they’d come to call Chewie—was her favorite.

  Levi didn’t know how productive he’d be, but he knew he had to do something. He’d tried to watch a movie at home, but he couldn’t be still. The stillness let the memories seep in, no matter how unwelcome or unwise. Of Adam’s father. Of his own papa. Of nineteen-year-old Adam. Of what it would have meant to twenty-year-old Levi to know the truth. Of what it would have looked like for Ben Kerr to fire his papa. Would Ben have given him a reason or just let him go? Would he really have called INS? Would Ben have shown Levi’s very proud, very Catholic, very homophobic father a video of them naked and wanton, fellating one another twenty floors above where he had worked?