No Good Deed - Marie Sexton Page 0,27
his breathing, and let the emotions wash through him.
Guilt.
Always guilt, first and foremost.
Guilt because this was his best friend’s former lover. Guilt because he was violating one of their first pacts, made so many years ago, to never keep secrets from each other. And guilt because despite everything, he didn’t think he felt guilty enough. Because hot on the heels of that guilt came the memory of the night before. The peace and tenderness that came after their lovemaking. The surety that he’d fight anyone who wanted to take this new happiness from him, even if “anyone” ended up being his best friend of more than twenty years.
No matter how long Charlie lay there trying to find peace—trying to center himself before he started his day—he always dragged himself out of bed feeling as if his heart was being torn in two.
Jonas shared none of his guilt. Why would he? Gray was part of his past, and he had no reason to care about his feelings. Sometimes, Charlie almost resented him for being able to carry on as if they weren’t committing a grave sin, if not against God, then certainly against Charlie’s sense of decency.
Not that his guilt was enough to stop him from making love to Jonas at every opportunity.
On Friday night, somebody knocked on Charlie’s front door. It was easy to forget, in those hours between bedtime and dinner, that there was a whole world outside Charlie’s house—a world where nobody knew that Gray’s ex was now Charlie’s lover.
Charlie was in the middle of baking cookies. Jonas looked up from his digital art tablet, his eyes wide.
“Well, at least it’s not Gray,” Charlie said, setting his potholders aside. “He wouldn’t have bothered knocking.”
He found Warren on his doorstep, looking like he’d just gone five rounds with Mike Tyson.
“Jesus, what happened to you?” Charlie asked, holding the door open for him.
“I was just helping your neighbor.”
“MacKenna?”
“That’s the one.”
Charlie swore as he led Warren to his exam room. At least they didn’t have to go through the kitchen to get there. Jonas’s presence could remain a secret.
Warren tossed his coat aside and perched on the edge of the exam table as Charlie pulled supplies from the cabinet and began cleaning the cuts on Warren’s face.
“It’s nothing, right?” Warren asked.
Charlie laughed. “Are you kidding? You look like shit.”
“I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t look so bad once you washed the blood away.”
Charlie assessed Warren’s battered face. Getting rid of the blood certainly helped, but Warren had a fat lip, and one eyebrow was badly split and beginning to swell. “I don’t think there’s any chance of you pretending nothing happened, if that was your plan.”
Warren sighed. “Taylor’s gonna freak.”
Charlie examined the cut over Warren’s left eye. The edges were jagged, bone visible underneath. It almost intersected one of the scars he’d earned in Afghanistan. “Would you rather have stitches, or another scar?”
Warren scowled. “That’s a hell of a choice.”
“We’ll go with stitches. It’ll only take a couple. You want lidocaine?”
“What do I look like, Rambo or something? Of course I want lidocaine.”
Charlie laughed. “Just checking. I’ll be right back. Have to get it from the safe.”
It didn’t take long to retrieve a small syringe of the anesthetic. Just as Charlie finished injecting it into the cut over Warren’s eye, the sound of a timer going off reached them from the kitchen. Charlie’s last batch of cookies were done.
“You need to get that?” Warren asked.
“No.”
The timer turned off. They were close enough to the kitchen to hear the oven door opening and closing.
“Shit,” Warren said. “Sorry, man. I didn’t realize you had somebody here.”
“It’s not a problem.”
“Client or guest?”
“Guest.”
Gray would have given him the third degree, but that wasn’t Warren’s way. Warren believed very strongly in the idea of privacy. He was practically the poster child for “live and let live.” “Not sure if that’s better or worse, as far as having me interrupt you,” he grumbled.
“It’s fine, Warren. You know I’m always happy to help. Especially since I’m the one who got you into this mess.”
Warren shook his head. “It’s not your fault. I should have gone home and dealt with it myself, but I wasn’t ready to face Taylor. And I wanted to talk to you about Jeremy.”
“Stop talking while I sew this cut.”
It didn’t take long to put the stitches in. He hoped Warren wouldn’t have yet another scar, all because Charlie had given his number to MacKenna. Once the stitches were in place, he gave Warren