Staccato (Magnum Opus #2) - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,48

do everything I can to keep you in my life. I like you. I’m not going to squander that.”

“Okay,” Adam said one last time, and he hated himself a little bit for making it, but he also knew he didn’t want to live through another bleak, endless number of days not knowing if he’d ever see Nik again. That agony was proof that he’d take whatever he could get, however Nik would offer it.

“I’m sorry I can’t give you more. I’m sorry I’m not a better person.”

Adam shook his head, then shifted closer and laid his cheek on Nik’s shoulder. It was hard and uncomfortable, and he never ever wanted to move, ever again. “You are who you are, and that’s not a bad man. I hope that someday you’ll understand that, and maybe then…”

“Don’t,” Nik whispered. “Please.”

Adam sighed. “Okay. But you are good enough, and you deserve to get what you want. But if this is it, I’ll take it.”

Nik laid his chin on the top of Adam’s hair and breathed in. “Thank you.”

Adam let the pain of that sink in, embrace him, hold him by the throat. He heard the finality in Nik’s tone, knew that holding on to hope would be pointless, and he resolved to let this be enough.

Adam trudged through the front door, his back aching from the series of dermals along the spine of a young girl he was pretty sure were only going to get ripped out by her boyfriend’s teeth. Of course, it wasn’t his job to ask—or judge. Just to encourage them gently not to risk them getting infected, but he saw the hungry look in the dude’s eyes, and the way he stood protectively over her as Adam spent a half hour crouched over to apply them.

It didn’t help that she tipped the change—a buck-fifty, which left him still broke and still tired. He was emotionally drained from his dinner with Nik a few nights before, and though they’d texted, they were taking the rekindling of their new friendship slowly. Adam had a feeling it was for him, mostly, because he still wasn’t entirely sure he could handle being only Nik’s friend after that impossibly short, devastating kiss.

But he was willing to try, as much as it weighed on him.

With that problem looming over him still, it just seemed to magnify the rest, and he was starting to feel a little hopeless. The piercers at Vincent’s were paid an hourly wage instead of renting stall space, but it was small. It was barely above minimum, and he didn’t dare ask Vincent for a raise because he knew the shop was struggling. Mall rent was high, and while client appointments were steady, the walk-ins were low, and supplies only seemed to increase in cost with every passing month.

Adam hadn’t arrived with much in his savings, and that was dwindling, even when he wasn’t paying rent. At some point, Cooper would come home, and Stella would want him to move out. And then what? He’d be able to afford some shitty little studio with no real idea of what he was going to do next. The town was too small for him to start his own place, and it wasn’t like he had ever hoped to make money with his music.

He could call his mom for help—she had insisted both kids know it was an option, but she also wouldn’t hold back on her I told you so. Because she had. When he walked across the stage to get his associates without plans to do more, she had warned him.

“None of your life is sustainable, Adam. At least try to dream bigger.”

And he had—he had dreamed of a life with a partner and something with…substance, maybe? But all of that had crashed down around him, and he was just able to afford his testosterone every month and the absurd costs of his lab testing once a year.

With a sigh, he shuffled into the kitchen and pulled a beer out of the fridge. The clock read just past eleven, which meant Evie was asleep, but he heard footsteps on the stairs and wasn’t surprised when Stella joined him a moment later.

“I left you some food,” she said, walking to the cupboard for a water glass. “Just frozen lasagna.”

Neither one of them had really been adept at cooking, but then again, neither had his mother. Frozen dinners were his childhood comfort foods, and it made him warm inside to know Stella had left something