glanced over my shoulder to the bed of the truck to make sure Brewer was okay. The big dog was lying up against the cab, so he likely hadn’t been affected by my momentary lapse in driving skills.
Since I didn’t want to lie to him and I couldn’t really tell him the truth, I settled on saying, “Um, let’s just say there was a squirrel and leave it at that.’”
“Uh, okay,” Lex responded in confusion but thankfully he didn’t press me on the issue.
The driveway for Lex’s cabin came into view. I drove right past it.
On purpose.
Jesus, what was wrong with me?
“So you were saying about people wanting more from you?” I prodded.
“Yeah, so my love life basically went from nonexistent to having someone new on my arm every night. I guess… I guess I enjoyed it in the beginning,” Lex said sheepishly.
The idea of him fucking a new woman every night irritated me beyond belief and I found myself gripping the steering wheel hard.
“It took me a really long time to realize that they weren’t with me because… because they wanted to be. I mean, they did want to be with me, but not for the right reasons.”
Lex sounded embarrassed and hurt. “People are assholes,” I ground out.
There was a long beat of silence, which had me glancing in Lex’s direction. He was looking out the window. “Yeah,” he finally said.
“So there wasn’t anyone special?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how I’d gone from wanting to know why he’d accused me of something I hadn’t done to wanting to know more about his love life.
“I’m gay, Gideon,” Lex said.
The statement caught me off guard and it was all I could do not to run the damn truck off the road. As it was, I took my foot off the gas even more than it already was. We were going so slow at that point that the truck might as well have been moving backwards.
Lex must have taken my silence as a bad thing because he said, “I just wanted to get that out there because… because it’s not something I try and hide. If that’s a problem for you—”
“No,” I practically shouted before I remembered to use my indoor voice. My throat felt tight as I added, “No, it’s not a problem.”
It so was a problem. The butterflies that always seemed to be present in my belly when I was around Lex felt like they all took flight at once.
Lex was gay.
So if I put my hand on his and let it linger…
I let out a silent curse as I reminded myself that just because he’d admitted he was gay didn’t mean I all of a sudden had a green light to use him to figure out my own sexuality.
Lex let out a breath and then said, “No, there was no one special.”
It took me a moment to remember that I’d asked him that question before he’d told me about his sexuality.
“But there was one guy I thought was different…”
Great, the green monster was back and spitting mad. Beyond the jealousy, though, was another kind of anger. Based on the sadness in Lex’s voice, I already wanted to find the faceless guy and beat the shit out of him.
“What happened?” I asked.
Lex shook his head slightly. He was once again staring at his hands.
"I met him a couple years ago. He pretended not to know who I was or anything about me or my company. I'd been vacationing in this little town in South Carolina. I'd been dealing with a lot of stuff at work after taking my company public… I had some investors who wanted to take the company in a different direction and so I'd been fighting with them quite a bit about that. Anyway, I rented this little beach house—nothing fancy or anything. I slept in, took long walks on the beach, read… you know the drill. A few days after getting there, I met a guy on the beach and we hit it off. I was sure I was madly in love with him by the end of our third date. So I started telling him more and more about myself. Things about my childhood, my brothers, my business. At that point, my vision had started to become affected, but I could still see pretty well. But I'd gotten the diagnosis that I’d be legally blind within a year and completely blind in two. He was the only person I told. My brothers didn't even