Love Him Desperate (On the Market #5) - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,53
brow, he figured it looked like one too. “It’s been kind of a week.”
And that was no lie. Not just writing his first research paper, but playing matchmaker for his favorite professor and the man he was head over heels for was overwhelming, to say the least.
“We can do this later,” Ronan said, setting his bit of sandpaper off to the side.
Dmitri shook his head, biting the inside of his cheek. “No. I need to keep myself occupied.” Dmitri was struggling not to picture the way Raphael would get ready for his metaphorical date with Rian. He didn’t want to think about him making a big, concentrated effort on his looks, on his desirability for a man who would probably gladly spend the rest of his life making Raphael happy—and he would deserve it, because Raphael deserved to be adored. Universally and completely.
Dmitri felt like he might choke on both envy and joy.
“I feel like maybe you need to talk about this,” Ronan said. He shifted over, nudging Dmitri with his elbow until he shifted toward the end of the dock. Wordlessly, both men peeled away boots and socks, Ronan undoing the straps on his orthotics before cuffing his pants. The lake was too cold to submerge more than the edge of their toes, but the sharp bite of it did the trick and Dmitri thought about frostbite instead of Raphael falling in love with someone who wasn’t him.
“Better?”
Dmitri laughed. “That depends. How good is Parker at amputating frozen toes? And don’t talk about his arm, I know he didn’t do that himself.”
“He probably would have tried, if he’d been old enough,” Ronan said with a faint, soft grin. “But don’t worry, he’d send us both to a good specialist. It’s not that cold, though. You just need to adapt.”
Dmitri hated that word—adapt. He hated all the ways it had been used against him. Adapt to the sea of white kids with two parents in his elementary school. Adapt to his useless addict father who never got up before six PM. Adapt to having no one except two aunts who were too overwhelmed to deal with him, and an uncle whose quiet resentment at being saddled with a kid was never that quiet at all.
Adapt to being gay, but not being able to get it up for men.
Adapt to being asexual and not quite knowing what the fuck it meant for his future because he’d only ever had feelings for one man.
Adapt to losing the only person he ever wanted to love because it was never going to work anyway.
He’d take the frozen lake over any of those things. “Was it easier? Being in love with Parker since you were kids?”
Ronan snorted. “No. But Parker’s…he’s not the usual case. He’s always been both easy and impossible to love all at the same time. I just never knew any different.”
Dmitri picked at a few of the wood splinters, dropping bigger pieces into the water and watching them float around their toes. “But I mean, you never had to date.”
“I dated a little,” Ronan said with a quiet sigh. “We weren’t together the entire time. I loved him, and I fucked up, and I almost didn’t get him back.”
“Did you ever think you’d end up with someone who wasn’t him?”
Ronan chuckled and shook his head. “Sometimes I can be a little slow, but I’ve always known better than that. Every person who came along in the years he and I weren’t together was just…a placeholder.” He gave Dmitri a careful look, questions burning in his eyes, but he didn’t ask them.
“Then you met Jonas.”
“Jonas was entirely different,” Ronan said, and his face got that happy light to it again—different from how he looked when he was talking about Parker, but the same amount of love. “I never expected to fall in love with anyone who wasn’t my husband, but I realized I’m capable of more love than I thought.”
“And if either of them wanted out…”
Ronan took one leg out of the water, using his hands to help heave it back onto the dock and tuck it under him. He turned to face Dmitri and rested his back against the railing. “Are we going to keep speaking in abstracts?”
Dmitri shook his head. “I think I’ve been in love for about a year, but it’s not going to work.”
“Raphael,” Ronan said.
Dmitri felt his heart plummet into the icy waters at his feet. “Fuck. Am I that obvious?”