Love Him Desperate (On the Market #5) - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,54
“But I knew it was more than just being bored baking cupcakes that sent you to my office. And I recognized the way you look at him.”
Dmitri dragged a hand down his face and groaned. “It’s stupid. You know? Like, I want to fall out of love so I can be just happy for him instead of happy for him and feeling like someone’s carving me in half, but I don’t know how.”
The smile on Ronan’s face turned a little sad, and he glanced across the lake. “I’m not the man to ask that question, Dmitri. I wish I was, but I never knew how to let go. Even at my damn worst, I loved Parker an unhealthy amount, and that hasn’t changed. If he left me for whatever reason, I’d let him go, but I would never move on.”
Thinking about Ronan not being with Parker was like trying to unravel physics, and Dmitri got tired after only a moment of it. “So, you’re saying there’s no hope.”
“I’m saying you need to get out while you still can, if there really isn’t a way for you two to be together. Does he know?”
Dmitri scoffed. “God, no. He’d probably do something stupid because he felt sorry for me. Some dumbass kid in love with him.”
Ronan reached out and gently touched his wrist. “You’re not some dumbass kid, and he’d never insult you that way.”
“So then he’d tell me the truth, right to my face,” Dmitri groaned and let his head thunk back against the post. “And that somehow feels worse.”
“Love is bullshit, and I say that as a man who has more than he’ll ever deserve. I wish I had an easy answer for you.”
Dmitri let out a small sigh and threw more bits of wood into the lake. He was pretty sure he had a splinter, but he was grateful for that small, stinging pain because he wanted to feel things physically, not just the soul-deep ache he couldn’t touch. “I wasn’t looking for an easy answer. I’m just trying not to think of Raphael dating someone else.”
“How about dinner then?”
Dmitri blinked at him. “Um.”
“Jonas is probably cooking, Parker is probably making dick shadow puppets with his hand, and you look like you could use some beer.”
“I’m not twenty-one yet,” Dmitri argued, but he pushed himself to his feet, then grabbed Ronan’s crutches for him while he put his orthotics back on.
As he did up the straps, Ronan looked over at him with a slight smile, and he shook his head. “I was high out of my mind for my first hand-job. It was under this dock. It was summer, and there was a record drought, and the lake had receded about twenty feet in. Parker had a joint he stole from one of the lockers in gym, and he told me it was practice for when we met girls.”
“Him giving you a hand-job…was practice?” Dmitri asked as Ronan took the crutches and heave himself up.
Ronan laughed. “Yes. And I was just in love enough, and just stupid enough, to believe him. Because not believing him meant knowing the truth—and I wasn’t ready for that yet.”
Dmitri let him walk, trying not to let the words hit him. Because maybe there was something there Ronan was trying to tell him, but he wasn’t ready for that either.
When a prosthetic arm dropped in his lap, Dmitri jumped, almost spilling his beer. He stared down at it with slightly horrified eyes as Jonas laughed and plucked it off him.
“That’s a sign of affection,” he said, gently setting the arm on the coffee table. “It’s like when a cat kills a bird and leaves it in your bed. It’s a sign of them trying to take care of you.”
“That’s, uh,” he said, and stopped. Swallowing another long drink, Dmitri swiped his hand across his mouth and glanced across the room where Parker walked over to whisper something into Ronan’s ear. He didn’t think coming there was a mistake, but his heart was feeling battered, and it was making it harder to resist the temptation to text Raphael and make up vicious lies about Rian.
Because the moment he told the truth about Rian—that he was a nice guy, worth a shot—Raphael would say yes. He would say yes, because Raphael was lonely. He needed something new and different. Someone better than his exes, who only wanted bits and pieces of him and not him as a whole. And Dmitri wasn’t sure if Rian was that