couch and watched him pour his own cup.
The loft was sort of an amazing place. The bed and dressers were shoved up against the wall by the bathroom, and the couch was back against the wall farthest away from the window. The kitchen was on the side nearest the door, and it had a fully functioning stove and enough of a marble counter to hold a coffee maker and a toaster and a toaster oven, everything pushed back until it was ready to be used. The table in the kitchen area was small and made of wood, with old-fashioned wooden chairs surrounding it.
All of that left the center of the apartment empty, and Hunter had filled it with a gym mat and free weights. The couch had a coffee table in front of it, and then? The view was strictly business.
Except beyond strictly business was the entire city of Chicago in the rain.
Grace couldn’t help but stare beyond his own worry and his petty bullshit and look out at the entire city of Chicago, which absolutely did not give a crap that he’d been a fucked-up kid who’d made a series of really bad decisions.
It certainly didn’t care about the fact that Dylan Li couldn’t manage the requirements of being an adult human if someone gave him two roadmaps and let him steal another one.
“You warm enough?” Hunter asked kindly, and Grace pulled the navy blue fleece blanket around his shoulders. He wasn’t really cold, but Hunter’s hooded sweatshirt and his own yoga pants—as well as the T-shirt and briefs he’d had under them—had been hung up in the bathroom to dry. He was wearing one of Hunter’s white T-shirts and a pair of worn gray sweats, both of them ridiculously big on him.
He was already making plans to smuggle them out of the apartment.
“Fine,” he said, eyes drawn from the view of the city, impersonal in its watch over thousands of people, to the view of Hunter, very personal as he regarded Grace with concern in his eyes.
Those eyes, glinting silver in the soft light from a side-table lamp, darkened.
“I don’t believe you,” Hunter said. “Talk to me.” He took his mug of coffee—a splash of cream, no sugar, Grace noted—and moved to the couch. After he set the mug down on the table, he backed into a corner of the couch and held out his arms.
Grace eyed him suspiciously. “What dark sorcery is this?” he asked.
“It’s called a snuggle, Grace. You scared the hell out of me, and I would very much like to hold you until I’m okay.”
Grace followed his lead and scooted into the vee of his legs, turning slightly to pillow his cheek on Hunter’s non-pillow-soft pecs. For a moment, he lay there, feeling the up and down motion of Hunter’s breaths, watching the rain streak the windows.
Every emotion running around his frenzied brain like a hamster on methamphetamine stopped in its tracks, licked its own privates, and chilled.
For a few dazzling heartbeats, Grace could see a clear path of light through all the crazy in his head, and following it was the easiest thing he’d ever done.
“I was a mess in high school,” he said, eyes on the rain. “My parents were never around, and dance was only three days a week. I spent half my time at Josh’s, but, you know, it wasn’t my house. Not then. Josh was so smart. He came up with different things for us to do. Martial arts. Petty revenge. Breaking and entering just to beat someone’s security system was so much better than the shit I could get into on my own.”
“With great power comes great potential to fuck up?” Hunter asked, and Grace smiled.
“I need that as a T-shirt. Could you get me a T-shirt that says that? I want one.”
“As you wish,” Hunter murmured, kissing the top of his head. “Keep going. You had Josh to channel your criminal impulses. What happened then?”
Grace sighed. “I gave Gabriel Hu a blowjob after school. He liked it. He decided I should be around to do it whenever he wanted, and I… I was so stupid I thought that meant something good.”
“Ouch. How bad was it?”
“He was a bad person,” Grace said helplessly. “He was a few years older, ‘taking a break’ from college, supposedly. He beat up other high school kids, because I don’t know why. He thought it was fun, I guess. I followed him around and picked up the bodies and made sure they got