It was progress.
He needed more therapy of course. He needed a place to call home and to get back into his graduate program and to find himself again, but this was something. An important something. He smiled at Cian again, and something about the fact that it was temporary allowed him to release the tight hold he had on himself and start to feel again.
As predicted, Allie was obnoxious the moment she found out that Xan made tentative plans with her co-worker. She was all grins and subtle hints once everyone showed up at the pub, and though Xan managed to get her to calm down in public, she was on him the moment they stepped into the flat.
“You’ll love him. I mean, seriously, he’s so hot,” she said, falling onto her little sofa.
Xan scowled at her as he went into the kitchen for water. “It’s not like that.”
“It should be,” she called after him in a sing-song voice. “It’s been three months, Xan. Don’t you think it’s time you started to move on?”
He bristled, his entire body going tense. He wondered just how charmed her life must have been that she could assume it was that simple. Just move on. Just move on from four long years with a man who had never, ever actually been kind. Four long years that built to a moment where Max put his hands on him. Where he’d swung a fist. Where he drew blood and left more scars than Xan cared to find.
“I’m not ready,” he told her quietly as he moved back into the living room. “I’m happy to get out of the house for a bit, but I’m not looking for a boyfriend.”
She rolled her eyes at him and tossed a throw pillow at his face. “Yeah, I wasn’t suggesting you two move in together. He just looks like he’d be good in bed.”
That was probably true. And hell, Xan probably wouldn’t know the difference considering the fact that sex with Max had fizzled into something perfunctory—and then into nothing at all—long before what they had ended. But the idea of someone else touching him made him want to physically recoil, and he wasn’t going to push himself because his progress was making her uncomfortable.
“Can you not, like, set his expectations please,” he told her. He loved her, but she meddled enough that it had made his life miserable with Max, and he didn’t want to go through it again just as he was starting to feel human.
She wrinkled her nose at him. “So, you don’t like him?”
His throat went a little tight, and he curled his hands into fists. “I’m not ready, okay? I’m…every time I think about kissing someone else…” I think about Sebastion and Luca. Except that wasn’t entirely true. He thought about them when he was with them. But when he closed his eyes and thought about Cian putting his hands on him—his mouth on him—he thought about how sour Max tasted the last time they kissed. And how cold it had been. And ugly. And mean.
“Hey,” she said, and he realized he’d drifted. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be a bitch. I just thought some distance would help, you know?”
“It did help. It is helping,” he told her. “But I didn’t come here to have a bunch of one-night stands. I came here so whatever bullshit was going to happen with Max’s case could finish up, and I could figure out what I wanted to do next.”
She sobered and sat up straighter. “Have you heard anything?”
Xan shook his head. The last email had been about his date for sentencing, which was in two weeks. Max had pled no contest for a deal, and it was pretty obvious he wasn’t going to serve more than the time he’d already done the night he’d been arrested. Men like him didn’t get put away for hitting their lovers, especially when their lovers were men. Max had parents with money, and he had a good job, and his charming smile made people feel comfortable.
He hated thinking about it, but he knew he didn’t have much choice. If he was going back there—going back to the place he’d called home to finish his degree and to do something with himself—he had to be ready for everything else that came with it.
“You could always apply here, you know?” she said after a beat, and his gaze snapped over to her. “You don’t have to go back. You’re smart, and you’re