Redemption - Garrett Leigh Page 0,30

feeling I’m about to prove you were right all along.”

Paolo took the breakfast plates to the kitchen and scraped the food they’d forgotten to eat into the bin. Luis had dragged his visitor around the back of the cafe. They were by the yard gate. Paolo tried not to stare, but morbid curiosity let him down. Who cared if a line was forming at the counter?

Not Paolo. Not while some fuckhead from Moss Farm was within breathing distance of the man he’d shared his bed with last night.

Not that a mutual blowjob exchange gave Paolo ownership of Luis, but he didn’t give a fuck. He’d expected this day, but the weeks of nothing had lulled him into hoping it wouldn’t happen. That Luis’s old life had forgotten about him, and Luis had a chance of doing something different.

Paolo didn’t know the face who’d showed up. It wasn’t Dante Pope. But he was dressed like a road man, and even without the ludicrous swagger, the blacked-out car idling on the pavement round the front gave him away.

Scowling, Paolo dumped the plates in the sink. His conscience told him to go back to work and mind his own damn business, but it was the same conscience that sent agitation sluicing through him and made him want to barge out of the back door and chin whoever it was that had aged Luis a decade in three and a half minutes.

Because that was how long it had been, and conscience or not, Paolo wasn’t going to make it to five without causing a scene.

At least, that’s what he told himself as he tore himself away from the window and went back to work. Five minutes, and I’m telling that scumbag to get the fuck off my property. But fifteen minutes passed, and he stayed where he was, serving customers at the till and making a mess of the grill Luis had kept spotless all day, until Luis eventually returned.

Paolo watched as he picked up his tongs and flipped six rashers of bacon as if he’d been doing it his whole life. And that he hadn’t been gone for half an hour.

Leave it—

“What was all that about?” Paolo asked.

Luis cast him a flat stare. “I’ve been summoned.”

“By who?”

“Who do you think?”

“Your brother?”

“Yup. Apparently he’s upset I haven’t paid him a royal visit.”

“Are you going to go?”

“Fuck, no. I hate him.”

Relief rippled through Paolo, along with a hefty dose of shame. He had no right to will Luis away from his own family. But, god, it felt good to know Luis didn’t want whatever his brother was offering. And wrong. So fucking wrong. Luis was sweet and kind and funny. He didn’t deserve to be alone in the world. “Isn’t there anyone else? From before, I mean. I know you don’t want to see your mum, but—”

“There’s no one else.”

Luis’s tone left no room for argument. The conversation was dead. Luis took the grill back and spent the rest of the day cooking pristine, delicious plates of food in absolute silence, his face a mask of bland indifference as frustration ate away at Paolo’s gut. Luis was a man of few words at the best of times, but his quiet grin often spoke for him, his gentle smile. The little things he did to make Paolo’s life a hundred times easier.

His shifts finished at three. He often hung around till after closing, helping Paolo shut down the cafe, ignoring Paolo’s reminders that he couldn’t pay him for the extra time. “I don’t care. You pay me enough already.”

As if. Luis was still wrestling with the bank to get his account unlocked, so Paolo had yet to pay him at all. He tried to make up for it by sending Luis home with dinner every night, but that hadn’t happened since the night they’d first kissed. Other things had happened instead. Things that erased Paolo’s common sense and made him want to shut the whole world out so he could take Luis home and pretend that rolling around in his bed was all that mattered. You don’t have to do that. You can take him out. Buy him a beer. Let him talk. Resolved, Paolo shut down the dishwasher and wandered out of the kitchen.

But Luis had already gone.

After hanging around the cafe later than necessary to see if Luis would come back, Paolo went home. It was Tuesday, the day his cousin visited Toni and Nonna so Paolo could have a night to himself. Sometimes