Undeniably Yours - Jerry Cole

Chapter One

“I will be keeping my eye on this. You guys have my undivided attention.” I was lying again. I do it so often and so effortlessly these days that I hardly register when it’s happening.

The truth was that my attention was anywhere but here. Behind the group of fresh-faced interns, I was lying to, was a sight that made me feel decidedly ambivalent. My ex and his new lover were wheeling his father out of the hospital. His father was part of a clinical trial we were conducting at the hospital and, even though I wasn’t allowed to access his medical records, he looked much better. The word was the trials were showing great results and I could only assume that Mr. Green was part of that group.

What drew my attention wasn’t just the sight of tall and handsome Josh Green. Though, that was worth watching by itself. It was the way he was looking at the boy who was now the center of his world. I say the word boy, even though I know he is a grown man, but his new lover is boyish in his ways. It’s like he’s in some sort of perpetual puberty or something. It’s so unfair. Meanwhile, I am struggling to beat back premature wrinkles and sunspots. Damn this fair skin and red hair.

But I digress; the way Josh looks at his new lover reminds me of the way he used to look at me. When we were in high school, sneaking around like any two gay boys in small-town America would do; he used to look at me that way and I felt like I would light up. And that is what that boy is doing now. He is positively glowing. Even Josh’s grumpy old man seemed to be bathed in the soft glow of their love. He looked like less of an asshole than I remember. The three of them boarded the elevator at the end of the hall and disappeared from view, leaving me to rejoin the group of interns and their lists of petty grievances.

I don’t know why I couldn’t help but watch them. Maybe because Josh was the last person I could say I ever genuinely loved. Maybe because he was the last person I could say ever truly loved me. The first and the last. Either way. Even though I knew going back was impossible for so many reasons, I couldn’t help but feel something whenever I saw them together. I don’t want him back, exactly. He hates me, and with good reason. I totally poisoned the well on that one. But more like a strange longing, like a strangled cry somewhere deep in my chest. I want what they have, but I don’t want to take it from them. I want a Josh-like love of my own.

Which is a new feeling for me.

I managed to properly butter up the interns and slip out of the hospital and back into the sunshine. I made my way over to the Hummer I have parked in my special reserved spot and climbed into the cab. I say the word climb because, although I am hardly what anybody would call diminutive in size, the damned vehicle is a fucking behemoth. I only bought the damned thing to be an annoyance. I wanted to annoy my father by buying something completely unnecessary with his money. He’d siphoned money out of one of his charities into a slush fund and threw a sizable chunk at me as a belated birthday present. Unfortunately, it wasn’t his money, so he gave even less of a shit than he usually did. Once I realized where the money came from I quickly reimbursed them and ended up paying for the damned thing myself.

Happy birthday to me!

I made my way back to the old family home that was now doubling as the headquarters of Dunlevy Inc. We owned a building downtown that served as the official headquarters, but ever since I was sent back here to look after things I’d been avoiding the aging gray building. All of the day-to-day operations still happened from that building. All of the staff still reported to the glorified jail cell and carried on the work of their varied departments. I simply refused to follow suit. All of the executive decisions were made here, from the comfort of what was once my own home. The old house was so big that I could afford to convert four or five rooms into