Dirty Laundry: A Tucker Springs Novel #3

okay? You need anything?”
    Just you . Adam smiled and shook his head.
    Denver fussed around him until he was done eating, then whisked away the plate and came back with a big glass of water. “They gave me more pills, if you need them.”
    “If I take any more pills, I’ll be in a coma,” Adam replied, slurring a little. He blushed and averted his gaze. “I’m sorry.”
    “What for?”
    What for . “For everything, Denver. I know I overreacted, and I feel ridiculous.”
    Denver lifted Adam’s feet and sat under them on the other end of the couch. “Don’t feel ridiculous. You’re fine. From the sounds of things, Brad was a real ass.”
    “Brad’s always an ass.” Adam stared up at the ceiling. There weren’t any tiles to count, so he calculated the angles and shapes of the space, forming imaginary squares and rectangles to fill the silence.
    “The doctor wanted you to stay here overnight,” Denver said at last. “You okay with that, babe?”
    He wasn’t, of course. Carving out geometrics in the ceiling was the first sign that his OCD was climbing on top of whatever they’d pumped into his system. He thought of the pills Denver had offered.
    Then he lowered his gaze to Denver, and thoughts of taking more drugs faded in the presence of a much more palatable distraction.
    Denver caught the look on his face and shook his head. “No way. You just got out of the hospital.”
    “For a stupid anxiety attack, not a concussion.” I don’t want medicine when I could have you.
    Denver stared at him, his face in shadow, his body backlit by the light streaming over from the kitchen. He was big and beautiful, and Adam wanted him. He tried to figure out how he could have him.
    Denver averted his eyes and grimaced down at his carpet. “Besides, last I checked, I was being an ass too.”
    Oh. That. Funny how he didn’t seem to care, not anymore, not after watching Denver boss his way around the hospital, bullying doctors, herding Adam around the apartment like he was an exotic Russian painted egg. He sighed. “I don’t care. And I think I was an ass too. Three. Whatever.”
    Denver snorted. “You weren’t an ass.”
    “I think I might have been. I didn’t think about what telling you about your disability might mean to you.” Adam went back to shaping out the ceiling. “I think I was too caught up in the idea of how cool it was that you were like me to think about what—” He sighed. “Well. I guess it’s probably not exciting to you to be told your brain is broken too.” He started counting the shapes he’d made and carving the rectangles into smaller squares, trying to make the space uniform. “I think that’s pretty asshole-y, being excited about someone’s learning disability because it makes them a freak like you.”
    Strong fingers caught his chin, forcing him away from his math. Denver’s face was still in shadow, but Adam could make out the strong line of his jaw, the slight curve of his lips, the soft light in his eye. “You weren’t an asshole. And you aren’t a freak.” His thumb stroked Adam’s face. “You just hit against something I’ve feared for a long time. Like that Bugs Bunny short where he’s facing some huge guy, big as me, and nothing can touch him until Bugs hits this one spot on his chin. ‘His glass jaw!’ somebody says, and the big guy shatters and falls down, defeated. That’s how I felt. Like I’d made myself big and impenetrable, but I had this glass jaw, and you found it.” Adam cringed and opened his mouth to apologize, but Denver gently pressed his lips closed again with the pad of his thumb. “You could have come at me with the best, most patient, psychologist-approved explanation, and I’d still have freaked. I been afraid my whole life that I’m stupid and worthless, just like my daddy told me. I been waiting for something, anything, to prove him right, and you found it for me.”
    Adam felt like shit. Complete, utter dog shit. He still couldn’t speak because of Denver’s thumb, so he kissed it, mournfully, instead.
    “Baby, if it hadn’t been you, it’d have been somebody else. I been so sure that the boogeyman was coming. I wasn’t going to move forward, I don’t think, until I knew where he was. Kind of like your anxiety. I was afraid of a ghost, but I was sure it wasn’t just a ghost, that it could get me. I let my fear get the better of me, so when you told me what it was I’d been hiding from, I couldn’t hear or see