Almost Just Friends (Wildstone #4)(35)

Which, of course, he’d never done. And sure enough, the minute he turned his attention to the pan, the damn thing sparked, smoked, and then . . . burst into flames.

The fire alarm went off, screaming at him in a decibel so loud he couldn’t hear himself think. He stared at it for a single beat, and Piper rushed past him with the fire extinguisher and . . . killed the toaster dead.

“Seriously? You knew it was broken!” she said, or more accurately yelled to be heard over the still-wailing smoke alarm.

In a big, faded T-shirt and boxers, she climbed up onto the counter and began waving a towel in front of the alarm.

Feeling stupid, he climbed onto the counter as well, taking the towel. He was taller and had a better reach. “Get down, I’ve got this.”

Jumping down, Piper opened the window and back door, then surveyed the disaster while he continued to wave air at the fire alarm until it stopped going off. This took a good ten minutes.

“Dammit, Gavin,” she said in the blessed silence.

“I’m sorry. I really was going to fix it.”

“Gee, I’ve never heard that before.”

Okay, he deserved that. But he really hated how she could make him feel like a stupid kid again. “So you were just standing in the hallway waiting for me to fuck up?”

“Of course not! But when I smelled breakfast, I knew what would happen.”

He let out a breath and nodded. “Because I always screw up.”

Before she could react, there was a knock on the opened back door. Gavin turned and time stood still.

CJ.

He was in full cop gear, including utility belt with handcuffs and gun—the whole nine yards. “A fisherman called in,” he said, speaking directly to Piper without even glancing at Gavin. “Said he thought one of the empty cabins’ burglar alarms had gone off. I was in the area and followed the screaming alarm. Everything okay?”

Piper said something, but Gavin couldn’t have repeated it because he didn’t hear a word of it. He couldn’t talk either. Or breathe.

CJ, the only person outside of his family whom he’d ever loved, and also the only other person besides Piper on his list of people to make amends to.

Which he wasn’t exactly doing a bang-up job of.

He hadn’t seen CJ since they’d been, what, twenty years old and on top of the world? For one thing, he’d not come home often, and for another, CJ had left Wildstone for a while too. They needed to talk, but knowing what a prick he’d been, he’d felt uneasy and awkward about doing so.

Vaguely, he realized Piper had made some excuse to leave them alone and was gone. CJ still stood in the doorway, looking neither uneasy nor awkward.

Made sense. Gavin had been the one to screw up. He’d made a lot of mistakes, and he was here to own them. But as it turns out, saying that to himself and actually doing it were two very different things. “Are you hungry?” he heard himself ask. “I’ve got breakfast. Well, minus the toast. There’s more than enough. I could make you a plate—”

CJ was already shaking his head and turning away, without a single word to the guy he’d once claimed to love, and Gavin died a little inside.

“Ceej.”

He stopped but didn’t turn back. Tall, leanly muscled, tan on top of his Puerto Rican coloring, all of it stealing Gavin’s breath.

“I’m . . . sorry,” he said.

That got CJ to turn around, his dark gaze looking . . . haunted and sad, which didn’t match his carefully distant tone. “For?”

Okay, so he was going to make Gavin say it. Fair. “For leaving. For staying gone. For not returning texts or calls. Pick one. Or don’t. Whatever, it’s your choice.”

CJ took that in a moment. “When I say whatever, I really mean screw you.”

“Sometimes me too,” Gavin said, relieved because they were at least talking. “But right now it means I really am sorry, and I don’t know how to make you believe that.”

“That’s because I don’t give a flying fuck.”

But see, that had to be a lie, because CJ always gave a flying fuck, about everything, and it was that, the sarcasm and lie combined, that gave Gavin his first little bubble of hope since the day he’d left rehab. “Okay,” he said, nodding. “Understood. But you used to give a whole bunch of fucks, at least about my homemade breakfasts, and I have to tell you, I’ve only gotten better.”

CJ’s gaze slid past him to the stove, and Gavin bit back a smile. Gotcha. “I can hear your stomach growling from here,” he said softly.

“That’s because I’m just coming off a twelve-hour shift.”

“So you’re starving. Why make yourself suffer when it’s me you’re mad at? Here.” Gavin stepped back, giving CJ plenty of room and space to enter on his own terms, like he’d have done for a hurting stray animal. Meanwhile, he piled up a plate with food and set it at the table, gambling on the fact that CJ wouldn’t spite himself just to snub his long-ago ex.

After a long hesitation, CJ took the bait. He came in and sat heavily, like maybe he was exhausted. Probably for the same reason Piper always was. Budget cuts had caused hiring freezes, leaving the police, fire, and other emergency response agencies far too understaffed.

CJ began to inhale his food, and when he caught Gavin watching, staring really, because he couldn’t seem to help himself, he quirked a brow. “What, you’ve never seen a guy eat before?”