Looking for Trouble(29)
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m—Are we going to do something or what?”
Dylan looked up at him and grinned. “I thought you’d never ask!”
Damn it. The little shit had gotten him. “What am I going to do with you, Trouble?”
“I can think of a few things.”
“I thought you were going to be good?”
“Being good is hard. I always mess up. I’m not sure that’ll change.”
Clay sighed. He hated that Dylan felt that way, wondered what had happened in the past to lead him there. “Don’t say that.”
“Why? It’s true.”
“No, it’s not.” Dylan opened his mouth to reply, but Clay cut him off. “You haven’t messed up with me.”
“I tried to get you to fuck me!”
Yes, yes, he had, but still, Clay replied, “You didn’t know who I was.”
“I know who you are now,” Dylan answered, his reply heavy between them. It was a mistake for them to want one another; or not the wanting, though acting on it would be. But the truth was, Clay wanted Dylan as well.
“Then I guess I’m messing up too,” he admitted. “Now come on, Trouble. Let’s get out of here.”
“Clay… I…” Damned if his cheeks weren’t pink. He was cute as hell, and no denial would change that.
“Come on.” Clay put his hand on the back of Dylan’s neck, softly pulling him closer. “I’ll show you where we used to go as kids.” It was the least he could do, show Dylan around the town his father had grown up in.
Dylan nodded. “Yeah…okay. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dylan
“Um…please don’t tell me you’re looking for a place to hide my body,” Dylan said as Clay pulled into a small, empty parking lot. There were only about ten spaces, a sidewalk in front of it, and on the other side were…trees. Lots and lots of trees.
Clay chuckled. “Not today, but you keep causing trouble, and I might change my mind,” he teased. “We’re on the south end of some hiking trails. The north side is much more popular, but there’s a trail here I used to hike with your dad and April all the time. If you cut off at one point and go off trail, it leads toward where our old hideout used to be.” He cleared his throat as though the memory was painful.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you to do this.”
“It’s fine.” Clay shook his head and got out of the truck. Dylan did the same.
He waited as Clay grabbed his backpack, and until they were on the trail, small rocks and leaves on the path, before asking, “Who’s April?”
Clay stopped dead in his tracks, his face ashen when he looked at Dylan. The response made Dylan’s heart thud against his chest. “You don’t know about April?”
Dylan shook his head, apparently missing a big piece of information his father had never shared with him.
“She was…she was our best friend. It was always the three of us. Your dad, um…he fell in love with her.” Clay looked down, his hands fisted at his sides while Dylan struggled to make sense of it all. His dad had never told him about April. He’d known his father hadn’t loved his mom, but that she’d gotten pregnant and his dad wanted to stay close and raise him together. They even lived together for some of it. It lasted a few years before she left them—well, left Dylan. He’d seen her once since then, when he was fourteen, and he’d never wanted to see her again.
But his father had told him he’d been in love once in his life. It had been what scared Dylan about Clay and why he’d asked if there had ever been anything between them. Part of him had feared his father had loved Clay. This…this was unexpected. “What happened?” Dylan asked.
Clay looked at him, that sadness in his eyes bleeding through. “She died. We were eighteen.”
Dylan now knew the truth of what happened with his father and Clay had to do with April, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what it was or not. It hit him then that Clay had lost both his best friends, that he was the only one still alive. “I’m sorry for your loss…of April and my dad both. I’ve never had friends who were that close, but I know what it’s like to lose people—my dad, my mom, even though she walked away.”
“She left you?” Clay asked.
“Yes. I was too much for her.”
“I doubt—”
“Don’t do that. Don’t pretend to understand my life better than I do. I lived it, not you. I was too much for her. I wasn’t smart enough, got into trouble, and had too much energy. She couldn’t handle me, so she left me with Dad.”
Without waiting for Clay to respond, Dylan began walking. They were both quiet as the leaves crunched beneath their heavy steps.
“I have ADHD. It’s mostly under control with medication now, and I guess just age and learning how to control myself. But I get antsy, bursts of energy, blurting things out, insomnia, and sometimes…sometimes it’s hard to concentrate and I daydream or struggle to focus. It makes me miss things, but I’m not stupid.” As soon as the word left his mouth, Dylan knew it was a lie. Most of the time, he did feel like he was stupid.