Micah (Lucky Book 4), page 1
Praise for Garrett Leigh
“Emotional and brilliant…”
All About Romance
“Tastefully erotic … more smart than smutty…”
Publishers Weekly
“Powerful and compelling…”
Foreword Reviews
Micah
Lucky: Book 4
Garrett Leigh
Copyright © 2019 by Garrett Leigh
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Art: Garrett Leigh @ Black Jazz Design
Editing: Posy Roberts @ Boho Edits
Proofing: Con Riley, Annabelle Jacobs, Alex Korent, Jennifer Meadows.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
FURTHER READING
NEWSLETTER
PATREON
About GARRETT LEIGH
Also by GARRETT LEIGH
1
Author Note: previously published as Falling For My Roommate. No new content.
Sam
It didn’t matter how many times I explained to my Yorkshire kin that the London pub I worked in was as civilised as you could get, they still thought I worked in a spit-and-sawdust boozer in Hackney, fighting knife crime and dodging bullets. The Daily Mail had a lot to answer for in the seaside town I called home.
Not that I called Whitby home anymore. I’d been a Londoner for eight years and couldn’t see that changing. I loved city life. Even on weekdays, surrounded by yuppies and bankers with their bluster and excess.
I preferred Saturdays, though. The Fox was down the road from the Barbican and got enough custom from tourists and locals to keep things interesting. Lucky for me, today was Saturday, and it was getting late. Food service was over, leaving the tourists sipping cocktails and the locals chugging pints. The only exception was my flatmate in the corner, nursing his customary Diet Coke with ice and lemon and thumbing through his phone.
Micah caught my eye as I wove through the crowd collecting empty glasses. As ever, his dark gaze made me weak at the knees, but I dampened the sensation down like a pro. I was happy with my place in his friend zone.
I had to be. There was nothing else . . . right?
Micah
The pub was busy, but Sam still breezed past every ten minutes to check on me, even though he knew I’d never finish the drink he’d put in front of me at six o’clock. Sometimes I wondered how on earth he hadn’t figured out that I didn’t frequent this shithole pub every weekend for the quality of its carbonated brown water. Most nights, though, I thanked my lucky stars that he liked me enough to let me stalk him at work all night long.
The thought made me smile as I glanced up at just the right time to catch his attention. His blue eyes sparkled at me across the crowded bar, and for a fleeting moment, stars aligned. Then some fucker called his name and he was gone, leaving me to curse the fact that his easy grin wasn’t only for me.
I shook my head with my gaze still fixed on him. The bar was moodily dark, but somehow Sam’s golden hair still glinted like the sun. He was wearing skinny jeans and Docs, a Motörhead T-shirt, and an apron that made his slim waist look tiny. He slipped between tables and stools, stacking glasses and wielding a wet cloth. Men and women alike were watching him like I was. And he had no idea. Because that was the thing about Sam: he was the most gorgeous bloke on the planet, and he had no fucking clue.
Still shaking my head, I went back to scrolling mindlessly through my phone. A few messages pinged in. I ignored most of them, but there was one I couldn’t—Freddie Santos, an old teammate I accidentally owed my life to.
Freddie: yo yo yo, where u at man?
Micah: same place I usually am, bro
Freddie: not that crap hole by Moorgate?
Micah: like you’ve ever taken the tube in your life
Micah: but yeah, that’s where I’m at
Freddie went quiet, and I hoped that was it. He was a genuine friend, but not one I liked enough to talk to more than once in a blue moon.
I returned to the tabloid news site I’d been perusing for no other reason than I was a bored masochist. Enough time had passed since my career-ending meltdown that I was no longer a regular in the red tops, but my mate Dom wasn’t so lucky. He’d stepped away from the circus of elite football years ago, and yet somehow papped pics of him and his boyfriend still lit up my screen.
Mauling my bottom lip, I tapped through the images of my one-time teammate strolling through Regent’s Park, hand-in-hand with his beautiful boyfriend. Resentment warred with admiration. Dom had been the first of us yanked out of the closet. To have his life flayed open for all to see, irrevocably blighting the career he’d spent his entire existence building. He’d walked away without looking back.
Me? Fuck. I’d clung on until it had nearly killed me, but that was a story for another day. The scar on my leg throbbed. I rubbed it through my jeans as a soft thumb appeared from nowhere and rescued my lip from my teeth.
“Stop brooding.”
I treated Sam to a scowl we both knew I didn’t mean. Not with him. Never with him. “I’m not brooding, I’m reading.”
“Dude, the only shit you ever read are those wanky tabloids, and they always put you in a foul mood.”
“I’m not in a foul mood.”
“Oh no? So why are you glaring death craters into your phone screen?”
He had me there. But as luck would have it, Freddie saved the day.
Freddie: i’m gonna swing by
I held the message up for Sam to read as evidence of why I was giving my phone the stink eye. On cue, his lovely face folded into his own glower. “What does that knobhead want?”
“A drink, maybe? This is a pub.”
“I meant in general. He only hits you up when he wants something.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Be nice.”
Sam huffed and stomped off, slender hips swinging. My hands balled into fists and I forced myself to avert my gaze and mentally prepare for the whirlwind that was Freddie Santos.
Ten minutes later, he breezed into the bar looking every inch the flash git that made footballers so popular and yet unpopular at the same time. Designer everything, Peaky Blinders hair-don’t and a shit-eating grin that made even me, a by-product of his world, want to punch him in the face.
He dropped onto the bar stool next to me. “Duuuude, how’s tricks?”
“Same as ever.” I pocketed my phone, suppressing a sigh. “What brings you down these parts?”
“Looking for my wingman, aren’t I?”
“I’ve never been your wingman.”
“Course you have. What about those clubs in Rio? You were always by my side then.”
“Not on purpose. There was nowhere else to stand.”
Freddie rolled his eyes, but I was saved from further bullshit by Sam’s sullen appearance behind the bar.
He fixed Freddie with a bland stare. “What can I get you?”
Freddie scanned the shelves behind Sam. “Suppose it’s too much to ask for your champagne list?”
“Nope, but it’d be a short read, even for you.”
Too dense to realise Sam was already cutting him down, Freddie let out a theatrical sigh. “Whatever. I’ll have a vodka. Neat. And make it the good stuff; Micah’s paying.”
Sam turned away to fix the drink.
I thumped Freddie’s arm as hard as I dared, considering the insurance policies his club probably had on his body. “Why am I paying? You know I take home a couple of grand a month now. That’s a month, dude. Not an hour.”
Freddie shrugged, rubbing his arm. “I was joking. Trying to get a rise out of your pretty roommate. You know he gets territorial over you.”
“I think it’s more he’s pegged you for a prize wanker.”
I’d never spoken truer words, but they didn’t sound the same in my flat London accent. Sam’s warm, northern brogue made everything magic. I heard it in my dreams, awake, asleep, always.
Freddie nudged me. “I don’t care what your dude thinks of me, man.”
“He’s not my dude.”
“Uh-huh. Anyway, I really did come by to drag you out. A bunch of us are heading to that new joint by the river tonight, the one with the burlesque show and the titty bar. Come with me?”
I stared at him like he’d grown horns. Like he hadn’t been the one to hold my hand when the London Transport Police had scraped me off the Tube tracks. “Are you kidding me? Why the fuck would I want to go to a titty bar?”
“Dunno. Maybe to spend some time with your mates? People who haven’t seen you for months and months and months?”
There was a damn good reason for that: those arseholes hadn’t ever been my fucking friends. But I knew Freddie, and it was loaded conversations like this that kept me from icing him out of my life. As clumsy and offensive as he was, he really did care.
A shot of vodka appeared on the bar. I didn’t dare look up, but I felt Sam’s presence like a second skin.
Freddie didn’t spare Sam a glance either. He prodded me in the ribs. “So? What are you saying? You wanna come out?”
“I’m not saying anything remotely like that. Even without the titty bar, it’s not my scene. Not anymore.”
The conversation went round in circles, but eventually, Freddie necked his vodka, dropped a fifty on the bar—show off—and left. By then, the bar had quieted. On instinct, I searched out Sam. He was by the fire exit, sweeping the battered wooden floor. My gaze zeroed in on his long, lean legs encased in gunmetal denim, his elegant hands, and finally his dazzling grin.
He ambled over to me. “Dickhead gone home?”
“As if. He’s off out. Wanted me to go with him.”
“Didn’t fancy it?”
“What do you think?”
“That your mate is a bit of a twat, but you should probably get out more.”
“To a strip club by the river?”
Sam grimaced. “Okay. Maybe not. I stand by the twat comment, though.”
“He left you a forty-quid tip.”
“He’s still a prick.”
Frustration, laced with a heavy dose of guilt washed over me. “He can’t help acting up. When you’re young and surrounded by that lunacy, it’s hard to know any better.”
“He’s not that young.”
“Not by playing standards, maybe, but in real life he is. Why can’t you trust me when I say he’s a nice bloke underneath it all?”
Sam shrugged. “Because you’ve never told me why. You let him prance around in front of me like a peacock and expect me to just believe you that he’s something else entirely.”
“You think I’d lie to you?”
“No, I think you’re too nice for your own good.”
I laughed. Couldn’t help it. In the last six months, Sam had got to know me better than anyone else had in years, but fuck, he still had so much to learn. “I’m not nice.”
“You are. But don’t worry, I’ll never tell anyone.”
2
Sam
Micah sent me a soft grin across the breakfast bar and accepted the plate of bagels, smoked salmon, and soft scrambled eggs. “Thanks. You didn’t have to do that.”
He had no idea how untrue that statement was. When he’d first answered my ad for a flat-share and moved in, he’d spent days and days alone in his room. The only way I’d coaxed him out was with food, and six months into our roomie-hood, it was a habit I’d yet to break. “I was up anyway.”
Lies. All lies. But who the fuck cared if I’d jumped out of bed the moment I’d heard Micah limping out of his bedroom?
Not me.
I fixed my own plate and rounded the breakfast bar to claim my seat beside him. He was scrolling through his phone again. I nudged him. “You’re on that thing so much I’m starting to think you’ve got a Grindr account.”
Micah snorted. “A new Grindr account, you mean. You know what happened with the last one.”
Of course I did. Even without the left leg that dragged behind him when he walked, the whole world knew that a casual hook-up had sold him out to the tabloids, and the threat of exposure had driven him to an “incident” on the London Underground. I’d never understand why a career spent kicking a leather ball around a field was so important, but then working in the bar was the most exciting thing I’d ever done, so what did I know?
I found a smile from somewhere and pasted it onto my face. “Just because it didn’t pan out the first time doesn’t mean you’re doomed to a lifetime of gay bachelorhood. Whether you want to be or not, you’re out now—”
“I do want to be.”
“—so you might as well hook up. There must be a thousand blokes out there who’d want to be with you.”
Micah slid me a look I couldn’t decipher. “I don’t want a thousand blokes.”
“Well, not all at once. That’s beyond an orgy, eh?”
“If you say so. I’ve never had one.”
So the papers had lied about that too. I made a note in my Micah files and, not for the first time, wished that I’d known absolutely nothing about him until he’d rocked up on my doorstep. It was so unfair. I had the privilege of privacy that he hadn’t had since he’d signed his life away as a football-mad teenager. He knew of me what I wanted him to. I knew he was lucky to be walking at all. That he’d been sectioned for two weeks, and his entire family had disowned him. And he’d never told me a fucking thing.
I poured more coffee and changed the subject, wittering away about bullshit gossip from the bar until Micah ditched his phone and started to eat. As usual, a good feed cheered him up and brought him alive in ways that made dragging my tired self out of bed three hours before I wanted to totally worthwhile. The changes in him were subtle, but I saw them like beacons in the dark, lighting the way to his kind, funny, and clever soul. If only he knew how he made my heart skip. Actually, scratch that. I was glad he didn’t. Our friendship meant the world to me. Spoiling it because I couldn’t contain myself would be the worst thing that could ever happen.
To both of us.
After breakfast, he stretched and limped off to the bathroom. The shower turned on, and steam billowed out through the warped door he’d, as usual, neglected to close properly.
It took every ounce of restraint I possessed not to peek. I busied myself rinsing plates and stacking the dishwasher. Then I retreated to my room and crawled back into bed. I flicked the TV on and lost myself in an episode of Columbo until a light tap roused me.
Micah stood in the doorway, dressed in sweats and a hoodie, hair still damp but effortlessly cool next to my grungy bedhead. “Got a client. Be back around four. What shift are you working?”
“Four to twelve.”
“Oh.” His cautiously open expression closed off. “I thought it was five.”
“It was, but someone needs to go home early from the lunch shift.”
“Why’s that your problem?”
“It’s not. But an extra few quid isn’t going to do me any harm. We haven’t all got millions in the bank, you know.”
“I haven’t got millions in the bank either. I spent it all on horses, coke, and escorts when I was living my best straight life, but thanks for the reminder.”
Gallows humour softened the punch of his words, but I felt the impact in my chest all the same. “Your best life is still out there. You just have to go somewhere other than the gym and the shithole I work at.”
“I like the gym, and I like where you work.”
I’d never quite understood why, on either count. The gym was the home of the devil, and Micah hated crowds and drinkers, so why he hung out at the Fox every weekend was a mystery to me. “You’re a freak.”
“Tell me something I don’t know. Text me if you need anything, yeah?”
“I will.”
He left and I followed his lead of taking a shower and getting ready for work. During the week, when Micah was home alone while I worked, I’d curse the fact that my job demanded such unsociable hours, but weekends were different, Saturdays and Sundays. I knew he’d come and see me.
Because he always did.
I glanced across the bar and stifled a laugh. Micah caught me and treated me to a rueful grin, but it was brief, his attention too in demand to be wasted on the likes of me.
Or, at least, that’s what the tipsy lady in the high heels and floaty skirt probably thought. I wasn’t her type. Too cute, according to her. And that was fine by me. As cougars went, she was sweet and nowhere near the worst the bar had to offer, but a woman’s beautiful body did nothing for me. I was gay, gay, and throw in a little more gay.
