He looked down at himself. He was wearing all the clothes he had been the night before, or at least he thought so. He smelled like sweat and booze, and he needed a shower.

  He stood up, feeling a little dizzy, and held himself up on the nightstand nearby. His gaze slid down past his arm and toward the things atop it.

  It might have been the most organized nightstand he had ever seen. There was a stack of red and black books, all of them thrillers from a cursory glance. Next to them, a glass of water, which looked like it might have been placed there for his benefit, and a wooden tissue box with a white tissue sticking out.

  On the far side of the nightstand, the one nearest to the wall, there was a pair of dark pink triangle cufflinks placed near one another. Unlike the rest of the nightstand, they were in slight disarray, as if they had recently been used.

  Sean narrowed his eyes as he thought about whether the man that had picked him up the night before had been wearing them.

  Cufflinks… he must have been old.

  He was staring at them when he heard someone clear their throat at the door. He tried to contort his expression into a sincere smile, but he was sure it was more a terrifying grimace.

  He looked at the man who had cleared his throat, his gaze on his eyes, and for a second, he was sure that the world had sunk under him.

  He closed his eyes. He didn’t think he had been tripping, but he wasn’t always the best decision-maker when he was drunk.

  And he had been known to hallucinate the things he wanted. Even if they were things he, should, in theory, hate.

  Knight was intoxicating. The man had even taken hold of Sean’s dreams.

  And even though, before, he was erring on the side of hate… there was something about Agent Rocky Knight Sean just couldn’t get away from.

  His hands fists at his side, he opened his eyes slowly again. He could feel the blood draining from his face when his gaze landed on Rocky Knight again, who now looked far more amused than cautious.

  “When—what—”

  “Good morning,” Knight said.

  Sean blinked. “This is your room?”

  “Yes,” Knight replied. He leaned against the threshold and crossed his arms over his chest.

  Sean had seen him outside of his suit many times, but he had never seen him wearing pajamas before. Sean could only assume it was pajamas, because the cotton shirt was practically sheer. It was clinging to his bicep muscles. It made Knight look like a cross between a Greek god and a cross fit trainer.

  Sean’s gaze slid down Knight’s body. He was wearing loose grey pajamas which happened to hug his hips just right. They were loose when they got to his knees and he wasn’t wearing any shoes.

  Sean stared at his feet for far too long, then swallowed as he looked back up at his face. He bit down on his lower lip and stumbled back on the bed. If they had slept together, it was a terrible injustice that Sean wouldn’t remember it.

  But there was no way.

  Knight would never be interested. Sean was almost completely certain he was straight. But some men, well, they were straight until after they had a few drinks.

  And Sean had never seen Knight drunk. He had seen him drink a whiskey neat and then slam the glass back on the countertop. He had seen him nurse the same beer for three hours as he kept an eye on Sean and Don.

  But maybe, just maybe, when he got drunk…

  “Nothing happened,” Knight said, as if he was reading Sean’s mind. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Sean raised his eyebrows. That had been what he was thinking, but he hadn’t expecting Knight to be thinking that too. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “You’re not gay, anyway, so nothing could have happened.”

  For a brief second, Knight smiled. “Right.”

  Sean eyed the pink triangle cufflinks on his nightstand. “You’re not, right?”

  Knight cocked his head. “I’m not what?”

  Sean licked his lips. He could feel how hot his cheeks were. He wanted to get out of there, but first, he needed to find out how he had gotten there in the first place. He stood up again. “Gay,” he mumbled under his breath, almost certain Knight wouldn’t be able to hear him. He began to walk around the room, his gaze cast on the floor as he scanned for his shoes.

  “I’m gay enough,” Knight replied when Sean had his back to him.

  Sean stopped. It was only for a few seconds, but he stopped walking completely, unsure if he had heard Knight right.

  He couldn’t ask him. There was no world, no situation, in which it was okay to ask him to repeat those words.

  He blinked instead, moving closer to where his shoes were and leaning down before he spoke. His back was still to Knight, but that was the way it had to stay. He didn’t know if he was ever going to be able to meet Knight’s gaze again and he desperately needed to change the subject, at least for the sake of what little dignity he had left. “So what happened last night?”

  “You got drunk,” Knight said. “I found you by the lake and brought you back here.”

  “You…”

  “I slept on the couch,” Knight said. “And now I’m making you breakfast. So hurry up, before it burns.”

  Sean nodded, though he was sure Knight couldn’t see him. Even then, he heard Knight turning around and his footsteps receding once it was clear that Sean wasn’t going to say anything back.

  He looked at Knight over his shoulder. The mother-in-law suite wasn’t particularly big, so Knight disappeared pretty quickly into the room. Sean sat down at the edge of the bed and worked on putting his shoes on.

  Every time he tried to think about what had happened the night before, he got more confused.

  And Knight’s words kept playing on a loop in his head, his voice low and gravelly. Sean noticed the soles of his boots were wet and wondered just how long he had stayed outside. Once he was done, he stepped into the living area of the mother-in-law suite, trying his best not to look around too much.

  There was a small glass dining table for two pushes against a wall with wooden sliding, near another window, and Sean realized that there was a bowl of peeled and cut fruit sitting in the middle. “Is that—”

  “I’m just serving coffee,” Knight said. “You can get started on the fruit.”

  Sean nodded. It felt wrong to be fed breakfast by this man, but he had already made it, and it would be rude to turn it down, especially after he had spent the night in his bed.

  There was a pillow and a few blankets on the couch, he noticed with some guilt.

  “Thanks,” he said as he sat down. He took a second to look around the rest of the place. It was small, but not cozy—minimalist, sure, beautiful, almost, but bordering on brutal. The only colors Knight seemed to like were dark blues and browns, with large white prints breaking up the monotony. Were it not for the food and the mess on the couch, Sean might not have believed anyone lived there.

  The place looked like it was recently dusted and it was being staged. “You live here?” Sean asked as he grabbed his fork and stabbed a piece of melon.

  “Yeah,” Knight replied. He was walking toward him, carrying a silver tray with two cups of coffee and two plates with eggs and toast on them.

  Sean thought he was going to have to move the fruit out of the way, but Knight had perfectly calculated the amount of space he would need to set things down.

  He did so and Sean watched with wide-eyes as he put everything down with precision.

  Knight chuckled when he saw his face. “I put myself through college by being a waiter,” he said, winking at him. “This has nothing to do with my secret service skills.”

  Sean smiled back at him. Knight walked the tray back to the tiny kitchen and Sean watched him as he nibbled on a piece of fruit. Even if he had tried to peel his gaze away from the man, he didn’t think he was going to be able to.

  He wanted to.

  He wanted to stop looking at him, he wanted to go back to the main house and stop thinking about all the things that could happen, even if they hadn’t. Yet.

  He closed his eyes and shook his head slightly. Nothing could happen between them. If anything, what had happened the night before just went to show exactly how much nothing could happen between them.

  Sean had ended up in his bed and Knight hadn’t touched him at all. Even though he was, as he put it, “gay enough.”

  He tried to forget about it as he began to eat his food. This wasn’t something to worry about. Regardless of how much he wanted it, it felt much like wanting to be invisible when he was a child—like a dream.

  Knight sat in front of him and flashed him a small smile. He always kept a close shave, which Sean knew was part of the dress code, but there was some stubble on him that morning, making the sharp lines of his face stand out even more. The lines around his eyes were far more visible than they had ever been then, when he sat down across from Sean and smiled at him, sunlight hitting his face at just the right angle to soften it without visibly making him uncomfortable.

  “I hope you like my cooking,” Knight said, looking down at his food.

  Sean couldn’t be sure, but it looked like he was embarrassed.

  “I’m sure it’s great,” he said.

  Knight shook his head and Sean laughed. He began to eat what Knight had served him, which wasn’t bad. The man was clearly not a chef, but Sean’s stomach was growling and he thought he might be able to think better when he had some food in him.

  He continued to eat his food as Knight briefly explained what had happened the night before. When he asked about Ellie, Knight told him that he had sent word to the house to keep her entertained.

  Sean swallowed.

  “Don’t worry,” Knight said. “I’m not going to tell your father about this.”

  It was the first time Sean was startled enough to look right at his face. There was a softness to Knight’s tone he wasn’t familiar with and he found it disorienting. “Why?”

  “Because it was just one night,” Knight replied. “And you have been doing a good job. You don’t deserve to get any shit for it.”

  Sean blinked. The bite he was having felt like it was stuck in his throat and he had to swallow down hard as he attempted to regain his composure. It was as if Knight’s kind words were practically enough to send him into a tailspin.

  But it was probably just the hangover. He hoped it was just the hangover. It had to be.

  “Hey,” Knight said when he saw the expression on Sean’s face. “I know the president is harsh on you but—”

  “He’s not just the president,” Sean said. “He’s my father.”

  “I know,” Knight said.

  Sean opened his mouth to say something else, but there was nothing to say. Knight was fully aware of Sean’s situation. There was nothing Sean could say about it.

  He sighed as he thought about excusing himself. He didn’t know if this change anything, but—his train of thought was interrupted by the warm touch of Knight’s hand on his own.

  They had touched plenty of times, but it always felt incidental. At least it had until he came back home and the touching felt deliberate, real, like it meant something.

  Sean’s gaze was glued to Knight’s hand, to his long, slender fingers, to his slightly bruised knuckles, his trimmed nails, the lines on the back of his hand. His hand pulsed—at least Sean thought that was what it was—but he didn’t move it away from Sean’s own.

  “It’s hard,” Knight said. “I get it.”

  Sean picked up his head to look back at him. He opened his mouth to say something, but he was struggling to form words. “It’s okay if he doesn’t like me,” he finally said, acutely aware of the weight of Knight’s hand on his own. “I just—he doesn’t have to like me. I just wish he didn’t hate me so much.”

  He was surprised by the words coming out of his mouth. There was no need to disclose that to someone who worked for his father. Knight’s grip on his hand tightened. “He doesn’t hate you,” he said. “He just worries about you.”

  Sean shook his head. “I’m never going to be president,” he said. “I don’t want to be. I just want to keep my head down, and I don’t know, work in IT.”

  Knight raised his eyebrows and Sean chuckled.

  “Okay,” he said. “Sales. Event planning. I don’t know. I really don’t want thousands of people’s lives riding on my decisions.”

  “Your father wants to effect change,” Knight said.

  “Yeah, but I don’t,” Sean replied. “I just want to live my life. I don’t know why that’s so hard.”

  Knight moved his hand away from Sean’s then. “I don’t know either,” he said. “But you do deserve to do whatever makes you happy.”

  “If only I could figure that out, right?”

  Knight smiled back at him, but he didn’t say anything.

  CHAPTER NINE

  After the night with Sean—it wasn’t a night with Sean, really, and Knight had to stop treating it like it was. He hadn’t even slept in the same room. He didn’t know why, every time he closed his eyes, his mind would wander back to Sean sleeping in his bed, the duvet on his body as he held it close.

  It shouldn’t have been sexy.

  Knight had carried Sean to bed plenty of times, and every single one of those times, he had walked away with a shake of the head and a sour taste in his mouth. He didn’t want to judge Sean’s lifestyle choices, because he was only a kid after all, but after Knight had gotten to know him again as an adult, it felt like his frame of reference was all wrong.

  The man on his bed wasn’t a kid.

  He was a man, sure, a struggling one, but he was a man. And he was trying.

  Knight could see that every day, when Sean woke up early in the morning and hung out with his sister before he took her out to the park or for a swim. He was not a morning person, but he went along with her bursts of morning energy.

  He had even taught himself how to sew so he could make clothes for her barbies. There was even a twinkle in his eyes when he looked at her. Knight had always seen it, he just hadn’t seen it when Sean was exhausted and looked like he was going to pass out, which happened far too often for Knight’s liking.

  He’d found Sean sleeping on the couch with his phone almost falling out of his hand, with a book on his face, a pillow on the floor and his head on a twisted arm.

  It was Knight’s job to make sure that nothing happened to the president’s children. He didn’t think he did a poor job of it, but he was worried about how distracted he was getting lately just by looking at Sean.

  His awareness had been sharply taken from his surroundings and it was focused on Sean. On the way his clothes fit him, on that grin that made his eyes sparkle.

  Knight would sit down in a semi-circle and play barbies with Ellie and Sean. Their gazes would meet when she would say something cute or funny and they would both hold back the urge to laugh.

  He would watch Sean carry an exhausted Ellie to bed then collapse on the sofa when he tried to watch a TV show. Knight would put the throw blanket on him, making sure it covered his feet, and he would lean back on the wall and stare at the reflection of Sean’s body on the television screen.

  Matilda had caught him a couple of times, but she knew better than to say anything. There was nothing to say, anyway. If this was just a crush—and it was definitely just a crush—then it was going to go away with time and there was nothing to be done about it but wait.

  He had to wait until Sean was out of the mansion and out of his life again.

  Then he would move on with someone else, anyone else, until he forgot all about Sean. He would go back to work after that, when he felt better, and slowly, Sean would fade from his memory.

  And everything would be better.

  No, that wasn’t quite right.

  It wouldn’t necessarily be better, but it would be easier. Knight had never longed for easy quite so much in his life. There was also the fact that Sean seemed to be making things harder.

  It was possible that it was in his head, but after Sean had spent the night over in the mother-in-law suite, Knight was almost positive that he sat closer to Knight when they were in the living room. He was also sure that he spoke more to him in general, whether it was about the news or about the day.

  There was a friendly banter between them now, though it felt precarious, at least on Knight’s side. There were lines he couldn’t cross, no matter how much he wanted to.

  Sean was young.

  Sean was under his care.

  Sean was the president’s son.

  Everything around Sean made for a cocktail of impossibility without an antidote. And that was good. Knight wanted to keep it that way.

  Summer was almost over and they had fallen into what felt like an easy routine. There were only a few days left before the president was due back and Knight could say, without a doubt, that Sean had behaved admirably.

  He would have to ignore the stabbing pain in his chest when he thought about the approaching end of summer. It was going to be better—it had to be better—but it certainly didn’t make him feel good.

  He could remember what it was like before Sean had arrived. His life hadn’t been unhappy, but it hadn’t felt nearly as full.

  Now, as he looked as Sean get out of the pool, he thought about what it would mean for him. Normalcy, he supposed.

  Or at least that was what he wanted.

  And he had willed himself into situations before, surely he could will himself out of love, or whatever this was.

  Sean smiled at him as he approached the lounge chair. Ellie was still splashing around in the pool, talking about something, but Sean was exhausted and he looked like he might pass out if he stayed in the pool for a second longer than he had to.

  His skin, which was quite pale, had acquired a red tone to it.

  Knight put down the spy thriller he was reading and looked at him over his sunglasses. “Sean,” he said. His name still sounded weird in his mouth, like popping candy on his tongue.

 

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