Wasn’t the best neighborhood, but it was what he could afford on his pay. At least it wasn’t a tiny one-bedroom apartment in a really crappy complex, which was where he’d been living until he started working at the dealership.
After he had the car securely locked up in the garage, he headed to his friend’s house to return the trailer.
“Get it working?” he asked Jeff.
“Yeah, Brooke’s great.”
“Told you. I wish her father was still working, too, but she definitely has his skills.”
“Yes, everyone was right, I should have listened to your advice sooner and taken it to her. I was trying to save some money.”
He shrugged. “You don’t always come out ahead in the end trying to save time or money.”
Or maybe even trying to save love, Jeff thought.
Which was how he’d gotten his heart broken the last time, by a guy he’d thought was the whole package, including a gearhead.
Another reason it’d taken him a while to get back into wanting to work on the Edsel again.
Too many bad memories.
Once he returned home and grabbed a shower, he sank onto his sofa and stared at the TV. He was hungry, knew he should eat something, but couldn’t muster the energy to go get leftovers out of the fridge and nuke them.
He needed to do something different with his life.
I’m thirty-seven and I don’t even have a steady boyfriend.
Hell, he hadn’t been laid in over six months. He could find guys for fast fucks if he wanted…but that wasn’t what he wanted. He also seemed to be attracting subby guys. He didn’t mind being a little toppy on occasion, but he wanted a Dom. A guy who was secure in his life, not a poser, not an abusive asshole. Someone who could play the good kind of mind games with him and leave him wanting more.
Not someone who’d toss him away and break his heart like his last long-term relationship had.
He wouldn’t even mind a switchy guy who preferred being a Dom as his default state.
It struck him as ironic that he’d had no trouble figuring out his sexuality after high school, and after a couple of failed relationships with women, but it had been his career path he’d sucked at.
His father had assumed he’d work with him and eventually take over his drywall business.
Jeff had hated every minute of it. Not to mention, while he’d been okay at it, he struggled and it took him nearly twice as long as someone else to do the same quality job.
It wasn’t…fun.
Finally, even his father had to admit Jeff sucked at the drywall business. He’d allowed Jeff to work around his class schedule at the vo-tech school, where he had studied to be an auto tech. Then Jeff had found a job and, well, now he worked on cars.
He made better money, plus he found the work interesting. Although encounters such as the one today with Brooke emphasized to him how much he still needed to learn.
Fuck it, I’ll go Saturday. Wasn’t like he had anything else to do.
With that decided, he dragged himself up off the couch and out to the kitchen to fix himself dinner.
Chapter Three
I can do this. I’ve got this.
At least, that’s what Stuart would keep telling himself until he finally believed it.
Sure, packing up and leaving the only town he’d ever lived in to go somewhere he’d never been before was…well, crazy.
Except he knew if he tried to spend the rest of his life in Iowa, he’d go crazy. It wasn’t like it was a hotbed of cute, eligible gay guys.
And the kink scene was…lacking.
At least it was for him. Maybe there was a thriving het kink scene he wasn’t clued in to, but it was beside the point now.
And I didn’t even have to come out to my family.
Yet.
Right now, he was parked at a truck stop in northern Florida, just south of the state line, a little after midnight early Monday. He’d finally reached the point of exhaustion and had stopped to nap.
Except he couldn’t fall asleep when he closed his eyes.
Inside the topper on the back of his truck, and in the U-Haul trailer hitched to his truck, were all his possessions. He’d downsized most everything he’d had, which hadn’t been much to start with.
He’d been renting a room from his cousin, Mark. Stuart had lived there ever since he’d graduated from high school. Mostly so he could be away from his parents and escape the torment he suffered during frequent visits by his oldest brother, Jake.
That also meant had he tried to date a guy and bring him home, he would have immediately been bombarded with a lot of uncomfortable—and probably antagonistic—questions he didn’t want to answer.
Shouldn’t have to answer.
I’m twenty-five, for crying out loud.
And then there was Jake to contend with. He definitely would have had a lot to say about Stuart being gay.
Much of it with his fists.
When Stuart had discovered FetLife last year, he realized that there was a much larger world out there than was offered to him on the outskirts of Des Moines, Iowa. After doing some research on job websites, he’d found the construction industry was exploding like crazy in Florida.
And there happened to be a BDSM club in Sarasota.
Coincidentally, there were contractors looking for qualified electricians in that same area. After a couple of phone interviews with one company, they sent him a written job offer—practically unheard of in that field—if he could start next week. They would even put him up for as long as four weeks, at their expense, at a long-stay hotel, if he’d sign a minimum one-year job contract with a guaranteed salary. On top of that, they’d pay for both his registered electrical contractor license fees and, if he applied for it, his certified electrical contractor license.
They were that desperate for trained, qualified people they could depend on who wouldn’t flake out on them. It also meant terms he could wave in his family’s face when they tried to protest or talk him out of moving. Guarantees that he wasn’t doing something stupid or on a whim.
Even his stubborn father had grudgingly admitted he should take the chance.
Stuart was soooo looking forward to this change in his life.
No more nasty winters or ice storms.
No more gut-wrenching, stomach-churning dashes to a storm cellar during tornado season.
No more nosy siblings and cousins breathing down my neck.
It didn’t hurt that he’d been messaging and e-mailing with a guy named Albert Durkin, who lived in Sarasota. They hadn’t talked on the phone or anything, but Stuart wanted to surprise him by moving down without telling him.
Not in a creepy way, though. Stuart had wanted to move down regardless. Albert told him really cool stories about the group of people from the area who were involved in kinky activities. Stuart longed to belong to that kind of group of friends.
Maybe he and Albert could get something going…or not. Either way, still, kind of cool to know he’d already have one ready-made friend he could count on.
* * * *
Stuart finally did manage a nap in the cab of his truck. When he awoke around dawn Monday morning, he headed into the bathroom to freshen up and wash his face to help drive sleep from his system.
He had a little money saved up. Researching apartments in the area showed the money he’d be making would allow him to get a small place, at least. That was all he needed, just a one-bedroom or even a studio, in a decent neighborhood.
The job wouldn’t be exciting or unusual. Most of what he’d be doing at first would entail working for the contractor building out a new subdivision in southern Sarasota County. Eventually, as that slowed down, they’d be sending him out on service calls or other new construction projects.
By lunch time, he was in Sarasota. His first stop was his new employer, where owner Cedro Luzon warmly greeted him and it immediately set Stuart’s mind at ease. Especially when the older man insisted Stuart call him Cedro
. Cedro spoke with an accent, he thought Spanish, but wasn’t sure.
This was real.
This was happening.
He’d done it.
The prediction his mother had always preached behind his back wouldn’t come true—he would make something of his life, on his own. She’d used him living at Mark’s as a prime example of Stuart’s failure to be self-sufficient, while ignoring the fact that she’d suggested it in the first place. A way for him to save money while going to trade school, since Mark lived a mile away from the campus.
As Stuart sat in Cedro’s office and filled out more paperwork, he took deep breaths and tried not to break down crying in front of the man.
Probably not the best first impression to give his new boss, sitting there blubbering like an idiot in front of him.
“Also, I picked you up a couple of apartment guides this morning,” Cedro said as he put them on the desk in front of Stuart. “I know you kids all use the Internet and stuff, but I thought maybe it could help, you know? When we finish here, I’ll take you over to the hotel, get you checked in, let you unpack. Tomorrow morning, you come back here and we get started.”
“Thank you.” Stuart had to stop writing because his hand trembled. “Sir, you don’t know how much I appreciate this opportunity.”
Cedro smiled and waved his comment away. “When I talked to your previous employers, they all sounded very nice, very honest about you. I’d rather have someone new who is willing to learn how I want things done than someone older who thinks they know everything. You’ll be apprenticing under one of my best guys until you get your license. I bet some of our building codes down here are different than in Iowa.”
Cedro waggled a finger at him, but the smile never left his face. “I don’t expect perfection, but I do expect progress and hard work. One of my daughters, Kimbra, she’s an attorney. She drew up the employment contract for me. She’s worried about someone taking advantage of me. I’m more worried about finding quality people I can keep long-term. I can’t run this business forever. I’d like to retire. I can’t do that if I’m not sure I have good people in place. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. I won’t let you down.”
“Something about you told me you’re a good kid. I liked the way you sounded. My Kimbra, she’s not so easy to get past. I told her when she ran the background check on you that I had a good feeling about you. I’ve got guys been working for me close to twenty years now. Unheard of in this business. Leastways, here in Florida. That’s because I run an honest business. I don’t cut corners, and I don’t cheat people. I don’t hesitate to fire a guy who’s not keeping up to my standards. Got it?”
Stuart nervously swallowed. “Yes, sir.” Maybe being out wouldn’t be an option here.
Cedro leaned back. “And like I tell my guys, I don’t care what you do in your personal life as long as it’s legal. I don’t care who you’re dating, either. Long as you show up, do your work well, and don’t put a black mark on my good name in the process. We’re like a family here. One of my guys, he and his husband just got married a few weeks back and we all went. You know? Have each other’s backs. Watch out for each other.” He joined his hands together, fingers laced. “Mi familia. You’re part of our family now.”
Tension drained from Stuart and he nodded, a little harder this time. At this rate, he might seriously be crying before he got out of the guy’s office.
An hour later, Stuart was standing in his new room at the extended-stay hotel. Not super-fancy, they didn’t even have a pool. But it was clean, Cedro told him the neighborhood wasn’t bad, and they had free Internet and cable TV included. The mini kitchen meant he could go grocery shopping and save money by not eating out.
By the time he finally quit for the day just before six, he’d unloaded everything from the truck and trailer that was staying with him at the room, had finished unloading the trailer into the storage unit he’d reserved online when he’d gotten the trailer rental handled, went grocery shopping, called his mother to tell her he’d arrived and his temporary address, and after a shower made himself a large salad with chicken breast for dinner.
As he unwound in front of the TV, the Sarasota station’s six o’clock news started and he began to learn even more about his new adopted hometown. He’d hoped to drive over to the beach and see the Gulf before bed, but he felt so exhausted he knew he needed to get to sleep early for tomorrow morning.
He wanted to be sitting outside Cedro’s office and ready to get to work tomorrow morning when the first person arrived. Cedro had put his faith and trust in Stuart.
He wouldn’t let him down.
After he ate and washed his dishes, he curled up in bed with the TV timer set and didn’t bother logging in to FetLife to check for messages from Albert. It wasn’t unusual for them not to contact each other every day.
A smile creased his face.
Wonder what he’ll say when he finds out I’m living down here now?
Chapter Four
Brandon sipped his coffee and tried to wake up Tuesday morning.
“You all right, Dad?”
“Sure.” He stared at Emma. “I know you didn’t inherit those morning-person genes from me.”
His wide-awake daughter grinned. “You said when I’m sixteen I can start driving myself to practice and school.”
“If your grades are good and you help earn the money for a car and insurance. And since I don’t want your grades or performance to drop, you might have to save up for a while.” She frequently babysat for people and was good about saving her earnings and her allowance.
One of the other moms would drive Emma to school after practice today, because her daughter and Emma went to the same school. She usually picked Emma up from Tracey’s when Emma stayed there, because she had to drive right by their house. But, this meant he’d get to work way early today, and able to leave early to pick Emma up from school and go home.
Well worth it to spend the time with her, though.
When they pulled up at the fitness complex where the swim team practiced, Emma leaned in and hugged him. “Thanks, Dad. See you this afternoon.”
“Go knock ’em dead.” He watched until she walked into the building.
Then he took out his phone, dialed Tracey’s cell, and put his phone in speaker mode before he pulled out into traffic again.
“Hello?”
“Hey. I’d like to talk about what happened yesterday morning between Emma and Corey.”
Tracey made a sound that he knew was accompanied on her end by an eye-roll of epic proportions. “It was nothing. Just Corey being a stupid teenage boy and she took it too personally. It got blown out of proportion.”
“I think secretly setting up a camera in her room to film her is more than a kid being stupid. That’s criminal behavior.”
“For crying out loud, Brandon, don’t turn this into more than it is. She got upset, she overreacted, and thanks to her we had to shell out a hundred dollars for a plumber to come out and get the damn phone out of the toilet.”
Brandon made a mental note to give his daughter another fist bump for that one. He almost offered to chip in half of the plumbing bill…except he knew they probably wouldn’t punish Corey nearly enough.
“I hope Corey faced some sort of punishment for that.”
“Why should he? He didn’t stop up the toilet.”
“For trying to film our daughter without her permission. What if he’d gotten video of her naked and posted it online? Would it be so ‘innocent’ then? That’s considered distributing child porn. He could be arrested for that.”
“As usual, Brandon, you’re overreacting. It was an old phone. It barely works. It’s not even activated.”
“If it has a Wi-Fi connection, he can still upload stuff to the Internet with it. It doesn’t have to be activated as a cell phone to do that. Or didn’t you know that? It would literally take seconds for that boy to ruin our daughter’s life by posting naked pics of her all over soci
al media and humiliating her.”
Tracey went quiet for a moment, meaning she hadn’t factored that into the equation. “He wouldn’t do something like that.” Her tone said otherwise.
“Don’t be so sure about that. Let me tell you something, Tracey. If I hear of him doing any bullshit like that again, I will call the cops on him, and I will insist they press charges against him. And they’ll certainly want to know why you didn’t call them the first time. So it’ll behoove you and Pat to sit the kid down and lay out the facts of life to him. Why didn’t you tell me he’s living there full-time now?”
“Because it’s none of your business.”
“When my daughter’s unhappy, it most certainly is my business.”
“Well, if she’s unhappy, you should have thought about that before you turned gay and left me, jerk.”
She hung up on him.
He tossed his phone into the passenger seat and didn’t bother trying to call her back. It’d be pointless. Especially once she’d pulled out that threadbare insult and hurled it at him.
Besides, he’d driven home what he’d needed to—that he would call the cops.
She knew it, too.
He was pretty laid back about a lot of things.
Emma’s safety and well-being was not one of those things. When Emma had been having problems with bullies in school three years earlier, and Tracey hadn’t done anything about it, it was Brandon who’d taken the day off from work and gone to the principal and demanded action be taken.
Tracey had whined that she couldn’t afford to take off work to deal with it, and it was just “normal kid stuff” anyway.
Brandon also didn’t let Tracey’s jabs about him leaving get under his skin. She’d willfully refused to listen to reason or accept him being gay wasn’t something that suddenly happened to him. It wasn’t a conscious choice he’d made to “turn gay.” That he’d unfortunately lied to himself and, by default, her when they’d gotten involved and then married. Absolutely he regretted it, except he didn’t regret having Emma.