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“Shit,” Liam said quietly, and his hand squeezed Ambrose’s.
“I love my mum,” Ambrose said. “She’s not perfect or anything, but I love her. But yeah, maybe I have a bunch of issues that come from her. Like, I never measure up, you know?” He smiled, but it was a bitter smile. “She, like, lives in a dressing gown for a week straight without showering, and her agent hasn’t called her in a decade, but I’m the one who never measures up to her brilliant fucking career.”
“I think you measure up,” Liam said quietly.
“Sometimes I don’t even know if I even love acting still, or if I’m just trying to prove something to Mum. Just trying to make her proud, or something, when half the time she doesn’t even know what day it is.”
“How does she manage, if she’s like that?”
Ambrose gave a half-shrug. “Me. I pay a neighbour to take her shopping, and I go see her when I can, and when she goes off the rails for the umpteenth time, I visit her in hospital and pretend it’s all fine.”
“Does your sister help out?”
“Nah, she’s in Brisbane. She did the smart thing and went to uni there, and just never came home again.” He exhaled heavily. “I don’t mean to make it sound like she does nothing. She sends parcels pretty often, clothes and gifts and stuff for Mum, and we talk a lot, but she doesn’t visit much. She says she can’t stand it. I sometimes wish I had the guts to walk away too, but it’s my mum, you know?”
He pulled their hands apart and rolled over, away from Liam’s pitying gaze. He hadn’t meant to lay himself bare like that, but he hadn’t had anyone he felt like he could talk to about this stuff in too long, and once he’d started it was hard to stop. He silently hoped that Liam would know enough to leave it alone, and Liam must have picked up on it, because he said, “It could be worse. She could try and feed you brie and Vegemite croissants and threaten to set you up with rat-faced Richard that you last saw when you were nine.”
Ambrose laughed weakly, grateful for Liam’s attempt at a joke. “Yeah. I guess I got lucky on that score at least.”
Liam put a hand on Ambrose’s hip. “It sounds rough. I’m sorry you have to deal with all that.”
“It’s not as bad as some people have it.”
“Yeah, probably not,” Liam said, and tightened his grip on Ambrose’s hip briefly. “But it’s not a competition.”
“You’re nice,” Ambrose said around a yawn. “And cute. Why are you single again?” Even as he asked, a tendril of a memory tinged with wine tickled at the back of his mind. “Wait—you told me about this. There was a guy, right? And he…”
“Cheated, yeah.” Liam sighed. “And I never told Mum and Dad, and they don’t understand why we broke up, and now they’re on my case.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll break your heart sufficiently to keep them at bay,” Ambrose said, and tried to ignore the way even the idea of letting Liam go left a bad taste in his mouth. It’s fine, he reminded himself. The breakup was as fake as the relationship. And they were going to catch up sometimes back in Sydney. Liam had agreed. So that was something, right?
Liam snuggled up closer behind him and let out a yawn of his own, his hand never straying from Ambrose’s hip. He pulled the blankets up and mumbled, “Okay, sleep time.”
He was asleep minutes later, breathing soft puffs of air against the nape of Ambrose’s neck, and if Ambrose pulled Liam’s arm across his body so he could cuddle in closer, so what? He was sharing a bed with a hot guy. He might as well make the most of it.
They were woken by a knock at the door. Ambrose blinked and raised his head from where it had somehow ended up pressed against Liam’s chest. Ambrose had apparently been possessed by the spirit of an octopus sometime in the night, because he’d also thrown an arm and a leg over the top of him. Liam didn’t seem to have a problem with it—but then again, Liam was still dead to the world.
Ambrose shook his shoulder. “Hey. Someone’s here. I think it’s your dad.”
Liam’s eyes flew open, and he stared at Ambrose in silent confusion. He had bed hair and was sleep-rumpled and he was utterly fucking adorable. Ambrose kind of wanted to kiss him, but he didn’t, because while they’d sure as hell blurred those lines last night, blurred—jizzed all over them—whatever, Ambrose was painfully aware that rules often changed in the cold light of day.
There was another knock, and Will called, “Boys? Are you awake?”
“We’re trapped!” Ambrose called. “The key snapped off and now we’re locked in!”
There was the sound of the door handle rattling, followed by muttered cursing. “Let me grab my tools, and we’ll have the door open in a jiffy, okay?”
Liam’s eyes grew wide, the way people’s did in a movie when they’d just remembered something important. “Shit,” he breathed. “We need pants before he gets back.”
Oh, right. They were still naked. Ambrose toyed briefly with the concept of staying naked—it would certainly get him in the bad books—but looking at the way Liam was scrambling desperately for his bag and dragging out underwear, he dismissed the idea. He liked Liam, and he didn’t want him to melt into a puddle of embarrassment if it turned out it wasn’t only his dad on the other side of that door.
By the time Ambrose had used the bathroom and brushed his teeth, Liam was dressed, and Will was obviously back, if the sound of drilling and the mumbled “Come on, you bastard thing,” was anything to go by.
“He said he tried to jimmy it open, but that didn’t work so now his best bet is probably to drill out the entire mechanism,” Liam said, and Ambrose nodded as if he had any kind of clue how locks worked. Whatever Will was doing, Ambrose should probably put his pants on.
He wiggled into his underwear and skinny jeans and was just shrugging his shirt over his head when there was more drilling, a triumphant “Ha!” and a metallic clunk as the handle inside dropped to the ground, leaving a hole where it used to be. There was another thunk, and the door swung open to reveal Will standing there, a cordless drill in his hand, looking all too pleased with his handiwork.
“Well, the lock’s fucked, and the door won’t shut at all now,” he said, holding up a handful of parts that Ambrose didn’t even attempt to identify. “We’ll have to fit a whole new one. Bloody Dad and his bargains. I told him the locks were dicky. You boys are probably going to want to move up to the main house.” He tucked the drill into his tool belt. “I guess at least it was you two who got stuck in here, and not paying guests. Why didn’t you call us?”
