Page 19 of Nicks and Cuts

“Good plan.” The man nodded. “Paramedic…so you’ll be staying up at the old horse-riding place?”

Shannon tried to keep the surprise off his face, but was pretty sure he failed. When Dante said everybody knew everyone’s business, he hadn’t been kidding. He had to remind himself it wasn’t stalker behavior; it was small-town friendly behavior. They felt much the same to him. “Um, yeah.”

“The Cutlers were good people. It’s real bad what happened to all of them.”

Was he supposed to agree or pretend like he didn’t know so Dillon could spill the gossip? Before he decided what to do, Dillon filled in the silence.

“But you’d see tragedies every day.”

“Unfortunately. Tragedy doesn’t care if you’re a good person or a bad person.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket to pay, not wanting to discuss his business or Dante’s business with a person he’d just met.

“There you go.” Dillon pushed three bags of groceries toward him. “I hope you find a permanent place to stay.”

“Same.” But he hadn’t even been looking. He blamed settling into a new job, and that he didn’t know the town well enough to decide where he wanted to live, but the truth was he was enjoying living at Dante’s…or was he enjoying the proximity to the man?

Both could be true.

And if they were, it was all the more reason to be looking for his own place because it was clear that living together was not working out.

He had not come to Foggy Basin to jump into a new relationship. Not that they had a relationship. They had a hook-up and a whole lot of lust.

Relationships had been built on less.

Which was part of his problem…

“Thanks.” Shannon put the bags into the trolley and wheeled them out to his SUV. As he loaded the bags, he was stunned to think he preferred the anonymity of LA. He could go to the shops in a mood and in his sweats, and no one knew him…and if they recognized him because it was his local store, they didn’t stop for a chat.

If he did that here, people would be asking what was wrong—and worse, expecting him to tell them. That was the part of this move he hadn’t thought through. Did he really want to make nice every time he came into town?

What was the difference between friends and busybodies?

He didn’t have any answers and had no idea what he was going to do about Dante and where to live in town…though he was starting to understand why Dante lived out of town, as it gave him a little more privacy. He was pretty damn sure he could not afford to rent a property like that on his own.

When he got back to Dante’s place, he put all the shopping away and started making the cookies. While he waited for them to chill in the freezer—a step that had seemed like torture when he was a child—he pulled up the real estate listings for the town and the wider area, the same way he’d done before applying for the job. The fact that his relationship had imploded and the job listing had come up at the same time had seemed serendipitous.

He’d checked out the town and applied, and when he’d been offered the job, it had seemed like it was meant to be. Maybe he’d listened to his mother a little bit too much about things happening for a reason because now that he’d had the chance to slow down, he was starting to develop some doubts about the move.

The only thing keeping him in Foggy Basin, aside from the job, was the way everyone expected him to return to LA, as if it was the only place he could exist. Trouble was he wanted more than existing. He wanted more than making sure he was living in the right area and meeting the right people.

Knowing what he didn’t want was one thing, but figuring out what he wanted was something else, and it was much harder to do because how could he tell what he was missing out on if he didn’t know that he was missing out?

He scanned through the property listings, hoping that something would catch his eye and that it would be an easy decision. Most of what was there were family homes, and while in theory he could rent out a room to someone else the way Dante did, he wanted his own space. He bounced between his parents’ place and his boyfriend’s apartments his entire life.

There was an apartment in Hartsville, but it was a soulless new build in what they called a thriving community hub…which meant as busy as fuck. And it only had one parking bay, which was a problem as he needed somewhere to park his bike.

The timer went off, and he shoved the two trays of cookies in the oven, reset his timer, then he got busy making the dahl so he had lunches for the rest of the week. It was not enough of a distraction from his Dante dilemma or his housing situation.

By the time he finished cooking and dishing it up into tubs, all he wanted to do was sit down with a coffee and enjoy his cookies in what was left of the sunlight.

So that’s what he did. He sat out on the deck with his legs hanging off the edge, basking in the sun like the stray cat they’d fed for a couple of years before moving when he was a teenager. He’d loved that cat and been devastated when they’d moved house, and his parents had refused to let them take it. Spark, the family dog, had fortunately come with them. She’d like it here with all the trees and open space.

He refused to think about how much nicer it would be sitting there with Dante. Instead he worked his way through the stack of cookies and his coffee, knowing that when he went inside, he’d put his lunches in the fridge and then he’d go down to the garage to work out.

Maybe after that he’d heat the grocery store pizza and eat it in the bathtub while he watched a movie. The only way to make the sound of that more depressing would be if he got drunk and texted all his exes.

If Dante were there, they might’ve watched a movie together, from separate sofas so there was no risk of touching. He wanted to do a whole lot more than touch. And he was damn sure Dante wanted more…so why the fuck was he making it so difficult? It’s not as though he was going to walk into town waving a banner stating that he was fucking Dante Cutler.

He smiled at the idea. What would Dillon in the grocery store have to say about that? Probably a bit too much, which was exactly why Dante didn’t want his business all over town. Having got a taste of it, Shannon completely understood.