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“We’re gonna talk about some of that later,” Dei said. “But I need to know if you’ve done any of that before?”
Felix shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve had a few people get a little rough, and I liked it in the moment, but it was always over really fast, and they never stuck around.”
Dei’s expression cracked. “Oh, darlin’…”
“I’m glad they didn’t,” Felix said quickly. “I was so starved for affection I might have stuck around with some mediocre asshole and missed out on this.”
Dei blinked, then burst into laughter, shaking his head as he fell back against Felix and let his cheek rest against his shoulder. “I’m so in love with you. And if you want me to give you a pretty, cherry-red ass one of these days, I will.”
“I think I…yeah,” Felix said.
He didn’t know how to describe the way it made him feel, but it wasn’t just the pain. It was also the fact that it was Dei. It was that he was with a man he trusted beyond all reason. A man he knew loved him and would die before going too far. It was being with someone who wanted to give Felix everything—who didn’t judge him for the things he needed…or the things he wanted.
“Talk to me,” Dei said softly.
Felix closed his eyes and shifted his arm so he could tangle his fingers in Dei’s soft hair. “I’m shit-scared of losing you. I’m…Jesus Christ, I am so in love with you, Dei, I feel like I’m losing my mind. This is the kind of love that could ruin a person if they lost it.”
“You’re not gonna lose me,” Dei whispered, holding him just a little tighter. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
Normally, Felix wouldn’t let someone make that kind of promise to him. He knew better than anyone that things could change on a whim, and not even Dei could control the universe. And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to refuse Dei’s vow because somewhere deep down, he felt the same way.
He couldn’t imagine a world where he wasn’t this in love—and maybe it was dangerous and reckless, but he was ready for that in his life.
He’d been cautious for so long, and he was ready to just let himself be loved.
“Can I stay?”
“Darlin’,” Dei murmured, kissing the side of his jaw, “if you tried to leave, I’d chase you down.”
Felix laughed. “Okay, creeper.”
“Not sorry,” Dei murmured. He pulled away abruptly, lifting himself off the bed a few inches, and he stared at Felix. “Say it again, sweetness. I need to hear it.”
Felix didn’t need to ask what Dei meant. He owed him a few more of those words—from now until the day he died. “I love you,” he said.
Dei’s smile was like the sun, and the kiss he gave after was somehow even brighter.
23
“You got a light touch, bud. How the fuck are you not booked for the next three years?”
Rafe looked up at Felix and laughed. “Stop kissing my ass. It’s a bad look.”
Felix grinned unrepentantly. He’d been out of work for the last week after a grand mal seizure had taken him down, but it had been expected. He would always have ups and downs, and medication wouldn’t always be the most effective, but it was starting to matter less and less because he was happy.
Dei was a huge part of it, but Felix was starting to feel like this was his family—like everyone at the shop were all the missing pieces of the puzzle he’d been putting together for years. He wanted to believe that he would have eventually gotten there if he and the other guys had stayed with Bonsai, but he knew that coming to Key Largo—that signing with Irons and Works—had healed parts of them they hadn’t even realized were wounded.
He stared down at the band around his ankle and grinned. Rafe’s style was unique, and Felix had been craving a piece by him for months now, and with his time off, he was finally able to get it. It was also distracting him because Felix was supposed to be heading over to meet Dei’s mom for the first time that evening.
She hadn’t gone downhill as fast as Dei had been worried about, but he knew she was slipping. She didn’t remember him anymore, and it was a good day when she ate a few bites of a meal. Felix knew Dei was struggling with the slow loss, and Felix was struggling with the fact that there was nothing he could do except be there.
He couldn’t stop the inevitable. He couldn’t take Dei’s pain away.
All he could do was exist and trust Dei when he said that was enough.
“Hello, my children,” came a voice from the front of the shop, and Felix looked at Rafe, who mouthed, ‘Tony.’
He’d been coming around a lot more lately, and Zeke had finally fessed up that Tony was preparing a couple of the other guys to take over the shop in Colorado because he was looking at a partial retirement, and the Keys were definitely on his list.
