Chapter Five
Mike
Mike walked inside without knocking and cringed at the sight in the dining room. The trailer wasn’t big; the kitchen and most of the living room were visible from the front door. Wood had just slid his fork from between Trent’s lips, feeding him spaghetti with a sappy-ass grin on his face, before the sound of Mike slamming the door made him drop his utensil.
“Don’t you have your own food, Trent?” Mike scowled as he marched over to them while thinking of the man he’d left by himself on the porch. “You both sit here feeding each other noodles like two dumbass Dalmatians while your house guest sits outside alone. Wood, I thought you said you were Southern—I’m starting to question your upbringing.”
Wood stood from the table, taking his and Trent’s near empty plates and practically throwing them into the sink. His voice was pleasant, but his lips were twisted into a frustrated snarl. “To what do we owe the pleasure, Mike?”
“Wait. Rayne’s on the porch?” Trent went to the window. “He said he was walking to the corner store for something… Umm, Visine—no, a magazine… or was it ice cream?”
Mike sucked his teeth, still giving them judgmental glares. He glanced around the trailer to see if he saw anything else to get on them about, and of course, he did. “Trent, what the hell is that?” Mike pointed at the bag of cat food on top of the refrigerator. “I specifically said no pets. I might allow a pit bull or a German shepherd, but I draw the line at cats.”
“I don’t have a cat, Mike, but there’s a cool gray-and-white one that hangs around the neighborhood, so I put some food out there and play with her every now and then,” Trent answered.
Mike rolled his eyes. “So you found a loophole in my rental lease, and now you’re fuckin’ sponsoring a cat, then. Great.”
Wood went to the window. “Rayne isn’t a guest. He’s our roommate, Mike. And you can’t expect us to stop loving up on each other because he moved in. And besides, Rayne doesn’t want that either.”
Mike gritted his teeth. He knew Wood was making sense, but none of them truly knew what Rayne wanted, did they? He was a puzzle to Mike, a fascinating enigma that wanted to be figured out and understood. There was already a lot for Mike to see on that beautiful face. Desire, desperation. Need. He had seen it all even through the mask.
While Wood had known Rayne a few months longer and had his trust, Mike still felt as if he and the younger man had made an interesting connection. Maybe it wasn’t sexual. Curiosity, perhaps. But it was something, and it stirred a storm deep down in the pit of his stomach. Mike hadn’t met a man like Rayne in a very long time. One that made every one of his natural instincts kick into an unsustainable gear. He wanted to protect him, guard him, watch over him… touch him.
Fuck. Mike gripped his toolbox handle so hard his palm burned.
“He looks like he’s praying.” Trent jerked his head back in surprise.
“He’s not praying. Pretty sure he’s meditating.” Wood rubbed Trent’s shoulders. “He does that a lot. He says he’s trying to find inner peace.”
“He probably is praying,” Mike mumbled on his way down the narrow hall that led to the two bedrooms. “Praying that your dicks get chafed so he can live here in peace.”
“Huh?” Trent asked, following behind him.
“Nothing,” Mike sighed. He had to tamp down his urge to fight a battle that wasn’t his. Hell, he didn’t even know if Rayne would appreciate him intervening.
“What are you doing?”
Mike faced his son as he stood outside his and Wood’s bedroom and asked, “Anything you need to hide before I go in here?”
“Fuck off.” Trent shouldered past him and opened the door, then flopped down stomach-first onto the unmade bed.
Mike noticed that Trent had made a lot of changes to his old bedroom—the entire trailer—since he and Bishop had moved out and rented it to him. He’d really made it a home for him and his partner. Mike went straight to the master bathroom and flung the door open. It smelled of stale air from months of being broken and unused. He knew what was wrong with it, but when he’d lived here alone, he’d been fine using the hall bathroom.
“No damn way!” Trent laughed loudly. “Wood, you won’t believe this shit! My dad’s fixing the bathroom.”
“I’m your landlord. It’s my responsibility,” he retorted, because the real reason he was there had nothing to do with Rayne’s grievance this morning.
“I asked you to fix it six months ago, and you told me—” Trent snapped his fingers a couple of times. “I think your exact words were ‘watch a YouTube video and fix it your damn self.’”
Mike was glad he was already bent under the sink and Trent couldn’t see his crooked grin. Yeah, he’d said that, and he’d meant it.
It took him two trips to Home Depot and four YouTube videos, but three hours later, Trent and Wood had a working bathroom. Therefore, Rayne no longer had to share one with the two overzealous lovers.
“Dang. It’s about time,” Trent complained as he leapt up off the couch from where his head had been resting in Wood’s lap while he watched some loud action movie and Wood sketched in a notepad. “I’m exhausted, and I have to get up early.”
“Then go to bed,” Mike deadpanned.
“Night, Dad.” Trent shoved Mike playfully after mumbling a quick thanks for fixing the bathroom.