Hesitant Hearts
“Hesitant Hearts”
M/M Gay Romance
Jerry Cole
© 2019
Jerry Cole
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This book is intended for Adults (ages 18+) only. The contents may be offensive to some readers. It may contain graphic language, explicit sexual content, and adult situations. May contain scenes of unprotected sex. Please do not read this book if you are offended by content as mentioned above or if you are under the age of 18.
Please educate yourself on safe sex practices before making potentially life-changing decisions about sex in real life. If you’re not sure where to start, see here: http://www.jerrycoleauthor.com/safe-sex-resources/.
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner & are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Products or brand names mentioned are trademarks of their respective holders or companies. The cover uses licensed images & are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any person(s) that may be depicted on the cover are simply models.
Edition v1.00 (2019.03.27)
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Special thanks to the following volunteer readers who helped with proofreading: A. Pittmoore, Earleen Gregg, Julian White and those who assisted but wished to be anonymous. Thank you so much for your support.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Prologue
“Why do I have to go to this dinner anyway?” Patrick said, staring down into his glass and wondering why it wasn’t magically filling itself back up. “You know I don’t do well with friends of friends.”
Rebecca snorted into her drink, but she’d passed drunk three martinis ago, so Patrick figured it was okay. Still, there was something to be said for how pretty she was in this lighting. Nope, he thought to himself viciously, don’t go there. Again.
“Obviously,” Eddie chimed in, waving a finger in Patrick’s face.
How many drinks had they had?
“You don’t get along with anyone who isn’t me,” Eddie said, and when he waved a hand at Rebecca, he accidentally smacked her on the nose. “Or Rebecca.”
Patrick frowned. There was definitely something wrong with that sentence, but he couldn’t figure out why.
“There’s Keith,” Rebecca said, her cheeks pink and God, Patrick had forgotten!
“Yes,” he said with a little more enthusiasm than was probably warranted. “I get along with Keith. And ‘whatsherface,’ Bec’s new PA. Natalie.”
“Natasha,” Rebecca corrected, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. Patrick almost couldn’t hear her, and he wished the DJ would turn down the music. God, he was getting old; he sounded like his dad.
Don’t go there, either, he reminded himself. Thankfully, it was easy enough to distract himself.
“Anyway, the point is,” except Patrick had forgotten the point and he scowled into his drink.
Eddie and Rebecca fell into silence, and they stared mournfully at each other, none of them wanting to be the person who had to thread their way through the throng of bodies at the bar and get more drinks.
“The dinner,” Eddie said, looking accusing, as if it was Patrick’s fault, he had forgotten what they were talking about. It had been Eddie’s idea to come out for drinks, so it definitely had nothing to do with Patrick.
“I’m not going,” Patrick pointed out, bringing them full circle.
“Yes, you are,” Rebecca said fiercely, her eyes narrowing in the way that Patrick knew better than to argue with. When he had considered dating her, before his adult revelation about his sexuality, she’d been able to get him to do anything she wanted with that look. It still worked, sometimes, but right now he was drunk and resistant, so he was able to ignore it.
Patrick dropped his head to the table, knowing his voice was a whine as he said, “Why?”
“Do you want to upset Gary?” Eddie asked, and when Patrick raised his head to glare at him, he was unrepentant, mouth quirked up into a smile, the asshole.
The thing about Gary was, Patrick thought hysterically, he didn’t get mad at you for refusing something, he just looked disappointed. If there was one thing Patrick couldn’t stand, it was disappointing people and Eddie, the bastard, knew it.
“If I talk to Gary and he doesn’t know anything about this,” Patrick said, a warning in his voice.
“Please.” Eddie tossed back the last of his drink, though only dredges remained. It was probably supposed to be smooth but just cemented the asshole vibe he was giving off. “Gary knows everything about this.”
Chapter One
Apparently, Gary did know everything.
Patrick eyed him from behind his workbench, trying to gauge Gary’s mood. He was a pretty passive guy, and there was no figuring out what his current expression meant beyond shut up, Patrick. “I know you’re trying to work–”
“‘Trying’ being the operative word,” Gary muttered, but he shrugged when Patrick looked at him pointedly. “Please, go ahead and distract me.”
“Okay,” Patrick said affably, sliding his chair to the end of the desk, to where his computer was still running data on his latest phone design. “This dinner, who am I supposed to be schmoozing?”
Gary stared at him, expression unreadable – would it kill the guy to make some form of expression that wasn’t boring? – and huffed a laugh. “Nobody, Patrick. It’s a dinner with friends.”
Patrick was fairly sure that hadn’t been
the explanation Rebecca and Eddie had given him, and when he said so aloud, Gary looked even more amused.
“We know how you are with friend meals, Patrick. You put them on your calendar and then mute the alerts. The fact that it’s tonight means you can’t get out of it, especially not with Keith giving you a lift home.”
Dammit, Patrick knew there had been a reason he’d wanted to stay home the night before, hangover notwithstanding. He could either run home at lunch and miss out on meeting his deadline for the new release, or he could attend this stupid dinner, hang with friends who probably needed to see his face a few times if he wanted the privilege of calling them that, and make an idiot of himself no doubt.
Except he’d probably do that by skipping out on the meal, so no harm no foul, right?
“All right,” he said easily, eyes narrowing on the screen as he noticed a flaw in some of the code and halted the program, typing out the fix, making sure to flip Gary off when he said something about being triumphant in the face of hungover adversity.
Patrick would show him hungover adversity.
Unfortunately, by the time Gary threw a pen at him, letting him know Keith was ready to pick him up, Patrick was tired, eyes burning from staring at screens for hours on end, and his joints ached when he pushed away from the desk to stand.
“I’ve changed my mind, I ache too much to go out to dinner.”
“Sure,” Gary said, and there went his disappointed expression.
“Rebecca and Eddie got me drunk last night,” Patrick said, hoping for the sympathy vote. Gary wasn’t budging. “Ugh, whatever. I hope you know I’m going to be bitter and tired the entire way through the meal.”
Gary gave him a searching look. “I doubt it.”
Okay, weird, considering Patrick was constantly bitter and tired through most of the dinners he had with his friends, especially if there were new friends going to be there. Not that Patrick’s friends existed in a bubble; they knew other people obviously, and he himself had a couple of acquaintances that could have been friends if they weren’t prone to splashing his life around the internet.
Still, the point was –
Actually, he’d forgotten his initial point, but his friends knew other people and had other friends. They just weren’t the sort of people that wanted to get to know Patrick. They had good reasons, of course, especially if they were the kind of people who believed everything they read in the media, but he knew he was difficult to get along with.
“Stop brooding,” Gary said, tossing Patrick his jacket from the door. “Go home, please shower, and come out and enjoy yourself.”
Patrick wanted to pick two options from that list, but he knew better than to say so aloud. He let himself be led to the car, waving at people calling his name, telling him to have a good night. The only problem with being everybody’s boss and wanting to get in on the action, was having a bunch of people he didn’t know and had never met wanting to talk to him.
“Your life is so hard,” Natasha had said once, her expression and tone dryer than the Sahara.
Patrick wasn’t entitled, no matter what certain friends said. He knew he was lucky, had more than most people could dream of, but it wasn’t as if he went around squandering it. Okay, so he drank more than was probably necessary, but he didn’t like, buy ridiculous jets and throw it away on frivolous projects that went nowhere. He was charitable. He tried his best.
He just wanted to work on things he loved – things that had landed him a household name, but things he loved all the same.
Shaking himself from his thoughts, Patrick rubbed at his face, forcing himself to wake up. For all his protesting and griping, it had been a long time since he’d had all his friends in one place long enough to share a dinner with them. Aside from Eddie, Rebecca and Natasha – and Gary, God help him – there was Jake, who was often out of the country on business. Jake tried to put forward that he was some kind of spy, but Patrick was no slouch in the tech department, and he knew Jake was a freelance security specialist, top notch in his field, and constantly in demand. Still, Patrick liked him enough not to mention it.
The new friends, people Patrick didn’t know the names of, were something new and equally terrifying. Patrick didn’t like the unknown. Every attempt to drive the names from Rebecca and Eddie had ended in a withering look. Patrick just wanted to run the customary search on them, search engine their asses a little bit and find out what he was getting into, all right?
“You’ll just use the information to get out of going,” Rebecca had told him exasperatedly. “Just come to the dinner and suck it up, Patrick.”
Patrick would be insulted by his friends’ treatment of him if they hadn’t earned the right, holding his head back from toilets, watching him self-destruct back in his teens. And into early adulthood. Then late adulthood. Maybe they were right, and he was his own worst enemy.
“Ugh,” Patrick said, as Keith pulled the car into the drive of his apartment block. Most people said that without thinking about the implications behind it, when Patrick literally owned the entire apartment building. “I assume you have orders to come back and get me?”
Keith snorted, turning to look over the back of the seat. Patrick could drive himself, but with a spectacular hangover, he preferred not to drive when he would likely crash. “Nah, Eddie’s gonna swing by and collect you.”
Great. Patrick could probably get away with convincing Keith that he could drive himself, but there’d be no getting rid of Eddie. Night determined for him, Patrick waved off Keith’s suggestion that he follow Patrick up and share a drink. Keith was a nice enough guy, had been Patrick’s friend since high school, but he was also the worst person to encourage Patrick’s drinking habits. If Patrick was going to get through this dinner without pissing off every friend he had, he was going to have to do it sober.
Hungover, but sober.
Chapter Two
“So where are the others?” Patrick asked, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket. Thankful that Eddie had demanded casual rather than a suit, he was comfortable in running shoes and jeans, not something he usually afforded himself.
“Meeting us there,” Eddie said effortlessly, looking remarkably well put together for someone who’d drunk more than Patrick the night before.
Patrick shivered, burrowing himself deeper in his jacket. It was too cold a night to be walking, but Eddie had protested the use of a car, always wanting to be economical and green. Patrick could appreciate that, but not when he was convinced that he was getting frostbite from this walk alone.
“It’s not that cold,” Eddie said, a laugh in his tone, when Patrick said as much out loud.
“You’re gonna have to carry me,” Patrick informed him. “I’m too cold to walk.”
This time Eddie did laugh, and Patrick felt a deep satisfaction in his belly. It wasn’t often that Eddie could cut loose; he was always busy taking care of his mother and sisters, working two jobs to see them right and help out with his charities. Making a face at himself, Patrick could have cursed. Maybe if he’d thought about that before, he would have agreed to this dinner thing just to give Eddie peace of mind. Whatever, it was done now. He was out, in the cold, freezing his balls off, and at least making Eddie laugh through his drama.
Eddie paused outside of a restaurant Patrick remembered mentioning as somewhere he’d like to go at some point, and Patrick raised his eyebrows appreciatively. Eddie rolled his eyes. “Don’t get dramatic, it was the first restaurant I could think of.”
Patrick thought it wise not to say anything this time, but swept past Eddie into the restaurant, and narrowed his eyes when he didn’t see anyone else from their usual bunch of friends. Patrick never arrived on time – even with Eddie leading the way – and by now, there should have been at least Natasha and Rebecca, if not Jake or Gary, who couldn’t be late to anything if he tried.
“Where is everyone?” Patrick asked, turning on his heel to confront Eddie.
“Obviously we’r
e the first here,” Eddie said, unconcerned, and gestured toward the host, who was waiting patiently by the small podium. Patrick rarely had to wait to be seated, someone was always in his face to make sure he was accommodated with everything he needed. It was irritating at the best of times, but it came with having the kind of face that everybody recognized. Patrick was as much a product of the technological age as he was a pioneer within it.
The host, a woman with a few years on Patrick, gave them the customary smile that always looked a touch forced, and inclined her head toward the podium. “Do you have a reservation?”
“Yeah,” Eddie said easily, before Patrick could open his mouth. “Should be under Wright.”
Patrick snorted, recognizing the usual eyebrow raise of the host, before she checked the PDA.
“This way, please,” the host said, and started to thread her way through the tables.
Patrick looked back over his shoulder, giving Eddie an unimpressed look, and preceded him through the restaurant, following the woman’s gray bun as it bobbed through the crowd. Patrick shoved his hands back into the pockets of his jacket as he was brought to a small table in the corner, already occupied with a stocky blond guy who looked vaguely familiar.
“What,” Patrick asked, turning to stare at Eddie, and balked when he realized Eddie had disappeared. What the fuck.
The host was gesturing at the table, and when Patrick turned back, ready to ask what the hell was going on, the blond gave Patrick the once over and looked half-amused, half-exasperated. “Patrick Wright, I presume?”
“You have an advantage on me,” Patrick said, waving off the host when she asked if everything was fine. “I don’t know who the hell you are.”
“Charming,” the guy said, rolling his eyes. There was a curve to his mouth that Patrick appreciated.