Mickey grimaced. “He didn’t work for DOSHA.”
“I know, sweetheart. You look tired. Do you want something to eat?”
“Honestly, I’m fine. I have more people to see before I can go home. Do you want me to text you with the exact time and date for the work, or would you rather I didn’t?”
“I don’t want to know,” Rosetta said. “Perhaps you could tell my son, though? Just in case?”
It was on the tip of Mickey’s tongue to lie and say he didn’t have Benito’s contact details, but something in Rosetta’s dark, familiar gaze quieted him. He nodded and backed away until Benito’s mother shut her front door.
Bemused, he jogged down the stairs, half a mind on the leaflets he still had to dig out of his car, the other entrenched in his favourite place: Benito.
Alone at night, in his bed, Mickey allowed himself to focus on the parts of Benito that made his blood run hot—his warm skin, cut muscles, and sinful lips. In the cold light of day—though the sun had set an hour ago—he tried to think of other things. Like the fact that Rosetta and Benito had apparently repaired their relationship enough for her to cook him breakfast.I wonder—
Mickey’s foot hit the bottom step, and his distracted gaze solidified on the outside world. There wasn’t much to the entrance of Barnfield Court—just a ramp and a railing that needed painting, but it was never quiet. Right now, it was bustling with folk coming home from work, and kids hanging out in menacing clusters because they had nowhere else to go.
By the ramp was a set of steps where residents who didn’t want to smoke in their flats caught a few moments of peace. A lone figure sat there now with Mickey’s favourite set of gym-honed shoulders.
Benito.
Mickey’s heart skipped a beat. He jogged forward with little conscious thought, as drawn to Benito’s cigarette as he was to the man himself.
He dropped down beside Benito and plucked the smoke from his fingers. “Cheers, man. You read my fucking mind.”
Benito nodded, as if he’d heard Mickey comingandsensed his hours-long craving for nicotine. “I saw your car.”
“And you waited for me?”
Benito shrugged. “I didn’t know if I should, but somehow I couldn’t leave before I saw you.”
“You’d have seen me a lot quicker if you’d come inside. I was just talking to your mum.”
“You just missed me then. I was there five minutes ago.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. She likes me at the moment.”
Mickey took a deep, soul-clearing drag on Benito’s cigarette. “How do you feel about her?”
“Depends how much sleep I’ve had. Right now, I’m running on an eight-hour nap, and she made me the best sandwich I’ve ever had, so we’re pretty tight.”
“That’s the way to your heart, eh? Feed you?”
“Like you didn’t already know that.”
Mickey said nothing. He couldn’t deny he’d known for a long time now that presenting Benito with something to eat was a sure-fire way to put a smile on his face. But his heart?
Man. Mickey wasn’t ready for that conversation. Or maybe he was, and he just didn’t have a fucking clue where to start.
Benito nudged him. “What did you need to speak to her about? She hasn’t missed a rent payment, has she?”
“Nope. She’s all square. I needed to tell her about some maintenance work happening in a few weeks. Actually, she asked me to give you the date and time so she didn’t freak out about it, so I’d have been calling you soon enough anyway.”
“That’s the only reason you were going to call me?”
Mickey grinned, letting his mind drift back to the scene he’d conjured up in his dreams the previous night. Putting short-term brakes on their physical relationship had done wonders for his imagination and absolutelynothingto cool the current that thrummed between them. “As it goes, I was going to invite you for a sleepover.”
Benito raised a brow. “A sleepover? With horror films and popcorn?”