Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 115525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 578(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 578(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
“Um.” Rayne cleared his throat. “Table salt isn’t good for you, and besides, you haven’t even tasted it yet.”
“Just in case.” Mike took his plate and condiments into the living room and nodded for Rayne to follow him.
Rayne enjoyed their banter; they sounded like a couple already. He hoped he wasn’t being too pushy about the food, but he wanted to be able to contribute something in the house until he could pay his own way. Which was why he was elated when Mike took a tentative bite of the buttery salmon before he scarfed it down and then went and got the last piece out of the pan.
“I told you so,” Rayne teased.
“Shut up,” Mike said with his mouth full of flaky rice.
When they were done, Mike was generous with the praise. He said he’d grown up eating a lot of soul food at a spot named Mama’s when he was young, but he wasn’t used to well-seasoned, home-cooked food anymore. Mike told him the dinner reminded him of what food cooked with soul and love tasted like, and it was the best compliment he could’ve given him.
Rayne set his empty plate on the coffee table. “Can I ask you one more question?”
“Shoot.” Mike reclined on the couch and rubbed his full stomach.
“You know what I did to innocent, hardworking men. Men with homes and families.” Rayne tilted his head. “Why aren’t you afraid of me?”
Mike was dead serious when he answered, “Because it takes a helluva lot more than that to scare me.”
Chapter Thirty-four
Rayne
If Rayne wanted an honest, genuine relationship for the first time in his life, then he had to start with the truth. Mike needed to know what he was signing up for, just as Rayne knew the kind of man Mike was. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Attempting to go for casual, Rayne took another sip of his water, then wiped his dry lips with his napkin. He was trying to appear that he wasn’t so ashamed of the things he’d done that he wanted to hide. But he was learning in his counseling sessions that burying his past wouldn’t give him peace either.
“Well, my childhood story is not so original, I’m afraid. I was born in Manhattan, raised in Carnegie Hill by two fake, bougie-ass parents that thought appearances were everything. Especially their kids. We weren’t there to be loved… we were there for show and prestige.”
“We? You have brothers and sisters?”
“I did have two older brothers and a sister, but… we haven’t talked in years. Not since I left.”
“I’m sorry.” Mike frowned as if he couldn’t fathom having blood siblings and never speaking to them.
“Anyway, I was no longer a good show pony when I came out at seventeen.” Rayne laughed humorlessly. “Well, I didn’t so much as come out by having a sit-down with my father—more like he caught me about to go down on a bartender at one of his many fundraisers so I could get a couple bottles of Don Julio tequila for me and my friends.”
Rayne paused and thought on that memory. He supposed that was around the time when he realized his powers of persuasion.
Mike’s hard glare never left his. “They throw you out?”
“Oh no.” Rayne gasped, clutching the nonexistent pearls around his neck. “That would have been scandalous. Instead, they hashed out a plan that wouldn’t make them look bad. I turned eighteen three months later and graduated from private school. And in a dignified manner, they sat me down with scones and tea in the hearth room and explained why I had to leave. They gave me a hundred thousand dollars in cash and sternly asked me to please leave the city while they told all of their friends that I’d been accepted to some pompous business school in London.”
“Are you serious?” Mike gaped. “Didn’t people think something was up when you didn’t come home and visit on holidays and shit?”
Rayne wished that were true, but the people his parents associated with were only interested in things that served them. He wasn’t one of those things. “Once you’re out of sight, you really are out of mind in that world.”
“So what did you do?” Mike asked
“Well, I spent some of the money on tuition to a really good trade school, knowing I couldn’t afford college after being cut off. But I had to drop out. Lots of shit happened that I won’t get into right now. But needless to say, when the money ran out and I was put out of my condo, I found unique ways to get the bills paid. I was too damn smart to end up on the streets or strung out. So I used my talent”—Rayne used air quotes around the last word as he lowered his head—“and found the kind of men I could extort. Mainly family men because they had a lot more to lose.”