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Harry walked toward the front door, wondering why he’d told Tristan all that. Not that it mattered. He just didn’t talk about his life very much. It wasn’t that exciting, and all his relationships after Reed—if they could be called relationships at all—hadn’t involved very much talking, and definitely not about landscaping.

“Come on inside,” Harry said, after making sure there was no one else on the street. Tristan cautiously moved from the front walk into the house, and Harry closed and locked the door. He then set the alarm. “If you open any of the outer doors or windows on the first floor, the alarm will sound, and once we go upstairs, I’ll activate the sensors on the main floor, so even if someone comes in, they’ll trip the sensors, and we’ll hear them. Unless they’re crawling on the floor.” Harry smiled. “I had to have them set so the cat wouldn’t trip them.”

“Why do you have all this?”

Harry sighed. “There are some pieces that were handed down to me from my grandfather that I really love and want to protect.” He didn’t go into details. Bull had also insisted that he have an alarm system because, well, Bull was Bull, and he’d seen so many things. It had been Bull who had actually designed and installed the system for him a few years earlier. “Are you hungry or thirsty? I have some things in the refrigerator.”

“No, thanks. I’ve had plenty to drink, probably too much, and….” Tristan yawned, so Harry motioned toward the stairs. He turned off one of the downstairs lights but left the other on, and then he followed Tristan upstairs, doing his best not to stare at his rear end. But, damn, that was hard, with Tristan’s tight little butt shifting slightly back and forth in front of him. He was really starting to feel like a pervert and averted his eyes. Tristan was here because he needed a safe place to stay. He wasn’t here so Harry could ogle him all the time.

“This is the guest room,” Harry said as he opened a door near the top of the stairs. “The bathroom is right down the hall. I’ll bring you a pair of sweats and a T-shirt for you to use if you want them, and there will be towels and stuff in the bathroom. The right-hand drawer has all my extra things. Just take whatever you need.”

“Thanks,” Tristan said softly and stepped into the bedroom. He closed the door, and Harry went on down the hall. He set the alarm and opened his bedroom door, and a yellow streak bolted out and ran down the hall and then the stairs.

“Dammit,” he swore and stepped into his room. He sniffed but didn’t smell anything unusual. The dang cat loved to climb into his bed, so he’d checked the covers before he’d left and then closed the door to keep her out, but she must have been hiding or something. The poor thing was probably starved and undoubtedly needed to use the litter box badly. Harry took Tristan something to wear to bed and then got undressed and put on a light robe, leaving the door open slightly in case the cat wanted to get back inside.

After a few moments, the sound of hard crunching on dry cat food reached Harry’s ears from the kitchen below. His mother would have scolded him for not teaching the cat to chew with her mouth closed. A door opened, and footsteps sounded in the hall, and then the bathroom door closed. Harry waited for Tristan to finish in the bathroom before he took his turn. He sat on the edge of the bed as exhaustion overtook him. The bathroom door opened, and the hall floor creaked just before a startled scream propelled Harry off the bed and out into the hall.

“Sorry,” Tristan said, lowering his hand from over his chest. “The cat startled me.” Again the cat raced past Harry’s feet in a yellow streak. “I don’t like cats. They give me the creeps.”

“Well, it isn’t likely you’ll see Butterscotch again. She’s pretty timid around strangers.” The dang cat was probably burrowing under his covers as he spoke. She did that whenever she got frightened or there were strange people in the house.

“Butterscotch?” Tristan said, a slight smile forming on his lips. “You don’t seem to me the kind of guy to name his cat Butterscotch. Maybe Princess, but not Butterscotch.” Tristan’s eyes danced slightly, and then he burst into a grin.

“I got her at the pound, and that was her name.” Harry leaned against the doorframe. “She was curled up in the corner, traumatized by all the other cats and the sounds of the dogs and stuff. Her eyes were huge, and when I picked her up, she burrowed into my chest and hid her head behind my arm. What could I do?” Harry shrugged, and Tristan’s gaze seemed to follow where she’d gone. “She’s hiding, so don’t worry. It isn’t likely she’ll pay a visit, but if you close your door, you’ll be fine.” Harry waited for Tristan to go in the guest room, and then he continued on to the bathroom. He cleaned up and used the facilities before returning to his room. He left the bedroom door partway open, in case Butterscotch wanted to get out, and then he climbed into bed.

The cat hissed at him. “This is my bed, you nasty damn cat!” Harry cursed back at her and settled under the covers. After a few seconds, she shifted around him and slowly worked her way out from under the covers. Then she pranced around and over him before settling near his knees, first kneading the covers with her paws and then curling into a ball. “You think you own the bed, don’t you?” Harry was tempted to move his legs just to show the yellow furball who was boss, but then she began to purr, so Harry closed his eyes, deciding he wouldn’t disturb her if she was happy.

Harry fell asleep with Butterscotch for company. How pathetic was that? A cat—he shared his bed with a cat. Harry moved, and Butterscotch stopped purring and growled at him. Yup, he was way past pathetic. He closed his eyes and wished for a hell of a lot more. Fuck, he wished the person sleeping down the hall was with him instead of this cantankerous old thing. After a few minutes, the cat moved again, and Harry ended up falling asleep with the cat right next to him, her head on the next damned pillow.

T
RISTAN
M
ARTIN
didn’t sleep much. He was in a strange place, and he never slept well in a place he didn’t know. He also spent half the night worried about the apartment. More than once he’d gotten up and peered out the window to check that no one was watching the house. There wasn’t anyone, as far as he could see. It was still dark, but he was awake. He’d only gone to bed a few hours earlier, and he should be tired as heck, but he was wide-awake. He would normally go into the living room and watch television when he felt like this, but Harry had said that the alarm was on, and he’d set it off if he went downstairs. And just outside the door, waiting for him, was that hairy yellow demon of death. He hated cats, just hated them. With nothing else to do, Tristan checked outside the window one last time, then climbed back in bed and stared at the ceiling.

What the hell was he going to do? He’d made a mess of his life yet again, or more precisely, still. One stupid mistake, and he was still paying for it. All he’d done was fall in love with Eddie Menendez, and then his life had gone down the crapper. How in the hell was he supposed to have known Eddie was a goddamned drug dealer who turned into a possessive asshole as soon as Tristan found out and wanted out of the relationship? He didn’t know anything about Eddie’s business or drugs. But his life had been torn to hell, and his problems affected his friends too.

This was the second time he’d been pulled out of his home, and he hated it. Harry was nice to let him stay here. Tristan tried not to let his mind go to the handsome club owner. He had noticed Harry—who
wouldn’t? He was tall, and while not nearly as big as Bull, he was strong and—from Tristan’s perspective—fearless. He’d liked the way Harry had protected him at the club. But Tristan had seen Harry talking with a lot of guys at the club, and he knew Harry went home with some of them. Tristan had even thought about talking to Harry, but as soon as he had, he’d seen Harry talking to the bartender Rodney, and then that night he’d noticed the two of them leaving together. That was cool, Harry could see whoever he wanted, but Tristan had had enough of guys who slept around and spent all their time cruising. Eddie had been like that. He’d just done a good job of hiding it for a long time.

“Stop whining,” he whispered out loud. Tristan hated that he’d been doing that a lot lately. It drove him crazy. He hated when others went on whining for hours, and yet he’d been doing that for months.

He decided he needed a drink of water and figured he could brave it. He got up and cracked open the door. He didn’t see any four-legged creatures prowling the hall, so he opened the door the rest of the way and walked across the hall to the bathroom. He got a drink of water and used the toilet before returning to his room.

“Are you okay?” Harry asked from his bedroom doorway.

“Yes. I’m sorry I woke you.”

“I’m surprised you’re up already.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Tristan admitted. “Everything is very comfortable and nice, but I can’t stop my mind from wandering.” He yawned. “I’ve been doing that a lot lately. I guess I keep wondering what I did to deserve this. All I wanted was a boyfriend, but what I got was a real mess, and it put all my friends in danger.”

Harry stepped closer. “You know none of this is your fault. That’s the really crappy part about situations like this—the innocent person is the one who suffers. You didn’t know Eddie was selling drugs. None of us did. Granted, I’d hazard a guess your friends wondered if something was wrong because of the way you pulled away.”

“They all hated Eddie, and they’d never even met him.” Tristan sighed, then shifted his gaze down and wriggled his toes nervously. “That should have been a clue. And the way he kept making up excuses about why he couldn’t meet my friends and then kept coming up with reasons why I should spend more time with him.” Tristan wrapped his arms around his body as a chill raced up his spine. “I should have seen it.”

“You were in love with him. They don’t say love is blind for no reason. It can be wonderful, but love can make us fail to see what’s right under our noses because we don’t want to see it.”

Tristan opened his mouth to protest.

“I’m not saying you did anything wrong. You didn’t. All I’m saying is that you were in love, and Eddie used that against you. He must have known how you felt, and he twisted that to his advantage. The slimy bastard.”

Tristan couldn’t argue with the last part of that assessment. “I always thought I was a good judge of character. Now I second-guess everything.”

“Nothing has changed, except that in the future you’ll be more careful and probably more circumspect. But don’t stop being yourself. That’s the worst thing you could do. Eddie is a complete shit, but if you let him change who you are, he wins. There are plenty of people who are behind you, don’t forget that, and they’re behind you because they care about you. The real you.” Harry paused, and Tristan wondered if this conversation wasn’t a little deep for five in the morning. “That’s worth a lot. Sometimes it takes months or years before you get to know the real person, and when you do, you find out they don’t like you… or want something from you that you can’t give… or whatever. But you have friends who know you and love you. That’s why they were worried when you were seeing Eddie—because they cared.”

The expression on Harry’s face told Tristan, even in his sleep-deprived and worked-up state, that maybe Harry didn’t have those kinds of friends. “The guys are… I don’t know… they’re the guys. I always thought of us like that
Sex in the City
show, but with gay guys instead of girls. I saw that show a few times, and they always seemed like such good friends. That’s like the four of us. Zach and Jeremy have… husbands, I guess, but the four of us are still just as close.” He smiled. “I used to think everyone had friends like that.”

“They don’t,” Harry said softly and then yawned. Tristan got the idea the yawn was fake. “I’ll see you in the morning.” Harry turned and went back into his room. Tristan went back to his room and got into bed. This time he must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew, light was pouring in through the windows. He groaned and rolled over, trying to go back to sleep. It didn’t work, and after glancing at the clock, he pushed back the covers and got up. He had an hour until he had to be at the restaurant for his shift as a waiter, and he couldn’t afford to be late. He got up and checked the hall before bolting across to the bathroom. Grateful for Harry’s generosity, he found the things he needed and took a shower and shaved. Then he pulled on the sweatpants he’d slept in and did his best to skitter back to his room.

“Are you in a hurry?” Harry asked, coming out of his room.

Tristan nodded and wished he’d pulled on his T-shirt so he wasn’t so exposed under Harry’s intense gaze.

“Let me get dressed, and I can take you to your place and then to work,” Harry said.

“That’s okay. I can get to work if you drop me off at the apartment.”

Harry paused. “What if something’s wrong, or….”