Bad Company by K.A. Mitchell Page A

my dad was having a fit about me being a freak show—he doesn’t believe I’m actually gay by the way, even if I was kissing that Gray boy —and threatened to use one of his contacts in city hall to screw things up for the café.”
    “Why didn’t he threaten the paper?”
    “I think he’d have already come after you if he thought he could.”
    “Thanks for thinking of me.”
    “I didn’t want the people there to lose their jobs, so I quit.”
    “How mature and unselfish of you.”
    “How stuck up and dickish of you to point that out. I already have an asshole for a dad, man. Don’t really need you to be one too.”
    Nate picked up his guitar and settled it back over his lap. His fingers squeaked as he shifted them on the frets, but he didn’t strum it. “Are we done now? You pissed your father off; he noticed. When do you leave?”
    “What happened to my two months?”
    “What do you want, Kellan?”
    “I thought we worked that out. You were letting me stay here until—”
    “Until you could show your dad he couldn’t control you.” Nate’s fingers squeaked over the strings again, making the hair on the back of Kellan’s neck stand up.
    “So you’re going back on the deal.”
    “I think if you ask your mom, she’ll let you have enough money to find a place to live and you can find a job.” Nate looked up, eyes wide and dark behind the lenses of his glasses, and then quickly looked away, picking at a string.
    The sound and the way Nate was chicken-shitting his way out of this pissed Kellan off.
    He strode over and stood in front of Nate close enough that the neck of the guitar was an inch from Kellan’s thigh. “I stuck with every one of your rules. And the point of this was to put pressure on my dad for his homophobia. So you’re backing out and I want to know why.”
    A weird kind of energy held him there. Not only a maybe-I-want-sex thing or a c’mon-and-fight-me thing. Nate was right. Kellan had made his point, and he probably could get money out of his mom if he had to—if Nate would give him enough money to go find her. But as much as today—his dad, quitting, the rain and Goodwill—had sucked, Kellan didn’t want to—couldn’t walk away.
    Cutting Nate out of his life once had been hard. Doing it now would leave a bigger scab for his brain to pick at when things got too quiet. He wished Nate would get off that couch and shove him back, kiss him, maybe more. There was no way he could leave without knowing where this was going.

Chapter Twelve
    Nate backed down again. “Okay. I guess we should find you another job then.”
    “Yeah,” Kellan said without enthusiasm. “We can get right on it. Unless you want me to show you that F chord now?”
    Things were weird enough without Kellan getting close enough to correct his fingering—on the frets. “Not right now.” Nate put the guitar in its case but didn’t shut it.
    “Mind if I take a shower?”
    “Go ahead.” Please. Get out of the range of temptation and get—naked and wet.
    As soon as the bathroom door closed behind Kellan, Nate dove for the desk drawer that held his cookies. The mouthful of thick frosting didn’t do a thing to take his mind off what was in his bathtub. If Nate didn’t stop trying to sublimate like this, the already too-soft edges on his hips from his desk job were going to turn into bona-fide love handles. Who knew that three days of Kellan’s company could turn Nate into a textbook case for every neurosis he’d studied in Psych 101.
    Not wanting to get caught with his hand in the cookie drawer, he went over to lean on the bathroom door and listen for the spray.
    “ The Sun is going to run some of the article we did tomorrow, along with one of Eli’s pictures,” he called into the bathroom.
    The water shut off. “He must be happy.”
    “Ecstatic. He’s out celebrating.”
    “Did you want to go meet him?” Kellan opened the door.
    The humidity from the shower escaped in a sweet-smelling cloud