On a Roll by Beth Bolden (free ebook novel .txt) 📗

Sean asked, before he could stop himself. Stopping himself—something that apparently he couldn’t quite do anymore.

Gabriel glanced up at him through the open window. He took a few steps closer, and shrugged. “I told him what he wanted to hear. He didn’t want to hear that we kissed.”

His voice stuttered slightly over the last word of his sentence, and Sean felt the echo of it in his stomach. They’d kissed. And no matter what he might claim, he did want to do it again. He wanted to do it again, and he wanted even more.

“Actually, he might,” Sean said lightly, stepping out of the back of the truck and walking around to the front, until he was face to face with Gabe. “Those guys are practically a gossip factory.”

“Exactly,” Gabriel retorted. “That’s our business. Nobody else’s.”

And Sean realized, at the worst possible moment, that Gabriel wasn’t being just protective of himself, he was being protective of . . . him?

The knowledge knocked the wind right out of him.

It was difficult to convince himself that Gabriel was a bad man, when he didn’t act like a bad man.

“I agree,” Sean said, and hesitated. There was an apology tugging at him, deep down, annoying and persistent. But he didn’t say it out loud, because he didn’t even know what he was sorry for. For claiming that he’d seduce Gabriel into changing his mind? For walking away so abruptly, twice? For wishing that Gabriel had followed him the second time?

None of those were apologies that would end well, so Sean did the only thing he could—he kept his mouth shut.

“I guess we still have to figure our shit out,” Gabriel said.

An understatement of the century.

“Well, you just told Tony that we would and . . .” Sean trailed off. He’d been arguing for two years that nothing needed to change. He and Gabriel could always share the name, right? Never mind that they’d never done it particularly well. But it wasn’t really affecting either of them. Sales were good. Even when Tony had come to them last night, Sean had mostly thought it was bullshit.

But then after he’d walked home from the Funky Cup, angry and worked up in ways that he didn’t want to examine too closely, he hadn’t been able to fall sleep right away.

Finally, in desperation, he’d pulled out his phone and went to his truck’s Yelp page, which he tended to avoid, and then visited Gabriel’s as well. And just like Tony said, there was an undercurrent of frustration. A few reviews claiming confusion. More reviews posted on the wrong truck’s page.

He’d lain in bed and for the first time acknowledged that maybe it really was time.

Not for him to change the name, of course, but for them to figure something out.

“And?” Gabriel asked archly.

“And it’s time,” Sean said. “Don’t ever tell him I said it, but Tony is right.”

Gabriel shrugged. “We could always keep going like this.”

“No,” Sean said. “We need to do something.” It cost him something, to admit that. To reveal he’d not only been wrong, but that he’d been deliberately ignoring that wrongness for a really long time.

“Okay,” Gabriel said, but didn’t say anything else.

“Don’t you have any brilliant ideas?”

“Oh, I’m brilliant now?”

Sean rolled his eyes. “You weren’t brilliant last night, that’s for sure.”

“Yet,” Gabriel pointed out, “you still kissed me. Twice.”

He had. And goddamn it, he wanted to do it again.

Sean cut that thought off hard and fast. This negotiation didn’t need to be tainted by thoughts of everything he wanted and shouldn’t ever indulge in.

“That’s . . .” Sean cleared his throat. “That’s not what we’re talking about right now. You said it yourself, they’re not related. And they need to stay unrelated.”

“Fine,” Gabriel said. “Why don’t we start with your reason why you won’t change your name?”

“What?” Sean supposed he should have seen it coming. But he hadn’t, and the question hit him right in the solar plexus, stealing his breath.

Why had he ever thought that Gabriel would fight fair?

“You have a reason. I’m just a stubborn asshole,” Gabriel said with a wry smirk, “but you? You’ve got a reason you’re clinging to.”

The last of Milo, Sean thought, even though that wasn’t even remotely true. He had lots of pieces of Milo; he’d carry one of them in his heart, forever, no matter what his food truck was called. But old habits died hard.

“It’s none of your business,” Sean said. Even though he knew that was a lie. It kind of was Gabriel’s business. Not only because Milo was the reason that Sean wouldn’t address for refusing to budge, but also because, before last night, Milo had been the last person Sean had kissed.

“That’s not true, and you know it,” Gabriel said. “I can even see it on your face. You don’t even believe yourself.”

Sean had never wanted to be that guy with a dead husband, so when he’d moved to LA, to start fresh, and to start On a Roll, he’d deliberately never mentioned it to any of the guys who had become his friends. Milo was his, private and inviolate, and he had no intention of sharing now, or ever.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Sean said stubbornly. “All that matters is that it’s none of your fucking business why I won’t change the name, just that I won’t. Not now. Not ever.”

“But you think Tony is right,” Gabriel stated with disbelief.

“Well, I would think the conclusion you could draw from that is pretty obvious,” Sean said. Knowing he was being prickly, and not really caring. He wished that he’d put the stained apron on this morning, if only because he knew Gabriel felt guilty about it, and reminding him of what he’d done might have given him an advantage.

“I don’t see why I’m the one who needs to give in,” Gabriel said.

“Because I have a reason and you’re just, as you so charmingly put it, a stubborn asshole.”

“Why are you allowed to keep secrets and I’m required to just