The rest of the drive was a blur until he parked the Jeep in Mike’s spot, then made his reluctant way to the apartment. When he walked in, he found the last thing he ever expected to see.
Mike. Beet red, veins bulging, shirt completely soaked and arms flexing, neck expanded as if he’d just been doing deep squats with twice his weight on the bar. Huffing from exertion, Mike wouldn’t look him in the eye. Pacing, he walked back and forth down the entrance hallway, a hulking mass of nervous energy.
“How did you beat me home?” he asked, puzzled. At best, he was twenty minutes ahead of Mike’s top marathon speed.#p#分页标题#e#
“Cab.”
“Why’d you take a cab? I thought you were running it out.”
Silence. This Dylan could handle; he knew what to expect when Mike withdrew. But walking into the living room gave him a scene he was wholly unprepared to encounter.
Glass. Shattered glass everywhere. On second thought, it wasn’t nervous energy Mike emanated.
That was rage.
The smoked-glass coffee table was a heap of shards and broken footings. A fifty-pound dumbbell lay cock-eyed in the middle, books piled on it from the collapse.
“Mike, what the fuck—” Sheer terror consumed him as he turned to find Mike holding the other fifty above his head, not pointed at Dylan but rather at a small end table next to the leather couch. The crash was splinteringly deafening, the sound of Mike’s grunt as he exuded enough effort to pitch the dumbbell in a perfect, parabolic arc combining with the breaking glass to create a noise that made Dylan’s teeth rattle.
Jumping back, he avoided getting hit by shrapnel. His mind raced. Was he in true danger from Mike? Mike? His partner for more than ten years, the gentle man he’d admired and respected, who was always so compassionate and—
Mike stormed out of the room and started throwing objects in his bedroom, the sound of drawers opening and closing, loud thumps and thick cracking sounds making Dylan follow him, wary and ready to protect himself if needed. Entering Mike’s bedroom, which has always been minimalist and sparse, the sight before him was jarring. Everything he owned was everywhere—clothes spilling out of drawers, his closet ransacked, candles rolling in jars on the floor and pictures face down. Mike was standing near his bed, wildly shoving items into a hockey duffel bag, head down and muttering to himself.
“What happened? Were we robbed?”
Mike snorted but didn’t look up, robotically grabbing a blue sweatshirt, then a pair of torn jeans, then flip flops, all going in the bag by rote movement. “Yeah, Dylan. I was robbed. Of Laura. By you and your stupid, fucked up ideas.”
“Hey, man, you can’t pin this entirely on me.” His own rage swelled inside, ready to match Mike’s molecule for molecule. “You’re the one who primed her not to trust us in the first place.”
The look Mike shot him was pure evil. His heart sank as his ire rose. That wasn’t a look you give to someone you care about. That was a look you get when someone you love turns cold. Turns off. Views you as no one.
It was worse than indifference. And it was a look he had only received once before, from an old girlfriend, and it had made his balls crawl into his throat, his soul shrivel into a shrunken mess, and he had resolved never, ever to let anyone in who could do that to him.
So far he hadn’t.
Until now.
“I fucked up,” Mike huffed. “I own it. But dammit,” he shouted, smacking his dresser top for emphasis, his wallet and change cup falling off the right edge. “We fixed that! She took us back in! And you—you! You wanted to waste all that because you’re so fucking afraid that taking Jill’s money means you accept her death or that you loved her less of whatever fucked up emotional process you have buried deep in your ego. I can’t even look at you,” he added.
Stunned, Dylan couldn’t form a coherent thought to respond. Who was this man? He looked like Mike but might as well have been some psycho twin, come up from the dead to steal Mike’s spirit and destroy their relationship. Mike was never mean. He could be firm, and he could be sarcastic (though rarely), and he knew how to take a stand and hold firm, but he was never, ever an asshole. Had losing Laura really driven him to some sort of psychotic break?
Or was Dylan just way, way off in estimating how much he had hurt Mike by wanting to wait to tell Laura about the trust fund? Was this more about him than he realized—and not in some self-centered way, but more in an “Oh, shit, this is all my fault” kind of way?
Mike strode angrily to the front door, then stopped cold. “Where are my keys?”