Shades of Gray by Brooke McKinley Read Free Book Online

the stillness returned.
    Danny shrugged. “I couldn’t wait to get out of Atwood and I think I’m a city boy at heart. I like how fast everything moves, how not everybody knows your business. But I miss the quiet sometimes. And the way the air smelled.” He looked away. “But I left for a reason and that reason is still alive and living in the house where I grew up. Even if I wanted to, going back is not an option.” He shredded a dark red leaf between his long fingers. “What about you?”
    “I miss the—” Miller made a rolling motion with his hand,
    “space, I guess. The way the sky always seemed so big and yet it felt almost like you could touch it if you reached high enough.” He shrugged, embarrassed to have said so much. “You know?”
    “Yeah,” Danny said, voice low. “I know.”
    Miller’s gaze snapped to Danny’s. They looked at one another without speaking, two men longing for an idealized home, instinctively recognizing the loneliness at their centers. Danny’s eyes came to life, darkening as desire swam to the surface, moving past suspicion, cutting ahead of anger. Miller tried to take in a breath and found he couldn’t.
    His insides felt hot and smoky, like he’d swallowed the lit end of his cigarette and was choking on the flame.
    What the fuck? Miller wrenched his eyes away, heart beating its way into his throat. He had heard all the rumors about Danny—that he was gay, that he was bisexual, that he liked men but only while in prison, that he liked women but only when drunk out of his mind. But yesterday, when he’d finally met Danny face to face, he had put the gay rumors to rest. Danny didn’t fit his perception of a gay man. He was too tough, too cocky, too much like a regular guy. He didn’t prance or preen. But Miller couldn’t mistake that look in Danny’s eyes.
    No mistaking what that look did to you, either. But Miller severed that thought on his mental chopping block, locked it in a box labeled DO NOT OPEN in letters three feet high, and threw away the key.
    “Gotta run,” Danny said, standing again.

    Shades of Gray | 37
    “Wait.” Miller turned and picked up Danny’s leather jacket from the far side of the bench. He thrust it in Danny’s direction, not daring to meet his eyes. “Here.”
    “Oh, hey, thanks. How’d you know I needed this?” Danny pulled the jacket on over his red shirt, the leather matching his raven-wing hair.
    Miller wished Danny would just go and leave him in peace, take those all-seeing eyes and walk away. “I searched your car and found it.
    Thought you could use it in this weather.”
    “Speaking of my car, am I going to get it back anytime soon?”
    “You can pick it up at the impound lot. The one downtown.”
    “Okay.” Danny didn’t move, his black combat boots planted on the leaf-littered path.
    Miller forced himself to look up. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, concentrating on a spot in the middle of Danny’s forehead.
    Danny smiled. “I’ll be waiting.” He turned and sauntered away, leaving Miller alone in the cool sunlight.
    DANNY staggered up the last flight of steps to his apartment, three sacks clutched in his arms, his fingers cramping as they clasped the brown paper in a death grip. Mentally he cursed whoever invented grocery bags without handles. Goddamn morons.
    He groaned around the keys clamped between his teeth as the sharp edge of a cereal box rubbed against his still-tender wound. He lurched down the hall and maneuvered one of the sacks between his knees, managing to unlock the door on the second try.
    Once he was through the door, he let one of the sacks drop not-so-gently to the floor, too late remembering he’d gotten eggs. He pushed the door shut with his hip, tossed his keys onto the couch, and locked the door behind him. Never used to bother locking his door, but Miller had mentioned it yesterday when he’d called to set up another 38 | Brooke McKinley
    meeting. As though doors couldn’t be kicked in.