Dirty Laundry: A Tucker Springs Novel #3

that he tossed his wad of paper into a nearby trash can and stormed out the door.
    “Adam!” Denver shouted, but Adam started to run. Denver went after him, worried about how upset he was, but Adam was fast. He barely had sight of him for blocks, and when they hit the edge of the pedestrian mall, he lost him completely.
    When he made it back to Lights Out he was out of breath, and Jase was standing at the door in his place, looking pissed.
    “What the fuck is going on, Denver?” he demanded.
    Denver waved him away, angrily, and headed for the back room. He stalked all the way to the far wall, where he slammed a hand into the plaster before collapsing against it. For a long time he stood there, feeling more lost and afraid than he had since he’d left Arkansas.
    Eventually he righted himself, cupped his hands under the utility sink faucet and took several handfuls of water into his mouth, then splashed some on his face for good measure. After wiping the drips off with a towel, he headed back to the door, where Jase still looked angry, but curious now too.
    Denver fished Adam’s papers out of the trash. He scanned them a moment, felt the usual frustration and confusion well up, then thrust them at Jason.
    “Do me a favor. Look these over when you get a free moment tonight, and then tell me what the hell it says when we close.”
    Jase frowned as he took the papers, though his face softened a little when he scanned them. He nodded and tucked them under his arm. “I’ll look at them now and report back at your break.” With a hearty good-bye grip on Denver’s shoulder, he headed back to his office.
    Denver took up his post again, checking IDs without really looking at them, focusing entirely on getting himself the hell through the rest of the night.

Adam was fairly sure he would have ended up in an institution after his fight with Denver over the learning disability thing, if it weren’t for Louisa. Because after months of daily meetings or at least a barrage of texts during his shift at the bar, Denver was now completely silent, and this had Adam on nearly constant panic-attack alert. He was so bad, in fact, that on the second day, he allowed Louisa to come over to his apartment.
    He’d hoped either that he’d be too upset to care or that somehow, despite everything he’d said to Denver, he’d be magically cured, but no, he was still twitchy with her in his space. She sat on the sofa beside him, rubbing his back and telling him over and over again he was okay, and he appreciated it, but he was very, very aware that he had a guest in his house, and his OCD didn’t like it. The problem was, his OCD liked Denver’s silence even less.
    “It’s going to be fine,” she said. “He’ll respond to your texts eventually, hon, I promise. And if he doesn’t, I’ll go kick his ass.”
    The idea of anyone at all being able to kick Denver’s ass was ridiculous, but the fact that Louisa said it and that she forgot herself and let her voice pitch low in her fury made Adam feel very loved and cared for. He leaned into her shoulder. “I haven’t texted him.”
    “For crying out loud, hon—”
    “No.” Adam said this with enough force that Louisa stilled. “Look, he’s the one who got all pissy on me, and besides, we have that whole Dommy-subby thing going on, or whatever. He made that clear. It’s his job to text me or call me.”
    Louisa frowned. “I’m not sure this is how D/s works, hon.”
    Maybe it wasn’t a D/s thing then. Maybe it was just that it was fucking up to Denver to make the next move. Or maybe Adam was wrong and screwing up. He fisted his hands in his hair. No. No, he wouldn’t let himself spiral out over this. It was too important.
    He drew a deep breath and made himself speak out loud, because it was harder to write bad scripts in his head when Louisa could argue with them. “Even if he doesn’t outright say he’s sorry, he needs to be the one to make the next move. I need that.”
    “That’s fair,” Louisa said, and she almost sounded approving. It soothed Adam and prompted him to continue.
    “If I chase after him, it’s every nightmare with Brad all over again.”
    That made her frown. “How? Brad’s the one chasing you.”
    “He’s chasing. I’m obsessing. I still think about him, Louisa—I don’t want to be back with Brad, but I still lie awake sometimes and worry that I didn’t handle things right, that—I don’t know. I don’t want to freak out over this.