Free A Bit of Me by Bailey Bradford

was doing.
    He was hovering, damn it. Xavier stood on the landing, his hand raised to knock on
    Billy’s door. Not that he had a particularly good reason to knock, except, well, he was used to checking on the kid. But there wasn’t any need for that now, Xavier realised as he let his hand drop to his side. Billy had someone else to watch over him, someone to care about in return, and Xavier needed to respect that and let Billy have his space. And Liam, can’t forget about him. Billy and Liam seemed to have that connection, the kind where anyone who saw www.total-e-bound.com
     
    A BIT OF ME
    Bailey Bradford
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    them could feel the attraction between them, whether those two were ready to admit it or not. Xavier really did need to let him go.
    A loud moan filtered through the door. Yeah, it definitely wasn’t the time for him to come banging on the door. Xavier turned and jogged down the stairs before he could suffer permanent scarring to his brain. There were just some things he didn’t need to hear or think about, and Billy having sex was on the top of that list. Xavier definitely didn’t want to think about what exactly was going on in there that made Billy moan like that.
    Xavier jogged across the yard to his place where he stopped on the porch.
    “Well, now what?” He looked around the yard. Everything was trimmed and weeded.
    He shrugged and went inside, giving the place a good look. The house was spotless. He’d never been particularly messy, but lately he’d become a total neat freak. Probably some psychological reaction to the soon-to-be-empty nest.
    His heart pinched in a way that had become all too familiar of late. It happened every time he thought of Billy moving away. If this was what being a parent felt like, he wondered why people did it—because it hurt . Even if he was proud of Billy, even if he did want what was best for him—which wasn’t hanging around until Xavier keeled over—it just…hurt.
    Fuck, he was such a wuss. Wouldn’t the people who thought they knew him be
    surprised to discover his hard-ass attitude was all just a cover, at least where Billy was concerned. Xavier knew he was, well, susceptible to being tender-hearted, for lack of a better term, and that was one of the main reasons he kept people at a distance.
    Except lately, other people had kind of been slipping through his hard shell. It was as if, once he’d realised Billy was going to finally fly free, he’d been looking towards others to help fill that void.
    Xavier snorted at that idea. Obviously he should have taken some psych courses in
    college. He kept going back to crap like that while trying to figure out what kind of melancholy hell he was trapped in. He wandered through the house, trying to think of something to do.
    A glance at his watch told him it was barely ten in the morning, way too early to go to the club. What would he do there anyway? He’d already scrubbed his office and redecorated www.total-e-bound.com
     
    A BIT OF ME
    Bailey Bradford
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    it. The bar was stocked and so was everything else. He’d end up sitting at his desk feeling sorry for himself, which was just pathetic.
    He could…Xavier’s mind blanked. Obviously he needed to make more friends or find a
    few hobbies. The problem with the first was, he’d taken care of Billy for years, and not necessarily legally. Xavier had met Billy when the kid had propositioned him on a street corner in Dallas one night. Billy had been fifteen, but he’d looked like he was twelve. Xavier’s protective instincts had kicked in immediately, and though it’d taken a while to get Billy to trust him and realise that no, Xavier hadn’t wanted to fuck him, they’d done all right.
    Especially once they’d moved away from Dallas.
    Once Billy had turned eighteen, Xavier had been able to relax a bit and quit worrying about someone from Child Protective Services snatching Billy up and tossing him back into another nightmarish foster home. But by then