Nexus Read Online Free PDF

heart.
    What if there were no Joseph Locke for me to love? I could not imagine me without him; it just wasn’t possible anymore. He was my home, my whole life. Without him, nothing worked. I could be me out in the world, both professionally and as a warder, because I had a sanctuary to return to.
    “Baby?”
    I shivered hard.
    “I can’t breathe,” he laughed against my throat, his warm breath tickling over my skin.
    “Okay,” Elliot said as I let Joe go. He pulled his wife around in front of me, and Joe’s mother grabbed him, crushing him again.
    “Christ,” he muttered. “Mother, come on.”
    But she needed to remind herself that it was in the past and that she had her son safely in her arms before we could go in. Mothers were like that. Because Joe was the same way, he hugged her back tight and whispered into her hair. Everything was okay.
    Inside, the hostess led us to a large room in the back of the restaurant where two long tables were set up side by side. Each table sat twenty-five, and that was enough for just the family. For the party on Saturday, they were expecting a good three hundred people, but for the rest of the time, fifty was the high end.
    “Are you the only non-white guy in the room?” Joe asked me.
    “Yes.”
    “Am I the only blind guy?”
    “Yes again,” I said, squeezing his hand.
    “And are we the only gay people here?”
    “For the third time, and the win,” I teased him, scanning the crowd. “I’m gonna go with yes.”
    “Oh thank God, I wanted us to be special.”
    “No worries about that, love,” I assured him.
    “Awww, thank you, honey. I—hey, wait a minute… that’s not a compliment.”
    I tugged him after me, and we went to speak to his grandfather.
    You could tell that when he was younger Henry Locke had broken hearts. The man was still stunning at eighty with his thick white hair, ruddy complexion, broad shoulders, and strong build. I was certain that women had swooned when he walked down the street at twenty-five.
    “Marcus!” He greeted me loudly, standing up, big grin on his face, arms open to receive me. “So glad you could make it.”
    “I wouldn’t have missed it,” I said as I stepped into him.
    He hugged me tight, pounded my back with his fist, and let me go before turning to his grandson. Unfortunately, he was careful with Joe—which my boyfriend hated— always treating him like he was fragile. Henry liked me better, and we all knew it, because I could do all the things he could, but mostly I had won him over when we took turns target shooting two Christmases ago. I had stood outside for hours with him, never tiring, never complaining, and we had bonded. Now whenever I visited, I was received warmly.
    After he spoke to Joe for a few minutes, we walked down the table to where Barbara had saved us two spots. Unfortunately, Kurt was sitting beside her. When my eyes flicked to his, he looked away, so I figured we were all on the same page.
    People kept stopping to see Joe, put their hands on his shoulders. The women leaned down to kiss him, and the men patted him affectionately. Everyone shook hands with me. The women hugged me when I stood, and the men clasped my hand as well, making me feel welcome.
    “So,” one of Joe’s cousins asked from the other side of me. “What do you do now, Joey?”
    He cleared his throat, hand on my thigh under the table. “I own my own company. It’s called Bumpy Road Limited, and we make plastic pieces that are in Braille that go over laptop keyboards and phones and watches and other things.”
    “What do you mean?”
    He pulled out his phone and everyone saw the clear plastic piece over the top that had Braille bumps on it.
    “That’s so cool,” another cousin told him.
    “Well, we have a lot of orders for them, and we’re adding new designs as new pieces of hardware—phones and stuff—come on the market every day. They work just like a gel skin, maybe a little heavier, so they can be peeled off and put