He sat with has back against the headboard. Next to him, the Forrester heir slept. It hadn't taken much work: RJ Logan had all but thrown himself at him. The man who pretended to be Thad Pasado chuckled and ran a knuckle the length of RJ's back.
Unlike Courtney Sloan, who had cosmetic surgery to look like someone else, Thad had just enough done so that he didn't resemble anyone. Thad Pasado wasn't a real person. He was a fake name with a fake backstory, created for a specific purpose.
In one night, he had done what Courtney had failed to do in weeks. She had told him she knew who he really was. Courtney claimed she knew he wasn't gay. She wasn't wrong. He wasn't gay, but he wasn't straight, either. Labels didn't matter to him. Only Eden, the real Eden, mattered. And if he had to sleep with this man to get her, then he would do just that.
Victor would need to know, if he didn't already. The man looked to the one camera in his apartment whose location he knew. There were more, probably everywhere. It was just as well. It wasn't like he and RJ had kept the fun confined to the bed.
Soon, he would receive his new instructions. His first objective had been merely to gain RJ's trust. They'd skipped several steps of the plan in one night. There was no friendship, no flirtation, and no seduction. Everything he had been plotting for the long term had been rendered pointless. He wondered why. Why had RJ sought him out?
He had forgiven Noah Newman for whatever happened with Courtney. She was still playing the long game, but she wasn't doing a very good job of it. Noah was still in RJ's home, still in his bed, and yet RJ was in Thad's.
"Wake up," he ordered with a nudge, watching as RJ groaned and rolled over to look at the clock. The man looked back to him and he clearly wasn't awake yet.
"It's four in the morning, Thad," RJ mumbled as he rubbed at his eyes.
"Doesn't matter. You need to wake up." He kissed RJ, and RJ groggily reciprocated.
"Why? You told me I could stay here as long as I needed." Even though he was still half-asleep, RJ was already smiling. He leaned in for another kiss. The man reminded himself that Eden was waiting for him to free her. He obliged.
He reached over and grabbed RJ's small body, dragging him across the bed and into his lap.
"Oh. I see," RJ murmured, almost to the point of being awake. He laughed and kissed Thad again. "Is this why you woke me? Because I don't have to work until nine, but I can tell you have a job for me already."
B&B
"Amber? Have you seen the news?" It was no secret that Brooke didn't particularly care for Amber. If she had her way she wouldn't even need the woman's number in her phone, but the situation was dire enough to require a phone call.
"About Maya? Yeah. I've tried to get ahold of her, but she's not answering her cell." Brooke heard Amber's breath catch. "How's Rick taking it?"
Sighing, Brooke closed her eyes and wished she were still drinking. Her life had been so much less annoying when she had cocktails with every meal.
"Rick is not your concern, Amber. It's bad enough you got your dollar store press-on claws into my company, but I won't let you sink them into my son, too," Brooke snarled. "What about RJ? Has he been able to talk to her?"
"Brooke, RJ never came to work today. I know we wrote yesterday off because of the whole Ridge and Caroline thing, but..."
Brooke hung up on Amber. This couldn't be happening again. RJ promised her he was done disappearing. Her lead model and lead designer were both AWOL after back-to-back scandals. L&M's PR department and her own office phone were swamped with calls and Thad had called in sick an hour before the Maya story broke. Brooke debated calling Thad back and telling him to come in anyway, but it wasn't like he could really do anything about this.
Instead of Thad, Brooke called Liam.
"Hey, Brooke," he answered. "I was wondering how you were coping over there. Is it true? About Maya?"
"Why don't you go read the Restless Style website and find out?" she snapped. Brooke sighed again and ran her hand through her hair. "I'm sorry. It's just really stressful here right now. I need to see you. Are you free tonight?"
"For you? I'll make time," Liam promised.
B&B
Layla was pissed. Rick was shaken and she understood it, but she also didn't care. "You have to release a statement of support for Maya, Rick. Even if you end the engagement, and I won't blame you for that if you do because this is huge, but Forrester Creations needs to say that it stands behind Maya. Or were all those words you gave me about wanting to change this company lies?"
"What do you want me to say, Layla? That I don't mind my fiancée being a man? RJ is the gay one, not me." Rick rubbed his forehead and stared at the glass of scotch he'd poured. When he realized why he had woken up to an empty bed, he wanted a drink. But even though he had been holding the glass for hours, he had yet to take a sip. He hadn't even bothered to get dressed.
"Maya is not a man, Rick. She is trans. Don't you get what that means?" Layla snatched the scotch from him hand and slammed it on the sofa table, spilling half of its contents. "She should have told you. I have trans friends. Not many, but enough to know that disclosure with a cis partner is considered important. So I get why you would personally be pissed off, but you still need to publicly back her. Or I'm walking."
"You have a contract, Layla. You can't break it," Rick reminded her angrily. "We will sue you."
"Because after yesterday, you think suing me is a good idea?" Layla reached out and held Rick's hand. "You don't have to mean it. You can hate Maya and want her out of your life because she lied to you. But what you can't do is abandon her to the prejudicial masses.
"This is no different from when RJ was outed. It was some hateful asshole looking for payback and using a third party to get it."
"What are you saying, Layla? Do you know who did this? Who was it that made me look like an idiot to the entire world?"
"Who do you think, Rick? Who would hate you so much they would destroy Maya's life just to make you look bad? Who would benefit the most from outing her?" Layla asked, squeezing his hand.
Rick looked up into her eyes. He had been mad when she came to the mansion and found him reading article after article about Maya. He had been mad when she took his tablet away and started yelling at him for abandoning his company and his fiancée. But what she saw in his eyes at that moment wasn't anger. It was murder.
"Ridge," he said coldly, actually making Layla a little bit scared. "Ridge did this to me. To her. Ridge and Caroline."
"You need to get dressed, Rick. After that, you need to come with me to Forrester Creations. We're going to call a press conference, you're going to say that you support Maya being who she is. You don't have to mean it. Lie if you need. And after that, you're going to refuse any questions, you're going to walk away from that podium, and then we are going to destroy those two. They thought yesterday was bad?"
"They have no idea what's coming." Rick smiled, and it was one of the most horrifying things Layla had ever seen.
B&B
"You really don't have anything better to do?" Thad asked as RJ ate his third cup of yogurt for the day.
Shrugging, RJ thought about the things he should be doing. He had a company that needed him. Steffy had made it clear she was now his enemy, and he needed to find a way to neutralize her. And Noah... He had Eden if he got lonely.
"Nah. Do you know how many opportunities I get to unplug from the world? No internet, no phone calls, no TV or radio or magazines... How do you not have a TV? Are you one of those hipsters who reads boring books and talk about them with other hipsters over horribly overpriced coffee?"
"I don't have a TV because I had to sell it for my security deposit on my apartment. And I just got my first paycheck the other day, which bought all the food you've eaten," Thad told RJ with a wink. "And besides, any TV shows I would watch can be seen on my laptop."
"You smug ass cord cutter," RJ laughed as he opened a fourth cup of yogurt. It was blueberry. "And don't give me shit about my appetite. You are the one who keeps wearing out my energy reserves. And if it's that big a deal, I can always have replacement groceries delivered. I never leave my place with less than a grand in cash."
RJ grabbed his pants from the floor and threw them on the bed, where Thad lay looking at him.
"My wallet's in there. Take as much as you need." RJ finished the blueberry yogurt and then threw the trash in the bin by the fridge. He was still hungry, so he grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl on the counter. It wasn't like he really needed to worry about calories: Thad had already given him more than a daily workout before noon.
"What I need isn't money." Thad ran his eyes over RJ, who felt the need to strike a flirty pose with the banana.
"How the hell are you ready to go AGAIN?!" RJ snorted and began peeling the banana open. "You haven't eaten since you made those eggs for breakfast. I'm already up. Do you want something?"
"Fine." Thad gave a humoured sigh and sat up. "I'll take one of the grapefruit. I have some of those fruit spoons with the jagged edges in the drawer under the fruit bowl."
"Do you want a bowl for the rind?"
Chuckling, Thad shook his head. "It's a peel, not a rind. And I'll just use my coffee cup from breakfast. It's not like there's anything in it right now."
To prove his point, Thad leaned back to grab the mug. RJ took the opportunity to marvel over how in shape the man was, then looked down at his own body and frowned. He wasn't fat, and while he wasn't a gym person, he did like to run. Nonetheless, being lean was nothing compared to being ripped. Thad even put Noah's body to shame.
So why was this fine man messing around with someone like RJ? Thad totally had the "masc looking for masc" look, if not the vibe.
"See? Empty." Thad turned the coffee cup upside down and the cup was indeed bone dry.
"Can I ask you something?" RJ asked, turning away from the man who had spent the entire day fucking him. He pulled open the drawer with one hand and sifted through the silverware, holding his partially eaten banana in the other. "Why did you do it?"
"I'm sorry?"
RJ looked back to Thad and tossed him the grapefruit spoon. He grabbed one of the round citrus fruit from the bowl and brought it to Thad, sitting next to him on the bed.
"That's an orange," Thad pointed out, taking the fruit anyway. He stabbed the orange with the spoon and began peeling it.
"Sorry."
"It's cool. Now what is it I'm supposed to have done?"
Biting his lip, RJ looked down to his banana. He was nervous. After everything he had done to Thad, and let Thad do to him, it was a conversation that gave him pause.
"Me," RJ clarified. "Yesterday in Julian's office, you kissed me."
"You tried to kiss me first," Thad argued. It was a valid point.
"And you pulled away. You said it was because I caught you off guard, which is fair because we've barely spoken since you were hired at L&M, but then you kissed me anyway. And you let me..."
"I let you blow me," Thad finished nonchalantly. "And then you called me later and asked if I could pick you up and take you home. At first, I thought you meant your place, but you grabbed my dick in the car and specified that you wanted my little one room studio apartment. Did you not notice I had to make the eggs on the windowsill with a tiny propane grill? Why would you want to come here?"
Noah happily hugging RJ and telling him how much he loved him came to mind and RJ shuddered. Thad must have noticed because he put an arm around RJ's shoulders. He looked over and saw the half-peeled orange sitting on top of the coffee cup. The spoon was wedged underneath the orange.
"After everything that happened yesterday, my loft is the last place I want to be. Everyone wants to talk to me about my dad and why I leaked the tape and blah blah blah."
"You leaked the tape?" Thad asked. RJ looked up from the cup wedged between Thad's legs and to the man's face. He looked surprised, but he didn't seem to be judging RJ. It was appreciated: Noah probably would've been mad at him. Noah always got mad when RJ did stuff like that.
"Yeah. My dad and I don't have the best relationship." RJ didn't see the need to tell Thad about anyone else's involvement in the scheme. It wasn't even like it mattered anymore. Steffy and Ridge and Taylor all knew he planted the bug itself. That was all that mattered.
"So you've said." Thad pulled RJ close and kissed his temple. It was a small thing. It should have been nothing, but it was something RJ hadn't expected.
Casting his eyes to where his bare feet hovered just above the hardwood floor, RJ sighed. "You never answered my question."
"I didn't? What was the question again?"
When RJ looked back up to Thad, there were tears in his eyes. They weren't sad tears, nor were they angry. All RJ felt was disappointment, but he didn't know where to aim it.
"You are one of the best looking guys I've ever met. And I work in fashion, so I don't say that lightly. You could have any man you wanted with a snap of your fingers. So why would you want me? I'm a tiny little fey guy with a big mouth and an even bigger attitude. Objectively, I'm good looking, but nobody would call me hot. So why?"
Thad kissed RJ again, then used his thumb to wipe the tears from his eyes. It stung a bit, from where Thad had just been handling the orange, but RJ didn't see the need to say anything about it.
"Because that's my type," Thad told RJ with a smile that radiated sincerity. "I just love bossy little bottoms who fuss over their hair and whether their shirts match their shoes."
RJ sat his banana on the nightstand, then took the coffee cup from Thad and sat it next to the banana. He crawled onto Thad's lap and pushed on his chest until the man relented and lay back on the bed. Bending down, RJ kissed him again and reached between Thad's legs.
"So, I can already tell, but I'll ask anyway. Are you ready for round four?"
B&B
When there was a knock on the door, Noah hoped it was RJ. It hadn't been the day before, but that had been then. His boyfriend had to come home sometime. After all, he had been seen at Forrester after Steffy had stopped by the loft, so he wasn't dead: RJ was just hiding from everyone again.
"Oh," Noah said when he saw Maya in the hallway.
"I'm sorry?" she said quietly. "If you want me to go... I didn't know where else to go. I can leave."
Shaking his head, Noah stepped back and welcomed his guest. "I saw the news when I was at Spencer this morning. I'm so sorry. Are you okay?"
"You aren't going to ask if it's true?" Maya kept her head down and walked into the loft. "I spent over a thousand dollars on a cab, told the driver to go to San Francisco, then when we got there I had him come back. When we returned to LA, this was the only place I could think to go. RJ's invited me and Rick over before, but he never really meant it so I never took him up on it."
"Why would you take a cab to San Francisco and back again? Why not just stay there if you wanted to hide?" Noah shut the door and guided Maya to the sofa. "Do you want anything to drink?"
"I could use a cup of tea."
Noah gave her a small smile and shook his head. "I don't know how to make tea. RJ keeps trying to teach me, but I just suck at it. We have soda. Or water. Liam left coconut water the last time he visited, but I don't drink water unless it comes from a faucet or a plastic bottle."
Maya finally looked up at Noah. She was smiling, too, but it was a sad one. "I'll have just water then. And I knew the moment I checked into a hotel the press would know where I was, just to answer your question. I don't have friends in San Francisco I could stay with. I barely have friends in LA. Just Layla, really. Amber and I are friendly, but she's Amber."
"I already know what that means," Noah agreed with a nod. He stood and fetched a water bottle from the fridge. "Why would you come here, though? Why not go to Layla? Not that I mind you coming here, Maya. I won't tell anyone, and when he comes home, RJ won't, either. You have my word."
"That's why," she told Noah as she took the bottle from him and cracked it open. "I love Layla to death, but I don't know that she wouldn't tell Rick where I am in an attempt to make things better. This can't be made better. Either he'll accept it, or he won't."
"And you're afraid he won't?" Noah sat next to Maya but didn't touch her. He didn't really know what to do.
"No, Noah. It's not that I'm afraid he'll reject me. It's that I know he will."