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escaped, Pete wanted them back. Now Trevor would be wondering how he knew two relatively obscure gay porn stars. Pete frowned. Now that he thought about it, how did Trevor know these two relatively obscure gay porn stars?
    “Fine,” Trevor conceded, apparently oblivious to Pete’s internal panic. “How’s Joe sound? Non-porny enough for your conservative, financial-advising ass?”
    “Perfect,” Pete agreed with more enthusiasm than the name warranted. “How about a last name now? How’d you pick Courtland?”
    “After bolting out of that supposed ‘safe’ house, I hid in the back of a truck carrying a load of Courtland coffee.” Trevor looked as if his mind was far away for a moment. Refocusing on Pete, he shrugged. “How about Richard Joseph Long—please call me Joey?”
    Pete sighed. Obviously, Trevor was determined to be Dick Long. “Nice to meet you, Joey the graffiti artist. I’m your loving partner, ex-financial advisor Pete Giordano.” He swung into a cracked and crumbling driveway and parked. “Welcome home.”
    Craning his neck to see the house in front of them, Trevor closed his eyes as if he were in pain. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
    “W-what?” Clamping his lips together, Pete gave his head a short shake. What was up with the stuttering? He’d had a rough time with it when he was a kid, occasionally 12
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    getting so bad he’d been completely stuck, frozen, unable to get a word out. It’d taken years and numerous fights before he’d lost the original nickname of “retard”. Since junior high, he’d been pretty much stutter-free, although it snuck out on rare occasions under stress. Three times in an hour, though—that was unacceptable. He glanced at Trevor’s incredulous face as the other man examined the house. Pete knew why he couldn’t talk right. The reason was sitting right next to him. He also knew he needed to get over this insane crush right away.
    “This place is about to fall down, that’s what,” Trevor told him, opening his door and climbing out.
    Pete turned the car off and got out. “It’s structurally sound,” he corrected. He could hear the tightness in his own voice.
    Trevor looked at him, disbelief covering his face. “Is this heap yours?”
    Bending to pull two suitcases out of the back of the truck, Pete welcomed the chance to hide his expression. “Yeah. That’s the other reason I need to keep my name. The real estate agent knows it already.”
    “Why the hell do you own a shithole in Honey-fucking-suckle?”
    “It’s not a shithole,” Pete snapped before attempting to rein in his defensiveness.
    “We need to live somewhere. Might as well use this time to fix it up and then resell it when we leave.”
    Trevor started to laugh. His offense dropping away, Pete could only stare at the way laughter transformed Trevor’s face, from sulky model to someone…irresistible.
    “You’re flipping the house,” Trevor choked out, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. “We’re a gay couple from Cleveland and we’re flipping a house.”
    Tearing his eyes away from the beautiful man in front of him, Pete hauled the suitcases up the front walk to the uneven front porch steps.
    “If we’re going to be this kind of cliché,” Trevor said from behind him, “does this mean we have to get a Shih-Tzu?” He laughed even harder. Pete ignored him, dropping the suitcases on the porch so he could dig the key from his pocket. One of the suitcases didn’t stop at the porch but broke through and fell to the earth below, leaving a jagged hole in the wooden porch floor. After a second of startled silence, Trevor burst out laughing again.
    With a sigh, Pete pulled the screen door open with a squeal of hinges. Yanking the key from his pocket, he inserted it into the lock. It was reluctant to turn, scraping against itself as it finally gave way. Pete turned back toward Trevor. “Watch your step,”
    he cautioned, gesturing at the porch. “Think some of