Page 36 of A Real Good Lie

“You left me.”

“One kiss,” Jace repeated. “You told me one dance. One kiss. I’d taken both.”

“I didn’t ask you to go,” he said.

“It was implied.” Jace stared down the hallway. “You were ashamed of it.”

“Ashamed?” He took a step toward Jace. “I was many things, but not ashamed. Besides, how would you know? You couldn’t see my face. You didn’t ask.”

Callahan took another step closer.

“What other things, then?”

“Embarrassed,” he answered quickly.

“Because you let a stranger kiss you?” Jace backed against the wall. “Is that not your style?”

“Embarrassed because of how much I liked it.”

Jace licked his lips and leveled a heavy stare at him. “What else did you feel, Callahan?”

God, he liked the sound of his name in Jace’s mouth as much as he liked the feel of Jace’s tongue in his.

“Aroused.” He took another step. The toes of their shoes hit, and they both looked down, then up again. Jace’s eyes were wide, his pupils huge and black. “So aroused.”

Jace raised his hand between them, flattening it against Callahan’s chest. Callahan studied Jace’s mouth, the creases of his lips and the stubble on his cheeks. How had he been so oblivious before to how much he wanted this man? He’d known it, of course, because he’d been unable to forget the way his knees had trembled when they’d danced and kissed, and he knew the way his blood pressure spiked when Jace breathed too close.But he really and trulywanted.

He’d never sought something fleeting or casual before, never tried to pursue that kind of pleasure because it had never gotten him anywhere good. Rhys had been a drunk frat party hookup that turned into more, and Derrick had been his first foray into internet dating. Callahan wasn’t capable to doing casual, and he didn’t want a boyfriend, so he’d allowed himself neither.

“I noticed you were turned on,” Jace rasped. “I felt it.”

Jace’s hand slipped down Callahan’s chest and settled on his waist. It wasn’t a firm hold, more like a resting place. It reeked of comfort and a feeling bubbled in Callahan’s chest that he didn’t have a name for, that he didn’twanta name for. At least, not again.

“I feel it now,” Jace said.

Callahan blushed, heat warming up from his throat to his cheeks.

“It’ll be easy for you to pretend, then.” Jace sidestepped along the wall and moved quickly toward the elevator button, stabbing the down arrow and clearing his throat.

“What?”

“If you don’t hate me,” Jace said. “It’ll be easier to pretend you like being around me. For the weekend.”

“I-I…what? I never hated you,” he stammered, just as the elevator doors opened.

“Oh, look who it is.”

Against the back wall of the elevator, Rhys smiled, a smug and pretentious expression on his face. He had his arms folded across his chest, and his fiancé was nowhere to be seen. Rhys’s suit was impeccably tailored, as they always were, and he gave Jace a disdainful once over.

“Come on, babe.” Jace stretched his hand behind him, not missing a beat, his focus not wavering from where it had landed on Rhys.

Callahan hadn’t been done speaking. He hadn’t said the things he’d wanted to say. He hadn’t gotten his point across. It would have to wait, though. He had his role to play with Rhys, with Jace, with everyone. It wasn’t anything new, and he didn’t know why he’d expected it would be.

He tangled his fingers into Jace’s and stepped onto the elevator, desperate for a moment when he could just be himself. He could feel his desperation in his bones, an ache to pour his heart out to Jace, no matter how foolish, no matter the cost. But he knew better.

He had to know better.

The elevator doors closed, sealing them in with Rhys.