Page 20

Liam

Nathan caught up with them in the parking lot, apparently determined enough to harass Liam that he left his friends at the table.

“Cassidy,” he said again, undeterred as Liam ducked out from under the hand on his shoulder. “You can’t still be avoiding me.”

I really, really can.

“We were just leaving.” He double-tapped the key fob in his coat pocket, his car lighting up down the row.

“Who’s your friend?”

Jonah, who hadn’t said a word since they stepped outside, kept his head down. Liam placed his hand gently on his elbow and kept them moving toward the car.

Nathan stepped directly into their path, then went still. “Wait.” He ducked to get a look at Jonah’s face, and his eyes went wide. “No shit.” He rocked back on his heels, glancing from Jonah to Liam. “Seriously, Cassie? Is this why we haven’t seen you in weeks?”

Liam cringed at the nickname. “I’ve been working,” he defended.

Nathan turned back to Jonah. “I guess you both have.”

Jonah’s eyes hadn’t left the ground. His jaw was a hard line of tension, agitated twitches of muscle under his skin. A surge of protection ripped through Liam.

“Watch it,” he warned.

“It’s a joke,” Nathan said, in the familiar tone of all the jokes he had hurled at Liam over the years. “He can take a joke, right? Hey, you should be thanking me. I didn’t realize I was playing matchmaker, but it looks like everything worked out.”

His face warmed despite the cold wind, but he didn’t know if it was from embarrassment or rage. “Jonah is just my friend.”

Nathan blinked, cutting his eyes to him. “‘Jonah?’” he echoed.

He felt Jonah stiffen beside him. Liam wanted to run himself over with his own car. It had been so long since he thought of him as Leo, and he was frankly surprised Nathan remembered him by any name at all, but still—it was a careless mistake.

“Don’t let us keep you from your friends,” Liam said, desperately swerving away from the subject.

“Right,” Nathan said, glancing between them again. His eyes lingered on Jonah a few seconds longer. “Are you coming to dinner next weekend? Or will you still be avoiding me then?”

Liam had already been dreading seeing Nathan and Ben at their families’ yearly pre-Christmas dinner. Now he wanted to withdraw from it entirely. He could only imagine the ways that Nathan would dangle this story over him in front of everyone. In front of Liam’s parents.

“I’ll be there,” he said, short and clipped.

“Great.” Nate smiled, a wolfish grin. Before he left, he turned to Jonah one more time. “Good seeing you again, Jonah. ”

Liam waited until they were back inside the car before he pressed his palms against his face. “I’m so sorry,” he said miserably.

“For what?”

“For using your real name, for one. And for the fact that you had to interact with him at all.” Liam dropped his hands. “Believe me when I say he was the last person I wanted to run into tonight.”

“It’s fine.” Jonah glanced his way long enough for a quick smile. Liam watched as he fidgeted with his sleeves, visibly on edge.

“Are you okay?” Liam asked.

As if catching his own tell, Jonah stilled his hands, flattening them against his lap. “I’m good,” he said. “I’m having a really good time. Don’t let him ruin it for you.”

Liam shook his head, forcing a cleansing breath. “You’re right. Sorry. ”

As expected, the house was dark when they arrived. Liam took Jonah to the back door, since it was a more direct route to his room.

Jonah crouched to unlace his shoes as soon as they stepped inside, but Liam waved him off. The last thing he needed was his parents finding a pair of unfamiliar men’s shoes on the way to the bathroom and jumping to the most obvious conclusion.

“On your left,” he whispered, pointing toward his room. Jonah moved with eerie silence behind him, his footfalls barely registering on the carpet.

They slipped in undetected. Once the door shut behind them, Liam turned to find Jonah smiling at him. “What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Jonah said. “That just seemed very practiced. You have a lot of experience sneaking guys in?”

Liam snorted. “You know me. A real Casanova.”

“You got me here, didn’t you?”

There was still that curl of a smile at the corner of his mouth, and for a moment Liam couldn’t find the line between the truth and a joke. Jonah seemed to have the realization at the same time, turning away to instead examine the inside of Liam’s room for the first time.

It was surreal to see him there, outside of a bland hotel room and transported into Liam’s most intimate space, like a dream come to life .

Jonah toed off his shoes in the corner and walked the perimeter, fingertips drawing lightly over the collage of Liam’s sketches plastered to the wall.

“You did all of these?” he asked.

Liam hadn’t accounted for the attention this visit would bring him. He shoved his hands in his pockets, putting on his best impersonation of someone who was very, completely cool about his work being observed. “Yeah,” he said, then added quickly, “Some of them are years old.” He pointed to the one Jonah had stopped in front of. “I drew that when I was fourteen. Not my best work.”

“Fourteen?” Jonah looked back at him. “Liam, that’s amazing.”

He was pretty certain all the blood in his body had pooled in his face.

Jonah continued his tour, and Liam watched with sudden horror as he stumbled on the most embarrassing piece on the wall. “Oh, that’s... God, don’t look at that. I can’t believe I still have it hanging up.” In truth, he had almost torn it down a number of times, most recently after his twenty-first birthday. But every time, some pathetic part of him held him back from throwing it out.

“Is that...?” Jonah crouched to get a better look: three young boys with their arms around each other, as depicted by a ten-year-old Liam.

Jonah looked up at him. Liam stared at the picture, if only to avoid Jonah’s eyes. “Believe it or not, there was a time when things were good.” Back before they had been old enough to notice the differences between them, or to care about them even if they did. “I guess some part of me clung onto the hope that things could be good again. What does that say about me?”

Jonah stood to his full height and turned to face him. “That you’re a good friend,” he said. “They don’t deserve you.”

An edge of real anger laced his words.

Liam watched his expression, the encounter from the diner parking lot still close to the surface. “I never did ask you,” he began cautiously. “I mean, I assume you had to spend some time with them the night we met? Nathan and Ben. Were they...?” He cleared his throat. “I know how they can be.”

Jonah turned back toward the wall. “It wasn’t a long walk back to the hotel.”

That...decidedly didn’t feel like a real answer, but he could feel Jonah closing up on him, and he didn’t want to push. Nathan and Ben had no place here tonight.

“You know,” Liam said, sinking down onto the side of his bed, “I probably have a lot to apologize for from that night. I was so awkward. I—” He broke off into a startled laugh at the memory. “I mean, shirtless and rambling in the bathroom was not a stellar first impression, but then I really doubled down in the hotel room. Could I have handled that any worse?”

“You could have.” Jonah turned back to him, an easy smile back in place. He walked over to the bed and sat next to Liam. “I got the impression you didn’t make a regular habit of hiring rent boys.”

“I don’t know where you got that idea.” Liam leaned sideways to bump shoulders. The brush of contact felt more charged than usual inside this room. He pulled back. “I don’t have anything against making money from it, you know. When it’s safe and consensual and...” He stopped himself before he could venture too far down that path. “It was purely a me thing. I’m.. . I’ve never...”

“Paid for it?”

Why had he brought this up? “Anything,” Liam said, face heating. “All of it. I’m...”

“A virgin?”

Liam covered his face. “Does the energy just radiate from my pores?”

“They may have mentioned it,” Jonah said. “When they set me up with you.”

Liam wanted to melt into his bedsheets. “Of course they did,” he said. “Why wouldn’t they find a way to make the whole thing even more humiliating.”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Jonah said.

Liam brought his head up to look at him. “I’m twenty-one.”

“You were also raised religious,” Jonah pointed out. “And even if you weren’t, so what? Even if you never wanted to, it’s nobody’s business. Definitely not theirs.”

“I do,” Liam said, a little more quickly than he intended. “Want to, I mean. Eventually, with the right person or whatever. It’s not like I’m waiting for marriage or anything. I may be a hopeless romantic, but I’m hardly a traditionalist.”

“Have you ever kissed a guy?”

Liam was busy twisting a loose thread from his pillowcase around his finger when Jonah asked the question. It snapped free, the blood flow rushing back to his fingertip. He looked up at Jonah, who was looking back at him, his whole body angled in Liam’s direction.

“You haven’t, have you?”

Liam swallowed. “No,” he admitted.

Jonah placed his hand on the mattress between them, inching toward Liam without making contact. “Do you want to?”

He couldn’t put words to the shift that happened then, the buzz in the air that seemed to intensify from his words. He couldn’t say who leaned in first, but they were definitely closer than they had been moments before. Jonah’s eyes were the first to twitch downward to his lips, and Liam felt a bolt of electricity thrum from his scalp to his fingertips.

“Jonah,” Liam whispered. “I’m not...I didn't bring you here with any expectation of...”

Jonah inched back, watching him carefully. “Is that a no?”

Liam was shaking his head before he could even finish processing the question. “It’s not a no,” he said. He reached down and covered Jonah’s hand, turning it over to fold their fingers together. “I’m just very aware of... I never want you to feel obligated.”

“It’s not like that,” he promised. “Not with you. ”

They were close enough now that he could feel Jonah’s breath against his lips. Jonah raised a hand to cup Liam’s cheek, rough fingertips sliding over the stubble on his jaw. Liam closed his eyes.

“Ask me,” Jonah whispered.

Liam’s swallow was loud enough to puncture the quiet. “Can I kiss you?”

Jonah answered by pushing forward to close the distance. The first graze of their lips was so subtle he almost thought he’d imagined it. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

The second kiss, though, was unmistakable.