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“Maybe if you go grab him now, you can delay him until twelve,” Ramsey said.

Zach knew he should think this through.

But how many times had Zach waited for Gavin to be ready? To be willing to follow through? He was done hesitating right on the threshold and never getting to cross it.

He took off for the bathroom, which was in a little hallway tucked in the back, near the pinball machines.

It was quiet, nobody over here, the whole team gathered around the bar, waiting for the final countdown to start.

As Zach turned down the hallway, he looked at his watch. Two minutes to twelve. All he had to do was waste one hundred and twenty seconds. Easy.

But then the bathroom door opened and Gavin’s eyes widened as he took Zach’s appearance in. Like the last thing he’d expected was to see him right now.

“Oh, hey,” Gavin said awkwardly.

It was really a very tiny hallway. Barely enough room for two people. Zach stopped right in the middle and didn’t budge, even as Gavin sidled up to him, like he expected him to move out of the way.

Like Zach had come to piss, and not to find Gavin .

“Hey,” Zach said. “I was looking for you.”

“Right, it’s . . .uh . . .almost midnight, isn’t it?”

Zach didn’t want to look down at his watch, but he thought they’d probably wasted at least forty-five seconds.

“Yeah, I think so.”

Gavin took a step closer, and Zach still didn’t move.

“Are you—” Gavin broke off, taking a deep breath. His head tilted back and he looked right at Zach.

“Yeah,” Zach said.

The noises from the team were filtering through the hallway, getting louder by the second. A countdown, Zach realized, his brain finally picking out the numbers from the raucous cheers.

He and Gavin stared at each other. Gavin had to know what he wanted, what he wanted, but he didn’t move. Zach decided that was permission enough.

And then, finally , a final noisy yell.

“Uh, Happy New Year?” Gavin said nervously, licking his lips.

Zach broke first. He stepped closer, his hands rising to cup Gavin’s cheeks. Felt the scrape of his late night scruff along his jaw and tilted his mouth against his own.

Zach was kissing him.

Gavin had known it was coming. He’d known the moment he’d opened the bathroom door and Zach had been standing here in the hallway.

It wasn’t hard to figure out what he wanted .

But what do you want?

That wasn’t so much the question as what am I allowed to want?

It was only then, staring at Zach, who had him practically held hostage, not moving, just looking, just waiting , that Gavin acknowledged to himself that he’d come to the bathroom for exactly this reason.

He hadn’t wanted to watch the clock tick over to midnight and stand next to Zach and just keep fucking pretending that he didn’t want to kiss him.

He wanted to kiss him.

So Gavin kissed Zach back.

Zach’s kiss had been soft, almost hesitant. Like he was asking a question he hoped he knew the answer to.

Gavin tilted his head and kissed him back, deeper.

He didn’t know if the kiss was so different because it was a man, or because it was Zach, but it lit Gavin up from the inside out, electricity humming through every bit of him—to his fingertips and then all the way back to his toes.

Zach gasped into his mouth, and then there was his tongue, sliding against Gavin’s own, as his hands cupped his cheeks and held him there, just for him to kiss.

It shouldn’t have been so good, but it was actually fucking incredible.

Zach pulled back, and Gavin nearly reeled him right back in. He wanted to keep kissing, keep feeling , and not worry about thinking anytime soon.

But Zach took another step back, lips red and wet, and Gavin’s brain kept short-circuiting .

But one thought stood out from the jumbled, heated mess: he’d been five seconds from grabbing Zach’s arm and dragging him back. Not just into Gavin’s arms, but to the bathroom with its single room and the lock on the door.

With nearly the whole team just outside.

Zach didn’t say anything, and Gavin didn’t know what to say.

He couldn’t pull out the that was a huge fucking mistake card, not when he wanted so badly for it to be the opposite.

But desire didn’t equal reality.

He’d promised himself, a hundred times, a thousand times, that he wouldn’t do this.

Always before, he’d managed to pull back at the last moment, but he hadn’t this time.

He wasn’t stupid; he’d known exactly why Zach cornered him in the hallway.

Zach had given him plenty of outs. Plenty of chances to leave. To laugh it off. But he hadn’t.

Instead, Gavin had been an exposed nerve of pure fucking need , and he’d just given in to the onslaught, when he should’ve been remembering all the very good reasons he had to keep his distance.

“Oh, there you two are.” A voice echoed through the hallway. Gavin was afraid to look and see if it was Ramsey, because God knew, he could probably figure out immediately what they were doing.

But it wasn’t Ramsey. It was Brody, who flicked a glance between them, a crease between his brows, like he thought he might know what he was witnessing but some part of it didn’t quite compute.

Thank God for small favors.

“Yes,” Gavin said, clearing his throat. “We’re right here.”

“Right here,” Zach said, voice rough.

“You missed the ball drop but it’s okay. There’s still some champagne left.”

“Right, okay.” Gavin nodded. “Lead the way.”

He could feel Zach following him, could feel Zach’s eyes on him, burning right into his skin, as they rejoined the rest of the team.

Forty minutes later, the party was breaking up, and Gavin could still feel Zach’s eyes on him.

Even though he’d been talking to Finn and Jacob, and Zach had been on the other side of the group, chatting easily with Mal and Elliott and Ivan, Brody and Dean chiming in every few minutes, he just knew Zach was watching him, carefully.

Watching and waiting for an opportunity to come over and say casually, “Oh, we’re going the same way? I’ll walk with you.”

Then somehow, they’d end up in Gavin’s house, and they’d kiss again, and probably more, and it would be simultaneously glorious and the worst thing Gavin had ever done.

He had to tell him something—but maybe that could wait. Maybe he could put it off, for a few days. At least until his lips didn’t taste like Zach’s every time he licked them.

At least until the memory wasn’t burning a hole in his brain.

But of course, that wasn’t how it worked out.

Ending up standing outside the arcade with Zach as Finn and Jacob said their goodbyes and melted into the night was probably karma intervening and paying him back for touching Zach in the first place.

The sidewalks around them were empty, with absolutely nothing to distract from the fact that it was just the two of them .

“So, uh, well,” Zach said, giving him a bashful glance from under long lashes. Like he hadn’t been the guy pushing right into Gavin’s space and kissing him first less than an hour ago.

Gavin steeled himself. There was a part of him that knew he could just talk around it. Say he was tired, they had an early morning, etcetera, and then put this horrible conversation off for another day or two.

But another day or two wasn’t going to change anything, and maybe it was better to just plunge right into the fire.

“Zach, we need to talk.” His tone wasn’t gentle just for Zach; he was trying to take it easy on himself, too.

Zach’s face, eager and boyish, fell so fast. Gavin ignored the spreading pain soaring through him in a dizzying wave.

“Are you really going to do this again?”

“I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have—” He couldn’t say I shouldn’t have let you do that, because Gavin had been a full and enthusiastic participant.

He’d known exactly what Zach was going to do, and he’d let him do it anyway.

“It’s my fault. I keep letting this happen and I shouldn’t. I’m sorry.”

There was a flash of the same agony that Gavin felt across Zach’s face, then it was wiped clean. He shoved his hands into his pockets and shot Gavin a stony glare.

“You really are, I guess.”

Gavin didn’t know what to say. How to even explain. He couldn’t even fucking explain it to himself .

He just knew whenever he thought of keeping this going—of seeing it to its natural conclusion—hugging Zach and kissing him and dating him, he felt so sick to his stomach with guilt and horror he knew he couldn’t.

How could he ever face himself in the mirror knowing that he’d just moved on, easy as that?

“Zach—”

“No, don’t. Don’t.” Zach glared at him again, hotter this time. Angrier. “You want this, you want me , I know you do.”

It was impossible to deny it. “I do,” Gavin said, “but—”

Zach’s gaze was burning, boring , into him. “There doesn’t have to be a but ! It just is. We weren’t expecting it but it happened, and it . . .” Zach looked away then, like he couldn’t bear it.

Gavin couldn’t bear it either, but he had to, because he’d created this whole fucking mess. No matter how shitty this felt, he had to just stand here and feel it.

“I want to say I shouldn’t have taken this job, because I was afraid of this, but we’ve been good together,” Gavin said.

Zach threw his hands up. “We could be good together, period . If you would fucking let us.”

“I’m too old for you. Too old and too . . .fucked up,” Gavin said quietly.

“If any of that was actually true, then this wouldn’t already be working,” Zach argued. He still looked pissed but he took a step closer and then another. Gavin wanted to run away, but he deserved this. So he stayed put. “You say we can’t date, that you won’t date, but we’re already dating.”

Gavin wanted to argue. But his mouth was so dry. Zach was so close. “No. No .”

“The only thing we’re not doing is kissing and—” Zach broke off with a muttered fuck .

“We’re just not touching each other like that, but we both want to.

We’re doing everything else. We spend like fifteen fucking hours together and then after, we talk to each other every night. Like we can’t get enough.”

“That’s . . .that’s . . .that’s work .” But Zach wasn’t wrong.

And Zach knew it too, because he wore an unimpressed expression that told Gavin he knew just how much of a liar he’d turned into. It was work, yes, but it had evolved into something else, too. Friendship, affection, companionship, attraction. Even lust.

“It’s not wrong to want more,” Zach said, and suddenly he was gentle, soft, again, palm pressed against Gavin’s cheek and God, he wanted to lean into that touch more than he’d ever wanted anything, ever.

But that wasn’t true, was it?

Because the thing he’d wanted, the one fucking thing he’d needed and never gotten was for Noelle to come back.

Guilt surged, and Gavin shook Zach’s hand off. “No,” he said roughly, turning away so Zach couldn’t see the glitter of moisture in his eyes.

He never should’ve permitted things to get this far, but now that they had, he could at least take responsibility and finally, put his foot down.

“Are you serious—you are , you’re fucking serious,” Zach said incredulously.

He didn’t reach for him again.

“I told you.” Gavin hated how raw he sounded, like his throat had been scraped with glass.

Zach stared at him for one beat and then another. “Yeah, you did.” And then he turned and walked away.