Page 17 of Hold Me Down (KRK Security #4)

Shutting the door with a bang brought him no more than two seconds of satisfaction, but Travis was too pissed to care at this point.

He was done for the day—done with analyzing, done with trying, done with everything that had brought him here: tense, and tired, and with a headache from hell.

What he needed was fun and easy, but he wasn't going to find it at home tonight, so he was going for the next best thing.

He decided to order a ride to his favorite pick-up bar.

It was startling that it had taken him a few seconds to remember the address, but then he realized he hadn't been there in months. He'd gone once during the whole Dave's-dating-now phase, but even before that it had been a while, too.

Perks of having a regular fuck buddy at home , Travis figured once he accepted the offered ride in the app. Even if said buddy is a fucking asshole at the moment .

After the session with Doctor Kumar, he'd had every intention to go back home, have a quiet night in, and try not to push any of Dave's buttons.

He'd been looking forward to lying on the couch and forgetting everything the doc had said because it was too much to process in a day.

Hell , he'd been hoping Dave would be up for relieving at least some of the tension with orgasms, but if not, it would have been fine to simply chill together.

What hadn't been fine, however, was that a grown-ass man risked his safety for absolutely no reason at all.

The hypocrisy of that thought didn't hit Travis until he was already in the car, but he pushed it aside for the night. He was done with overthinking—or even thinking in general.

He needed to relax, and what better way to do so than a night out after a few weeks of quiet nights in.

He chatted with the driver for the rest of the way, exchanging opinions on the NBA playoffs so far (underwhelming) and the next season (a shakeup, hopefully), and by the time Travis walked into the bar, he was in much better spirits.

The club was far from crowded this early in the evening, but he knew it would pick up in less than an hour, the usual crowd skirting a bit older than the young guys who didn't even leave the house before nine thirty and could dance the night away.

Still, as Travis walked towards the bar, he clocked a few guys as possible options. Two of them were familiar enough that he had a feeling they'd hooked up before, so he took them off the list, but the other three seemed new, which sent a bit of excitement down Travis's back.

It had been way too long since he flirted with a hot stranger, that was for sure.

It had been even longer since his last bathroom hookup. Whenever they'd gone to a bar, there was no point of dragging Dave out of the booth and into the bathroom when they could just as well go home and fuck in a bed—or against the front door, on a few memorable occasions.

Damn , was Travis getting old if he preferred a bed over a questionable bathroom stall?

He hoped not.

Besides, tonight wasn't about that. He'd rarely followed a guy to his place, and he'd definitely never taken anyone to the house he shared with Dave, so his current choices were the bathroom or the shadowy corner out the back.

Both could do in a pinch.

"Can I buy you a drink?" A deep male voice came from the left and a moment later, there was a tall, black-haired man on the stool next to Travis.

"Two of what he's having," the guy told the bartender without waiting for the answer, but when he turned towards him, Travis saw a nice enough smile and a jawline that could cut glass, so he decided to let it go.

"It looks like you already did," he said with a raised eyebrow.

Okay, so maybe he didn't entirely let it go, but he liked to keep people on their toes, especially at the beginning.

Thankfully, the guy only laughed.

"That's true. But if you say no, I guess I'll have two whiskeys to soothe my busted ego with."

Travis's lips twitched. This, at least, was easy.

"How about you keep one and I keep the other?"

"Perfect." The guy's smile widened. "I'm Byron."

"Travis."

And after that, it went down a fairly familiar path—even if one that was half-buried in his mind. They talked, they flirted, the personal space got smaller and smaller…

But then came the obvious question, and things suddenly weren't the same anymore.

"You up for another round or do you want to get out of here?"

Travis had come here to hook up. That had been the whole plan for tonight—to let out some steam, to lose himself in quick and easy pleasure. And yet, now that he was faced with what he supposedly wanted, he balked.

"Sorry, I'm—" Travis halted, searching for the right words while he still didn't quite understand what he was doing and why.

"I'm up for another round but nothing more, so no hard feelings if you want to change targets, so to speak.

" He glanced back and saw the place had filled out while they'd been talking. "Plenty of fish, etcetera."

Byron leaned back in his seat but thankfully didn't seem angry or upset.

"Ah. I might have mixed up the signals, then. It's been a while since I've done this."

"No, that's on me," Travis assured him quickly. "I seem to have changed directions along the way. Sorry about that."

"No worries. Maybe that's actually a better outcome. A slower reintroduction to the scene won't hurt."

"Bad breakup?" Travis motioned for the bartender for another round. He wasn't usually the type to sit there and listen to a sad story from a stranger, but their conversation had been going well so far and he did feel kind of bad for backing out. "Or a nice one, which may be even worse?"

Byron drowned the rest of his drink.

"Uneventful for him, life-changing for me, since I've had to start looking for another job and an apartment now that I don't want to keep living my life in the same place as him."

"The worst, then." Travis grimaced and grabbed a glass when the bartender put the new drinks in front of them. "That sucks."

"The worst part is, I know I was the stupid one. We lived together, worked together, and spent basically all our time with each other, and he still kept insisting he wasn't 'the commitment type'."

Freezing, Travis stared at the drink in his hand, unable to look up at Byron, who seemed to be on a roll now.

"And let's be clear, I wasn't asking for his hand in marriage or whatever. I used the word 'boyfriend' and he would flip out, that kind of thing. I finally realized I'm too old to be a convenient fuck buddy hoping for something that will never come, but that's two years I'm never getting back."

For a moment there, Travis could kind of see the scene from the side, as if he was watching an interactive-experience movie or something.

There was Byron, gesticulating and talking about his failed relationship with a guy who sounded like he could be a copy of Travis, and there was Travis himself, unmoving, having some kind of an existential crisis in the span of a few seconds.

"—too old to be a convenient fuck buddy hoping for something that will never come—"

"—calling yourself a person that doesn't 'do commitment' in general can create confusion, because that's not who you are in every context. You're committed to people who are already in your life and with whom you have close bonds—"

"Do you ever think you might one day want a committed relationship after all?"

Byron's words, and Doctor Kumar's, and, finally, a question from Dave, one that had seemed insignificant at the time—all of it came back to Travis now, reframing what he'd always thought of as central to who he was.

But was it really?

Was "no commitment" really a core part of him, or was it more that he had "no desire to seek commitment outside of what he already had" , like Doctor Kumar had suggested?

Travis didn't know.

He didn't know .

And suddenly, it was as if nothing was more important than finding out. He needed answers, because what if Dave felt like that, what if Dave was Byron, and Travis was The Asshole, and—

"Hey, are you okay?" Byron's voice cut through the spiral Travis had caught himself in. "You look like you've seen a ghost. If my story stirred up some shit from your past, I'm sorry, I got carried away."

It definitely stirred up something .

"Not your fault." Travis moved to his feet and pulled out some cash to drop it on the bar. "I have to go, though. Good luck with everything."

Without waiting for a reply, he left, making his way through the crowded space quickly.

He couldn't stand being here even a minute longer.

He had other places to be.