Page 90 of Kitchen Gods: The Complete Series

“It’s always going to get boring. That’s what always happens.”

“Bullshit,” Wyatt retorted. “I jumped out of a fucking plane for you. If you want exciting, I’m going to give it to you, because I care about you. But I’m done playing games.”

“I don’t . . . I don’t understand.” Another lie. Wyatt found his normally moderate temper beginning to spike. The one thing he hated was being lied to, and Ryan was doing it a lot, and not just tonight.

“Sure, that guy in there is hot, I’m not going to deny it, but we don’t need him. Do you need him?”

“I . . . you don’t want to go home with him?” Ryan sounded incredulous. When Ryan had been the one flirting with him all night, not Wyatt.

“I want to go home with you,” Wyatt bit out.

“I’m not dumb,” Ryan sneered. “I don’t believe that you’ll want that forever. You’ll get bored, you’ll start looking, and someday you’re going to wish we took him home. And instead of the three of us, it’ll just be the two of you.”

“Tell me you don’t need that guy,” Wyatt said again. “Tell me you just want that guy, and we’ll figure this out. Because it’s not about what I want. It’s about what you want.”

The look in Ryan’s eyes was pure stubbornness. “I want to have fun. I never want to be bored. Never again.”

It shouldn’t have hurt so much because he’d anticipated it, but it burned like hell anyway. “And I’d bore you, eventually,” Wyatt said quietly. “I get it. Thank you for being so clear.”

He turned to go, because he couldn’t stand there any longer and try to figure out which stupidity coming out of Ryan’s mouth were lies and which was the truth.

But Ryan caught his arm. For a split second, Wyatt’s heart rose, because maybe now he would finally get the answers he wanted.

Maybe he could finally break through this barrier that Ryan had insisted on erecting.

“Where are you going?” Ryan demanded. “We’re supposed to get photographed together.”

The hope hit the barrier straight on and crashed and burned. Because to Ryan, the games were all that mattered. He hadn’t even listened when Wyatt had tried to lay his heart on the line for him.

All he could do was shrug. “Go get the fucking angel to do it with you. I’m done.” And he walked out of the alley alone.

Ryan was still unsteady when he walked back into the club. The moment Wyatt had walked away, he’d wanted to run after him, and beg him not to give up on him.

But he’d been really fucking clear, hadn’t he? He’d laid out the details of the arrangement and had never given Wyatt any expectation that he would change the rules. And now that Wyatt wasn’t getting what he thought he wanted out of the deal, he was done?

Fuck that. Fuck him.

His temper had boiled over after that, leaving him raw and shaky, and clenching his hands over and over again, wishing for a bat to hold onto. To ground him. To beat against the most convenient stationary object.

It wasn’t supposed to go this way, and it definitely wasn’t supposed to end like this.

He went back to Temple because he didn’t know what else to do. Marching back up to his VIP section, he unscrewed the lid off the tequila and took a shot from the bottle. He was buying it after all, he could do whatever the fuck he wanted to with it.

“You okay?”

Ryan looked up and the angelic waiter was standing there, looking confused. Well, that made two of them. “Not really,” he admitted. He took another long swig of tequila and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

There was part of him that really wanted to take the angel home anyway. Keep Wyatt up all night with the sounds of their fucking. Make it crystal clear that whatever Wyatt thought Ryan felt, he was wrong.

The truth was, he didn’t know if Wyatt was wrong. Maybe Ryan was wrong. Maybe whatever they’d been doing was bound to crash and burn at some point. Nothing simple ever stayed simple, and even Ryan could acknowledge they’d crossed over into complicated awhile ago.

“You want a drink?” he asked Alex, extending the bottle towards him. “I probably shouldn’t be drinking alone.”

“Can’t, sorry, I’m working, and I’ll get fired if they catch it on the cameras,” Alex said apologetically.

Ryan took another long drink from the bottle, large enough for both of them. It suddenly occurred to him that while the interest in Alex’s eyes might have been genuine, he’d probably been paid to flirt outrageously with them.

It wasn’t so much different than Wyatt, who he was paying to be his boyfriend and to cook cute, couple-y meals that he could post to his Instagram. But even then he knew it was a lie, because even though he’d been paying Wyatt since day one, money had never been part of what existed between them.

“Was that your boyfriend who left?” Alex asked, perching just on the end of the couch.

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” Ryan admitted. His total ignorance of the realities of the situation made him want to drink more. But he didn’t, because he’d learned a long time ago that getting drunk never really helped. Tomorrow morning he would wake up hungover and miserable and still fucking clueless.

Alex shrugged. It was clear he thought Ryan should go figure that situation out before trying to make threesomes with hot Temple waiters happen. And the galling part was that he was absolutely fucking right.

“I don’t suppose I can give you a ride back to my place,” Ryan said, even though he didn’t even want to. He wasn’t even sure anymore if Alex wanted to, but this situation was already so monumentally messed up, surely fucking it up more couldn’t make it worse.

“You’re cute. You’re rich. You’re famous. Normally, sure. But not tonight. Not when it’s not even me you’re thinking about.”

“We can just not think at all,” Ryan said, sounding a little desperate. The last thing he wanted to do was go home alone, and sit in his empty house, imagining the conversation if he went and knocked on Wyatt’s door.

Nothing good, that was for fucking sure. But the thought would tempt him all night.

The look Alex shot him was pitying. “You can’t turn that off,” he said, and got up to leave.

Ryan ended up alone on the couch in his VIP section, sipping his tequila, and trying to figure out how to text Eric that the photos tonight were off.

He’d composed version fifty-three of the message when instead, Eric texted him.

Why am I not hearing rapturous reports of your cute coupledom? Eric said.

Slight snag, Ryan texted back before he could lose his nerve. The tequila also helped with that. Photos tonight off.

He sent another text to call the car, and then turned his phone off, gripping the neck of the bottle of tequila.

Maybe waking up hungover would at least fuzzy up some of the extraneous feelings he was never supposed to have in the first place.