Page 10 of Night By Night

Chapter Three

Early Monday morning, Maddox sat on his toilet and stared at his phone. He hadn’t even had his first cup of coffee yet, but he was now wide awake.

He’d spent the night dreaming about Hank, probably due in no small part to the fact that right before he fell asleep he masturbated to old fantasies he hadn’t thought about in a while.

Like having his blue-eyed friend under him in bed and slowly plowing his ass while Hank stared up at him in wide-eyed desire and need, begging Maddox to make him come.

Or to let him come.

Because…yeah, tease and denial was haaaaawt.

Right now what had his full and undivided attention was Hank’s reply to his message last night.

Had his pulse throbbing.

Especially the last line.

Let’s get together this week and catch up. Sooner, the better.

He read and reread it.

Yep. I’m officially an emotional masochist.

Because obviously the man was a father now, and probably involved with someone. He’d referenced unloading “our” stuff.

He wasn’t…unattached.

That meant Maddox knew his hottest fantasies would forever remain tightly tucked within his mental closet, never revealed.

But Hank was back and wanted to see him.

Thisweek.

No hypothetical, wishy-washy maybe someday. Nooh, we should totally get together sometime.

No “should.”Thisweek.

Adefinitive.

God, I’m a dumbass.

Because as Maddox looked at Hank’s pictures again, showing the handsome man he’d grown into over the past fourteen years since Maddox had last seen him, he realized how much of Hank’s life he’d missed. He wasn’t at the man’s wedding—

Well, if there’d been a wedding. Maybe there hadn’t been.

He hadn’t made a better effort to stay in touch with the man who’d been his best fucking friend.

The love of my life.

Then again, in some ways it had been easier to let their relationship naturally fade away, hadn’t it? It meant he hadn’t had to make an official acknowledgement in his brain that it was over, that there would never be anything between them other than friendship.

No reason to finally accept in his brain that his darkest and most fervent fantasies had no hope whatsoever of coming true.

Except as he thought back to his fairly dismal romantic track record, he realized he’d never truly felt about anyone the way he’d felt about Hank. Especially not Kelly, who’d been the closest he’d ever come to settling down, before she showed her true colors and nuked his world.

Didn’t that say…something?

He’d fucked blue-eyed guys before and pretended they were his Hank.