Page 31 of Rebound

“I’m a little…” He paused and swirled his finger near his temple, hoping it got the message across. “I drank a bit and I just want to clear my head before we…”

Thomas licked his lips and it looked utterly sinful. Ben had to have seen him lick his lips before. It had to be the alcohol talking, clouding his vision, telling him it was sexier than it had been before, that it…

No.

Nope.

Absolutely not.

“Gelato?” Thomas asked.

“Anything to settle my stomach.”

Thomas swallowed visibly, audibly, then he nodded and tipped his chin toward the corner. “Lead the way.”

“Have you been there before?”

“I haven’t lived here long,” Thomas answered, and Ben remembered his circumstances. Why Thomas was living in a city apartment and not a sprawling house in the suburbs somewhere with his loving wife and two children.

“Right.” Ben started toward the gelato shop with Thomas beside him. “So, how was your night?”

“Uneventful. Yours?”

“Dinner with some friends,” he said. “We had Japanese.”

“Sushi?”

“Ramen.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had ramen,” Thomas admitted.

Ben scoffed and stopped, grabbing Thomas’s bicep and dragging him to a halt. It wasn’t the first time he’d had his hand on Thomas’s body, but he’d never realized how muscular he was. Or maybe he had and it just hadn’t mattered.

“How have you never had ramen?”

“I mean, I’ve had the dollar stuff from the grocery store,” Thomas said. “I had a lot of that when I was younger and Dakota was a baby.”

“Dakota? Is that your son?”

“Yeah. My oldest.”

Ben flexed his fingers, tightening them around Thomas’s arm until he registered the heat radiating against his skin. He dropped his hand to his side and started to walk again, not waiting for Thomas to follow. He could or not. Ben wanted him to, but also hoped he wouldn’t.

“Real ramen isn’t anything like that shit,” he said.

Thomas chuckled and caught up to him. “I didn’t think it was.”

“You should try it sometime.”

“You’ll have to take me,” Thomas said quickly. He made a painful noise and followed up with, “Since you know where to go. Or you can just tell me.”

Ben bit the tip of his tongue between his sharpest teeth, desperate for some clarity. He knew he was riding the line of what was acceptable between them, of the things they’d agreed on. But he would be a liar if he said he didn’t want to see Thomas more than he had been. That he wanted to see Thomas differently than he had been.

“I can take you,” he said, rounding the corner with Thomas at his shoulder.

The lights of the gelato shop glowed a bright yellow and pink neon, and Thomas glanced at him, barely more than a flick of his head that Ben was aware of in his peripheral. Ben stopped in front of the store and returned Thomas’s stare. There was something there, something he was sure Thomas wanted to say, but the door to the gelato shop opened and a group of girls poured out, laughing and chattering, completely unaware of anyone else around them. Their exit jostled Ben as the girls weaved between them and around them, but Thomas held his stare and Ben returned it in kind.

He couldn’t breathe.