“Neither did you.”
“Yeah,” Ben said quietly. “I know.”
“Oh?” This was news. This was a change. This was…
This was hope.
“I needed to work through it, and don’t take this the wrong way, but your kid really did a number on me,” Ben said with a half-laugh.
“I know.”
“So much of the reason I didn’t want anything serious with you in the first place was because of the way he made me feel. But after a while, I realized that I was thinking about it all wrong. That I deserved to be with you if that was what I wanted,” Ben said.
Thomas fisted his hands together in his lap and dared a glance up at Ben, who was staring at the pothos on the opposite wall.
“It’s silly that he’s fucked me up the way he has.”
“It’s not silly,” Thomas said. He looked down at his knuckles. The scrapes from the brick wall of the restaurant had long since faded, their marks superficial compared to the wound Ben’s absence had left on his heart.
Ben didn’t say anything for a while, and Thomas could barely manage a breath. The couch creaked, and Ben shifted, turning his knees inward toward Thomas’s legs.
“I missed you,” Ben whispered. “Imissyou.”
“I’m right here.”
“Are you?”
Thomas blinked quickly and caught Ben’s stare, which was now fixed solely on him. Thomas’s own focus narrowed down to nothing more than the tired loneliness in Ben’s eyes. There was more to the question and he could see the depths of the meaning in Ben’s eyes.
“It’s not too late,” he said. “You didn’t take too long. You haven’t said the wrong thing. I would keep waiting—”
Ben cut him off with a kiss, throwing himself across the couch and tackling Thomas onto his back. He brought their mouths together in a tangle of chapped lips and teeth that had him gasping for breath beneath the onslaught of Ben’s long-missed attention. He dropped one foot onto the floor, spreading his legs and making more room for Ben’s body to slot against his, and he arched upward, wrapping his arms around Ben’s back, desperate to not let him go again.
He didn’t know which answer was the one Ben needed to hear, but he was thankful he’d found it.
“How long would you have waited for me?” Ben asked, kissing the corner of his mouth, his chin, his throat.
Thomas dropped his head against the arm of the couch, giving Ben room to explore his body again. Stars danced against his ceiling and, for the first time in weeks, his cock came to life, eager for attention. It pulsed, pressing insistently against Ben’s stomach as he continued to trace his tongue along the curving slope of his neck.
“However long you asked,” he answered.
“Good.” Ben still looked tired, but something familiar sparked behind his eyes. “I need a little bit more time, though, Thomas.”
He did everything he could to school his expression, giving Ben a slow nod in answer. “How much longer?”
Ben looked over his shoulder toward the hallway that led to the bedroom. “I’m thinking about twenty seconds. That’s how long it’ll take to get into bed, right?”
CHAPTER29
BEN
Ben knew as soonas he saw Thomas’s tired and miserable face lit by the hot pink neon gelato sign that he was going to go after him. Lara essentially told him to fuck off and leave, but Thomas was quick. Ben didn’t catch up to him before reaching his apartment, but he also hadn’t run. He didn’t want to look as desperate as he felt, and when he found Thomas’s door open and his ass on the floor, something tightened in his chest that had him fearing he might be ready to throw up all over the floor. His first instinct was to reach for Thomas—it was always that. To touch him, to console him, to make things better, but that wasn’t where they were at. That wasn’t how they’d left things.
Kissing Thomas again was the biggest relief of his life, feeling Thomas’s hands and his body heat, and the hard press of his erection. He shouldn’t have assumed that Thomas would take him to bed, but he had to try. Ben was now the desperate one. Desperate to recoup the lost time and salvage things between them.
He was still looking toward the hallway when Thomas’s arms wrapped around him and, with a very ungraceful grunt, lifted him. Ben wrapped his legs around Thomas’s waist until Thomas was off the couch, well aware of how much he weighed, then he let his feet fall onto the carpet.
“You’ll hurt yourself carrying me,” he teased, grabbing Thomas’s head in his hands and kissing him again. Thomas kept his arms around his body, leaning in with a needy groan. The press of knees encouraged Ben backward, and they stumbled down the hallway like that, arms and tongues entwined.
