“Didn’t you get the answer to that earlier?” Matt asked, and had the enjoyable and, he suspected, rare experience of seeing Jesse Turner blush.
JESSE
“Hey, Jesse!”
Jesse didn’t think anyone had ever looked as genuinely pleased to see him as Tristan did.
Tristan and Bryce had come into the kitchen, where Matt and Jesse were having another coffee. They were sitting next to one another, though there was less touching than before and no kissing, because Jason was busy cooking. That hadn’t stopped Matt’s fingers sliding against his as he’d passed him the sugar bowl. Hadn’tstopped Jesse seeing the smile in Matt’s eyes, and wanting warm things, impossible things.
“Good day?” Tristan asked. “What’d you get up to? Think we could swing by Missy’s pen again?”
The questions came fast enough to make Jesse’s head spin.
“Yeah,” he said, grabbing onto the easiest one. “You want us to put the horses up for the night while we’re there?” he asked Matt.
Matt nodded, but absently. For the first time all afternoon, his attention wasn’t on Jesse. It was on Bryce.
Bryce held Matt’s gaze, a world of meaning in his expression, and Jesse wasn’t part of whatever silent communication thing they had going on. He set his jaw. Didn’t matter.
Following Tristan out the door, Jesse got him to sit down on one of the wooden benches under the tree. To his surprise, Tristan had evidently paid attention to the previous day’s lesson—he calmed his breathing and his body within a couple of minutes.
Jesse would need to learn not to underestimate Tristan just because he talked a lot. The stream of consciousness from his mouth should have been a clue. His topics jumped all over the place, but there was always a thread tying them together—Tristan’s brain simply moved too fast for Jesse to keep up.
They walked together up to the barn, and Jesse tried hard not to sink into this. Not to feel how it filled a need he didn’t want to have. It was a dangerous need, to believe he could sit with someone, talking about horses and think they wanted him here. None of it would last. Look at how quickly Matt’s attention had turned away from him.
Wanting wasn’t the same as having. He’d forgotten that earlier, but he remembered it now.
Chapter Eighteen
MATT
“You got something to tell me?” Bryce asked, closing the door to Matt’s den behind him.
Matt was pouring the whiskey. It would put off the instant when he had to answer Bryce’s question-that-wasn’t-really-a-question. Bryce had known him too long and too well.
Bryce took the filled glass and sat down with a slight groan, stretching out his legs in front of him. Matt folded into his chair and sipped his whiskey, relishing the burn.
“Anything I need to know about at work?” he asked.
Bryce shook his head, frustration in his eyes. “You’ve missed nothing. What I want to know is what the hell’s going on? I thought Jesse was just staying one night—hell, from the way he’s been talking, I thought he was leaving at least twice by now—but he’s still here, your scent’s all over him, and his—”
“Enough.” There was a weariness to Matt’s word, but it had the force of an alpha behind it.Bryce shut up.
“Maybe we just fucked,” Matt said.
“Leaving aside the fact you don’t ‘just fuck,’ not any longer, the fact you said ‘maybe’ has me questioning that statement.”
Anyone else, Matt could intimidate into shutting up. But although Bryce would submit to him, he never let things go completely.
If he told Bryce they were mates… The weight of the entire mess was suddenly back on his shoulders. He’d done so well not thinking about it this afternoon. He’d lost himself in Jesse, in the pleasure of being with him, and hadn’t allowed himself to think what that meant. But now Jesse wasn’t here, and Bryce was asking questions.
“He’s my mate.”
He hadn’t intended to say it, but if he couldn’t trust Bryce to understand, he was truly alone.
Bryce’s face paled as he stared at Matt. “No. No way.” His fingers spasmed around his glass as he hauled in a painful-sounding breath, his throat working. After a frozen moment, he ran his hand down his face, hiding his expression.
Then he thrust up from his chair and strode over to the window, looking out at the land they’d bought together, the home they’d built together. He said nothing for a long time.
