Oh God.
Might have actually happened, too.
I couldn’t breathe. No, I was breathing too fast. I couldn’t tell which and it was probably both, but either way, there were definitely breathing issues happening.
The cold, dead flutters inside me weren’t the only things in danger of asphyxiating this morning.
“Whoa, babe,” Gage said as I hit the floor, leaning over the edge of the bed and frowning down at me with a look of concern.
He reached out a hand to help me back up, because of course he did. He was amazing. Always there for me. Always helping. Always taking care of me. Always—
Wait. No. I couldn’t spend time swooning over Gage’s total Gagefulness right now, because… because…
Babe.
Babe?
Had he really just said that, and not called me Noe or dimples or goofball or bro?
Oh God. He… hehad.
I scrambled backward again, luckily unable to fall off the floor because it was afloor, thank you very much, and frantically felt around my neck since I couldn’t actually check it visually to see if my fears were justified or not. (A poor design choice for the whole neck thing, in my opinion, not that that was actually relevant at the moment.)
My fingers touched something.
Oshit. That “something,” on the other hand, wasveryrelevant at the moment, and it meant that the answer was yes, my fears were totally justifiable. Justified in the extreme. Justiconfirmed.
I had a collar on.
Aslavecollar.
Because… because I’d lost at poker and Gage had won me and everything I sort of remembered but had been totally prepared to write off as a super-hot, never-to-be-disclosed, wet-and-dirty-and-oh-so-delicious dream must haveactually happened, and I’d…
I’dlikedit.
So much.
Better than anything ever.
I whimpered, staring up helplessly at my hopefully-not-soon-to-be-ex-best-friend.
“Noah?”
I shook my head in denial, squeezing my eyes closed to block out reality as I hyperventilated my way toward total panic.
Spoiler: I’d already arrived.
Spoiler, the Sequel: blocking out reality didn’t work, because the reality was that I knew for sure Gage wasn’t gay. And I wasn’t gay, either… probably. Well, maybe. But that was a thought I’d been ignoring for long enough that mid-freak-out didn’t seem like the right time to suddenly shine a spotlight on it, becausethe pointwas that if neither one of us was gay and we’d touched each other’s dicks in a drunken bit of… of drunkenness, then best case scenario was that Gage wouldn’t trust me not to molest him in the future and might actually start walking around our dorm room with more clothes on than he usually did and thus deprive me of one of life’s most perfect viewing pleasures.
Worstcase—and I honestly wasn’t sure I could handle worst case—was that my best friend in the entire world… wouldn’t be anymore.
Oh God.
My vision started going black, and I forced myself to suck in a strangled breath.
It wasn’t that Gage was homophobic, because I was pretty sure he wasn’t, but there were still the things people were okay with forotherpeople, versus the things they were okay with—or totallynotokay with—for themselves.
Honestly, I didn’t know which version of probably-not-homophobic Gage might be. But much more relevant, urgent, and anxiety-inducing, Ididknow that he definitely wasn’t into guys, andIwas a guy. He also wasn’t into having sex with the same person for very long, and nowwe’dhad sex… ish. And, above and beyond all that, he also wasn’t into… attachments. Of the romantic variety, I mean.
