The quiet was soothing to Ollie’s scratchy soul, but the urge to fill it with something—anything—to acknowledge Shay was too strong to ignore.
His hands were still trembling. He ignored the tremors and reached for one of Shay’s hands, twining their fingers together before he could change his mind. “I’ve never told anyone that.”
Shay dragged his gaze from the ground. It was alive with emotions Ollie couldn’t quite decipher. “Why did you tell me?”
I wanted you to know.“You asked.”
“No one’s ever asked you about it before?”
“No one’s ever seen me the way you do.”
Shay seemed as though he wanted to say more, but he simply smiled and squeezed Ollie’s hand. “I see you because I want to. It’s up to you how much you show me. I’m sorry I went to Corina behind your back. I won’t do it again, I swear.”
“I don’t care if you do. Maybe it’s easier that way.”
“It’s not. I don’t want to see you through someone else’s eyes.”
Ollie still didn’t get why Shay wanted to see him at all, but he kept that to himself and checked his watch.Shit.He was supposed to have brought Shay back to the venue an hour ago. “You’re gonna be late.”
Shay grunted. “What else is new?”
But despite his nonchalance, their time really had run out—for today, at least. Ollie reluctantly got to his feet, still clutching Shay’s hand. Letting go seemed like the end of the world. What if he never got it back?
“Ollie?”
“Yeah?”
Shay chewed on his bottom lip.
Ollie rescued it from Shay’s teeth without thinking, freeing it with his thumb. He lingered there, tracking Shay’s tongue as it darted out to moisten his lips. “What is it?”
His whisper seemed to carry through the trees, unnaturally loud in the quiet park. Shay sucked in a breath and leaned into Ollie’s touch. “I want you to kiss me again.”
Another whisper. “Why?”
“Because I was drunk as fuck last time, and I need to know it was real.”
“It was real.”
“Ollie—”
Ollie cut Shay off, pressing their lips together in the kind of kiss that blew memories out of the sky. His head swam, and he gripped Shay’s jacket and then his face, hanging on for dear life as desire swept through him. It was the best kind of heat—theonlyheat Ollie could contemplate, even as it sluiced through his senses, clearing his synapses of anything that wasn’t Shay’s lips on his, Shay’s hands on his hips… anything that wasn’tShay.
It went on and on. Shay made a quiet sound—a moan, a soft gasp of pleasure—and the frigid wind that picked up around them did little to slow the stampede of sensation. Ollie’s trembling became welcome, almost addictive, and it was only the incessant buzz of his phone in his pocket that forced him to stop.
Ollie pulled back and pressed their foreheads together. “It was real.”
Chapter Ten
The lastGlasgow gigs passed in a flash. Shay closed the last show on Larry’s favourite cajon drum and gazed out at the crowd. Faces, so many faces. He couldn’t see Ollie, and Ollie hadn’t even said he was coming, but he was there. Shay felt it.
And better than that, he was waiting backstage when Shay got there, his characteristic sardonic grin firmly in place.
Shay staggered towards him, his legs shaky from jumping around like a maniac for the last two hours.
Ollie caught him and gripped his chin in his hand. “You need to eat something.”
He was right. Shay hadn’t noticed his sugars dropping, but as the adrenaline faded, so did his equilibrium.
