“Okay, hunk.” She kisses my cheek and hops down from the counter. After a sidelong glance at Joss, she disappears and the mother hen inmefollows her to the door. I peer out at the bar. It’s Sunday afternoon and the place is kicking, patrons spilling out onto the sidewalk. You’d think that would mean there were less inside, but no. The bar is packed, blocking my escape route.Goddamn it.There’s a reason I don’t hang out downstairs on weekends, and I’m looking at it. A thousand—in my head, I know it isn’t literal—pairs of eyes to get past. A thousand bodies. The bar is dark too, even in daylight, and the furniture has a natural smoke scent. It’s nothing like a burning car, but somehow it’s still triggery as fuck to me.
“Hey.” Joss comes up behind me. For the first time since we kissed in the woods, he lays a deliberate hand on me. On my shoulder. “Sorry if I blew up in your face. My brain feels like Heathrow airport today.”
I absorb his touch. Turn and let his hand slide down my bicep.
It comes to rest on my forearm, and I like that. He feels like a friend and the rest of it doesn’t matter.
Not that I mind the rest of it. Joss called it a struggle, but I’m not struggling with my sexuality. It’s just different from what I thought it was all these years. What I assumed. It’sJossthat quickens my fuckin’ pulse. I don’t care about the semantics, and I’m distantly aware that I’m lucky in that respect. But I haven’t felt lucky for a long time, so it’s an alien good fortune to accept.
“Hey.” Joss waves a hand in my face. “I’msorry.”
“What for?”
“Are you being nice or absent?”
“Absent, probably. But you don’t need to apologize for shouting at yourself.”
Joss laughs, but his face is complicated right now. Guilt. Self-loathing. Defiance. All mixed in with the dry humor I’ve come to crave from him when he’s this close to me. “I’m glad you see it that way. Last person I lived with ran home to their mum every time I raised my fucking voice, and it gave me a complex.”
“A guilt complex?”
“Sometimes. I paid two thirds of the rent to make up for it.”
“You got swindled, bro. No one should pay a premium for being different.”
“Where’ve you been all my life, eh?”
Up a mountain. In a helicopter. Crying on my neighbor’s couch. Where’shebeen? I want to know.
I want to know itall.
Joss is still holding my arm. He has long fingers covered in scars—burns and knife nicks. And knuckles that have seen too many fights. With walls or faces, I can’t tell, but this close to him, my brain lacks the buoyancy to think my way through it.
I wet my lips. Joss’s gaze drops to my mouth before he blinks hard. “Whether I was shouting at you or not, I’m still sorry. I know sudden noises make you jump.”
“I wish you didn’t know that.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to live without tripping over my own feet every time a car backfires.”
“Cars do that around here?”
“Bet Tanner’s Jeep does. Piece of shit.”
“You really don’t like that car.”
“I—"
The kitchen door opens. Joss’s hand falls from me as Tanner shoulders his way through it, Jax a heartbeat behind him. He steps away before I can tell him that I likehim.
Tanner tugs me out of the kitchen. His dark eyes quickly find mine, concern weighing them down. But for once it’s unwarranted. He’s the one who can’t handle blood and guts anymore. We’re from the same club, but our stories are different. “Thanks for cleaning Molly up.”
I lean against the wall, the crowded bar already blocking my fuckin’ throat. Telltale heat flaring in my chest. “It’s no thing. I was here. She okay?”
He nods. “Think so. I’ll check on her later.”
“You’re not working tonight.”
