Tanner’s grin fades. “What’s going on with you and Kai?”
I tip apple juice down my throat. It’s sweet and syrupy, but cold and wet enough that I have no complaints. When I’m done, I give Tanner a level stare. “In what sense?”
“In any sense. He’s kept everyone a mile away from him since last year, but every time I see him these days you’re together.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“I don’t mean to. I’m just curious, and I don’t want to get up in his face about it.”
“Why not?”
Tanner scans the open space around us—a concrete bay where the delivery trucks park to unload. He doesn’t want to look at me, which tells me two things:
One: he’s about to ask me an awkward-as-hell question.
Two: he knows the answer, if I give him one, is none of his fucking business.
I can’t hate him for it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Tanner, it’s that he cares. About Jax. About Molly.
About Kai.
My heart wants to give him an honest answer, but my conscience won’t play ball. Wherever Kai lands on his sexuality, it’s his to share, not mine. If he wants Tanner to know, he’ll tell him.
Or he won’t, and what we’ve shared will be ours alone.
What if I’m the only bloke he ever wants to lay hands on?
I like that thought more than I have any fucking right to. Kai is a beautiful soul, and he deserves to feel as good as he does with me every day and forever.
“Are you hooking up?”
There it is. The question Tanner’s been choking on. I suppress a sigh and set my juice bottle down. It clangs against the concrete, unnaturally loud in the heavy silence I let fall over us. “If we were,” I say eventually, “why would you want to know?”
“Because I’d be worried about Kai.”
“Why?”
Tanner grits his teeth. He hates this, but he can’t seem to stop. Hewon’tstop, until he’s said what he wants to say. “He’s fragile, dude. I don’t know how he’d deal if he got his heart stomped on top of everything else.”
“You think hooking up with me is equal to heartbreak?”
“Is that what’s happening?”
“Don’t get tricky with me, mate. That’s not what I said. I’m just curious why you think,in theory, that two blokes can’t hook up without it turning into a gigantic mess. Unless you think I’m the kind of cunt who’d fuck with someone’s head for fun.”
I speak mildly, bottling the sharp flush of anger that threatens my med-induced calm. I don’t have time to get ragey right now. Fuck, I never have time for it. Life’s too short, and I know Tanner means well. That somewhere in his complex interrogation, there’s a warning I should heed.
“I don’t think you’re any kind of asshole.” Tanner breaks the protracted silence. “I just love Kai, man. And Jax loves you.”
“You don’t love me, Tanner?”
“Not yet. I’m hoping you’ll stick around long enough that I’ll get the chance, and then this conversation won’t fucking matter.”
His concern falls into place. He’s not worried I’m no good for Kai. More that we’ll grow too close and me leaving will hurt his friend. I’m worried about that too, but like so much of my life, I’m on a train I can’t seem to get off.
Tanner gruffs out something I don’t catch, then rises and disappears inside. I don’t miss him. And I won’t when I’m gone. He’s right, we haven’t had time. But Kai has. And perhaps it’s already too late for me to abandon this place without leaving a piece of myself behind.
* * *
