“Yeah, well next time you decide to think, don’t,” he scolded me. “Losing you sucked, but not knowing anything about what happened or where you’d gone nearly killed me. I don’t want to make you feel bad, but it really fucked me up for a long time.”
Fuck. Hearing how I’d hurt him felt like a knife twisting in my chest.
“Let me make it up to you?” There was nothing I could do to fix our past, but I wasn’t leaving town without at least trying to earn a second chance with him.
Over the past decade, Tyler never left my mind. The night we’d first kissed, I hadn’t realized how deep my feelings for him ran. It was years later when I admitted to myself that the feeling of my heart being ripped out of my chest when we moved was because I loved him, not like a brother, but like a piece of myself. And ever since then, I’d felt his absence but was never strong enough to fix it.
I turned, draping a leg over Tyler’s, resting a hand on his hip. “I don’t deserve anything from you after the way I left, but I miss you, Ty. Not my fishing buddy or the guy I dreamed up crazy bike stunts with, but you, the person. You made me want to be more than I thought I could be, and when I was with you, the bullshit at home never mattered.”
“Owen.” Tyler’s voice caught on the single word. He sniffled, and when I dared to look up at him, his eyes were glassy. He swallowed hard, shaking his head. “I don’t know if that’s smart.”
“Who in the hell cares if it’s the smart thing to do,” I argued. “If you don’t want me, tell me. But last night you begged me to not control myself around you. You didn’t want to hear my apology for crossing the line and kissing you. I’m not good with mixed messages. Figure out if you want me to push you or walk away, and then tell me.”
I stood, needing to put some space between us. And I wanted Tyler to think about what I had to say without me being right there to confuse him. “I’m not going to beg you to love me, but know I never stopped loving you. Being here, running into you again, it feels like we were meant to be. Think about that. Decide what you want, and then let me know. If it’s before the end of the weekend, great. If it’s months down the road, I’ve waited this long, I can wait longer.”
“You shouldn’t have to wait for me but I’m not sure I’m ready to jump into something blindly,” Tyler countered. “I’m sorry if it’s hard for me to believe you’re not going to ghost me again. I wanted to hate you for a long time, but all that did was make me a bitter person who couldn’t trust anyone to not leave me once they found out how I felt about them.”
This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have while looming over Tyler. I crouched so I was on his level, resting my hand on his shoulder for balance. “Give me this chance, and I promise I’ll bust my ass every damn day to prove that you’ve always been the man I wished I could be with. I don’t want to waste this second chance with you. I can’t walk away without knowing I did everything in my power to show you how special you are to me.”
“Okay.” He wasn’t looking at me, and his voice was so soft I almost thought I’d imagined his agreement.
My heart raced and my legs shook, threatening to come out from under me. I slid a finger under his chin, turning his face toward mine. “Thank you. I won’t do you wrong this time. No matter what happens, I promise I’ll talk to you.”
Before he could second guess his decision, I pressed my lips to his. It was supposed to be a chaste kiss, a promise of more to come when we could steal some time alone without the threat of someone catching us if they walked to the back of the park. But Tyler obviously had other thoughts. He shoved me onto my ass and straddled my legs. I gasped, and he took my parted lips as an invitation to deepen the kiss. He tasted like cinnamon sugar, throwing my mind back to that first kiss.
I wrapped my arms around his waist, wishing I could do everything I wanted as he ground his body against mine. Something had snapped inside of him, and it was on me to be the voice of reason before we wound up stripping one another naked to relieve the sexual tension that felt like it had been building most of our lives. “Ty, we can’t do this here.”
“Fuck, you’re right.” Tyler tried wiggling away. I dug my fingers into his hips to keep him close. We were sheltered by the overgrown grasses, and the festival was far enough away it was easy to forget there was anyone else in the park. “What are you doing to me, Owen? Why can’t I keep my head together when you’re around?”
“Maybe it’s because you know you’re safe with me,” I suggested. It was a foolish suggestion so soon after he admitted the pain I’d caused him, but beneath it all, I liked to think it was true. I’d been the one person who never judged Tyler and supported him in everything he wanted to do. “Come back to my room tonight and we won’t have to worry about interruptions.”
“I shouldn’t…” Tyler scrubbed a hand over his face before sucking his bottom lip between his teeth.
“Are you saying that because you don’t want to or because you’re scared?” I challenged. We probably looked ridiculous, sitting on the pier with our legs wrapped around one another, but I didn’t care. This was as far away as I was willing to let Tyler go. We had limited time together and I wanted to savor every second.
Tyler stared blankly over my shoulder. “It’s not that I don’t want to.”
“Then let me take care of you.” I cradled the back of his neck, massaging gently. The moan that escaped Tyler’s lips had my dick throbbing. Spending the rest of the evening with a raging case of blue balls was going to suck, but with any luck, the release later tonight would be explosive. “It’s way too soon for me to tell you what you mean to me, and you wouldn’t believe me if I did. But let me show you.”
This was the first time I’d begged someone to be with me. There was no one else who’d ever be worth this level of effort, but there were no limits when it came to him.
“Yeah, okay.” It wasn’t the excited response I’d hoped for, but it was better than him telling me to shove it up my ass. “I’m not going to be much good for anything, but it beats heading to Michael’s.”
“I promise, I won’t keep you up late. Hell, I don’t care if we sit and talk until one of us passes out. It’s about spending time together for me.”
Tyler cracked the faintest hint of a smile. He wrapped his fingers around the railing and pulled himself up. He stepped in, pausing as if he wasn’t sure the protocol here. I wasn’t sure there was a guidebook for how to act when you’d just agreed to go to an old friend’s hotel room for the night.
I closed the distance between us, sliding my hand around to the small of Tyler’s back. “It’s going to be fine, Ty. Don’t overthink this before tonight.”
“No promises.” He started walking next to me. It took every bit of self-restraint I could muster to keep from taking his hand when our fingers brushed against one another. I pretended it didn’t hurt when he put more distance between us as we neared where the next band was unloading. They spotted me and called out my name. “I guess you need to get back in there. We’ll meet up later, okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll be the geek at the sound board,” I joked, needing something to lighten the tension building between us. He walked ahead as I turned to join the band. A pit formed in my stomach, wishing we didn’t have responsibilities to attend to.
“Hey, Tyler,” I called out. He stilled, not turning back to me right away. When he glanced over his shoulder, I flashed a quick smile. “I meant what I said earlier. Don’t let your head get the best of you.”
“Yeah, same to you.” He waved, and I watched him disappear into the crowd.
One of the guys hollered my name again, drawing my attention away from Tyler’s retreating form. I shook my head, trying to remember I had a job to do. Just a few more hours, and then we’d see if it was possible to fix the mistakes of the past.
