He checked the photo. Jace looked surprised, but that worked just fine. It was blurry, but that was also fine. It didn’t look staged. It looked like a captured moment. Authentic. Like they really were just documenting their life as it happened.
Jace had gone silent, so Noah didn’t even bother showing him the photo. He understood how uncomfortable this was for Jace, and he was grateful for everything he’d done so far. Noah didn’t feel like he deserved a man like Jace, even as a best friend.
He uploaded the photo to his own Facebook account. Thinking of a caption made him pause, but then he realized that the truth would be the best thing.
I love this man, he typed. His stomach swooped as he hit post. While he knew it was true, he’d never said it out loud before. Or typed it online, which was more or less the same thing.
Noah knew his mom would see it, but it wasn’t the first time he’d posted a drunken selfie like this, potentially with a stranger. It would only have significance to people who knew who Jace was.
He would eventually have to explain about his marriage to her, but today wasn’t that day. He could worry about it later.
They couldn’t fight Rafe directly, which he knew would bother Jace. Jace was the kind of man who liked to be told what the problem was and how to solve it, and be allowed to do that. That was why he made such a good nurse. This wasn’t that kind of problem, though.
“You wanna go home?” Jace asked, whispering close to Noah’s ear. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, his body responding to it with anticipation. Noah knew intellectually that Jace wasn’t about to kiss his neck, but he expected it instinctively anyway.
He was ready to go home, regardless. Between the game and Rafe coming back to haunt them, Noah was exhausted and wanted to curl up in bed until the morning.
“Yeah,” Noah said, draining the remainder of his beer. “Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter Eighteen
When he’d suggested kissing Noah, Jace had thought it was the perfect plan. He’d imagined he could put so much feeling into it that Noah would realize he meant it, and they wouldn't have to have any awkward conversations.
Then Noah had kissed him on the cheek instead. That had put a dent in Jace’s master strategy.
Now that he knew what he wanted, though, he’d have to act on it. Patience had never been Jace’s top skill, and while Rafe resurfacing had probably stopped Noah from potentially running back to Joe, he couldn’t get the thought out of his head.
He wanted to kiss Noah, for real. The whole drive home, that was all he could think about.
Noah had laughed at the idea of being scary to approach, but there was so much at stake here. They lived together. They had a great, functional relationship that allowed them both to have comfortable, productive lives.
Jace didn’t want to ruin that. The thought that they might lose the great thing they had tied his stomach up in knots.
But not knowing whether he was missing out on having something even better was killing him, too. Noah could so easily have been his soul mate. Jace wasn’t sure he believed in that kind of thing, but he’d never connected to anyone else the way he did to Noah. It had taken him too long to see it, because he’d been convinced until recently that he wasn’t interested in guys.
Jace was learning a lot of things about himself, lately. One of them was that he maybe didn’t know as much about his own sexuality as he thought he did. Brian said he could be bi, that liking just one guy was enough to qualify, and Jace was starting to believe he was right.
It didn’t quite make sense to him—none of this did, not yet—but it made way more sense than trying to tell himself he was one-hundred-percent straight. He obviously wasn’t. He just hadn’t met the guy he’d go so far as questioning his straightness for until he’d met Noah. Until he’d beenmarriedto him, until he’d had to kiss him and start sharing a life with him.
He really, really wanted to kiss Noah again.
“You’re very quiet,” Noah said on the way up to their apartment.
“Hmm?” Jace glanced over at him. “Uh. Tired, I guess,” he lied. Now wasn’t the moment. Noah was pissed about Rafe, exhausted from the game, and probably not in the mood to deal with Jace’s self-discovery crap.
“Me too,” Noah said, obviously buying the lie. He must have been tired if Jace could fool him. “It was a good game, right?”
“Yeah, it was. Joe seems nice.”
Jace could have kicked his own ass for bringing Joe up. He didn’t want Noah thinking about him. He didn’t want to lose Noah at the last minute, just when he’d figured out his feelings.
“He’s… okay. An acquired taste. You don’t have to pretend to like him.”
Jace didn’t like him, but he did seem nice. It sounded as though Noah’s feelings were more mixed, though, which was a relief. Noah didn’t sound like he was angling to get to see Joe on the side, which Jace had been worried about.
“I don’t wanna be rude about your ex. You picked him at one point, so you must have seen something in him.”
Why wasn’t he changing the subject? Why was he trying to sing Joe’s virtues to Noah?
