“Yeah,” he said. “Just… processing.”
A pause.
“You didn’t look uncomfortable,” Logan added quietly.
Tommy hesitated. Not because he didn’t know the answer, but because he did.
Growing up, he’d always suspected he might have had a crush on Chase. Who wouldn’t have? And beneath the shock lingered a quieter truth. Chase had made him feel startlingly present, fully inside the moment in a way he hadn’t expected.
“No,” Tommy admitted softly. “I wasn’t.”
Logan hummed behind him, absorbing that without tension.
“Come on,” Logan said after a moment. “Let’s shower. We need one.”
He pulled Tommy closer as they stood, easy and familiar.
Tommy leaned into Logan’s warmth, legs shaky, realizing the night hadn’t complicated what they had it had simply revealed how much more there might be.
Logan’s arm tightened around him, and Tommy understood he wasn’t losing anything at all.
He was discovering something new with the person he already loved.
Chapter Four
Chase
Chase knew he needed to get off the apps.
As far as anonymous encounters went, tonight could have been worse, but random connections had never really been his thing.
He didn’t breathe properly until the hotel door closed behind him.
The hallway felt too quiet after the warmth of the room, the patterned carpet stretching endlessly in both directions as if giving him space to reconsider every decision that had led him there.
He walked fast at first.
Not running. Just… leaving.
By the time he reached the elevator, his pulse was still uneven, adrenaline humming under his skin in a way he couldn’t quite shake.
The doors slid open.
Empty.
Good.
He stepped inside and stared at his reflection in the mirrored wall.
His hair was a mess. Shirt half-buttoned. Expression somewhere between stunned and unsettled.
“Jesus,” he muttered under his breath.
The elevator hummed downward.
He replayed the moment over and over , the turn of Tommy’s head, recognition landing all at once, the way the air in the room had shifted without anyone raising their voice.
Tommy.
