Bryce paced in front of him. “Can we not do this now?”
“We can wait,” Sage agreed. “But we’re not pretending it didn’t happen.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“It isn’t,” Sage argued, then shook his head. He nodded toward the hall. “Go to sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Bryce stood another second, then he spun on his heel, walked down the hall, and shut his door. Quiet settled again, and Sage stood there until the tightness in his chest eased. It didn’t go away, but it did ease.
He checked the windows, put some of the bottles they’d used by the sink, and straightened things that were already straight. His head didn’t clear. The details got sharper instead. Bryce’s hand steadying the bottle earlier, the small crease he got when he focused, the way he looked right at people when they talked. None of that was new. The new part was what it felt like now. How it made Sage feel inside.
He filled a glass and drank water he didn’t want. The cold did nothing to help. His hand shook once when he put the glass down. He made a fist and pressed his knuckles to the counteruntil it stopped. Closing his eyes, he counted to ten and then opened them.
A door somewhere down the hall rattled. Not Bryce’s. A neighbor. Sage realized he’d been listening for Bryce and didn’t love that about himself. He took the trash out to the stairwell and stood in the cold for a minute. When he went back inside, he left the hall lamp on and turned the living room one off. He stood at the edge of it and told himself the only things he knew for sure: he’d wanted more in the closet; Bryce had too, but neither of them was ready to name it. Fine. He could live with that for a night.
He went to Bryce’s room. His hand paused on the knob, but he didn’t open the door. Instead, he knocked and waited. “You good?”
There were a few seconds of silence before Bryce answered. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” Sage said.
He went to bed and lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. Finding no answers, Sage stood and went back into the kitchen. Leaning on the counter, he closed his eyes and felt Bryce’s lips on his. “Shit.”
Chapter Seven
The room was dark except for a strip of light under the door. Bryce leaned against the door and listened to his own breathing. Far too fast, and he hadn’t run anywhere, but he felt like he had.
He pressed his palms over his eyes. It didn’t change anything. His mouth still remembered the closet. His body still remembered Sage’s hand in his hair and the steady hold at his back. For those two minutes, everything made sense. That was the problem.
“Chemical reaction,” he muttered. “Drunk. Whatever.”
He didn’t buy it. He dropped onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. He tried to picture Layla and got Sage instead. His gray eyes in the dark.Do you regret it?He hadn’t said no because saying it out loud would have changed things.
His phone buzzed under a pile of notes. He left it and told himself to calm down. He couldn’t, though. He thought about the times Sage had sat three feet away and made the room feel comfortable. He should have noticed that before tonight. Hethought about Sage’s palm at his spine and had to roll onto his stomach and breathe into the pillow until the heat in him settled.
Nine minutes. He counted them. Then he stood. Lying there wasn’t helping and leaving Sage to carry it alone felt worse than the confusion in his head.
“Test the hypothesis,” he murmured.
He opened his bedroom door quietly. The apartment was quiet, and the living room was dim. The lamp in the hall threw a warm half-circle across the floor. Sage stood at the counter with his hands braced like he needed it to hold him up.
“Hey,” Bryce said.
Sage looked over, and Bryce saw the way his body stiffened. “Hey.”
Bryce shoved his hands into his pockets so he wouldn’t reach without asking and decided to ignore the fact he wanted to reach for Sage. “I shouldn’t have walked off.”
“Probably not,” Sage agreed.
“I’m not good at this.”
Sage exhaled heavily. “Me either.”
They stared at each other across their own living room like it wasn’t theirs, the air thick with tension. Bryce licked his lips and looked away, then ran a hand over his face. “When I said it was nothing,” Bryce tried. “I didn’t mean… I didn’t mean that.” He shook his head. “I’m saying this wrong.”
Sage waited. He was good at that. It made Bryce want to fill the silence. “Bryce.” Sage whispered his name.
“It didn’t feel like a joke,” Bryce murmured.
