Evan stood next to him and watched the room. Two men at a table near the stage had a dancer between them, arms draped over their shoulders, all three of them laughing. A couple at the far end of the bar were pressed together so tightly that Evan couldn’t tell where one man’s shirt ended and the other’s began. Nobody was looking at Evan. Nobody cared that he was here. The anonymity of it loosened something in his shoulders that he hadn’t realized was clenched.
Finn handed him the whiskey. Their fingers touched on the glass and Evan’s skin registered it like a static shock, the contact rippling up through his wrist into his forearm.
“You’re doing the thing with your hand.”
Evan looked down. His free hand was gripping his own thigh. He released it.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re standing like you’re at a compliance meeting.” Finn took a sip of his whiskey and leaned against the bar, his hip cocked, his body angled toward Evan. The button-down pulled across his chest. “Nobody here gives a shit who you are.”
That was the thing. Evan took a drink and let the whiskey burn a path down to his stomach and stood in a room full of men who did not care that he was the coach’s son or the director of hockey operations or thirty-eight years old. They saw two men at a bar. That was all.
He took another drink.
“Better,” Finn said.
“Shut up.”
Finn grinned, and Evan’s chest did something involuntary.
They found a table near the back and Finn narrated the room, his mouth close to Evan’s ear over the music, his breath catching the skin below Evan’s earlobe. The dancer on stage was new, Finn said, replacing a guy named Derek who’d moved to Chicago. The DJ was good but played too much house. The bouncer by the back hallway had once arm-wrestled Finn and lost, which Finn brought up every time he was here and which the bouncer confirmed with a grudging nod when Finn caught his eye.
A dancer stopped at their table. Mid-twenties, lean, dark-skinned, in black briefs and nothing else. He moved with the easy confidence of someone who knew exactly what he wasselling, and he leaned in toward Finn with the familiarity of a regular.
“Holloway. Been a minute.”
“Been busy.” Finn nodded at Evan. “This is Evan.”
The dancer turned his attention to Evan. His eyes moved over Evan’s face, his shoulders, his hands on the table, the space between his body and Finn’s. He seemed to take in the full picture in about two seconds.
“First time?”
“Is it that obvious?”
The dancer smiled. “Little bit.” He braced one hand on the back of Finn’s chair, rolled his body once, slow, the muscles of his stomach catching the colored light. A preview. “You want a dance?”
Finn looked at Evan. Evan looked at the dancer’s body and then at Finn’s face and said, “Yeah.”
The dancer moved between them, his attention shifting from one to the other, reading what they responded to. He worked close to Finn first, his hips rolling in time with the bass, then shifted to Evan, one hand on the back of Evan’s chair, his body near enough that Evan could feel the heat coming off his skin. The music was loud and the table was half-hidden by the crowd and it was nothing like anywhere Evan had been in his life.
The dancer leaned in close to Evan’s ear. “You want to go to the back? More private.”
Evan’s mouth went dry. He looked at Finn. Finn raised one eyebrow, took a sip of his whiskey, and didn’t say a word. The decision was Evan’s. All of it.
“Yeah,” Evan said. “Let’s go.”
The dancer led them down a corridor past the bouncer, who nodded at Finn without a word. The hallway was narrow, the bass muffled through the walls, a row of curtained-off rooms on either side. The dancer pulled back a curtain at the end andgestured them in. A couch along the back wall, low lighting, the music filtered and distant. The curtain fell shut behind them and the noise from the main floor dropped to a pulse.
Evan sat on the couch. Finn sat next to him, close enough that their thighs pressed together. The dancer stood in front of them and rolled his shoulders back, a professional reset, the social mode shifting into performance.
“I’ll take care of you,” he said, and began to move.
He was good. Evan could appreciate that objectively. He had control of his body and understood rhythm and proximity, how close was close enough. He moved between them, around them, his body a fluid composition of muscle and shadow, and there were moments where his attention landed on Evan with an intensity that was clearly practiced but no less effective for it.
But Evan’s eyes kept going to Finn.
Finn was watching the dancer with easy appreciation, his whiskey balanced on his knee, his body relaxed against the couch. Then his gaze shifted to Evan. Caught him looking. His mouth curved and he didn’t look away.
