Lane glowered. “Maybe.”
“Maybe for anyone else,” Ramsey said flatly. “Nate’ll be down shortly.”
“Nate’s here,” the man himself said a moment later as he rounded the corner and leaned against the counter. “What’s the emergency, dude?”
Lane opened his mouth and snapped it shut. It wasn’t really anemergency. But then if it wasn’t, why had he lain awake for hours, replaying what Trevor had said to him, and then his own piss-poor response? If it wasn’t an emergency, why had he finally given up the idea of sleep and driven here, panicked and euphoric in equal measures?
“Turns out that Trevor’s not straight,” he said. “Nobody else knows, but he told me. I know I should keep it to myself . . . but I’m kinda freaking out.”
Freaking out was an understatement, honestly. Trevor had told him last night, and yet saying it,admitting it out loudnot just in his own fucking head, hit him in a whole different way. Lane slumped down onto a barstool, apparently past the point where he wasn’t going to let this fuck him up.
No question, it was fucking him up.
“Well, duh,” Ramsey said, from his spot over by the coffee machine. He finished tamping down something and pushed it with some force into the machine. “I can’t have this conversation without a whole lot of fucking caffeine,” he muttered under his breath.
“Espresso?” Lane asked hopefully.
Ramsey rolled his eyes. “Shows up at fucking dawn on New Year’s Day. Pounding on the fucking door with news that’s only news tohim. And then he wants coffee.”
Nate crowded into Ramsey’s space, winding his arms around Ramsey’s waist, kissing his neck. Lane watched it happen, thinking stupidly of howhemight’ve started this morning if he’d been able to say something other thanuhandumto Trevor.
“Baby, I’m sorry,” Nate murmured, the words just barely audible to Lane. “You gonna make us all coffee? It kinda seems like Lane needs it.”
But no, it didn’t matter if he’d gotten something out of his uncooperative mouth, the idea was still catastrophic. Even if Trevor wanted it, which there was no guarantee he did. He’d probably only told Lane because Lane was gay, not because he wanted Lane.
That would be insane.
“He fucking does,” Ramsey complained. “Showing up at six a.m. and demanding to talk to you.”
“I’ll make it up to you later,” Nate promised. Ramsey shot him an unamused look, but Nate just laughed, clearly not worried about it.
Lane didn’t even know what that kind of trust, that kind of faith, felt like. He’d never had it. Never even had a boyfriend, because that had never felt fair, not when he was so hung up on Trevor. He turned away, eyes suddenly burning—with exhaustion, he told himself, but deep down, he knew it was something else.
Nate grabbed the milk from the fridge and, a minute later, coffee was in front of Lane, who took a grateful sip.
“So,” Nate said, slipping onto the barstool next to him, his own coffee cradled in his palms, “what happened? You guys didn’t seem too drunk when you left Vault. Did you go someplace else?”
“We didn’t get drunk and . . .” Lane swallowed hard. “Hook up. We went back to my place. Drank some Gatorade. Worked on some of Trevor’s stupid puzzle, and then he told me he wasn’t straight.”
Nate raised an eyebrow. “You did some of Trevor’s puzzle?”
“Shut up,” Lane muttered.
“So what did you say after that?” Nate asked.
God, this was the worst of it. “Nothing,” he said, staring into his coffee cup. “Absolutely fucking nothing.”
He ignored the bark of Ramsey’s laughter from the other side of the kitchen.
“Babe,” Nate chided, glancing up at his boyfriend, who was rearranging the contents of the refrigerator. “Be nice.”
“He wokeusup at fucking dawn,” Ramsey complained. “Completely destroyed my very sexy New Year’s Day wake-up plans. He deserves at least a little shit for that.”
“Wait,whatplans?” Nate asked.
Ramsey flicked a look over his shoulder as he lifted a frying pan from a drawer. “Don’t you wish you knew?”
Lane wasn’t even surprised when he felt a sharp elbow in his side. He probably deserved worse. “You owe me,” Nate muttered.
