“You’re impossible,” he mutters, not even looking up this time. “You pick a fight with a guy who had forty pounds and six inches on you, and then use your barely-healed hand like it’s a goddamn club—”
“More like two inches, and he went down.”
“That’s not the point, George. The real question is whether you made a single responsible decision tonight—and the answer’s a hard no.” He shakes his head, reaching for the antiseptic. “And you sitting there looking stupidly pleased with yourself makes me want to pour this straight into your eye.”
“That would be unprofessional.”
He points the bottle at me like a weapon. “Don’t. Push. It.”
I press my lips together, but the smile is still winning. He leans in to do the second knuckle. I don’t flinch.
“You went there on purpose,” he says, not a question.
“Was in the area.”
Lance gives me a flat look. “What were you doing in Point Loma, G?”
“They’ve got good beer.”
He exhales loudly, already exhausted with me. “Right.”
The real answer is sitting heavy in my chest, but I go with something safer.
“Got curious how you’d handle your first date with a man,” I say, shrugging.
Lance frowns, and for once I can’t read it. Disappointment? Annoyance that I don’t trust him to figure his own shit out? Both feel like knives.
“My first date with a man,” he repeats slowly, like he’s testing how the words taste out loud.
I wait for more, but he shifts gears.
“You scared me tonight.” His voice drops. “I looked up and there you were. For a second I thought—” He stops, jaw tight. “You got hurt again.”
I try to play it light. “We’ve been in worse. No big deal.”
The split knuckles are nothing. The fucking problem was watching that drunk guy put his hands on Lance like he had any right to touch him at all.
Something in me snapped. There was no thinking, just movement. I went straight through him, and I didn’t care who got in the way. It felt too right, driving them back and putting them down, like all that pressure finally had somewhere to go.
I would’ve kept swinging until there was nothing left to swing at. But Lance stepped right in front of me, pressed up against me exactly like that night.
He was close enough that I could feel every sturdy inch of him again. Chest, hips, thighs, the full weight of his body against mine. It’s the first time since that night I had him this close, so close that I could pull him in and hold all of him.
It was driving me out of my fucking mind.
Lance finishes wrapping my hand, then stays kneeling between my legs, my battered fist still cradled in both of his. The lamplight catches the sharp line of his jaw, the faint flush still riding his cheekbones, the shirt he wore for someone else.
He looks fucking beautiful.
And another man almost took him home tonight.
“You know I can handle myself, right?” he says. “If you hadn’t shown up, I still would’ve wrecked those guys.”
I don’t answer. I just watch him.
He stands, grabs two glasses of water, and drops onto the couch beside me. Close. Our arms brush. Neither of us moves away.
Lance stares at the floor for a long beat, then says, clearing his throat, “You can probably tell that I’m…bisexual.”
