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“I don’t have all the answers,” he said, cutting me off before I could get any further. “I don’t know what this makes me, or what this makes us, or how in the hell we’re supposed to walk downstairs and eat dinner like nothin’ happened. But I know I don’t regret it. Not one bit of it.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, something between a laugh and a sob catching in my throat. “This is crazy,” I said. “This is actually crazy, West. Yesterday you lost your whole life, and today you’re standin’ here tellin’ me you might be into men too?”

“Might be?” A ghost of that easy grin flickered across his face, though there was still uncertainty underneath it. “Rhett, I just came in my own hand jerkin’ us both off against the wall. I think we’re a bit past might be.”

Despite everything, despite the terror still sitting heavy in my chest, I laughed. It came out wet and a little hysterical, but it was real. And it loosened something tight that had been wound up in me for years.

“We should probably clean up,” I said, glancing down at the mess between us. “Before Aunt Dolly comes up here lookin’ for us and finds this.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t move though, not right away. He just kept looking at me with that same soft, searching expression, like he was trying to memorize something. “Rhett?”

“Yeah?”

“I ain’t sorry,” he said again, quieter this time, like he needed me to hear it and believe it. “Whatever happens next, however scared we both are, I ain’t sorry this happened.”

I reached up and touched his face, my thumb brushing over the stubble along his jaw, and for the first time all day I let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t going to end the way I’d always feared it would.

“Me neither,” I whispered.

But in the back of my head, I couldn’t help realizing that I was at least a little sorry. Up until that moment, I’d been planning on leaving Sagebrush. I felt like I had to get out of that little town so I could be myself and live my own life. And now that I’d done this with West, admitted everything to him… Well, I couldn’t leave now, could I? Asking him to go with me felt like far too big a subject to broach tonight or anytime soon.

We finished cleaning ourselves up in silence, tucking our shirts back in and buttoning our jeans like we hadn’t done anything unexpected or out of the ordinary. My hands were still shaking a little when I grabbed a rag from the kitchenette and wiped up the cum on the floor, my mind still spinning circles around everything that had just happened and everything that hadn’t been said yet.

The plan I’d been building for the past few months, the one where I packed up what little I had left, sold off my things, and drove until Sagebrush was nothing but a smudge in my rearview mirror, felt like it belonged to somebody else now. Somebody who hadn’t just had Westley Gilderoy’s mouth on his and his hands wrapped around both our cocks at the same time. I didn’t know how to fold that plan back up and put it away without him noticing something had shifted in me.

“You’re quiet,” Westley said, watching me from across the small room, still a little flushed around the collar.

“Just thinkin’,” I said, echoing the same excuse he’d given me that morning, and I saw the way his mouth twitched like he caught the irony too.

“About?”

I hesitated, the truth sitting right there on the tip of my tongue. But it felt too big and too soon. I’d have to warm him up to the idea because now, I wanted him to go with me.

“About dinner,” I lied instead. “Dolly’s probably wonderin’ where we got off to.”

Westley studied me for a second longer than felt comfortable, like he could tell there was more sitting behind my eyes than I was letting on. But he didn’t push, same as I hadn’t pushed him all day about whatever had been eating at him since that morning. Maybe that was just how we worked, circling each other’s secrets until they came out on their own.

“Yeah,” he said finally, grabbing his hat off the hook by the door. “Let’s go eat before she sends a search party.”

I followed him down the creaking stairs, my heart still not entirely settled back into its normal rhythm, and told myself there’d be time enough later to figure out what came next. Tonight I just wanted to sit across from him in the diner and pretend, for a little while, that the whole world hadn’t just tilted sideways underneath both our feet.

The bell above the diner door jingled when we walked in, and Dolly looked up from behind the counter with a dish towel slung over her shoulder, her eyes narrowing at the both of us in that way she had that made me feel like I was fourteen years old and caught sneaking a beer from her fridge.

“Well, look who finally decided to grace me with their presence,” she said, though there wasn’t any real heat behind it. “I was about two minutes from sendin’ somebody up there to make sure you two hadn’t fallen asleep.”

“Sorry, Aunt Dolly,” I said, sliding into our usual booth before she could look at me too hard. My face still felt hot, and I was half convinced she could smell what we’d just done on us, though that was probably just my own guilt talking.

Westley sat down across from me, easy as anything, like everything was just fine. I didn’t know how he managed that, looking so calm when my hands were still trembling a little where they rested on the table.

Dolly came around with two plates of fried chicken and mashed potatoes, setting them down with a clatter before she planted a hand on her hip and studied us both a beat too long.

“Y’all look flushed,” she observed. “Both of you. It hot up in that apartment or somethin’?”

“Yes ma’am,” Westley said without missing a beat. “Ain’t got much of a breeze up there this time of evenin’.”

I nearly choked on the water I’d just picked up to drink, and had to cover it with a cough. Dolly’s eyes flicked between us, something knowing tugging at the corner of her mouth, but she didn’t press it any further. She just patted the table once and headed back toward the kitchen, humming one of her favorite country tunes under her breath.

“She knows,” I muttered once she was out of earshot.