A Flighty Fake Boyfriend (Men of St. Nachos #2) - Z.A. Maxfield Page 0,31
and the flavor of newness and hope and wanting.
Needing more of that, I relaxed against the bench and let him lead, which he did—would have done, I thought—whether I’d yielded or not.
Perhaps that was another of Epic’s secrets. It was for damn sure I’d never foreseen this sexy, take-charge side of him. Nurturing? Yes. Dominant? I didn’t expect it.
I gripped the bench with one hand, uncertain whether I was ready for sexy Epic.
“Okay?” he asked.
“Mmhmm.”
He rubbed his nose against mine playfully. “Then why are you clenched up like an opossum.”
“Am not,” I scoffed while I tried to unclench.
“Am I moving too fast for you?”
I wanted to scoff again, but I knew how I’d sound. “No?”
“Oh my god, you’re adorable.” He stood, clasped my hand in his, and started walking while I tried to figure out what it meant that he found me adorable. He was the cute one, the young one, the one who wasn’t a workaholic with alcohol issues who was taking his first vacation in six years.
How did he keep turning things upside down for me?
We entered our suite and turned on only the most necessary of lights. I brushed my teeth while he changed into boxers and a T-shirt, then he brushed his teeth while I changed.
“You have a preference for breakfast? Do you want to eat here or go out?”
“Let’s go out.” He set his phone on the charger by the bed. “Maybe we can find someplace cool along the beach?”
“Sure.”
“Are we really not going to talk about it?”
“About what?” I stalled.
“About what just happened between us. I know you’re older, but surely you remember that kiss?”
“I remember.”
I sat on the side of the bed. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, Epic.”
“I’m in a billion-dollar luxury resort with a gay man I find super attractive. I don’t think it’s me who’s got the wrong idea.”
I grasped my knees with both hands. “I didn’t invite you here to hook up.”
“But you have to admit the idea has merit.”
I laughed. “You’re absolutely incorrigible.”
“Ryan, it’s okay if I’m not the right guy or—”
“That’s not it.”
“Or if it makes you uncomfortable. I just want you to know that I like you. I feel good about things when I’m with you. So I’d be down.”
“Just like that.” I scooted up so my back rested against the headboard.
“Exactly like that.” He knee-walked toward me but stopped when he was about a foot away. “Either way, it’s all good.”
I had to clear my throat. “I’m a little tired and a little drunk right now.”
He nodded, though I knew he saw through the lie. “Maybe you’re right. It’d be better if we were both sober.”
“Sleep well, Epic.”
“You too, Ryan.”
I lay awake long after Epic fell asleep, thinking about him.
The thing I regretted most was lost contact. Because even if hooking up was off the table for me just then, I missed the warmth of casual touch. I missed the way his back had pressed to my chest in the lounger and how he’d turned over and tucked his face into my neck. I missed holding him.
I’d gone so long without touch, Epic’s had ruined me in a single night.
He made me want.
He made me relive coffee-flavored kisses and long walks in the sunshine and someone who cared whether my ribs showed or I smoked too much. He made me miss Luis, whose lips I would swear still had a smile he shared only with me.
I relived lost days—lost dreams—with Luis, whom I’d met at an ordinary fundraiser in a posh hotel. I'd walked past him to get a drink in the bar, but I never got there. He'd grabbed my hand and simply never let go. Not until he realized there was nothing to hold on to, anyway, but by then…
By then we’d broken each other’s hearts.
When I finally drifted off, I dreamed of that hotel, and the look Luis gave me in its gilded mirrors, and the clench of his fingers around my wrist as he’d pulled me into the shadows and kissed me without introducing himself first.
I dreamed of his room, and the view, and the way we fed each other breakfast the next morning and how I’d believed I’d never be alone again.
“You feel too deeply,” he told me time and again. “You think too much.”
Whether it was my job—my windmills as he called it—or him, he was never comfortable with the way a news story or a casually caustic word from him could blow my world apart.