wasn’t going to talk about it until he wanted to. Of course, that day might never come, but the man was stubborn when he wanted and could put a bull to shame with how hard-headed he could be.
“Yeah, that sounds great,” Tyler said, pocketing his phone.
Nate gave him another curious look before walking off, heading toward the entrance. Tyler wished he could have told the man how good he looked or that as shocked as he was, there was something wonderful about seeing him again after so many years. Despite how everything had ended, Nate had been Tyler’s closest friend, the rich kid who, for whatever reason, had developed a bond with one of the poorest kids at their school.
Shaking his head, he waited until he was sure Nate had got far enough away from the club before leaving. It was only as he hit the warm air of the summer night outside that he realized where he’d just run into Nate.
The sole reason Nate had been pulled from his life, sent to somewhere unknown, with both of them forbidden to contact one another, was because he and Nate had been discovered together. They hadn’t even been doing anything over the top, just kissing.
Tyler hummed, correcting himself, there might have been some hands under one another’s shirts too. But they’d been caught, and by someone who had directly reported to Nate’s father. In a matter of days, Nate had been shipped out with barely a chance to say goodbye, and all because he’d been found with another guy.
So why was he in a gay club?
Nathaniel
Not for the first time in the past ten minutes, Nathaniel found himself absentmindedly checking his phone. When he saw there were no new messages, he gave a disappointed grunt, tucked his phone away and continued staring at the book in his lap that he was attempting to read.
It had been a few days since he’d run into Tyler at Pulse, and Nathaniel had been checking his phone with a frequency that irritated him whenever he realized what he was doing. The first annoyance was because he was no schoolboy with a crush, hoping that the boy of his dreams would text him back. Secondly, this was Tyler he was thinking about, a man who had every right to want nothing to do with Nathaniel after being abandoned so swiftly.
That last thought came mainly from the part of him that hoped Tyler didn’t message him. Inviting Tyler back into his life when Nathaniel was already on probation in his father’s eyes, was inviting disaster. While he knew his father didn’t pay a lot of attention to people he thought below his standard, Nathaniel had no doubt in his mind that he would remember Tyler considering he had been the source of the original problem between them.
And now he was inviting trouble right back into his life, and eagerly at that.
“Damn it all,” he grunted, closing the book and tossing it away from him.
To his annoyance, the book hit the top of the coffee table, slid, and struck a decorative bowl. The glass container continued moving, falling off the edge of the table and slamming to the ground with a shattering crash.
“Of course,” he said, standing up.
And on cue, the doors to his room swung open, and in walked what Nathaniel could only describe as a living stereotype. Black suit, short, dark hair, an earpiece in his ear, and Nathaniel was more than sure there was a gun hidden somewhere. The only thing the man was missing was a pair of dark shades and he would have fit the stereotype of the shadowy bodyguard exactly.
“Sir, is everything alright in here?” the man asked.
Nathaniel did his best to contain his annoyance, waving him out. “It’s fine, thank you. I only broke a bowl.”
“Just had to be sure, sir.”
Nathaniel grit his teeth. “That’s fine, and I asked that you not sit outside of my door.”
“We’re only following orders.”
His father’s orders, Nathaniel corrected internally. “And you can keep an eye on me from out in the hall instead of just outside my doors. I would appreciate a measure of privacy and I promise to make quite a racket if anything should happen to me.”
The man watched him for a moment before retreating back out of his room, closing the doors behind him. Nathaniel could hear him quietly talking to his partner, a man who bore an almost identical appearance to him, save that his hair was a slightly lighter shade.