Chapter Two

While Ollie carted the whiskey, glasses, and paper towels outside, Trevor grabbed the pizza, then followed Ollie onto the balcony. There was only a small outdoor bench—metal with a cushioned seat and back—and he put the pizza down in the middle, then looked around.

“Got a folding chair or something we can use as a table?”

“Yes. Good idea. Hold on.” Ollie put the glasses and other things on the bench, too, then disappeared into the house.

As soon as Trevor was alone, he exhaled, his entire body relaxing. He was being a selfish ass, and he knew he shouldn’t have come by, especially not without calling first.

He had a solid friendship going with Ollie, and he didn’t want to ruin it because he was acting like a schoolboy who didn’t know how to handle a crush.

But he did have a crush. And if he didn’t dial it back, he was going to ruin a friendship he truly valued.

Ollie was straight. Or if he wasn’t, he wanted to be. He’d had a lifelong crush on Nikki Stark, which everyone knew. Trevor was pretty sure he’d slept with Jamie at some point. And he knew that Ollie had been engaged to a woman named Courtney.

Straight. The guy was straight.

Even if there was a thread of queer in Ollie’s blood, he’d spent a lifetime either ignoring or suppressing it. The man was a good friend. That was all.

Trevor needed to get that through his thick head. And the sooner he did, the better.

Too bad his libido kept ignoring that very sound advice. Ollie had rung all his bells since the first time he’d met the attorney-turned-FBI-agent when their paths crossed back when poor Anne had been kidnapped. But their friendship had truly solidified not long ago at a party they’d both attended in honor of Jamie’s first starring role in Intercontinental .

By then, he’d been crushing hard, and it had only gotten more intense when Ollie had pulled him in to help on an FBI money laundering sting at the Mercury Club, a gay strip bar in LA. Trevor had wormed his way in as an actual stripper, and Ollie had posed as a customer. The operation had lasted a couple of weeks, and Trevor’d had plenty of time to watch Ollie in the audience. To see what he thought was a spark of interest in his friend’s eyes.

Maybe he’d been imagining it, but he didn’t think so. And that spark had lit a fire under his own desires, raising the heat from slow burn to full-on boil.

But real or not, Trevor knew damn well that Ollie was fighting it.

Honestly, crushing on a straight guy was a pain in the ass.

He could tell himself that forever, but it didn’t stop the tightening in his chest or the sparks of awareness that shot through him when Ollie returned carrying the folding chair. He was wearing paint-splattered jeans and a similarly stained white tee that did nothing to hide the fact that the guy was in great shape. He’d heard Jamie tease him for being skinny, but Trevor didn’t see it. Maybe before Trevor knew him, but if so, the guy had filled out. Ollie had always looked pretty damn delicious to him, with solid pecs, strong arms, and a tight ass that he really wanted to grab.

And so much for that whole dialing it back thing .

Mostly, he liked Ollie’s face. The way he smiled. The expressiveness of his eyes. Those long lashes.

Fuck. Seriously, just fuck.

“Here?” Ollie said, indicating the folding chair, and it took two solid seconds for Trevor to shift gears and figure out what he was talking about.

“As a table. Right. Perfect.”

Ollie nodded, apparently unaware that he was stirring Trevor up from nothing more than merely existing, then he opened the chair and centered it in front of the bench.

A few minutes later they were settled, drinks in the built-in cupholders, and the pizza on the chair in front of them. Their legs were stretched out, their feet propped up on the low concrete barrier into which the posts for the railing were set. Now they were kicked back, eating and talking and laughing.

It was good. Definitely good. Hell, right then he didn’t care if he never touched the man. Or, more honestly, he cared. He cared a whole lot more than he wished he did.

But he’d deal.

What choice did he have?

* * * *

“This is a stellar location,” Trevor said, then took a sip of whiskey and sighed. “I could sit here all day looking at the view.”

“I have to work hard not to,” Ollie admitted, feeling a rush of pleasure simply from the fact that Trevor liked his place. “One of these days I’m going to talk to Jackson about extending the balcony. Right now, it’s too narrow.”

As if to illustrate the point, he gestured from where they sat on the bench to where their feet were propped at the balcony’s barrier.

“I love that idea,” Trevor said. “And it shouldn’t be too hard for a guy with Jackson’s skills.” He leaned forward, his shirt untucking at the back to reveal a strip of tanned skin.

A strip that Ollie noticed, dammit.

“Sorry,” Ollie said, only then realizing that Trevor had been talking. “I missed that.”

“I said I assume you own the hillside land. Worst case, he could set a post or something, but I bet he could just extend it with a few trusses attached to the house itself.”

“Were you an architect in another life?”

“Nah, but I like working with my hands.”

“Right.” Ollie cleared his throat, deliberately not thinking about Trevor’s hands. “Leah mentioned that once.” Leah was Trevor’s roommate and another agent at Stark Security.

“My hands?” Trevor’s brows rose. “I’m flattered she noticed.”

Ollie rolled his eyes. “That you’d fixed up a house.”

“Yeah.” There was a definite chill in his voice. “That I did.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to touch a nerve.”

Trevor waved his hand, as if shooing away bad omens. “No, it’s me. Not the fondest memories.”

“Again, sorry.”

For a moment, silence hung between them. Then Trevor reached for another slice of pizza. “It was with Greg. My ex. We’d been together for just over two years when the law finally changed and we got married.”

“So fucked up that there had to be a change in the law in the first place. And now the bullshit of knowing that right might be taken away.”

“No kidding.” Trevor grimaced. “Then again, probably would have been easier if I’d never been able to marry the guy in the first place. Would’ve saved a lot of trouble on the backend.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Ollie snapped. “You loved him. You wanted to spend your life with him. It’s absurd for anyone to say you can’t, or that it’s a lesser marriage than between a man and a woman.”

“I know. Believe me, I agree. Stupid joke on my part. Marriage wasn’t the problem. Marrying Greg was.”

Ollie started to say that Trevor didn’t have to tell him any of this; it was obviously a sore subject. But at the same time, he wanted to know. Maybe that made him an asshole, but he stayed silent, taking a sip of whiskey as Trevor continued.

“Anyway, first thing we did was buy a house. Nothing says marriage like community property, right?”

“So they say.”

“Yeah, but what they don’t mention is that when community property is divided, it’s an expensive, stinking pain in the ass.”

“You got divorced.” He knew Trevor was single, so that was easy enough to figure out. “And I’m thinking it wasn’t a congenial breakup.”

“A thousand times no. It was a nightmare.”

“What happened?”

“Things seemed fine for a while. I was working at Stark International doing security. He had a job doing film restoration. We had a yard, a garden, and a dog. I thought we were happy. We were sure as hell domestic. Two years later, he left me for someone else.”

“Oh, man. I’m sorry. How did it happen? How did he meet him?”

“Him?” Trevor asked.

“They guy your husband left you for.”

“They met online. And the pronoun would be her, actually. Turns out he started trolling dating apps about two months after we moved into the house. I found out because he left the app open on his computer the same day he called from work and asked me to forward something in one of his files.”

“Oh, Trev. I’m so sorry.” Ollie’d had his share of heartbreak, but nothing like that. Nothing both out of the blue and perplexing. “You had no idea he was interested in women?”

“I knew he was bi. We’d actually spent a lot of time talking about it. Or, in retrospect, he was just paying lip service. Told me he loved me, and that was all that mattered. I believed him. I never thought—”

He broke off with a shake of his head. “Anyway, that night, I confronted him when he got home. He told me he didn’t want to be gay anymore.” Trevor said the last part with finger-quotes. “How was I supposed to argue with that?”

“Sounds like you’re better off without him.”

“Damn right.”

“But it still hurts.” Ollie knew how that was. Courtney was better off without him for sure, but Ollie knew the on-again/off-again relationship he’d put her through had hurt her, and deeply. It had taken a long time for her to finally say that they were over. Thank god she’d had the guts to. He sure hadn’t.

“Yeah, it hurt. I’d lost my mom about a month before, too. Single mom—I barely remember my dad. All I remember is him walking away from my fifth birthday party and never coming back. So, yeah, Mom was my whole world growing up. And then one day she was gone. I went into the garage to get the last of the groceries I’d picked up for her. When I left, she was telling me the plot of some soap she liked and making corn muffins to go with the chili she’d planned for dinner.” He swallowed. “When I came back, she was dead on the kitchen floor. Aneurism. The EMTs said she wouldn’t have felt a thing. I’m not sure I believe them.”

“Trevor.” Ollie put his hand on Trevor’s arm. “I’m so sorry.”

“It was hard. It still is. But it was different. She was older—she had me at forty-five—and we’d had some scares before, including a heart attack. So I’d faced it, you know? But then with Greg walking away…” He trailed off with a shake of his head. “That gutted me. I mean, shit, I even got sideswiped by panic attacks. Never expected that. Left me feeling like I wasn’t the man I thought I was, you know?”

“Yeah,” Ollie said. “I think I do. That must have been horrible.”

Trevor nodded. “It was. But the worst was that it was Greg doing this. Hurting me. We’d meant everything to each other—or at least I believed that. Isn’t that what marriage is? A statement of fidelity and togetherness?”

“I always thought so.”

“Greg didn’t. Either that or he missed the you don’t walk out on your husband day of class.” He waved the words away. “It shouldn’t still matter. I’ve been over him a long time. And yet every time I think about it, I get worked up again. It’s like the son-of-a-bitch cursed me.”

“You still have the panic attacks?”

Trevor shook his head. “Managed to work through that. A bit of counseling. A lot of talking to myself. Greg’s in the past. All of that is.”

“Relationships are hard,” Ollie said. “Especially when they’re complicated.”

Trevor turned, his eyes meeting Ollie’s. “ When they’re complicated? Come on, Ollie, when aren’t they?”

Ollie looked away, trying to ignore the uncomfortable zing of awareness that had shot all the way down to his cock. “You make a good point.”

He reached to grab another piece of pizza, then jerked back when Trevor reached for his whiskey at the same time and their hands brushed. That yank back was embarrassing enough, but what was worse was the pizza landing cheese-and-pineapple side down on his crotch.

“Oh, hell,” Trevor said, his fingers brushing Ollie’s sauce and denim-covered package as he grabbed the errant slice. And in the process making Ollie practically leap out of his skin.

Immediately, Trevor drew his hand back, leaving the pizza where it fell as he leaned back, hands up as if in surrender. “Sorry, man. You know I wasn’t trying—”

“No, I—”

“Just hang on,” Trevor said, standing. “I’ll get some paper towels.”

Ollie opened his mouth to tell Trevor to wait—that he was the ass, not the other way around. But Trevor was already gone, and Ollie was left to peel the pizza off his pants while mentally kicking himself firmly in the ass for being such a, well, ass.

All too soon, Trevor was back with the paper towels, which he held out for Ollie to take while he remained standing, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot as Ollie started to mop up the cheese, tomato sauce, and pineapple bits.

“Right. Yeah, so, I should probably go,” Trevor said.

“No, stay,” Ollie said, the words tumbling out. “It’s still early, and if you go, I’m stuck with not only pizza but cookies. I mean, how can you go without having at least one cookie with the whiskey?”

Trevor hesitated, his face a study of indecision. “It’s a nice offer, but I think we both know I should get out of here. Maybe tomorrow we can talk. But—oh, hell. I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out, and I wasn’t—”

“Dammit, Trev, do you think I’m an idiot?” The words tumbled out without Ollie thinking about them, and he wasn’t sure he could stop them even if he tried. “I didn’t freak because I thought you were making a move. I freaked because I wanted you to.”