“No!”

“I swear, Elliott, if you don’t give me that right now—”

“You’ll never take me alive!”

Elliott tore down the long hallway of the apartment, skidded in his socks, but managed not to hit the wall before he switched directions and ran for the living room. Aiden wasn’t so lucky, and Elliott cackled when he heard a dull smack and an oof. He pressed on mercilessly, vaulting over the back of the couch and bouncing along the cushions, his prize lifted high above his head.

“Give it back,” Aiden said, far too close behind him for comfort.

“Nuh-uh, you brought this on yourself when you left your baby photos where I could reach them.” Elliott jumped to the love seat and turned around, one hand keeping the album up by the ceiling, the other stretched in front of him, warding Aiden off as he marched closer, panic in his eyes. “Rookie mistake, buddy. I can’t not see, now that I know there’s pictures of tiny Aiden here.”

“That isn’t going to happen,” Aiden said ominously, advancing with his arms spread wide in case Elliott made a break for it. “Those pictures were put in an album instead of a frame for a reason.”

“Exactly. I’m guessing that the reason is that you were an adorably funny-looking kid before you grew into that face.” Elliott tapped his chin with a finger. “Yup, I can see it. The eyebrows, the ears, they would’ve been pretty goofy looking— Ah!”

Aiden had lunged forward and grabbed him around the waist, flipping him and dragging him down to the couch. Elliott tried to keep the book out of reach, but he was off-balance, his feet on one side of Aiden’s lap and his ass on the other, cramped in the small space between the arms of the love seat, so he cut his losses and opened it to a random page.

“Oh my god,” he said, staring at the four color photos of Aiden surrounded by his sisters, the family dog, and his parents. “I was right. You were so goofy.”

Aiden sighed and stopped reaching for the book. “Well, that’s it. The illusion is ruined. Might as well look all you want. It won’t make a difference now that you know I’m actually part troll.”

Elliott burst out laughing and pulled Aiden closer so that he could rub his face in the hollow where Aiden’s jaw met neck. He was still a little worried about being contagious, since he was only two days out of the worst of his cold, but Aiden had spent all of Saturday and this morning trying to convince him that he didn’t mind. And Elliott probably wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from nudging away that pout even if he’d still been throwing up every few hours.

“But a very cute troll,” he offered, patting Aiden’s cheeks. “I mean, that hair. It’s so fluffy, I just want to pet it.”

Aiden sighed again and took the album, flipping it to the first page. Elliott devoured every picture, smiling and cooing at hours-old Aiden in the hospital and his squished, jaundiced face, teasing him about how brave his parents must have been to take him home with them when he was clearly a changeling. He burst out in giggles multiple times at the evolution of Aiden’s hair, all the way to the end of high school, when he’d finally figured out how to make it look as attractive as the rest of him.

Elliott pointed to a picture. “And that’s Jill?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s the age difference between you?”

“Six years. And eight between her and Shannon, our older sister. Our parents insist that Jill was planned, but she counted back nine months once and she has her suspicions about their romantic second honeymoon to Paris. I try not to think about it too much.”

“Understandable. I did the math and I can never enjoy St. Patrick’s Day the same way again.” Elliott turned another page and saw a photo of Aiden and his parents, all smiling brightly. “They seem nice.”

“They are. I think I’ll keep them.”

Elliott looked back at the picture, and saw the same quirk of Aiden’s lips on his father’s face. He turned another page, and his fingers froze on a picture of a teenaged Innes, lounging on a porch with his feet propped on a playfully scowling Aiden. He stared at the photo for a long time. It was surreal to see someone he used to find so impressively larger-than-life just being a normal person who horsed around with his family.

“We were pretty close when we were younger,” Aiden said softly, and Elliott tore his eyes away from Innes’s bizarrely relaxed posture. Aiden’s eyes were unfocused even as they roamed over the picture. “There’s only eight years between us, almost like with Jill, so he felt more like an older brother than an uncle. The difference is that his parents never let him forget he was a mistake.”

Elliott winced. Regardless of Aiden’s feelings regarding Innes, it must have been hard for him to know his grandparents were so flawed. Elliott hadn’t known his grandparents, since they’d passed before he was born, one set on American soil, the other back in the old country. As a kid, he’d imagined them as smiling, wrinkled elves who would’ve given him cookies and patted him on the head, but real grandparents were just human. Some were cruel or too careless with their words.

“You aren’t close now,” Elliott said. It wasn’t a question. Aiden’s office was only one floor away from his uncle, and yet they rarely saw each other.

Aiden shook his head, his lips turning downward. “No. He’s my family, so I’ll always be loyal to him, but he became . . . cynical. Constantly being compared to my dad, being gay and aggressively out when his parents were alive to disapprove, some other stuff. It all compounded and made him harder. I think he’d rather die than feel inadequate again, so he builds himself up as this vain playboy with a mean streak that gets him what he wants. I miss him. The old him. I decided I wanted to go into the family business when I was nine years old because, at fifteen, Innes already knew that was what he wanted to do, and I wanted to be like him. My mom too, obviously, but mostly Innes. It wasn’t long after that that he really changed for the worse, but it took me a while to stop wanting to impress him, and by that time, I was already planning on law school.” Aiden shook his head, reached for the next page in the album, and started to turn it. “I’m sorry. This must be weird for you.”

Elliott blocked Aiden’s hand and the Ghost of Innes Past continued to smirk at them. “It’s fine. I figured he didn’t pop out of the womb with a sneer and a holier-than-thou attitude. It’s kind of nice to know that he got it from his tragic supervillain backstory, rather than it just coming naturally to him.”

Aiden shrugged, and his eyes sharpened. “I’m not excusing his shitty choices. My dad had the same parents he did, and he turned out fine.”

“Lucky.”

“Yeah.”

Aiden tapped a finger on the stiff page of the album. Elliott could see a question forming in the tension in his face. He was pretty sure he knew what was coming and wasn’t looking forward to answering, though he was surprised it’d taken Aiden so long to bring it up.

“Elliott, could I ask you something?”

“Yeah.” Elliott counted up to five and back down to zero in his head, his fingers twitching almost imperceptibly with each number.

“Why did you break it off with Innes?”

Elliott frowned. He’d been expecting Aiden to ask why Elliott had been with Innes in the first place. The answer to that one would’ve been easy: because Innes had been in the right place at the right time with the right tax bracket.

“Oh, that,” Elliott said, trying not to squirm in his seat. “Why do you want to know?”

“You don’t have to tell me. I just wondered, since you always seemed like you got along, up until you didn’t.”

Elliott couldn’t hold in a rough laugh. “I don’t know if we ever really got along. I didn’t like him—”

“Nobody likes him.”

“But we were compatible, mostly.”

In bed, they’d been evenly matched. On some days it was twenty percent grappling, eighty percent sex. Other days, it was closer to fifty-fifty, though it hadn’t started off that way. Innes had liked Elliott’s innocence, at the beginning, then he’d liked knowing that he’d contributed to changing Elliott’s world view and tinting it a little less rosy pink.

“But it’s true, we worked, up until we didn’t work anymore, because Innes asked for something I couldn’t give him.” Elliott felt Aiden tense beneath him, and it took him a few long seconds to realize what Aiden was thinking. “Nothing like that! God, Innes is the worst, but he didn’t pressure me into anything weird.”

Aiden’s body returned to a posture that counted as relaxed, for him. “Good. So, what did happen? If you don’t mind telling me.”

“It’s not that dramatic. Innes asked me to accompany him to a benefit at UCLA. Your family was considering setting up a scholarship fund.”

“Yeah, I’ve been informed. My mother is taking care of it, but they told us last year.” Aiden’s eyebrows crashed down in a frown. “Wait. Wouldn’t that be—”

“Awkward. Yeah. Innes asked me to go with him to this thing on school property, with the dean of my whole department in attendance. I couldn’t believe he asked me in the first place, but then he had the balls to be pissed off when I said hell no. I tried to explain that it was too close to home, but he seemed to think that there wasn’t any greater risk in that than an event somewhere else in the city.”

In retrospect, Elliott’s panic about the truth of that had made him react more strongly than usual, but Innes had still pushed his buttons.

“And that’s what it came down to,” Elliott said. “He must have known that he was asking for something I couldn’t give. He acted like he was all miffed, but he was relieved, I think.”

“Relieved?”

“It wasn’t just the school thing, to be honest,” Elliott said, watching his own fingers as they toyed with the buttons at the neck of Aiden’s soft shirt. “Our arrangement started to bore him, or at least that’s what I gathered from him trying to spice things up.”

“Do I want to know?”

Elliott snorted at the wrinkled distaste on Aiden’s face. “Probably not. It wasn’t that bad. He just started asking for things I’d already said I wasn’t interested in, and offering cash incentives so I’d change my mind. I hated that. It was like he was trying to buy more of me than I was already giving. We also started annoying the shit out of each other. He was basically finished with me, but he doesn’t like to be the first one to tap out, so he was trying to find ways to make it more exciting.”

“He hates to lose.”

“Lawyer,” Elliott teased.

Aiden smiled ruefully. “Exactly. It’s what makes the good ones great. It’s why I’m not going to be one of the Kents in Kent, Kent & Morris for at least another fifteen years.”

Elliott raised an eyebrow at him. “You don’t hate losing?”

Aiden shrugged. “Not any more than any other person does. I love to win, though. It’s what makes me work hard to get clients I can’t stand out of jail time for embezzlement they’re definitely guilty of.”

“Noble.”

Aiden rolled his eyes. “Someone has to do it. And it might as well be a guy with the track record to be able to charge them a ridiculous fee.”

Elliott laughed. “Nice. So you are a little bit noble.”

“I try.” Aiden’s smile faded, and he stared at Elliott beseechingly. “I stick to a moral code outside of work and hope that it balances out all the not-so-virtuous things.”

“I think it does,” Elliott said. “I think if you weigh it all up, you’re still a good man.”

“I hope so,” Aiden said, his eyes unfocusing. “It keeps me up some nights.”

“So, why don’t you quit?”

Elliott hadn’t meant to say it. He had some stake in hoping that Aiden stayed employed, but the blankness of Aiden’s face had made it pop out without any hope of a filter.

“I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not? You’ve already said you don’t need to work, trust-fund baby.”

Aiden shook his head, adjusting minutely in his seat. “That’s not it.”

“Then, what? What’s keeping you from throwing in the towel when it obviously makes you miserable?”

“It doesn’t make me miserable.”

“Oh? Then there’s a secondary reason for your misery?”

“You,” Aiden said, slanting him a look. “You cause me misery.”

“Oh, ha, ha. I’m being serious. Why haven’t you done something else, or tried to change your specialty?”

Aiden’s hands curled into fists on the edge of the photo album, and he studied Kents gone by for a long minute. “It’s not about what I want. I’m thinking of my family too. My mother, mostly. I’m the only one of her three children who showed any interest in following in her footsteps. She was so happy when I told her my plans, and that made me happy as well.”

“But not anymore.”

“No. But I still couldn’t leave the firm, not with her support behind me, and there’s no room for me to try something else while I’m there. I don’t think it would work anyway.”

“That sucks.”

It was all Elliott could think to say, but it felt insufficient. He was glad that it at least pulled a tiny smile from Aiden’s lips.

“I know.” Aiden’s forehead creased. “I’m nearly thirty, headed for another ulcer—”

“Another?”

“And one of the only things that makes me happy is a relationship I have to pay for.”

Elliott knew what Aiden meant. There was no offense for him to take, because it was the truth, and for once, Elliott only heard the positive.

“I make you happy?” he asked, in a voice that sounded timid to his own ears.

Covering Elliott’s hand with his own, Aiden said, “Of course. I’ve told you that before.”

Elliott closed the album and let it slide to the floor beside the love seat (or couch with delusions of grandeur, as Elliott liked to call it).

Aiden’s hair was soft and clean after his shower that morning, and it lacked the sticky-crisp product that usually made it stay in its normal style. Elliott brushed some of it away from Aiden’s forehead, letting it slip through his fingers as he framed Aiden’s face with his palms, then he stretched up to lay a chaste kiss on the worried line of Aiden’s lips.

The next real kiss felt new.

It was the first they’d had all weekend, since Elliott hadn’t felt well enough for more than binge-watching TV shows and complaining about having to eat nothing but toast and soup. This morning, though, his energy levels had surged, and he’d felt more human than he had in two days. When he’d woken up next to Aiden, he’d looked at Aiden’s body, open and relaxed in sleep, and wanted.

It had been a comfortable want that had previously been uncomplicated and easily acted upon. This morning though, after admitting to himself that he needed to step back or risk fucking everything up, it had been anything but simple. That didn’t mean it wasn’t good. They still fit together perfectly, warm lips sliding together sweetly.

An energy fizzed between them that hadn’t existed before. It simmered inside him and made him clutch tightly at Aiden’s shoulders, then swelled until he got scared of it. Was he imagining things? Or maybe he was feeling this stuff, but from Aiden’s perspective, it was business as usual.

Aiden broke the contact, sucking in air, but he brought Elliott’s body even closer, bending his spine with a strong arm behind his back, curling Elliott up even more.

“Elliott. Fuck,” he breathed into the space between their lips, then they crashed together again.

The speed and biting fervor were at odds with their languorous weekend, an intoxicating contrast that made Elliott’s head spin. It also made the new affection shiver in his chest, because he could swear Aiden felt it too.

Aiden’s hand slid down his back, slipping his fingers under the band of Elliott’s borrowed flannel pajama pants. They stilled there, pressing into the skin at his lower back, not demanding or pushing, but claiming those few inches as territory gained by this one, hot kiss.

“Aiden?”

The familiar woman's voice came from the front door. Elliott and Aiden froze.

“Are you here? You’d better be decent, because I’m coming in.”

Elliott looked down at himself. He was basically clothed. The only part of him that he needed to cover was— Elliott jumped as the reality of their position caught up with him. They lurched away from each other just as Jill came into the living room, and Aiden’s hand was still sliding out of Elliott’s pants when she saw them and stopped dead.

Aiden and Elliott quit trying to extricate themselves. The damage was done. Gym buddies didn’t cuddle with their hands in each other’s pants.

“I fucking knew it,” Jill hissed.

Elliott winced, then reclaimed his legs and stood up, tripping over the photo album as he hiked up his pants. He needed to get out of there. Aiden would—probably—survive Jill’s wrath, but Elliott had no such guarantee.

He flinched when Jill let out a squeal, then he took a step toward her and the front door. He didn’t get far, because Aiden grabbed his arm with an urgent, “Wait,” as Jill started jumping in place.

“I knew it, I knew it!” Jill said, a wide, mischievous grin on her face. While Elliott blinked at the abrupt shift, she slapped Aiden’s shoulder hard enough that the sound cracked in the high-ceilinged room. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me, you asshole?”

“I—” Aiden stammered. “There was nothing to tell. This . . .” He gestured between them while Elliott watched helplessly, wondering why he hadn’t left yet. “It’s a recent thing. It’s changed since the fundraiser.”

He looked at Elliott directly as he said it. Elliott’s stomach leaped into his esophagus. They hadn’t talked about it, but things had been different between them since the night of the fundraiser and the morning that had followed. Elliott hadn’t acknowledged it until recently—it had freaked him out too much—but Aiden was basically telling him now that he’d felt the same shift.

He was staring into Elliott’s eyes and telling him that they could be more.

Elliott looked away. He fixed his eyes on Jill and tried to ignore Aiden’s burning gaze until he could think straight, without panic and gut-reaction happiness clouding everything.

“Uh-huh. Sure,” she said, her eyebrow rising in a manner so much like Aiden that Elliott wanted to laugh. “And when were you going to tell me that this”—she flapped her hand in an exaggerated version of what Aiden had done—“had ‘changed’?”

“Maybe never?” Aiden’s voice was tight, his words clipped, maybe by Elliott’s refusal to make eye contact. “It isn’t a big deal.”

“Not a big deal?” Jill let her purse fall to the ground with a thunk, then crossed her arms over her chest. “Aiden, the last time you had a significant other that lasted longer than a single night, you were in college, and you went to Chili’s for all three dates.”

There was a quick intake of breath, then a short pause. “That’s an exaggeration,” Aiden said, sheepishly.

Jill’s lips twitched, and she stepped closer, grabbing Aiden’s hands. “Maybe, but only a bit. Aiden, I know you. You don’t keep things like this from us, not for long. I’d bet money that you were going to tell us about him at the party this Saturday.”

Elliott’s heart pounded, and he finally snuck a glance up at Aiden. That couldn’t be true. How could Aiden have expected them to go from almost-friends who have sex appointments to meet-the-family serious relationship?

When he saw Aiden’s face, though, he knew the answer. He hadn’t. Aiden didn’t seem embarrassed or hopeful. Just resigned. Disappointed that it was never going to happen.

“Jill,” Aiden said, looking down at her hands. “It’s complicated. I want to tell you everything, but in this case, I need some privacy. Don’t be mad?”

She stared at Aiden in silence, then withdrew her hands, wrapping her arms instead around his shoulders. She was tall enough that her head rested comfortably on the top of his shoulder.

“All we want is for you to be happy,” she said. “We thought that if you were happy on your own, then that was fine. But we could see that you weren’t. You’re not like me, preferring your own company to anyone else’s. You don’t want anyone to know, but you don’t do so well on your own. You always did need a teddy bear to hug.”

“Thanks,” Aiden muttered, a smile softening his sarcasm. Elliott tried to keep his eyes on the ground instead of the tender moment, but it was hard not to look to Aiden, who was watching him over Jill’s shoulder.

Elliott bounced on the balls of his feet, indecisive. He wanted to stay, to ask Aiden if anything was going to change. But he sure didn’t want to have a conversation where he was forced to make a choice between his next paycheck and whatever they had between them.

Jill pulled away, then poked Aiden in the chest, hard enough that Aiden rubbed the spot.

“You’ve been different lately. Even Mom and Dad can tell.” She suddenly turned to Elliott and pointed at him accusingly. “I was really hoping you were the reason why.”

“Well, I don’t know if . . .” Elliott stammered.

“Don’t even. The timeline fits.”

“How the hell do you know the timeline?” Aiden didn’t sound put out anymore. Just baffled.

She tapped her finger on her chin, smirking knowingly. “I’d say . . . January, right? Or the beginning of February?”

Elliott and Aiden looked at each other. She was right, but did that mean they had to tell her so? Elliott didn’t know Jill well, but from what he’d witnessed, she’d probably get insufferable.

“How did you guess that?” Aiden asked, with an indulgent roll of his eyes.

“That was when you stopped calling us twice a week. We assumed you were busy, but we didn’t think you were getting busy until the fundraiser, and I saw you watching Elliott’s ass like a piece of meat—”

“Yes, okay, Jill. Your incredible observational skills are appreciated. Shut up now.”

Jill sighed gustily, but she was smiling too much for genuine annoyance. “Fine. Shutting up. Except that I did come over for a reason. Catching my brother rounding the bases was just a horrifically scarring added bonus.”

“And whose fault is that? Yelling ‘I’m coming in’ isn’t exactly adequate warning to—”

“Doesn’t matter. Since I was home for the weekend, Mom told me to come visit you. Her motives were as transparent as they were selfish. She really wanted me to pressure you into confirming you’re coming to the birthday party at Mom and Dad’s this weekend.”

“Who’s this one for?”

“Jim’s kid.”

Aiden groaned so painfully that Elliott actually jumped an inch. His lips twitched in an unwilling smile at the picture Aiden’s misery made: His shoulders slumped belligerently. His face wrinkled like a toddler’s did in the minutes before a meltdown. His head dropped back to look at the ceiling as if asking a higher power, Why must I have family members? Why must they have children? What have I done to deserve this?

“Should I take that as a no?” Jill asked, sweetly.

Aiden groaned again, then let his face fall into his hand. “No. I like Jim.”

Jill hummed her agreement.

“I should go. God, I don’t want to. I hate birthday parties.”

“Well, lucky for you, no one’s asking you to enjoy it. All they’re asking is that you show up long enough to eat some cake and sit through the parents trying to make the kid read all the cards.”

“Yikes. It’ll be awful.”

Jill nodded sagely. “Undoubtedly. But you kind of have to go.”

“I know. Tell Mom I’ll be there, but I will leave the moment anyone breaks out a piñata. I have to draw the line somewhere.”

“Will do. But hey, look on the bright side. At least this time, you won’t have any of the aunts asking you if you’re seeing anyone.” Her eyes swung over to Elliott.

Elliott took an involuntary step back. “Whaaat? No, thank you.”

“Oh, come on,” she pleaded. “However new this is,” she waved her hand even more crazily this time, “you’ve still known each other for a good couple of months.”

Try a couple of years.

“Your mother isn’t expecting me. She won’t be prepared for an extra,” he countered.

Jill held firm. “Our dad makes enough to feed an army. We’ll have leftovers for days, even with you there.”

“I’d feel like I was intruding,”

“You wouldn’t be. In our family, plus-ones are always welcome.”

“Do I get a say in this?” Aiden cut in.

“Yes!” Jill grabbed Aiden’s arm and made him face Elliott, pulling her best pouty face. Elliott was impervious. She had nothing on Kevin. “If you don’t go, Aiden will be all alone. You don’t want that, do you, Aiden? Tell him you don’t want to be alone.”

Jill’s pout seemed to work better on Aiden than it did on Elliott. He looked at Elliott helplessly as she hung off of him, her lip trembling without any attempt to make it seem genuine.

Elliott felt like he was in the last round of a game show. The wrong answer to the One Important Question—in this case, whether he would cross from professional territory into very personal—would see him lose all the progress he’d made. His progress being the new vibe between him and Aiden, and the yarn Aiden was spinning about how long they’d been together. If he said no, would Aiden be offended and cut him loose, ending any potential for a relationship?

If he said yes, could he go back from there to the safety and comfort of three appointments a week and a monthly direct deposit, no icky feelings involved?

If he said yes . . .

If he said yes? What the hell was he thinking even considering it?

He was thinking . . . that he wanted to see what Aiden was like with his family. He’d seen him with Jill, glimpsed a side of the whiny, sensitive child he might have been before he grew up to be a generous, self-possessed man. He’d get to see how Aiden fit into the family. The middle child, the only boy, the one to continue the family business. The bisexual one, but was that a big part of his identity in his family? It seemed like he kept his dating history pretty much to himself.

When it came down to it, Elliott was still working a job. If Aiden wanted him to go to a birthday party, that was his prerogative. It didn’t matter if Elliott did or didn’t want to go. That he desperately did was just a bonus.

And if Aiden’s wide eyes over the top of Jill’s head were anything to go by, he wanted Elliott there.

“Okay,” Elliott said. “I’ll come if it’s on a day I can make it.”

“Yes!” Jill shouted, dropping the puppy-dog eyes. “It’s on Saturday. Be there.”

“We will be,” Aiden said, dodging her flailing fist. “But please don’t make a big deal out of it.”

She rolled her eyes at him as she picked up her abandoned purse from the floor. “Are you kidding me? That’s not really an option you have. While I might be completely circumspect, Mom and Dad are going to flip when they find out you’re bringing someone to meet the family.” Her smile turned playful. “God, we thought we’d have to convince you to pay someone to date you like Uncle Innes does. I told them you hadn’t quite reached that level of pitiable sleaze.”

Aiden tensed, and the nausea Elliott had fought off all weekend came crashing back. It was the gala all over again. He wanted to disappear into the floor.

“Let me guess,” Aiden said, his voice tight and neutral. “Your friend’s gossip again?”

“Of course,” Jill said, flippantly. “Heather knows all and shares all. Lucky for me. But I don’t share half of what she tells me about Innes with Mom and Dad. There’s just some things Dad doesn’t want to know about his kid brother, even if Innes is middle-aged now.”

Thirty-six is not middle-aged, Elliott wanted to say, but he didn’t dare. It was a pointless distinction anyway. The only reason it was important to him was so he could tell himself that no, he hadn’t had sex with someone as old as his father. Not quite.

Aiden had frozen, his eyes fixed on the ground. He looked almost as ill as Elliott felt, and that was enough to make Elliott wish for his blanket cocoon again.

It made sense that Aiden would be disturbed. How embarrassed would Aiden be if his sister found out that not only was he doing what she’d just insulted, but that he was doing it with the same person as her “sleazy” uncle?

They were living in a goddamned soap opera.

“Will Innes be there?” Aiden asked, apparently recovering himself.

“At a family birthday party? Are you kidding? He hates them more than you do. He’d rather contract a virulent toe fungus than be around that chaos. Everyone else will be though.”

Aiden’s lips turned down in a pout that wasn’t nearly as dramatic as Jill’s, but couldn’t be mistaken for a manly scowl. “Why does he get to skip out and I don’t?”

Jill stepped close to him, her purse on her arm, and clapped her hands on Aiden’s cheeks. “Because you’re a pushover, Aiden. And Jim will be ecstatic to see you, even if little Riley won’t.”

Aiden mumbled something about little Riley that didn’t sound complimentary.

“Well.” Jill dug her sunglasses out of her bag. “I was going to make you take me out for lunch, but I don’t want to interrupt anything.”

“You already did,” Elliott pointed out.

“Take this as the kindness it is, Elliott, and don’t question it,” she tossed over her shoulder as she made her way to the door. Before it closed, she yelled, “Welcome to the family!”

The silence she left behind her was dazed. After a few quiet seconds, Aiden blew out a long breath. “I’m sorry,” he said, with a pained expression.

“For what?” Elliott was still numb.

“I didn’t know she was coming, I swear.”

“I know.”

“She can be a bit much. You don’t actually have to come to the party if you don’t want to, that’s completely outside of what you agreed to.”

“Do you really want me there?” Elliott asked. There was no other question he’d rather ask, and there was nothing more important than an honest answer.

“Yes,” Aiden answered right away.

Elliott released the breath he’d been holding. “Okay, then. I’ll go with you.”

Aiden looked like he might argue again, like he wasn’t sure if Elliott wasn’t forcing himself into something, but Elliott’s face must have changed his mind. “All right, then.”

Some of Elliott’s tension leaked away, but he didn’t quite relax. Too much had changed for that to happen. With all the revelations, he felt like he’d been awake and sprinting for twelve hours.

Jill had reacted better than he could have hoped. Still, Elliott wished he could go back in time and hide in a closet before she came in. A lot of things seemed trickier than they had half an hour ago.

Elliott was going to meet the family. The family of Aiden, his lover/employer. His employer who might have the same beginnings of feelings—liar, liar, his conscience whispered—that he did.

Jitters shook outward from Elliott’s stomach. Their consequence-free bubble of a weekend was over. There would be no more ignoring things until they went away. That time was past. Wasn’t it?

“Elliott,” Aiden said, softly. “We should probably talk about—”

“Yeah, I know.” Elliott ran stressed-out fingers through his messy hair. “But could we just . . . not?”

Aiden frowned, giving Elliott the side-eye. “What do you mean?”

Elliott stepped up to Aiden and took his wrists in his hands, running his thumbs over Aiden’s pulse points like worry stones. “Are you happy?” Elliott shook his head and rephrased. “Is there something that you absolutely need to change about us, how we’ve been working. Like, right now?”

Aiden hesitated, looking from Elliott’s hands to his face. “Well, no. Not urgently, but aren’t things a little different?”

Elliott nodded, even as his heart rate spiked. “They could be. But if you’re happy, and I’m happy, and we make each other happy, can we leave it? And not talk about it?” Aiden blinked and drew breath, but Elliott pressed on. “Just for a little while. I need some time. This is—” He swallowed, grappling with his panic. “—a lot. I’m not prepared for—”

“Elliott, it’s fine,” Aiden soothed, flipping his wrists around and grasping the tops of Elliott’s forearms firmly. Elliott leaned into them, swaying closer to Aiden’s body but not pressing in yet. “Don’t worry about it. You take the time you need, I don’t want to pressure you into anything you’re not comfortable with. This is odd for me too.” He smiled ruefully. “I swear, I didn’t want more than what I asked for when we started this. But I didn’t know you. I didn’t think—”

“Stop,” Elliott interrupted, pulling his hands from Aiden’s to cover his ears. “Stop, stop, stop. Please.”

Aiden lifted his hands in surrender. “Stopping, sorry.”

Elliott gave in to the urge and wrapped his arms around Aiden’s waist, resting his cheek on Aiden’s shoulder and murmuring into the soft fabric covering his warm skin. “This is happening. Something’s changed, and I’m not ignoring it or denying it, but give me some time to deal with it. Let me bring it up when I’m ready. Okay?”

“Of course.” Aiden took Elliott’s face in his hands and kissed him, just once, gently. “I’ll wait patiently.”

It was reckless, Elliott acknowledged as he lunged in for a deeper kiss, a long and slow one. The choices he was making—mostly, his daydreaming of a perfect outcome—would have consequences, eventually.

But fuck, he didn’t want to think about them. Not when Aiden’s hands were stroking up his sides and down the length of his back so tenderly, like he could memorize every inconsequential nonerogenous zone.

He wanted more Sundays like this, so Aiden could press him into the couch and touch him all over to make up for the days between visits. More nights when he slept over and didn’t watch the clock. Whether he would allow himself to have these things in the long-term was a question he didn’t want to think about, let alone answer.

It was the beginning of the month. He had about thirty days before Aiden would pay him again. He’d decide before then whether he wanted to stick to the status quo or . . . do what exactly? Be with Aiden for real, no paycheck involved, but not have enough money for next year to help his dad keep the house he’d grown up in?

A little under a month, he thought as Aiden’s mouth whisked away his brain power. A month to decide in which way he was going to ruin this fragile, ephemeral feeling he didn’t want to call love.