Logan lay in bed the rest of the night, unable to sleep. He watched as the gray twilight brightened and his white walls pinkened with the dawning sun. Tidbits from the night before flitted in and out of his thoughts like birds: his initial panic over coming out, talking to his sisters, talking to Ellis, and the sound of dead air after Ellis had hung up on him.
One thought in particular blared in his head like a foghorn: this was the second time in the past week that Ellis had given him the perfect out.
This was his chance. If he wanted to walk away from this whole thing, now was the time. He could call his sisters as soon as it was late enough and tell them last night was a prank. Or a misunderstanding. They’d both been drinking. They’d believe him if he claimed he hadn’t been serious.
He could go back to the way things were before, when his life made sense and he had a plan. He’d forgotten Ellis once. He could forget him again.
Except that he couldn’t.
Even as Logan thought it, he knew he couldn’t go back. If his encounter with Ellis had taught him anything, it was that at some point, Ellis had gotten under his skin. Logan might have been able to bury him for a few years, but it was clear that was a temporary solution. Now that Ellis was back, Logan was as drawn to him as ever.
And he was okay with that. Shockingly okay with it. He almost couldn’t believe how okay he was with it. Wasn’t he supposed to have some sort of straight-guy crisis?
Every time he delved into his feelings, searching for the nerve that would set him off, he didn’t find it. The thought of being with Ellis made all the noise in his head . . . stop. It wasn’t just the idea of physically being with him—kissing him, holding him . . . other things that he hadn’t quite gotten to yet—but being with him. Talking for hours and goofing off and getting coffee. Simple, daily things. He had no idea how he’d been on the same planet as Ellis all this time and not been with him. He might as well have been without gravity.
That was his biggest regret in all of this: he couldn’t get back the time he’d squandered. What would his life be like if he’d opened his eyes in college and taken a look around? They might have been together this whole time. Ellis might not distrust him so much. He might not have ruined this before it’d even had a chance to begin . . .
He had to try. It didn’t matter if Ellis turned him down or if he made a fool of himself. This time, he was going to do what he should have done a long time ago.
Logan was out of bed and in front of his closet in a flash. He got dressed—in jeans and a brown knit sweater, not a suit—got a cab to pick up his car, and sped to Café En Seine, where he’d met Ellis the other day.
When he walked in, he did a sweep. There were some customers standing in front of the drinks board, and some others sitting at the tables, but there was no one behind the counter. There was, however, a man sitting on the counter, furiously making out with another man.
Logan stopped cold in his tracks and stared at them. For a split second, he feared one of them was Ellis, but the standing guy was too short, and the one on the counter had a beard dyed pastel pink, like bristly cotton candy. They seemed not the tiniest bit deterred by being in public, and even stranger, none of the customers seemed to care.
Logan peeked toward the back room. No one. Was he supposed to talk to the guy on the counter? He’d never been into video games, but he knew enough about them to have the sudden feeling that he was about to be given a side quest.
Logan both approached and maintained his distance. “Um, excuse me?”
Pink Beard popped off the other’s face with a wet sound. “Can I help you?”
The other guy turned to peer at him as well. “Are you here for open mic night? Because you’re about half a day early.”
“Uh, no. I’m actually looking for Ellis. Is he working today?”
“He is.”
Logan’s heart soared.
“But not here.”
It promptly nose-dived to the floor of his stomach, trailing black smoke as it went.
“Do you have any idea where he is?”
“He’s at one of his other jobs.”
Logan swallowed. “Which one? The Golden Flamingo?”
“No, I think he’s at his studio. It’s by the Brigantine Lighthouse. You know the place?”
Logan saw it in the distance all the time. It was a well-known local landmark, and also something of an architectural joke. It hadn’t been built to actually function as a lighthouse—in fact, it was too far inland to work regardless—and so the local police used it as their headquarters. Logan’s parents had taken him and his sisters to the little museum inside it a couple of times. “Yeah, I know around where that is. Can you give me the exact address?”
Pink Beard squinted at him. “You’re not an ex-boyfriend of his, are you?”
“No.” At least, not in the strictest sense. “I just need to find him.”
“All right.” He grabbed a notepad off the counter and scribbled something on it. “Go here. Be sure to announce yourself when you walk in. He’s been doing a lot of metalwork lately, and you never want to sneak up on a man who’s brandishing a welding torch.”
“Thank you for that solid life advice.” Logan pocketed the address and hurried out the door. Wet kissing sounds followed behind him. Guess he hadn’t thrown those guys too far off their groove.
Logan raced to the location Pink Beard had given him, and prayed there weren’t any cops around. The art gallery was a tiny building located spitting distance from the small but distinctive lighthouse. There was no sign above the gallery door, but Logan knew he was in the right place as soon as he peeked in the window.
Ellis’s work jumped out to him even without labels. It had matured since college, but his style was unmistakable: bold, primary colors, dripping metal, and sensual shapes. It was too abstract for Logan to make heads or tails of, but he’d always been able to sense Ellis’s passion in it.
The door was open. He let himself in. “Ellis? It’s Logan.”
The portraits on the walls offered no response. He spotted a narrow door tucked between two hunkering sculptures. He had just put his hand on the knob when the door burst open, and he was confronted by possibly the tiniest person he had ever seen. And the most androgynous. There was nothing about the person in front of him that suggested they were any particular gender.
“Whoa, dude.” They skidded to a stop just shy of plowing into his stomach and peered up at him with huge, brown eyes. “Where did you come from?”
“The front door?” Logan looked them up and down once more for any sort of gender indicator, but when he found nothing, he decided it didn’t matter. “Do you know Ellis?”
“Sure. He rents part of this gallery. You his boyfriend?”
“No, I just need to find him.” Logan paused. “Though out of curiosity, what makes you think he has a boyfriend?”
They shrugged. “Just the way he’s been acting lately. All giddy, but also like he might be sick.”
“That’s . . . far too accurate. Know where I can find him?”
“He’s working at the record store right now.”
Jesus, Ellis had a lot of jobs. “Can you tell me where that is?”
“Sure.” They gave him directions to a place down the street and turned to head back into the other room.
“Wait.” Logan hesitated. “Thank you so much . . . uh . . .”
“Forest.”
Logan smiled. “Lovely name. You have a nice day.”
He left and walked the short distance to the record shop, which was a thin building stuck between two big offices. It looked like a paperback on a bookshelf populated by encyclopedias. The hand-painted sign out front read, Good Vibes Records. Logan wasn’t sure how he knew, but he was one hundred percent certain that Ellis had painted the sign.
The music was audible even before Logan opened the door. Death metal blared from speakers that must have been hidden somewhere in the craggy ceiling. The store was devoid of people except for a bored-looking guy with a Mohawk leafing through a magazine. Logan weaved around packed rows of bins that were overflowing with vinyl records to the counter in the back.
The guy didn’t look up as he asked, in a monotone that would shame an automated call center, “Need something?”
Logan shouted over the music. “I’m looking for Ellis. Is he here?”
At that, Mohawk raised his eyes but not his face. “You his boyfriend?”
“No. Why does everyone think he has a boyfriend?”
“Everyone?”
Logan sighed. “Never mind. Is he here or not?”
“Sure is, sweetheart. He’s in the back.” Mohawk jerked his head toward an open doorway behind him. “But FYI, you might wanna ask why ‘everyone’ thinks you’re his boyfriend. That seems like the real question to me.”
Logan didn’t have a response to that. Were all alternative people adept at doling out advice, or were Ellis’s coworkers unusually perceptive? He almost asked if it was all right for him to barge into what he assumed was an employee-only area, but Mohawk’s attention had already sunk back into his magazine.
The music muted slightly the moment he ducked through the doorway, which meant his thoughts were no longer punctuated by throbbing bass. The room—a storage room, judging by the towering stacks of plastic-wrapped inventory—was much larger than the front, with unfinished walls and visible silver ducts snaking around the ceiling.
Ellis was standing by a worktable, sorting albums into piles with practiced ease. He didn’t look up when Logan approached. “What is it now, Max?”
There was an edge of irritation in his tone that almost gave Logan pause. He took a deep breath and tried for a joke. “More like who is it.”
Ellis whirled around. Logan’s first thought was that he looked as tired as Logan felt—had he had trouble sleeping as well?—and his second was that, with his glasses askew and bags under his eyes, he was the most beautiful thing Logan had ever seen.
“Logan. What the fuck are you doing here?”
All right. Starting off with a joke clearly wasn’t the way to go. “I’m here to see you.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to talk.”
Ellis stared at him blankly before turning back around. His hands shook slightly as they went back to sorting records. “It’s funny, all you seem to want to do lately is talk. If you’d done that four years ago, we might not be in this situation.”
Logan flinched. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ve told you to stop apologizing.”
“What else am I supposed to do? You clearly haven’t forgiven me.” He ran an aggravated hand through his hair. “I didn’t come here to fight. I want to talk things out.”
“We have nothing to discuss, Logan. Go home.”
“That’s where you’re wrong though! I talked to my sisters, and they made it clear to me that we need to talk now.”
“You what?”
Logan frowned. He couldn’t quite interpret Ellis’s tone. He sounded surprised, for sure, but also . . . scared? It was impossible to tell from two words. “I called Abby and Rachel. Remember them? I told them what happened and asked for some advice. They helped me sort things out. I know what I want, Ellis.”
Ellis inhaled hard enough for Logan to hear it. “I . . . You . . . I’m not falling for this game again. I’ve been hurt by you too many times.”
“Look, I meant what I said before: this isn’t going to work if you keep holding the past against me.”
Ellis paused, still not facing him. “Then I guess this isn’t going to work.”
“What?” Logan was aghast. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly.”
“But why? I don’t get it. Why can’t we move past this?”
Ellis whirled around again, and the fury on his face made Logan actually take a step back. “Because you fucking broke my heart, Logan Vanderveer!”
Logan’s eyes widened so much, he must have looked ridiculous, but he couldn’t help it. “Ellis . . . I know I hurt you back then, but I don’t see how I—”
“Oh, come off it already. I’ve been dropping hints ever since we ran into each other. Even you can’t be that oblivious. I was fucking in love with you, Logan. I was silly for you, and you left me without a word.”
Logan had never been rendered speechless before. The concept of words evaporated from his brain beneath the heat of Ellis’s murderous glare.
Ellis, however, seemed to have no trouble speaking. “I don’t think a week has gone by these past four years where I haven’t thought about you in some capacity. You were my first love, and no matter how many times I told myself to forget about you, I couldn’t seem to. The next guy I dated after you . . . You should send him a gift basket or something, because boy did he have his work cut out for him. I didn’t even blame him when he left, because who would want to date someone who’s still hung up on some ghost from the past?
“And then boom, one day you appeared like a fucking mirage, as beautiful and awkward and funny as ever. I thought, ‘This is it. This is my chance to find out what happened. Maybe now I can move on. I can get some fucking peace.’ And you know what you told me?”
Logan knew the answer, but he kept quiet. Ellis wasn’t looking for a response.
“You said you didn’t remember anything, Logan. You thought we were just friends. And you could not have made it more clear that I didn’t mean anywhere near as much to you as you did to me. You broke my heart all over again, and then you had the audacity to ask me to hang out with you! I don’t even know why I agreed. And then that kiss. I couldn’t tell if I was more confused or furious. But, honestly, I think I was angrier with myself than with you.”
Logan swallowed around what felt like a knife in his throat. “Why?”
Ellis looked like he was waging a war within himself. The anguish on his face made Logan’s bones ache. “Because that kiss made me happier than I’ve been in a long time.”
Logan sucked in a breath. “You mean that?”
“I do. I don’t want it to be true, but it is.”
Logan took a step forward. “Then be with me.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Be with me, Ellis. We’ll start over. I’ll make it all up to you.”
“You must be high to think I would even consider that. After everything you put me through.”
“Forget about what happened before! We’ll do it right this time.”
Ellis shook his head. “I can’t, Logan. You have to understand that. You’re the world’s biggest flight risk. You can’t expect me to trust you with my heart again. How do I know you’re not going to wake up one day and decide you’re straight again?”
That stopped Logan in his tracks. He’d had exactly the same worry. If he told Ellis that wasn’t a possibility, would he be lying? Was there a chance he was going to hurt Ellis again in the end?
The expression on Ellis’s face resonated in him as deeply as a lighthouse’s foghorn.
“Ellis, I will never hurt you again. I swear.” Logan put his hand over his heart. “Just the idea of doing that to you hurts me. I hate that I ever caused you any pain. I was young and confused, and I made the worst mistake of my life. Please believe me. I want this. I want this more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I want you.”
Ellis stared at him, quiet and still. Logan stared back, trying to pour every ounce of his conviction into his body language. If he could just make Ellis see how serious he was, maybe this would all work out. In truth, he wanted to sweep Ellis into his arms and kiss him until everything was better, but he had no idea how Ellis would react to that. He didn’t want to push him too far.
After an immeasurable pause, Ellis’s face shifted. He seemed less cautious now, more . . . challenging. And what he said next showed Logan that they were on each other’s wavelength every bit as ever. “Prove it.”
His meaning was unmistakable. It rolled over Logan like a wave, igniting an emotion he’d never felt before. He wasn’t sure precisely what to call it, but it was almost like an itch, a dark, persistent itch that spread through him, leaving heat in its wake.
He took another step forward. “You want me to prove it?”
Ellis licked his lips. “Yes.”
Logan took another step, and Ellis reached behind him to grip the table. Logan had no idea why, but that was unbearably hot. “You want proof that I want to be with you? That I want you?”
He might have imagined it, but he thought he saw Ellis shiver right before Ellis met his gaze and repeated, “Yes.”
Slowly, Logan closed the distance between them, giving Ellis time to move away or push him back if he wanted. But Ellis didn’t move. He watched Logan with dark eyes that got darker the closer Logan came.
When Logan was inches away, close enough to smell Ellis’s cologne and hear how heavy his breaths had gotten, he dropped his gaze to Ellis’s mouth. He didn’t have to look to know Ellis was watching the path his eyes took. He wanted him to see, to know exactly what he was about to do. He wasn’t just going to do this. He was going to do it right.
“Ellis,” Logan said slowly, drawing the sound out. He’d never fully appreciated it before.
Ellis’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed. “Yes?”
“I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone the way I want to kiss you.”
And so he did. He gave it everything he had. And, God, Ellis didn’t just let him. He was ready for him.
Ellis’s lips were everything. The entire world condensed down to a single feature. Soft and sweet and hot in every sense of the word. The shadow of stubble rubbing against Logan’s chin served as a constant reminder that he was kissing Ellis—a guy—but instead of deterring him, it only spurred Logan on.
Logan was struck by two thoughts. One, this was hands down the best kiss he’d ever had in his life. And two, he didn’t know something could be familiar and yet completely novel at the same time. It was like looking at a photograph from a day he’d thought he remembered, only to discover he’d gotten the details wrong.
Logan had thought he knew how Ellis kissed, but this was something else. Something needy and desperate and so, so good. Ellis had learned some things in the years they’d been apart, like how to suck Logan’s bottom lip expertly into his mouth, and how to nibble on it in just the right way to make his knees weak. It was all Logan could do to give back as good as he got.
Ellis seemed as captivated as Logan was. He grabbed a fistful of his shirt and used it to haul them together, chest to chest, as close as they could get. Well, almost.
Logan broke away, gasping for breath. He wanted to say something eloquent, something to commemorate the moment, but all he could manage was, “Wow.”
“Yeah.” Ellis tightened his grip on the shirt. “Couldn’t agree more.”
Logan couldn’t help but quip, “Are you sure I’m not gay? Because let me tell you, that felt pretty gay.”
“Shut up and kiss me.”
Ellis dragged him back in, and Logan melted into it. He’d had his fair share of lustful make-out sessions, but nothing had ever felt like this. He couldn’t seem to touch enough of Ellis. He slid his hands around Ellis’s back, stroked his sides, caressed his chest, never settling on any one thing in the need to feel everything.
The pièce de résistance, however, came when Ellis shifted his hips and pressed a very hard erection against Logan’s thigh. Even through their clothes, the heat of him was obvious.
If Logan was going to freak out, now was the time. Four years ago, it’d been realizing he was hard that had made reality crash down around him. And Logan didn’t need to touch himself to know that he was, in fact, every bit as hard as Ellis was. This was serious, and it was getting more heated by the second. Even without a whole lot of experience with men, Logan knew where this was heading.
And, Christ, he couldn’t wait for it to get there.
Without hesitation, Logan reached down and slid his hand between Ellis’s legs, just as Ellis had done to him all those years ago. Ellis made a muffled noise of surprise against his lips before rocking against his palm. And, fuck, that was a special kind of turn-on. Really, everything Ellis was doing filled his veins with fire.
Logan fumbled to stroke him, impeded by fabric, Ellis’s stuttering movements, and his own inexperience. He must have been doing a decent job, however, because Ellis pulled back and moaned in earnest. “Fuck, that feels good.”
Logan shivered as arousal spiked into him. “Yeah. Just touching you is amazing.”
“We can’t do this, though.”
Logan sucked in a horrified breath. “What? Yes, we can.”
Ellis shuddered, and Logan felt it from his chest to his thighs. “I’m at work. We can’t fuck here. We should go to one of our apartments.”
Logan didn’t think it was possible to be more turned on, but hearing Ellis acknowledge what they were about to do made him delirious with need. “I dunno if I can make it that far.”
“My coworker is in the next room, remember? It’s a miracle he hasn’t come back here yet. Or heard us, for that matter.”
“The music’s loud. There’s no way he can hear us. Or hear in general if that’s the volume he listens to every day.”
Ellis pushed him back. “We can’t. Besides, I don’t want our first time to be rushed. We should do this right.”
The space between them was unbearable. It took everything Logan had not to close it again. Ellis kept a hand on his chest, holding him away. One look at his face spoke to Logan as clearly as words: he needed that hand there; it was the only thing maintaining his resolve.
Fuck. If they didn’t get out of here now, they weren’t going to. And much as he wanted Ellis, he wanted more to respect his wishes. Besides, he had a feeling that once they finally had sex, there wouldn’t be a bass line in the world loud enough to drown them out.
“Come back to my place.”
Ellis hesitated. Now that there was some space between them, it was like his good sense was returning. “I can’t just leave. I’m working.”
“Ellis.” Logan slid a hand between his own legs and palmed himself. “Do you really want to wait until tonight?”
Ellis’s eyes latched on to him as he ran the heel of his hand down the outline of his dick. “No.”
“Then we have two options.” Logan didn’t even need to touch himself. He felt like he could come just from watching Ellis’s face. “Either we get out of here, or we’re going to give your coworker a show.”
Ellis put his hand over Logan’s and squeezed. “Okay. Let me tell him there’s an emergency. And we’re not going to your place. We’re going to mine.”
“Why?”
Ellis smirked. “Because I have plans for you.”