"Stop agreeing with me."
The corner of his mouth twitches. He catches it, kills it.
"Tate's birthday," I say. "I showed up in the rain."
Something shifts in his eyes. He goes very still.
"You left to get ice. I told myself it was nothing." I'm looking at my hands on the table because I can't look at his face for this part. "It wasn't nothing. And the pool party, and the kitchen, and every time I made sure I was on the other side of the room from you at Tate's place. That wasn't because I didn't notice you. It was because I did."
The silence is heavy. I make myself look up. His jaw is tight and his eyes are bright. His hands on the table have gone white-knuckled around his coffee cup.
"I wanted you before the club," I say. It costs me something to say it. I can feel it leaving, some piece of armor I've been wearing for years, and underneath it I'm exposed in a way that has nothing to do with heat or biology or a room full of strangers. This is just me. Sitting in a coffee shop. Telling Tate's best friend that I've been lying to myself about him since I was twenty. "That doesn't make what you did okay. But it means I can't pretend the club invented this. It didn't."
"Wren." He says my name like it's the first time. Like I just gave him permission and he's being careful with it.
"I'm still pissed at you."
"I know."
"I don't know how we tell Tate."
"We'll figure it out."
"I don't know if I trust you."
He takes that one slower. Nods. "That's fair. I'll earn it."
"You'd better."
I reach across the table and take his coffee and drink from it because mine isn't here yet and because I want to see what he does. He watches me drink his coffee and the look on his face is something I'm going to remember for a long time. It's the look of someone who got handed something they didn't think they'd get to hold again.
"I have class at ten," I say. "Walk me?"
He stands up so fast he bumps the table and I let myself smile, small, private, turned down toward his stolen coffee. He comes around to my side and stands there. I can feel his warmth and his scent and his want and I want to lean into it so badly my teeth ache.
I stand up. We're close. Closer than we've ever been outside of that club, outside of heat and masks and anonymity. This is just a coffee shop and I'm just a guy and he's just a guy and I can see his face and he can see mine and neither of us is pretending.
He reaches out, slow, giving me time to pull away. His fingers brush the side of my neck, over my scent gland, the lightest touch. My eyes close. My body leans toward him before I can decide about it, and this time I let it.
"Wren." Quiet. Close.
"Yeah."
"I meant it. Everything I said. All of it."
I open my eyes. He's right there. "I know," I say. "That's why I'm here."
We walk out into the morning. His hand finds the small of my back as he holds the door, warm through my jacket. I don't pull away. I step into it. A deliberate choice, clear-eyed, made by my brain and my body at the same time for the first time since this whole thing started.
The scent-bond hums in my chest. Steady. Certain. And for once, the rest of me agrees with it.
Two Years Before
Sully
Tate's birthday is the same weekend every year. Last Saturday in September. His apartment, too many people, not enough chairs, somebody always breaks something. Last year it was the bathroom towel rack. Year before that, the coffee table leg. Tate doesn't care. Tate loves a full room and a loud night and being the center of all of it, and I love Tate, so I show up early and help him set up and stay late and help him clean up and that's how it goes.
I'm in the kitchen cutting limes when I hear the door.