“Are you all right, mate?” Naveen asks.
“You’re all amped up. Wired,” Anya adds.
I lift the cup. “All this bloody tea.”
Naveen’s face is lined with skepticism, his voice deadpan. “Yeah, you’ve been drinking it your whole life. I don’t really think the tea has you in this mood.”
I glance at my watch. “I should go. It’s Wednesday. There’s a . . .” I say, then drift off, trying to remember what I normally do on Wednesdays. Run errands for the bar. Pick up supplies we need. “There’s an order I need to fetch.” I check my watch. “I should be getting on.”
“Dean.” The no-nonsense tone comes from Naveen.
I look at him. “Yeah?”
“If you need to talk . . .”
“We’re here,” Anya finishes.
A wave of self-loathing crashes over me. I don’t want to talk. I already feel stupid enough. Telling them won’t help. Listening to my gut five days ago would have helped.
But still, they’re my friends. They’ll be here. Hell, they are here. And he’s gone.
I tap the table. “Thanks. Listen, I appreciate it. I just need to sort some things out in my head. I’ll be fine.”
“And if you’re not, we’re still here,” Anya says again.
“And if you are, we’re here too,” Naveen echoes. It’s become a refrain.
I give a half-smile, which is all I can muster. “I know. Goes both ways.”
I open my wallet to pay, when Naveen waves me off. “Your money’s no good here.”
I stand, thank them, and take off.
I cross the street and head down the stairs into the Tube. I wish I could say I feel better than I did when I called them a little while ago then crashed their breakfast together.
I don’t.
But at least I feel like I’ll get through this, reassured that I have everything I need right here.
When I exit a few stops down the line, I pop into a supplier’s, say hello, grab a box of vodka samplers, return to the station, then head back home. I’ll leave this at my place and take it to The Magpie tonight.
Because I’ll be back at the bar.
I’ll do what I usually do on Wednesdays. Exercise in the morning. Grab a bite with Taron. Work on the books then mix the drinks and talk to the customers.
Everything I’m supposed to be doing.
As I get off the Tube once more in my neighborhood, my phone buzzes once, like it’s just caught cell service after trying to connect underground.
And for a few fantastic seconds, my brain tricks me into thinking it’s Fitz.
That he’s been calling all morning.
That the phone went to voicemail while I was on the Tube, where there’s no cell reception.
That maybe he knows how I fucking felt when he took off.
But I don’t grab it in time, and the ringing ends in my pocket. Checking it is too difficult as I juggle the box and head up the steps. The missed call will be there when I get home, and besides, it’s not going to fucking be him.
I’ve been ghosted, and I can’t wait till tomorrow at two, when I know he’ll be gone from my country and out of my life for good, and I can truly erase him from my head and heart.
I walk down the street, passing the shops I know, saying hi to a few neighbors, then I turn down my road.
And I stop in my tracks.
He’s sitting on the steps of my building, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, staring at his phone. One hand scrubs his chin, that thing he does when he’s thinking, trying to figure out what to say, what to do.
Even from this many feet away, I can tell what he’s feeling.
It’s in the set of his jaw, the angle of his shoulders, the language of his body.
He’s miserable.
Like I’ve been all morning.
Then, he raises his face and sees me, and something like hope flickers across his eyes.
But I steel myself to feel absolutely nothing.
31
Fitz
The second I see Dean—the damn nanosecond—I’m up, walking down the street toward him. I need to apologize.
I don’t think it’s going to be easy.
His face is the definition of implacable as he carries a box under his right arm.
I rush over to him—not quite running but definitely moving faster than a walk. When I reach him and he keeps going, I turn around and head with him toward his flat.
“Hi,” I say, my stomach roiling with nerves, with fear, with something else too—this crazy hope that he might feel the same way I do.
“Hello.” He’s cooler than he was on the bridge.
I deserve it. I clear my throat, trying to figure out what to say. I’ve been sitting on his stoop for twenty minutes, practicing, but nothing has stuck yet, so I blurt out the obvious. “I left this morning. At five or something.”
“I noticed.” His tone is expressionless.
“I’m so sorry.” But that barely covers it. The trouble is, saying more could make things worse. I could risk whatever this is now. But I have to say something beyond a simple apology for what I did.
His mask gives zero away as we walk. “Nothing to be sorry about,” he says. “I figured it out.”
“Dean.”
We reach the door, and he hardly looks my way. “It’s okay. You’re not obligated to stay. You’re not obligated to do anything at all. It’s all fine.” His tone is flat. He could be talking to me about a contract to clean the carpets.
But nothing is fine. Fine is how I feel about a turkey sandwich, or a piece of furniture, or a haircut, or the new blanket Carrie bought me.
But fine is not how I feel about Dean.
It’s never been how I felt, and now, it’s the furthest thing from what I feel.
And I’ve got to let him know. “I just freaked out. I couldn’t sleep, and I freaked out,” I say, starting to get to the heart of things.
He reaches into his jeans pocket. “I don’t know why you would.” His voice is so distant, and I’m such an ass for leaving.
“Because everything is happening so quickly,” I say, trying that on for size as he finds the keys in his pocket and palms them, meeting my gaze briefly.
“And everything is ending quickly, Fitz,” he says, matter-of-fact to the bone, as we stand in front of his building.
My heart hammers ruthlessly, its breakneck speed a reminder that I have to do this. I have to find the guts to let him know.
But how?
How do I express this emotion when I barely understand it?
This is all so damn new to me. The last person I had any feelings for was my college boyfriend, and that was more than six years ago. This is entirely different. We’re adults. We’re busy in our careers. We have lives and jobs and families and responsibilities. This is flying blind.
“That’s why I left. Because it is ending. And that sucks,” I say, taking another small step.
Dean’s expression remains stony. He’s more inscrutable than he’s ever been. “Fine. It was always ending. You ended it sooner. Doesn’t really matter, does it?”
I drag a hand through my hair, wishing I could get out all the words, but I’m terrified they’ll scare him away.
I purse my lips, hunting for the right sentences, when Dean does something unexpected. He fills the silence. He never does that. He always waits.
“Look, Fitz. Relationships end. It happens. It’s normal. They don’t last. I never expected anything. Stop acting like I did.” His tone is crisp, but his eyes look hurt.
I know that look. I feel it deep in my bones. I understand exactly what he’s not saying, what he maybe won’t let himself say.
But I have to say something. I’m the one who freaked out, the one who left. I’m the one who wants him back, if only for a day. And I have to let him know what he’s done to me.
Here in the doorway, in front of his home, I peel off a layer of truth, and it’s scary as hell, but it feels wholly neces
sary. “What if I do? What if I want more?”
Dean meets my gaze fully this time. His brown eyes flare with possibility, but pain too. He looks away, then back at me, shaking his head. “You can’t have that.”
“I still want it.” I sound desperate. I feel desperate. I tap my chest. “Do you think I came here to feel this way? Do you think I came to London to feel anything?”
“No. You came here to get laid, and you did it. Plain and simple.”
“That’s not why you’re mad.”
“Why am I mad, then?”
I reach for the box in his arms so I can set it on the stoop, but he doesn’t let go of it. Fine, I’ll do this with a physical barrier between us. I clear my throat. “Because in the last forty-eight hours, it’s become more than that, and you know it. Hell, it was more than that the first time we slept together, and you know that too.”
He breathes out hard, licks his lips, then in a quiet voice that gives me hope, he asks, “What did it become?”
I grab his shoulder to bring him close. “You know what it became.”
I inch closer like I’m about to kiss him. To tell him with my lips what this is.
He holds up a hand and presses it to my chest, a powerful stop sign. “You’re not kissing your way out of this, James. You’re not fucking your way out of this. I’m thirty-one. I’m not swayed by that. If you’re trying to say something to me, just say it. Don’t kiss it. Say it and mean it.”
His words are fire, and they ignite me. They’re the last straw between my actions this morning and what I hope my actions will be for the next twenty-four hours.
My jaw is tight; my chest is heavy.
I hold my hands out wide and rip off the remaining layers of truth. “You want to know what I came here to say?”
“Yes,” he bites out.
I shake my head, pissed and sad and frustrated all at once. “I’m crazy about you, Dean Collins. Just completely crazy about you. I didn’t plan this. I didn’t expect it. But it happened. We happened,” I tell him, and it’s both easier and harder now that I’ve said that. Easier because I feel like I can breathe again. I feel like I can fit inside my body without trying to crawl out of my skin.
Harder because he’s expressionless. I grab at my shirt, my chest, to make my point. “I feel so much for you that it scares me. I don’t know what to do about it, and I wish this thing between us could last well beyond tomorrow. I wish I didn’t have to leave. Because I just want to see you and kiss you and touch you and be with you, and it’s driving me crazy. Because you’re not a fling at all—not one bit. You’re the opposite, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
For several anguished seconds, he’s impervious.
His lips barely twitch.
His face remains impassive.
Then he breathes out hard, sets down the box and his keys, pushes me to the other side of the doorway, and kisses me.
My God, does he ever kiss me.
He kisses me like he feels the exact same way.
His hands clasp my face, and his body slams against mine, and he crushes my lips in a searing, bone-melting kiss that knocks all my senses out of whack.
His lips devour mine—rough and demanding, like he’s telling me all the same things with the fiercest, most passionate kiss ever recorded in history. One hand slides down my body, along my waist, traveling to my hip. The other ropes through my hair. And he’s yanking me closer, even closer, and holy hell, I guess I haven’t fucked up too badly.
If I get to have him for even one more day, I will be the happiest man alive.
Because Dean is kissing me like he’s crazy for me too, and I can breathe, and I am lit up, electric and alive again.
When he breaks the kiss, he still has me caged in. His hand clasps my face; his lips are a ruler. “Don’t do that again, James.”
“I won’t,” I say, shaking my head, relief flowing through me.
“I mean it. Don’t do that. I don’t like being ghosted. I don’t like you taking off without telling me. We both know what happens tomorrow. We’ve both known from the start. I know what I signed up for, and I can handle it. But if you want to be with me until then, you’ve got to be all in. No running.”
I swallow roughly. “I’m all in. I’m so all in with you.”
A sliver of a smile tugs at his lips, and he tips his forehead to the door. “Good. Get inside.”
“And can I show you how I intend to make it up to you?”
That earns me a devilish smile. “You damn well better.” He bends, picks up the box, then finds his keys and unlocks the door.
He opens it, and I follow him in, relieved in a whole new way. Thrilled that I didn’t fuck up the best thing to ever happen to me.
I trail him up the stairs, happiness washing over me because I have this time with him. A little more than twenty-four hours, and I plan to make the best of them.
As soon as we’re inside his flat, he lowers the box, pulls at the hem of my shirt, and jerks me against him. “Now listen, Fitz,” he says, and I can’t stop grinning because I’m Fitz again. I’m out of the penalty box.
“I’m listening,” I say.
His eyes blaze, and he’s dirty, bossy Dean once more. “We’ve got a day. I would rather fuck and have fun. And right now, here’s what that means.” He licks his lips while he slides his hand under my T-shirt, up my abs, making me shiver.
“Tell me what it means,” I rasp.
His hand spreads over my pecs. “It means I want you to show me what it’s like when the man I’m crazy for makes up to me properly.”
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
Forget all in.
I am so in love with him, it’s insane. It’s going to eat me alive. And I am going to let it. I am going to let this feeling take over my body and mind.
I grab his face. “I’m so damn happy you feel the same way.”
“I do. I do feel the same,” he says, and my heart soars. He keeps me close, his hands on my face too, as he toes off his shoes. Then he lets go of me and walks to the couch, stripping off his shirt and tossing it to the floor. He parks himself on the sofa, stretches his arms across the back of it, then spreads his legs for me.
He’s wearing his jeans and nothing else.
And he’s waiting for me to take care of him.
Oh hell, do I want to. Do I ever want to show Dean how sorry I am.
I kick off my shoes. My mouth waters as I walk over to my man and tug off my shirt.
I climb onto his lap, my hands settling on his shoulders then traveling down his firm and muscled arms.
“Let me grovel. Let me show you how sorry I am,” I whisper, as I bend my head to his neck, kissing him there in the way that drives him wild.
“Mmm. That helps. That helps a lot,” Dean says, sinking deeper into the cushions as I trail my tongue and my lips across his neck, the way I did the first time I ever touched him.
His fingers thread into my hair, and he tugs, pulling me down.
Making his intentions so damn clear.
I smile against his body as I follow his lead, my lips sliding along his chest as I kiss a hot trail along his pecs then down to his abs.
“How about this? This help too?” I lick a line along the grooves of his abs, across, down, traveling closer to his erection.
“That’s pretty good,” he pants. “But it might help a little more like this . . .”
His hands move to his jeans, unbuttoning the top button. I slide to the floor, kneeling between his legs as I work down the zipper. “I can definitely be of assistance.”
He lifts his ass and pushes the denim down to his thighs, his fantastic cock springing free and greeting me with a very happy hello.
Dean runs a hand down his stomach, takes his cock in his fist, then rubs the crown against my lips. My eyes roll back in my head as I lick him.
“Show me how you grovel, Fitz,” he says, all rough and commanding as his other hand curls around my head, yanking me close to his dick.
“With pleasure. With so much fucking pleasure.” I wrap my lips around the head, and I groan against his length because he tastes so damn good.
I want all of him in my mouth, want him to fill me up. I want to show him that he deserves all the pleasure in the world from me, only me. So I draw him in, inch by inch, spiraling my tongue along his shaft as I go, taking him farther.
“Fuck, that’s good,” he mutters as he slides to the back of my throat.
And that’s where Dean wants to be, judging from the sounds he makes. “Show me how much you love sucking my cock,” he says, and my dick throbs in my jeans at his dirty words.
I do love sucking his cock.
So damn much.
And I show him. Sucking him hard and deep and ravenously. Letting him grab my head, pull me down on his dick, and rock his hips up against me. Letting him fuck my mouth, my face, my throat.
I suck him hard and deep because it feels so good, because it drives him wild, and because I want to let him know what I’ll do for him. That if I have to, I’ll get on my knees for him.
No. Not just because I have to. Because I want to.
Because this guy—my God, this guy is mine, and I want Dean to feel every second of pleasure in the world from me.
As I devour his length, he bucks against me, dirty words falling from his lips. “Yes, fucking yes. I fucking love that.” Then just a long, choked out, “Coming.”
He shoots into my throat, salty and intoxicating, and I savor every drop of him.
When I let go of his dick, I look up to see a very satisfied man.
He’s supremely content, his lips parted, his breath coming fast. He reaches a hand to my face, runs a thumb along my jaw, then says, “Take your cock out. I want to watch you get yourself off.”
Fire roars across my skin. I rise and strip off my jeans in seconds flat as he lies back on the couch, parking his hands behind his head, and I straddle him.
My dick is aching for relief, heavy in my hand as I grip myself. I’m close to the edge already from having him in my mouth, from him coming on my tongue.
A Guy Walks Into My Bar Page 20