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“On that night, it meant eating half a pint of super fudge ice cream,” Harlan admitted.
I snorted. Soon he was laughing, too, rubbing his palms over his face.
“Sorry if I’ve been overstepping,” I told him. “Maybe so much has changed in my own life that I’m just trying to distract myself by thinking about your life, or something.”
“Are you okay, Sawyer?” he asked, and the depth of kindness in his eyes and his voice damn near broke me.
He was amazing. Even when he was three sheets to the wind, and I was an emotional whirlwind.
“Fuck if I know. Half the time I feel like I’m still just a lost little boy in the body of a capable adult, Harlan. Impostor syndrome is a bitch.”
“Well, I love you, okay?” he said. “Even when you boss me around like I’m some teacher’s pet.”
He moved in for a hug, wrapping his arms around me tight. I’d hugged him a million times before, but this time felt like more, somehow.
It brought back the memory of what it had felt like to kiss him. His clean, herbal scent. The bulk of his chest muscles pressed up this close to mine. It was making my mouth water, even now.
And that was something I couldn’t explain.
“I’m going to sit down now,” I said. “And you can bring out cocoa or lemonade, I don’t really give a damn. I’m strictly not going to give my opinion.”
“I appreciate that,” he said, “but I hope you know I love your opinions, even when you give them too much.”
He smiled and the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled up.
I gave him a smile back. “Thanks, Harlan.”
“You’re going to be okay,” he said. “Even with all the big, scary life changes.”
“I’m not scared,” I said. “All right, maybe that’s a little bit of a lie.”
“I’ve got you.”
There it was again. As he walked off to get us drinks, my heart felt like it was being pulled right along with him. Like he had a hold on me, and I didn’t want him to let go.
5
HARLAN
A few years ago, if someone had told me I’d be attending a dinner party at a professional football player’s house, I would have politely laughed and assumed they were out of their mind.
Now, as I walked into Kace Tomlin’s modern mansion with Sawyer at my side, it just felt like a normal part of life.
“There he is,” Nathan said as he saw me walking toward the kitchen with a growler of beer in each of my hands. I realized he was looking at Sawyer, though, and not me. “And Harlan, too, with beer bottles in hand.”
I furrowed my brow at him, putting the growler bottles down on the giant kitchen island. I crossed my arms.
“Since when is it ‘there he is’ for Sawyer and I’m the afterthought?” I asked. “I’ve known you for years and now Sawyer is some sort of VIP?”
“Sawyer!” Kace’s voice came from the other side of the kitchen, and the hotshot pro football player himself came out and wrapped his arms around Sawyer in a big hug.
Nathan took one look at my face and cracked a smile.
“Kace, now, too?” I protested as Nathan laughed. “You guys have only met a couple of times, and already he’s the man of the hour?”
“Kace stopped by the Fixer Brothers offices the other day and the two of them were friends in an instant,” Nathan said. “Who wouldn’t get along with Kace, though? God, I love him. Not to get all sappy on you, or anything.”
“Same with Sawyer,” I said. “You guys know I’m only giving you shit.”
I’d known Nathan as the straight, single dad from Fixer Brothers for years, and then a little while back I’d watched as he fell fast and hard for Kace Tomlin. Kace was young, charming, and one of the only openly gay pro football players in the country, and Nathan had gotten swept up in his world when he’d been hired to renovate Kace’s guest house. They were an unlikely pair, but somehow, they worked together like bread and butter.
“Sawyer told me all about your lemonade, Harlan,” Kace said. “Have you been holding out on me? You know I like homemade lemonade, too.”
“I call bullshit on that,” I said. “You like health drinks and electrolyte crap and stevia, whatever the hell that is.”
“Yeah, well, maybe if you tell me your lemonade recipe, I can make my own and add in protein and electrolytes and stevia.”
“Someone arrest this man,” I said.
“Those are fighting words, to Harlan,” Sawyer warned Kace.
“I’m just fucking with him. I do want to try the original lemonade, by the way. I like health drinks, but I like a good sugar fix, too. Here. Come into the dining room, we’ve got plenty of snacks. And only some of them are healthy.”
