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Maxwell shot him a glare. “Don’t give me that look.” He strode to the board and yanked out each dart stuck in it, then picked up the one he’d completely missed off the floor. “I’m not compounding my mistakes by letting you make more for me.”
“Well, then, what do you want to do?” Sebastian put his hand on his hip, and Maxwell couldn’t help rolling his eyes as he handed Sebastian’s dart back to him. God, the man hated to be told no. How did Leon ever manage him?
“I don’t know yet.” Maxwell stepped back from the line and crossed his arms. He reached for his glass and took a sip. “I don’t know.”
Then he glanced across the room to Garrett. He was still at the pool table, letting a few other people take a turn but laughing along with everyone else and goading the players, another beer in his hand. With him running the group, everyone in the immediate vicinity had been dragged into the merriment—no one allowed to linger on the edges, no one isolated.
“Does he know?” Sebastian’s question drew Maxwell’s attention quickly away, and he looked back to his friend and his slightly narrowed eyes. “Garrett fucking Twal, I mean. Does he know everything with Kurt?”
Maxwell shook his head and looked into the remaining amber liquid in his glass. “He knows some of it. But not…the primary issue.”
“Right.” Sebastian dragged out the word and threw a dart. Then he wrinkled his nose. “What exactly are you doing with him, anyway? With Twal?”
Wasn’t that the question? Maxwell drained his glass and set it aside. He wished he knew what he was doing with Garrett too, but all he could figure out was that it was probably a mistake. “Being friends.”
Sebastian scoffed and threw a dart. “Yeah, you look at him like I look at all my friends.”
Maxwell scowled back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
And even though he could feel Sebastian’s pointed eyes on him, he still couldn’t help looking back at Garrett. Garrett, who was also looking at him. Their eyes met, and Garrett flashed him a small smile over the rim of his glass.
“Oh god, I’m gonna gag.” Sebastian threw his last dart far out from his tight cluster in the middle and stepped away from the line with a shiver.
“What?” Maxwell hunched as he moved into a throwing position.
“You!” Sebastian cocked his hip out and put a hand on it. “You look at him like he hung both of Carta’s moons.”
“I do not.” Maxwell didn’t look at Sebastian as he tried very hard to focus on throwing his darts at the board this time.
“You do.” Sebastian sighed. “And he looks at you the same way, you know.”
Did he? Maxwell bit his lip, and he ran his fingers over his next dart. Sometimes it seemed like it, like Garrett saw the whole world when he looked at Maxwell and was happy with it. But that could so easily all be in Maxwell’s wishful thinking. In the fantasies he knew from experience were too dangerous to indulge.
“I didn’t see at first because I was”—Sebastian shrugged and watched Maxwell throw his last dart before going to retrieve them—“distracted with other issues.”
“You mean with Leon.” Maxwell raised an eyebrow.
“And, you know, the war!” Sebastian spread his arms out as he came back with the darts in hand. “But I still honestly don’t know how I missed it. You two are almost as bad as Mal’ik and Oliver.”
“We’re nothing like Mal’ik and Oliver,” Maxwell said quickly, stepping back out of position. They weren’t. That wasn’t what they were doing.
“Yeah, sure, whatever.” Sebastian waved a hand but then didn’t turn back to the board right away. He looked at Maxwell, and his lips twisted. “It’s just…you and Garrett and this secret you have…I don’t know how that ends well.”
Maxwell set his jaw and held out his hand for his darts. “It doesn’t end because it doesn’t start.”
“Maxwel—”
“No, I mean that.” Maxwell shook his head. “I’ve already told Garrett we’re not anything and that we’re not going to be anything. We might,” he glanced at Garrett again—he was grinning at someone, his dimples deep and his honey eyes bright—then down at the dart in his hand, “spend time together, but we’re not ever going to be together.”
Sebastian didn’t say anything right away, and Maxwell looked up at him to see him with a sad expression. “But why not?”
Maxwell gaped at him. “What do you mean, why not? You just said yourself you don’t see how this ends well.”
“I don’t see how it ends well with your secret, but without your se—”
“What is happening right now?” Maxwell straightened up, affronted and confused and a little angry because it all hurt enough without Sebastian questioning every little thing. “You don’t like Garrett. You don’t trust Garrett.” He stepped in close so he could lower his voice. “And I only just convinced you not to kill the last man I told my secret to, so what exactly are you suggesting now?”
Sebastian, predictably, did not back down. “I’m suggesting that Garrett Twal is not Kurt Buck.”
