Page 32 of Keep

Hank came back with two glasses. Their fingers brushed in the handoff.

“Hey Google, play soft classical.”

Piano filled the apartment—slow, contemplative. The sound equivalent of that woodsy cologne.

They sat on the couch, not quite touching, sipping.

Hank opened his mouth. Closed it. Took a drink. Opened it again.

“I—” he started and then stopped. Shook his head once, like he was arguing with himself. Whatever he wanted to say, he chose not to. “Never mind.”

Chad watched him swallow the words. Watched the effort it cost.

Tell me. Whatever it is, just tell me.

But he didn’t push. Instead, he set his glass on the coffee table and turned to face Hank.

“I’m here,” Chad said. “That’s enough for right now.”

Hank searched his face. Then he set his own glass down and kissed Chad—slow, deep, tasting like bourbon. His hands came up to frame Chad’s face, thumbs along his jaw.

Chad kissed him back. Then shifted, swung a leg over, and settled into Hank’s lap. Hank’s hands went to his hips, gripping, eyes going wide.

“Is this okay?” Chad asked.

“God, yes.”

Chad rolled his hips. Hank groaned—head back against the couch, throat exposed, fingers digging in.

“I want you,” Chad said against his neck. “Do you want me?”

“So much.”

“Then show me.”

Hank’s hands slid up his back, pulled him down, and kissed him.

CHAPTER 5

Hank had imagined this moment for most of his life.

Not with specifics—he’d never let himself get that far. Never allowed the fantasies to crystalize into actual faces or bodies or scenarios. Just the idea of it. The possibility. Someday, maybe, if circumstances were different, if he were braver, if the world were kinder.

And now it was happening.

Chad was straddling his lap on the couch, kissing him like oxygen was secondary, and Hank’s entire nervous system was staging a mutiny. The Chopin nocturne—he couldn’t have named it at gunpoint in his current state—drifted from the Google Home in the kitchen, and Hank’s brain supplied the unhelpful observation that Chopin had died at thirty-nine. He was forty and just getting started. There was probably a metaphor in there, but Chad’s tongue was doing something that made metaphors irrelevant.

Chad’s hands were in his hair, on his face, sliding down his chest. Hank wanted to catalog every detail with the thoroughness of a subcommittee report—the weight of Chad’s body against his, the lingering sweetness of White Russian on Chad’s tongue, the small sounds Chad made when Hank’s lips found his throat. He was, he realized, making a mental document. This was who he was. A man who experienced transcendence and immediately wanted to file it.

“Wait,” Hank said, pulling back. “I need to—I should tell you about⁠—”

“Hank.” Chad’s voice was patient but immovable. He pressed a finger to Hank’s lips. “That’s really what you want to talk about right now? Work?” He shifted his weight slightly, deliberately, in Hank’s lap. “I’m sitting on the evidence that says otherwise.”

“Not really, no.”

“I didn’t think so. You said boring government work. Has anything changed since dinner?”

“No. Just you. Us. I⁠—”