The Broken Triangle (31 page)

“You?” Patrick blinked at him. “Well, they do have a stunning metallic black. It’s kind of shot through with silver glitter, but subtle and shimmery. Not sure it’s really you, though.”

“New year, new me,” Vin said.

Patrick held up his hand for a high five. “Goes for both of us.”

Vin smacked his hand against Patrick’s and let himself absorb some of Patrick’s exuberance.

It would work out. He’d get over this sudden crush, get over Riley, get used to being alone again.

No. Get used to being single. He wasn’t alone.

He had Patrick.

Shane locked the door behind the last of the nightly customers—it had been a busy night even though it was two days into the new year, and the level of crazy had ratcheted back down into something resembling normal—and made an impatient gesture at Patrick. “Check the bathrooms. Then you’re off the clock.”

“Really?” Patrick looked at Shane in disbelief. Letting him leave before everything was cleaned up? That was unprecedented. “Are you sure?”

“Are you sure you want to argue with me?” Shane grumbled.

“No! I mean, no, sir.” Patrick beat a rapid retreat to the women’s room, which was relatively tidy, then moved on to the men’s room. Enough scraps littered the floor that it needed a quick sweep, but that was all. Patrick paused in the middle of it to text Vin, who’d worked the afternoon shift and planned to spend the evening upstairs in his apartment watching bad TV.

That was easy since Vin considered most TV bad.

He texted,
Hey! S letting me out of here early, want 2 hang out?

He’d barely finished sweeping the trash into the dustpan when Vin’s reply came.

Sure, if u don’t mind watching a Friends repeat.

Up in 5
, Patrick texted back.

Shane was leaning in the doorway of the office talking to Ben when Patrick went past it, and the atmosphere was thick with tension. Good tension, Patrick was sure, but he didn’t want to think about it too much, not now that he knew what his employers got up to when no one else was around.

Well, okay, he thought about it sometimes. When he was alone. He might be practicing celibacy—key word
practicing
—but he wasn’t a saint.

Vin opened his door wearing loose sweatpants and a short-sleeved T-shirt, both black of course, and with bare feet. The combination got to Patrick in a way the most outrageously skimpy outfits he’d seen in clubs couldn’t match.

“I’m slobbing out here,” Vin said, closing the door behind Patrick, then ambling back to the couch. He’d built himself a nest out of a fleece blanket, but he shook the blanket out, making room for Patrick to sit beside him, and muted the sound from the TV.

“Slobbing is good for the soul sometimes.”

“If you don’t do too much of it,” Vin agreed. “Want a drink? Food?”

“Nah, I’m good. Just wanted to say hi.”

Vin nudged Patrick’s knee with his foot, his bare toes clean, the nails cut evenly. “So say it.”

Patrick leaned over, staring into Vin’s eyes. “Hi,” he said in a deep, husky voice, ramping up the drama.

Vin edged forward until their noses were almost touching. “Hi,” he said before dissolving into giggles that set Patrick off.

“You are such a doofus,” Patrick said a moment later, still snickering.

“Sometimes. I think you bring it out in me. Hey, come here a sec, will you?” Vin beckoned him closer, staring into his eyes again, but intently this time. Patrick caught his breath, his amusement fading, a familiar ache of longing taking its place. “Patrick, what color are your eyes? For real?”

Patrick frowned, trying to remember which contacts he was wearing, trying not to lose his sense of control of the situation. This was playing, not serious. “Blue,” he said. “Not as blue as these contacts make them look. They were when I was little, though. They were really bright blue, like this. Now they’re grayer.”

“I want to see,” Vin said. He was close enough to kiss if Patrick leaned forward. “Show me.”

“I can’t,” Patrick told him. “I don’t have my case or my glasses with me, and once I take them out, the first thing I’ll do is walk into a wall. Though I guess you could videotape me doing it and put it on YouTube. Might get a lot of hits. Then I can trade this life of drudgery for the luxury I deserve.”

Vin reached out toward Patrick’s face, and Patrick froze. Vin’s fingertips were cool, like little icy kisses where they pressed briefly and lightly to the thin skin under Patrick’s eyes. “Okay. But sometime? I want to know what they look like.”

Every part of Patrick was screaming at him to lean forward and kiss Vin. He wanted to warm Vin’s lips with his, to taste his mouth and touch every inch of his skin.

“Sure,” he said hoarsely, then cleared his throat. “Sometime.”

“Do you still want to see my new tattoo?”

Whimpering pitifully would lead to questions Patrick couldn’t answer. Saying no would too. He nodded, mouth too dry to speak, and edged back to give Vin room to pull up his T-shirt.

Instead, Vin peeled it off, a swift up-and-over, so that Patrick went from staring at black cotton to drinking in the sight of Vin’s bare chest in the time it took to blink twice.

Thanks to a careless driver, he’d been drenched by icy spray from a puddle a few days earlier, the shock of the water hitting him driving his breath from his body. This felt like that, a physical reaction that robbed him of coherent thought. Smooth brown skin over defined muscles, the glint of metal through the dark, peaked nipples, inked colors spilling like liquid—his gaze absorbed it all. Arousal tore at him, ripping away his good intentions and his determination not to push Vin too far too soon.

He put out his hand and stroked the dragon’s wings, making Vin shudder, a sigh escaping him. Patrick would’ve snatched his hand away, apologized, but Vin arched his back, offering his chest up to be caressed again. His eyes were hazy, his lips parted, and his gaze was fixed on Patrick’s hand as if what it was doing mattered more than anything else.

Patrick dragged his fingertips over Vin’s skin to his pierced nipple. He watched Vin’s face, not his fingers, though he felt Vin’s nipple prickle and tighten in reaction to his touch. Vin’s pupils widened, and his chin lifted until his gaze met Patrick’s.

“What are we doing?” Vin whispered.

“I don’t know.” There were a thousand things Patrick could have said, but he was too scared to say any of them.

“I’ve been thinking.”

“About what?” Reluctantly Patrick pulled his hand back, but Vin caught it.

“You, mostly.” Vin held Patrick’s hand in a firm grip, like he was afraid Patrick would leave without it. “I’ve been thinking about you. I can’t stop.”

Patrick could’ve said so much to that, but in the end, after swallowing back half a dozen versions of
Do you mean it?
he settled for a whispered, “Don’t stop. Ever. Please.” His heart was beating quickly, adrenaline racing through him, but inside was a still, calm space waiting for Vin’s answer to fill it.

“But you— There’s someone you like.”

The mingled hope and despair in Vin’s eyes made them darker, or maybe Patrick was on the verge of passing out from holding his breath in case he missed anything. He sucked in a hit of oxygen, clearing his head. “Yeah. That’s actually you, but I was waiting for you to get over Riley before I threw myself at you again, because it didn’t go so well the last time I kissed you.”

“Me? It’s me?” Vin looked adorably confused, and Patrick had reached his limit on being patient, giving Vin space, turning his life around, all of it. He still wanted to change, but not to the point where he couldn’t recognize himself in the mirror.

“You, yes, it’s you. Of course it’s you.” He put his free hand against Vin’s face, shaping his palm to the angle of Vin’s jaw, stroking Vin’s cheek with his thumb, a slow, sweet drag of skin on skin. “If I kissed you again, would it be different? Would you kiss me back?”

Kissing had never mattered much with anyone else. He’d been with guys and the only place on them his lips had touched had been their cocks, but he craved a kiss from Vin like a flame craved air.

“Of course I would,” Vin said. “I know I freaked at the time, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”

Something in his tone blared a warning to Patrick, a huge BUT written in twenty-foot-high neon letters across the metaphorical sky.

Patrick’s stomach felt like he’d swallowed a rock. “What?” He drew back, not wanting to but needing to.

Vin’s hands caught at him, and no matter how much Patrick wanted to protect himself, he couldn’t hurt Vin by denying him the contact. “Whatever it is you’re thinking,” Vin said urgently, “stop, okay? Let me say some stuff. I need us to figure this out.”

“Okay.” Patrick took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay. Talk.”

“What if this doesn’t work?” Vin asked. He sounded more scared than Patrick had ever heard him.

“Why wouldn’t it?” Patrick knew that was unfair, because he’d asked himself the same thing a hundred times. “No, I mean it. Why?”

“What if I’m not what you want?” Vin gestured at himself, then seemed to realize that he was still sitting there without his shirt on, glancing down at his bare chest. “I’m not really your type.”

“You are,” Patrick told him desperately. “That’s exactly what you are. You’re totally my type; I was just too stupid to see it at first. What else?”

Vin scraped his teeth over his lower lip, all indecision. “What do you mean?”

“You’re going to give me a list of reasons why we shouldn’t do this, and I’m going to tell you why they’re wrong.” Patrick could see it so clearly. Why couldn’t Vin? “Can’t we skip this part? Whatever excuses you have, that’s all they are. I love you. I’ve loved you forever.”

As soon as the words were out there, he knew they were a mistake. Vin had seen him with guys, so many of them, listened as he babbled tearfully about being abandoned by them, looked uncomfortable when he’d drooled over their big dicks and what they’d done with them. Claiming a love that dated back more than a few months was problematic, and they both knew it.

He cleared his throat. “Forever means—”

“Since I met Riley.” Vin’s gaze was steady, even sorrowful. “That was when you decided you loved me, wasn’t it? And even then you didn’t stop screwing around. That time in the men’s room—”

“Oh God, don’t!” Patrick hid his face in his hands for a moment, his cheeks burning. “That was it, the last one. He let me see I’d hit rock bottom. I thought you had Riley, so I didn’t stand a chance, and it was easy to be what everyone expected. Then I saw the way you looked at me when I came out, and I felt such a fucking slut.”

“You weren’t,” Vin said. “You made your choices, and they weren’t always ones I think were right for you, but you were playing. Having fun. You didn’t hurt anyone.”

“Yeah, I did. It was junk-food sex. Fast, cheap, crappy sex. It was all I thought I deserved, and it seemed like plenty good enough at the time.” Patrick clenched his hands into fists, squeezing tight as if keeping his hands steady would stop his voice from shaking. “What I had with you was so different from what I was used to thinking of as love that I didn’t recognize it. We were friends. We liked each other. You didn’t…you didn’t go away. So totally different. Then I saw you with Riley and it all clicked into place, but it was too late. You’d gotten your happily-ever-after ending, and I was too fucking late.” He hammered his fists against his thighs with the last three words, knowing he’d screwed up his chances with Vin again.

Vin reached for him, curling his hands underneath Patrick’s so Patrick had no choice but to stop. He’d hurt himself, but he wouldn’t hurt Vin, and Vin knew it. “I don’t want to start something we’re going to regret, that’s all.”

“Yeah.” Patrick felt like he was shrinking. Of course Vin didn’t want to get involved with him. Of course. He never should have let himself dream, not even for a second. “I get it.”

Vin was looking at him with so much sympathy and understanding that Patrick didn’t know what to do. “No, you don’t,” he said affectionately. “You think I’m saying no.”

“Isn’t that what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying we have to be grown up and talk about it before we say yes.” Vin sighed. “This sucks.”

“Yeah. It does.” Patrick tried to be mature, like Vin said. He thought about what mature people would do in these circumstances. They’d wait, talk, talk some more, analyze every feeling to make sure it was genuine and not the result of jealousy or envy or whatever. It didn’t sound appealing when he was inches away from Vin, the rise and fall of his chest mesmerizing. “You know what wouldn’t suck?”

“What?”

“Kissing me. To see if there’s a, uh, a spark. Because if there isn’t, if there’s as much zing as you’d get kissing that jerk you were at school with, then we don’t need to bother with the talking and the thinking, and we can go back to being friends.”

He held still, barely breathing as he waited for Vin’s answer, not wanting to jinx it with more words. One kiss didn’t sound like much, but in a fairy tale, a single kiss could wake a lover from an enchanted sleep. Of course, they lived in the real world, and it was more likely that they’d bump noses.

“Okay,” Vin said readily. “Not going to lie. I want to kiss you so much I can’t say no, and there were plenty of sparks last time, but I think it’s a bad idea to—”

“Stop talking,” Patrick pleaded. “They weren’t sparky enough, or you wouldn’t have pulled away. You’ll change your mind. Kiss me. One kiss, Vin.”

“Not sure I can stop at one,” Vin said and put his mouth against Patrick’s with the delicacy of a bee landing on a flower. Did that count as one? If it did, Patrick didn’t feel cheated. That light brush, the brief slanting contact, left his lips tingling, a slow, powerful throb of desire rippling through his body. He swayed closer, sliding his hands along Vin’s bare back, up under the fall of hair that covered Vin’s shoulders, murmuring encouragement.

Vin kissed him again, lips closed, tracing the shape of Patrick’s mouth, a careful exploration with a rising urgency behind it held at bay as if Vin didn’t trust himself to let go. With his palms flat against Vin’s back, Patrick could feel him tremble, a racehorse waiting for the signal to run.