Page 41 of Keep

Mac. Jonathan. And now this.

Except—no. That wasn’t right, and he knew it even as the reflex kicked in. Mac was an addict who’d used him. Jonathan was a con artist who’d ended up in federal prison. Hank was a man who’d bought lube at CVS and called it hopeful, and made a sound when he came that Chad was never going to unhear. The pattern wasn’t the same. The instinct to make it the same—to file Hank under broken picker, exhibit C—was the thing that was broken, not the choice.

He didn’t fully believe that yet. But he was trying it on.

He’d Googled it in the bathroom at two in the morning, sitting on the cold tile floor with his phone at five percent battery. Henry Fortner. Junior senator. Sixth year of his term. An official Senate bio photo—the same face, no baseball cap, in a suit and tie that made him look formal and stiff. A handful of news articles. A Politico piece about some bipartisan infrastructure amendment. A mention in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about agricultural funding. Nothing alarming, and yet he’d sat there on the bathroom floor reading all of it like he was studying for a test.

Henry. The bio said Henry. The man asleep in the other room called himself Hank and bought Astroglide at CVS and made a sound like a man being saved when he came. The Senate bio did not capture that.

The coffee finished. He found a mug—plain white, no logo—poured himself a cup, leaned against the counter, and drank it black because he didn’t know where the sugar was and didn’t feel like rummaging.

“You found the coffee.”

He looked up. Hank was in the doorway, barefoot, in last night’s trousers with a gray t-shirt that had seen better days. His hair was wrecked in a way that worked. The beard was chaotic at the edges. He looked nothing like the Senate bio.

“I hope that’s okay,” Chad said.

“More than.” Hank came into the kitchen—a small space he filled—and reached past Chad for a mug with a matter-of-factness that felt almost domestic. He poured his own cup, turned, and leaned against the opposite counter. Eighteen inches of kitchen floor between them. Both holding mugs.

“Good morning,” Hank said. Voice still rough with sleep.

“Morning.”

Hank drank his coffee. Looked at Chad over the rim with those dark eyes that were cautious now—a different cautious than last night. Last night the caution had been about wanting and not knowing if wanting was allowed. This was a man waiting to find out how much damage his secret had done.

“I owe you an explanation,” Hank said.

“Yeah,” Chad said. “You do.”

Hank nodded slowly. “Can we—” He gestured toward the main room. “I’d rather not have this particular conversation standing in my kitchen.”

“Sure.”

They moved to the couch. Hank sat at one end, angled toward him. Chad sat at the other end with his mug balanced on his knee and waited. The couch where, a few hours ago, Hank’s mouth had been on him for the second time. The cushion had a different weight to it now.

“I should have told you Wednesday,” Hank said. “When you texted. Or Thursday, before I picked you up. Or at dinner, before—” He stopped. Restarted. “There were a dozen points at which the right thing to do would have been to tell you, and I didn’t do it at any of them, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.”

“Okay,” Chad said. “Why?”

Hank turned the mug in his hands. “Because I liked you,” he said, and then seemed to recognize how insufficient that sounded and pushed forward. “From the minute you handed me that drink on Tuesday, I liked you. And I was afraid that if I told you what I did for a living, that would become the whole conversation. Or you’d decide it wasn’t worth the complication. Or—” He paused. “Or you’d treat me like a senator instead of like a person.”

“I would have told you my last two relationships ended with one guy in rehab and one guy in federal prison.”

Hank blinked. “Wow.”

“As a counterweight. Things that are complicated to disclose.” He wrapped both hands around his mug. “I would have told you.”

“I see,” Hank said quietly. “But yours is past, mine is present, and that’s on me.” He met Chad’s eyes directly, the way he had at dinner when he’d said I’ve never been with a man. That same deliberate honesty that cost him something. “I’m sorry. I was a coward about it, and I don’t have a better explanation than that.”

Chad sat with that. Outside, a car passed on South Capitol Street. Somewhere in the building, a door closed.

“Are you actually Republican?” Chad asked. “Like, the whole thing?”

Something moved across Hank’s face—not quite a wince. “The whole thing, yes.”

“Okay.” Chad nodded. “I’m not going to pretend that’s not weird for me, because it is, but—” He exhaled. “I grew up in Manassas. Half my family votes Republican. I know the difference between the bumper sticker and the person.”

Hank was watching him carefully.