Page 110 of The Fire Line

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Were about to.”

“I was going to save us both time.” Jay took a drink. “You want to know who topped.”

Heat worked its way up Harris’s neck.

“Could’ve gotten there.”

“Eventually.”

Harris gave him a look. “Well?”

“Me.”

The answer came easily.

Harris kept his expression neutral.

“You?”

“I topped.”

“Always?”

“With Miles?”

“Yeah.”

Jay shrugged one shoulder. “Always.”

There it was.

Harris took another drink as though the answer had satisfied nothing more consequential than idle curiosity.

Inside, something rearranged itself.

Jay had been with a man for five years, and for those five years, Jay had occupied one side of that particular equation every time. Harris had exactly no experience of his own with which to complicate the obvious conclusion.

The tack room came back with uncomfortable clarity: Jay’s hand slipping lower, Harris going still, the strange combination of uncertainty and want that had made slow the only answer he could manage.

Apparently, if this kept going, Harris had some figuring out to do.

He did not intend to do any of it with Jay watching.

Jay studied him for a moment. “You look like you’re doing math.”

“Trying to figure out how Miles got a word in for five years.”

Jay blinked. “Excuse me?”

Harris took another drink.

“You talk a lot.”

“I answer one deeply personal question and this is what I get?”

“Yup.”