Page 87 of The Fire Line

For several seconds afterward, neither moved.

Jay rested his forehead against Harris’s thigh. One of Harris’s hands remained loose in his hair while the other lay open against the couch.

When Jay could make his hand cooperate, he reached toward the side table. Harris caught the tissue box first and handed it down.

“Very dignified,” Jay muttered as he cleaned himself.

“You were real concerned about dignity thirty seconds ago.”

“Eh. Dignity is situational.”

The corner of Harris’s mouth shifted.

Jay sat back on his heels and took him in: hair disordered, chest rising too fast, expression suspended between satisfaction and disbelief. He felt ridiculously pleased.

“I’ve been thinking about doing that for four days.”

Harris stared. “Four days?”

“More or less continuously.”

His gaze moved over Jay, slow and newly assessing. “Eager, aren’t you?”

“Shut up.”

“Didn’t say it was a complaint.”

Jay began to stand, but Harris caught him behind the neck and pulled him into a kiss.

The taste made him hesitate for the smallest fraction of a second, and then Harris kissed him harder.

Jay braced one knee against the couch and kissed him back, slower now that the frantic edge had passed. Harris’s hand stayed behind his neck, and when they separated, Jay remained close enough that their foreheads nearly touched.

Eventually reality returned in small, inconvenient pieces: the lodge, Harris’s family, Jay’s colleagues, and the fact that he could not walk back across the ranch looking freshly debauched without inviting questions.

He pulled his jeans into place and caught his reflection faintly in the dark window. His hair was wrecked, his mouth looked thoroughly used, and color remained high across his chest.

“I should give it a few minutes before I go back looking like this.”

Harris was assembling his discarded clothes. “Stay as long as you need.”

Jay washed up and returned to find Harris dressed again. Jay sat beside him rather than taking the chair.

Five minutes became ten. Somewhere in there, Harris asked about a festival screening Jay had mentioned on the mountain, and Jay told him about failed subtitles, a panicked moderator, and his attempt to translate half the film aloud from the back of the theater while everyone pretended the situation was intentional.

By the time Jay noticed how long he had been talking, his face had cooled completely. He didn’t make a move to leave.

15

You Kept Gettin’ in My Way

Harris listened to Jay describe the projectionist abandoning the booth and tried to determine how to tell him the truth.

The lie had felt manageable before the four days apart—unpleasant, but contained. Harris could have corrected it later, once he knew what this was or whether it would happen again.

Now Jay sat beside him, one bare foot tucked beneath the opposite leg, talking with his hands while Harris’s body still carried the memory of his mouth.

Jay was a beautiful man. Harris had spent weeks translating that fact into safer language—striking, noticeable, hard to ignore. Tonight, with Jay’s hair still disordered and his mouth swollen from Harris, the simpler word kept winning.