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He said it mockingly, but then his gaze caught on the bit of skin now visible through my shirt and he blushed.
I cleared my throat. “Okay. I’ll walk you down. You can leave through the side entrance.” I didn’t want him having to make his way through the bar.
Felix got his shoes on and took one last look around my apartment like he was memorizing it before I walked him downstairs.
At the door to the street, he turned and looked up at me.
“Thank you for dinner. It was great,” he said politely, then looked down.
When he looked up again, the polite calm was gone and in its place was something raw and needy. He put his hands on my shoulders.
“Huey,” he said softly, wrinkling his nose. “Wait—I just realized I don’t even know your last name.”
“It is my last name,” I said sheepishly. “Huey’s short for Hughes.”
Andrew Policzek had called me Huey when we played football together in high school. When I’d landed hard at my first NA meeting, I’d given it as my name when it was my turn to introduce myself. A thin patina of privacy that I’d never stripped away. Since then it had become what everyone called me.
“What? I’ve been thinking of it as a nickname for your last name this whole time, like we’re frat brothers?” Felix pushed at my shoulders. “What the hell’s your name, then?”
His outrage was adorable. Adorable enough that I found myself telling Felix Rainey what I hadn’t told anyone in over fifteen years.
“It’s Dane. Dane Hughes.”
He gaped at me, then nodded. “Well, yeah. You seem way more like a Dane than a Huey. Can I call you Dane?”
Hearing Dane from Felix’s mouth made me feel young and vulnerable.
Dane was the before.
Dane was the kid who lay out in the Virginia fields for hours, staring at the sky, so still he could feel insects’ legs move delicately over his skin. The kid who sat on his father’s sailboat in Cape Charles and pictured the bowl of the Atlantic floor, gasping at how deep it would have to be to hold such a vast volume of sea.
But Dane was also the man who turned his back on the fields and the sky and the insects and the water. He was the man who made choices like nothing he did mattered, even though he knew the effect of a single spark jumped onto dry grass.
I looked at Felix’s hair, rioting around his face after leaning on my shoulder, his big brown eyes, makeup a little smeary. He had his arms crossed over his chest like he was ready to fight about it, even though everything I’d learned about him so far also told me that if I said I didn’t want him to, he’d never actually press the issue.
“Okay,” I said.
Felix slid his hands back to my shoulders and pulled me down a little.
“Dane,” he said softly. “I like you. I wanna see you again. Can I?”
His words pulsed through me, hot sweetness stealing through my veins. My name on his lips left me reeling.
I nodded but couldn’t find any words.
He smiled. “Can I kiss you?”
I nodded again, stunned. For some reason, I hadn’t thought that this might really happen.
Felix pulled me down a little farther and went up on his tiptoes. He pressed soft lips to mine and kissed me so sweetly I felt like I was drowning. After a moment, he put his arms around my neck and kissed me deeper, lips parting just enough to share breath.
Everything in me strained toward him. I wanted to scoop him up and hold him tight to my body. He weighed nothing; I could do it effortlessly.
I wanted to press him to the wall and feast on his mouth until he was shaking against me with lust, begging for more of anything, of everything. I wanted to slide inside him, feel him with my whole body, hear him scream my name—my real fucking name—as pleasure took him apart.
I wanted him. Fuck, I wanted everything he had.
But instead I opened my mouth to let him inside. I took the sweet kiss he offered and committed to memory everything I could. His taste, the feel of him stretching to reach my mouth, the soft humming sound he made when I parted my lips and his tongue touched mine.
I slid a hand up his spine and felt him tremble. With the other hand I cupped his cheek, finally, finally learning the feel of his soft skin. I let myself feel his flushed cheek and the lean muscles of his back, his lips and his tongue. I let myself feel it with everything in me for one more minute. Then I eased away, because with each passing second my need for him began to outstrip my control, and I did not let that happen anymore.
