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“Okay, no details. I don’t want to picture you with someone else.”
“Now you know why I left when you were doing most of those shows. I saw enough. You dancing, though…” He leaned in to kiss me quickly. “Anyway,” he growled, then added, “You…can take rough, right?”
“For the record, women in the lifestyle are every bit, if not more into the rough stuff. To be truthful, most men I knew back when I first started were into weird stuff, not rough.”
He let his head drop as he laughed. “See, I know that. It’s me, not them.”
“I understand, Rick. I’m just glad you’re ashamed of it,” I said, laughing. “Because…”
“I should be, yes, I know. The toxic masculine thing, believe me, it was driven into me as a kid. I’ve been wondering, in fact, if I hadn’t always been bi, but shoved the thoughts out of my head. It felt almost familiar when I first realized my feelings for you.”
“Could be. I’d be pretty conceited to think I changed you overnight.”
“You should be conceited. I’ve never known anyone as beautiful as you,” he said in a husky voice. Rick then moved his head back, his brows drawn tight as he asked, “Can I say beautiful to a man?”
“Wow, you’re really feeling along here, aren’t you?”
“Chandler is helping, somewhat, but he says he doesn’t understand older gays compared to those of his age.”
“He doesn’t understand them either, but he’ll learn.”
Rick caressed my face like he couldn’t believe we were finally in a place where we could be truthful. “We all learn, sometimes the hard way, I suppose.”
“How soon did he know about…this? With us?”
“He saw it in me from the start,” Rick admitted with a heavy sigh. “Before I really knew what was happening with me. When we had that talk, he told me he knew I was, his words, crushing hard on you. I told him I’d started to make steps toward seeing if there was anything truly there, or if my loneliness had taken me to a place I wasn’t truly meant for. He encouraged it, and he was the one who told me to talk to your friends. Good or bad, they’d be honest with me, and they were.”
I loved my friends, even for the anger I felt that they didn’t let me in on things. “They’re great, yeah. I could tell they hated keeping it from me, but besides some hints, they never told me.”
Rick was staring down to the floor as he admitted, “I could tell. You were shocked to see it was me under the mask. Actually, I knew that you hadn’t guessed it was me at the table,” he said, then slowly raised his eyes to me to see my reaction.
I’d told him I was falling in love with someone. “So, you got it out of me without much trouble.”
“Kanan, I didn’t mean to find out that way. I swear to you, that was never my intention. I wanted to simply get to know you in ways I couldn’t as Rick. Does that make sense?”
“Yes, and in turn, you confessed things to me. Liking the lifestyle was one of them.” I took his hands into mine, forcing his eyes to stay on me. “You need to make sure that you want me before we start anything in the lifestyle. And more.”
“I figured you’d say that. I agree, of course. How do we continue with this, Kanan? I’m new to being with a man, remember?”
“It’s starting a relationship. It’s the same thing, only I have a dick and so do you,” I said, laughing. “The first thing, I need to go back into that club.”
“What? With your ex there?”
“Yes. I feel like a coward now, running off after seeing him. I made a commitment to Damon, Burke, and Joel. They brought me in, without knowing me, to help me out and I’m just abandoning them.”
He moved in and touched his lips to mine. “You’re beautiful and so much more. How could anyone not fall for you?”
My stomach was warm at his words. We hadn’t said the L word yet, no, but both of us made it clear we were there.
“I’d be proud to escort you.”
“No mask. If I can be petty for a moment, I’d love Jeffery to see what a hot man I ended up with.”
He laughed loudly and stood, helping me to my feet. “Let’s get petty.”
In the hall on the main floor, he saw the bathroom door open, so he whispered, “I’ll bet my hair looks great from that hood. Let me get pretty so we can get petty.”
He left me with a kiss before disappearing into the bathroom, and I went to the kitchen to get a drink of water. I never thought it would be so hard to drink water, but smiling the way I was, the water dribbled out of the corner of my mouth twice until I gave up and set the glass in the dishwasher.
