I couldn’t wait until Liam’s teammates finished their coffees and got the fuck out of my restaurant.

After trudging upstairs behind Jenny, the six of them had sat at the long oak table, their backs straight and shoulders rigid, making polite, stilted conversation. And when Liam’s head had been bent over his food, there’d been a lot of eye bulging and head canting among the other five.

It was obvious Liam wasn’t getting on well with the lot of them, which I found odd because when we’d first met, his easy going smiles and witty banter had endeared him to me right away. He was smart, funny, and droll in a way I appreciated. What wasn’t there to like?

While Dean and Cole cleared the table, I rolled my knives away as the sound of six chairs scooting back simultaneously hit my ears. As a unit, the men rose and awkwardly thanked their servers. With a wave and a few polite chin lifts, they extended their appreciation my direction as well. Normally, I’d shake their hands and thank them for coming, but that might encourage them to come back someday, and I didn’t want them here.

For as conflicted as I was about what was happening between Liam and I, I genuinely liked him as a person, and they’d behaved like pricks toward him all night. The least they could have done was thank him for the goddamn meal they’d been comped through his connections.

As the group shuffled toward the staircase, I called out, “Hey Liam, stay back a minute? I want to talk to you about something.”

He stopped, and I watched his chest rise with a gulp and then fall with a long exhalation. Meanwhile, the two guys at the front of the pack—I think their names were Hamish and James—turned to stare at me before their eyes swung to Liam and then back to each other. Hamish’s eyebrow shot up and James’s lips flattened into a grimace as his shoulders lifted in a shrug. I didn’t need thought bubbles over their heads to know Hamish was silently asking “What the fuck is that all about?” while James answered, “Beats the fuck out of me.”

“Yeah, all right.” Liam gestured to his new teammates with a half-hearted wave and a lackluster “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Tentatively, he shuffled deeper into the room, and unsure where to sit, shifted nervously near the island.

“Pull up a chair.” When he did, I leaned my forearms on the counter. “They’re a lovely bunch.”

“I’m sorry. That was so bad.”

“It was bloody excruciating, and I wasn’t even the one they were icing out.”

He scrubbed a hand over his weary face. “There was an … incident … in the locker room this afternoon. I should have canceled, but they said everything was cool.”

The way he said incident—that loaded pause and the drop in the timbre of his smooth, cultured South Dublin accent—put me on high alert. I sensed that whatever happened hadn’t been about rugby.

And then I remembered the way his teammates had looked at me when I’d called out to him, and I knew it hadn’t been about rugby. I’d been the problem.

Which explained his fucking panic attack before dinner.

I pushed off the counter and opened the cabinet where I kept my best scotch. Looking over my shoulder, I raised the decanter in silent question.

“Yeah, why not.”

I emptied a standard pour into the glass, paused, and then doubled it. “So, what did they say about me?”

He took a swig, his throat bobbing as he swallowed, and then winced as the smoky liquid slid down his throat. Staring into the glass, he swirled the whisky and then raised his eyes to mine. “This tastes like licking a burnt log.”

I chuckled despite the heaviness in my heart, the lead in my stomach. “You lick many logs lately?” And then I realized how that could have been misconstrued and laughed out loud for real. “Fuck, I’m sorry. That was bad.”

Liam’s mouth kicked up and he took another sip. “Horrible.”

I leaned my hip against the counter. “I’m serious, Liam. What did they say to you?”

His eyes met mine, and he took a deep breath. When he let it out, he blinked and his lips dropped into a frown. “They called you a faggot.”

I tried to keep my face impassive as I processed his words. And then I laughed, even though there was nothing funny about this situation. “I do like a good dick.”

“Don’t do that,” he bit out. “Don’t make light of it.”

“Liam,” I sighed, “they aren’t the first assholes to call me a faggot, and they won’t be the last. If I got my apron in a twist every time some fucking meathead called me a fairy or a pansy ass, I wouldn’t have accomplished anything with my life. In a few years, no one will remember their names, and I’ll still be here, one of the greatest chefs to ever come out of Scotland. I don’t like being called that, but I’m not going to cry myself to sleep over it either.”

“How do you …?”

“How do I what? Brush it off so easily?”

“Yeah,” he whispered. “That.”

“I didn’t always,” I admitted, remembering all the fights I’d gotten into after I’d first come out, my knuckles bloodied and my nose repeatedly broken. And then, when the fighting hadn’t quieted my demons, the hard-partying and anonymous, unprotected sex I’d turned to.

Pushing those dark memories aside, I continued, “But then I got older and wiser, and I decided the only opinions I valued were from those I respected. And I don’t respect big men who use small, ugly words to make themselves feel better about who they are underneath all that hate.”

I watched Liam process my words, mull them over and absorb the truth of them. I’d had a long time to get to this place, but he still struggled mightily accepting his new reality.

I was trying to be sensitive to his plight, but it didn’t stop me from wishing I’d met him three or four years from now. That our paths hadn’t crossed after he’d shrugged off his guilt. That he’d walked into my restaurant secure in his sexuality, with the knowledge that it didn’t define what he did outside the bedroom. That who he fucked was only one small part of who he was.

But that wasn’t what had happened. I’d met Liam now—when he was only just learning to give voice to his desires, when he still felt as if wanting another man made him less than. He wasn’t ready to let go of who he thought he was supposed to be, the life he was supposed to lead, the expectations people had for a man like him.

He wasn’t ready to give us a chance.

And yet I couldn’t walk away from him. I might not get to share his bed, but I could be his friend while he faced his demons. No one had done that for me, and those early years had been pure fucking hell.

“Look, I know you didn’t want this—” I passed my hand back and forth between us “—whatever this is. You didn’t walk in here that first night looking for a hookup. The thing is, I do want this, and I probably always will.

“But I also know you’re not ready for that, and I’m not going to pressure you. No more jokes, no more innuendo. I … I guess what I’m saying is, I just want to be your friend, like you offered before.”

Liam finished his whisky and set the glass down. “I appreciate that, I really do. But the truth is, I can’t stop thinking about you, wondering what it’d be like.” He groaned, and his face became a mask of repressed pain. “I want you so fucking bad it hurts.”

My cock stirred, and my gut clenched at his admission, at the look of pure, perfect longing on his handsome face. I’d just promised him I’d push that all aside, but knowing he felt the same way, I didn’t think I could.

I wanted him like I’d never wanted anything or anyone in my life—and that included my next fix when I’d been addicted to heroin. If Liam Donnelly was a drug, I was fucking hooked.

And like an addict, now that my fix was within reach, nothing could stop me from reaching out and taking hold of it. No amount of logic or reason could prevent me from stepping between Liam’s thighs and fisting his blond hair between my fingers. No amount of caution or doubt would keep me from tugging his head back. And when he gasped—his mouth parting in surprise—no amount of uncertainty would keep me from crushing my lips to his, from my teeth nipping at the sensual curve of his full, bottom lip. Nothing, and no one, would keep me from devouring the mouth I’d dreamed about for weeks, from licking my way inside, from tangling my tongue with his until he weaved his fingers through my hair and moaned, the sound moving from his chest, through his mouth, and into mine.

I was doing everything I’d just vowed not to, and yet I couldn’t be stopped.

Liam’s other hand palmed my cock and he squeezed the long, hard length of me in a tight grip. Reflexively, I rolled my hips and swallowed the groan he gave in response. With fumbling fingers, he plucked at the button of my jeans.

And that’s when I knew we had to stop.

I tore my lips from his and grabbed hold of his hand, linking our fingers together and pulling it from my body.

“Let me touch you,” he gasped, sucking in a large gulp of air. “I need to fucking touch you.”

My chest rose and fell with unsteady breaths. I wanted nothing more than to drop my jeans and let him explore me to his heart’s content, but if he did, there was no going back. If I let him touch my body the way I longed for it to be touched, he’d fucking own me.

And if he wasn’t ready for the ramifications of those actions, we couldn’t go there.

But instead of saying saying any of that, instead I whispered, “You have to be sure this is what you want.”

With his gaze locked firmly on the massive erection I was sporting behind my denim, Liam licked his lips. “It is. It so fucking is,” he said, dragging his eyes up my body until all I saw was the simple need that existed within.

“This is what I want,” he vowed. “I want you, Lachlan. I can’t stop wanting you.”