Cave Mathis had grown up to be unexpectedly hot. I mean, he’d been cute in high school, with his blond hair and shy smile. No doubt about that. But all the things that had made him cute back then, had intensified. He’d gone from being the All-American Boy Next Door to something more. Maybe it was the self-assurance. Maybe it was that look in his eyes that he had seen some things in the intervening years, things that had pushed him to grow and mature.

I sipped a fresh cup of tea and looked at myself in the mirror. I’d never look as comfortable as he did. Between the skin-care consultants, the laser treatments, the sunscreens and scrubs and elixirs flown in from labs across Europe, my team spent a lot of time making me look as fresh and young as possible. Maybe that was a problem. Nobody would let my face mature the way Cave’s had. If I started looking like I had some hard-won wisdom, the fans would fall away in droves.

Where was Toby? I’d been sure he’d be in the suite when I returned, nervously checking to make sure my walk hadn’t shown up on the gossip sites.

It was an unexpected moment of solitude. I didn’t get a lot of those. I could sit down and begin looking through the messages Toby had sent me, with the music he wanted me to listen to. Or maybe jot down a few of the lyric ideas I’d had lately. Naturally, most of my ideas involved the pain in my throat. I kept wanting to use the phrase hard to swallow in a song, but people would think I was making a very dated Vanilla Ice reference, and nobody wants that. I’d been throwing around rhymes for contagious, but probably nobody wanted a song about catching a viral infection either.

I laughed. Time off was definitely in order.

Unwinding my scarf, I let it fall to my bed, where it was followed by my clothes. A hot shower would be nice--nobody rushing me to get done with it, nobody demanding I interrupt it to take a phone call. Maybe it’d make my throat feel better, too. Toby would have demanded I spritz the shower with a eucalyptus and menthol oil the doctor had recommended, but it was gross and smelled like cough drops. No, I just wanted heat and steam and peace.

Peace, of course, was not on the menu. As I soaped myself up, I began to think about Cave. Oh, come on, I told myself. He’s not for you.

It might’ve been nice if he had been for me. My life was too complicated for that.

You hear a phrase like coming out of the closet, and it sounds so definite and final, doesn’t it? Like either the whole world knows, or no one does. But that’s not how it works at all.

Plenty of people knew I was gay. Toby certainly did. The label did. Most of my producers. Tons of folks. But there was a hard line drawn between them and the rest of the world. My fans didn’t know. They couldn’t. I have to admit, I was a little terrified at the idea of them finding out. All it would take is one wrong move, and my career would be over, whether my voice recovered or not.

I lay my forehead against the shower wall. So much for authenticity, right? All those songs about honesty and integrity and how love has to be based on truth. I don’t like to think of myself as a hypocrite, but I definitely am one. I wondered if the girls I dated talked about me behind my back. Surely they’d noticed that things never went anywhere, with any of them.

That’s why nothing was going to happen with Cave, even if his skin was sun-kissed and golden, his hair bleached from his time outside. If someone snapped a picture, if someone tweeted or posted, everything I had worked for these past years would be snatched out of my hands.

My hands. As though to comfort me, they had moved down between my legs, without my consciously thinking about it. Now I slowly ran my thumb down the length of my cock.

Cave was really hot. I mean, I was around hot guys all the time. The dancers who toured with me were nothing but muscle and sweat, and it was hard not to think of them during those off-moments when I wasn’t working. Cave, though, he was different. There was something so natural about him. So solid. I had no idea what he looked like beneath his clothes these days, but I couldn’t help imagining it.

One of my hands was cupping my balls, feeling them roll beneath the skin. I squeezed them--not too tight--and shuddered at the sensation racing up through my spine.

What would it have been like, if I’d stayed in town? My time with Cave had been so short, it was like we’d barely gotten into a relationship before I cut it off. We were so eager and energetic back then. Would he still have that same energy and excitement?

My cock was rock-hard by this point, my soapy hand flying over it. Picturing Cave, not even naked, just half-clothed, his shirt open, the hint of his muscular frame visible, the bulge in his jeans. To learn that body again, to study the ways it had changed! I was leaning against the wall of the shower now, using both hands to rush myself towards a climax I hadn’t realized I’d needed so badly.

The impossibility of it was part of what drove me forward. Cave was forbidden to me. Never in a million years would my handlers allow me to date him, let alone sleep with him. I’d never be allowed to touch that broad chest, to run my fingers down his back. We’d never kiss again, even though his rough blond stubble called out for my lips to touch it.

I whimpered and then cried out as I came, the strength of it surprising and engulfing me. I gripped my pulsing cock as it shot my load, my hips bucking, my breath fast and harsh. All thoughts fled away, replaced only by the thought of Cave, his face glowing in the afternoon sun.

I slid down until I was sitting on the floor of the shower, the spray raining down around me.

What would it be like? I kept asking myself. Even if you only had one more chance with him, what would it be like?