“Your key,” JT said, holding it out for Parrot as soon as he swung open the door.

He hadn’t anticipated getting an answer. His second option being to open the condo and leave the key on the table with a note. Although he hadn’t ironed out if he’d leave the front door unlocked after his departure. There was no point of putting Parrot into more of harm’s way. He’d already done that all on his own.

Itching to ask how it was going with paying off his debt, JT was too glad when Parrot opened the door wider and gestured him through.

“We need to talk,” he said.

JT agreed, but he didn’t vocalize it. Passing Parrot inside the space he’d called home for years, he moved to the kitchen, standing awkwardly while he waited for his friend’s next move.

“Beer?” Parrot offered.

“No. Driving home.” JT realized what he’d said, his stare meeting Parrot’s hard gaze.

“You’re really fucking married,” he said, shaking his head, laughing bitterly. “Fucking hell, man. What the hell did you get yourself into?”

“Drop it, Parrot. It’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Like hell it doesn’t,” Parrot said. He ripped open the fridge door, grabbing a can of beer himself. He snapped the tab open, taking a long guzzle before he strode past JT from the kitchen into the living area. He plopped down on the couch, in front of the muted TV.

“Why Alec?” he asked, switching the conversation, the back of his head easier to answer to.

“Why not? I feel the fucking pull for him. He’s hot. Loaded. He wants me as much as I want him.” JT folded his arms, glaring at Parrot’s head, at the swinging braid when he snapped around to face him. Parrot’s face contorted between shock and annoyance. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Don’t,” was all Parrot gritted out, his hand gripping the back of the sofa.

But JT couldn’t stop his roll. “Or did you want me to admit he’s the reason I couldn’t fuck you? Why this thing we had fell apart?”

“Fuck you,” Parrot growled.

“Been there, done that—not going to happen again, remember?” JT didn’t know where all of this snark was coming from, but it wasn’t him. Parrot brought out the worst in him as usual. He touched nerves that JT realized now he excelled at smothering when he was with Alec.

Parrot vaulted over the back of the couch, looking ready to talk to JT with his fists.

Standing taller, JT watched Parrot stagger. Most men did at his height and muscle. But then again, Parrot was never most men. He was his friend, his club president, and more of a family than JT’s parents had ever been. They were brothers first…and he liked to imagine they were still brothers while they butted heads.

Parrot didn’t swing his fists, even though he vibrated with his anger, radiated the dark emotion as he held himself still in front of JT.

“Alec Edwards… He’s too good for you.”

JT dropped his arms, his brows swooping down, his frown deepening.

Parrot nodded, his honey-brown eyes and the golden flecks in them colder than ever before. “Yeah,” he dragged the one syllable, “you’re going to ruin that kid, and he’s not going to be the same. Because you ruin things. You mess up everything you touch, JT.” He smoothed a hand over his chest, slapping his palm there once, hard and loud. The smacking sound rent the silence, sliced over his heavy breathing. “You messed me up good.”

JT clenched his jaw, holding back the new vitriol he shored up after hearing Parrot predict so accurately what JT feared from the start: harming Alec in all this, ruining him, as Parrot said.

“You hurt me.” Parrot fisted his shirt, beating his fist over his heart. “Right. Fucking. Here.” Whirling from him then, Parrot gave him his back, his fists back at his side. He laughed again, a short, hollow sound. “I thought, maybe, if I gave you some space—”

JT froze.

Well, he hadn’t expected this.

A fight, certainly. Another argument; this time without an audience, no bars hold. But this… Fuck.

It sunk into his thick skull, right as Parrot said, “I loved you, man.”

There it was. The proclamation that JT hadn’t ever imagined coming to the fore. Sure, he’d cared for Parrot. And maybe if he hadn’t ever met Alec, ever considered another option, he might have still remained as Parrot’s lover…as Parrot’s everything. Only now, he couldn’t stop the picture of Alec coming to mind as Parrot unloaded on him.

“I was wrong, obviously. I should have—damn, I should have told you, or something.” Parrot wrung his fingers through his hair, pulling long, silky strands of honeyed brown from his braid. “Fuck!” He cursed loudly, letting slip more growled epithets until he ran out of words and he heaved with his loss, his sorrow, his mourning for something that never was.

“Say something,” he said after a long silence.

JT was at his own loss, his words of comfort overwhelmed by his need for clarity and his desire to escape this. Why did it feel like everything hinged on whatever he said next? How he reacted could very well cement whether he and Parrot could ever remain friends, let alone brothers in arms on the road.

Swallowing hard, JT opened his cracked lips, realizing how dry they’d become in his shock. He had picked his jaw up off the floor, and now his slashed the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip, coughing to clear his throat. The sound was nervous. He didn’t want to come off as being thrown from his game.

It felt like Parrot was winning.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he needed to stop seeing this as a game of who bested who.

“I… I didn’t know.” It was the best he could come up with in short notice.

“Yeah, I gathered that much.” Parrot turned then, slowly, his face stony now. He’d schooled his features into unreadable marble. It made it that harder to tell how much JT had hurt him with his ignorance.

Fuck. He’d fucked up this time. In Parrot’s own words, he’d messed up—ruined their friendship. Worse, JT had no clue how to pick up the pieces.

“Sorry.”

“Save it.” Parrot raised a hand, his palm out, his tone whisper soft, roughened by the emotion he couldn’t completely cage. “That’s not what I want.”

Afraid to ask what he wanted, JT asked, “What now?” His voice nearly broke with the fear of treading on this conversation. The unfamiliar, twisting path of navigating what remained of their friendship. And where the road ended now that Parrot loved him.

“Now,” Parrot said, cocking his head, dropping his hand. “Now, you decide, man.”

JT held himself stiffly, not responding. Not wanting to choose. He wasn’t here for a fucking ultimatum. But that’s what Parrot had in mind.

“Him or me.”

“It’s not that easy,” JT said after another pregnant pause.

“I know,” Parrot said softly, his eyes breaking for sympathy it looked like. Which would be funny, because why would he be feeling anything like that for JT? His heart remained intact, even if it did shrivel up, knowing his choice, knowing exactly what he’d be losing.

“Just choose,” Parrot urged, pleadingly almost. If JT could put it into words, it was as if Parrot was begging for him to “put him out of his misery.”

JT struggled to form a coherent response.

In that moment, Parrot moved forward and JT held still, waiting, watching, like cornered prey. And it took a lot to make him feel like prey, considering he’d stared down Parrot’s loan shark and her thugs. He’d seen some crap from his years as a member of The Strix, too. He thought nothing could scare him, until now, until he had to choose between two people he cared for.

Parrot grasped his forearms, tiptoeing up, brushing their lips for a heartbeat before JT pushed him back, held him at arms’ length, and met his old friend’s rueful grin. “There,” he said, freeing himself of JT’s grip, and taking two long steps back. “You made a choice. Not so hard, was it?”

JT’s heart throbbed painfully.

“Friend zoned. Hurts more than I thought,” Parrot said, chuckling, again the mirth dissected from the rest of his features. His eyes were dead, void of any emotions now. His mouth a long drawn line, and his hands flexing into fists once again.

He left the open living area first, disappearing into his room and closing the door.

JT grabbed the key on the counter, the one he’d meant to return but he now used to lock up the condo after him. He settled his palm over the door, over what he’d left on the other side. One word from him, one kiss, and he’d lose Alec.

And JT couldn’t lose Alec.

Staggering to the elevator, JT kept tapping the ground floor button, desperately needing to get home. Once he had Alec at his side, he pictured all of this would clear up. He wouldn’t feel so icky leaving Parrot like this, confused and hurting, with their friendship up in the air, just waiting to go splat all over the floor.

Closing his eyes, he thought of Alec.

Yes. Alec.

He stepped out of the lift on automatic, heading into the parking garage and climbing his bike. Once the familiar rumbling roar of his engine hummed under the leather hide of his seat, JT felt even more sure he’d made the right decision. He gripped the handlebars and steered out of the garage, aiming his bike where he’d left his heart in Alec’s care.

So Parrot might have loved him… But JT knew he loved Alec.