I was stunned. I had not been expecting that.

I knew that Zane must have been having nightmares—I figured maybe he was dreaming about being attacked by a bear.

The guy did seem really afraid of bears.

I thought once he woke up, he’d be his normal, calm, collected self, and tell me to go back to sleep.

But instead he was gripping me tight as hell against him like he needed me.

“I’m sorry,” Zane repeated.

“There’s absolutely nothing to be sorry for,” I said, squeezing him. “Whatever you need. Really.”

He drew in a long breath, and I felt the rise and fall of his chest against my own. “God. So much for not waking you up at four in the morning.”

“Stop. This is different, and you know it,” I said. I still felt the whiskey in me from earlier, and slowly I could see that Zane probably still felt it too. There was a directness to his words that was usually missing.

But I liked it when he was direct with me. I needed that insight into what was going on in his head.

“Here,” I said, reaching behind me to get my duffel bag. I propped a pillow against it and then turned back to Zane, who still had his arms wrapped around me. I situated myself so that my back was against the pillow, and relaxed back onto it.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I promise I’ll leave you alone soon.”

“Please don’t,” I said softly.

“Don’t what?”

I paused for a moment, watching him. “Don’t leave me alone. There’s no need to.”

He finally let go, only for a moment, to sit up and look me in the eye. I couldn’t tell exactly what he was thinking, but after taking a breath in, he shimmied back down so that his head was resting on my chest. He was lying on me, essentially, and I enjoyed it way more than I had any right to. The air was cool in the tent—the mountains still got chilly, even at this time of year. But with Zane against me, the warm weight of his body covering me, it was perfect.

My hand naturally found its way to his hair, and involuntarily, I started running my hand through it. It was slow and meditative. My mom had used to do the same for me when I cried as a young kid.

For a while, we just sat there like that, listening to the sounds of the crickets and the trees and the frogs outside the tent. I could feel my heart beating, and I wondered idly if Zane could hear it from where he was lying. At the edge of the tent, near the door, Jelly was splayed out, sleeping soundly, not caring at all what we were up to.

I felt an upwelling of affection, the same affection I’d felt in the car ride up, when I’d accidentally fallen asleep on Zane. It felt so good to be so close to him. I was sick of pretending it didn’t.

“God, when will it go away?” he said softly. “When will I feel… normal again?”

“You’ll start to feel it slowly, bit by bit,” I said. “Until one day you wake up and realize you’re fine, and all of these awful thoughts will be somewhere far away.”

He pulled in a deep breath. “You’re right,” he said. “I just… I just want to think about anything else. I want to feel anything else.”

I paused, still just running my hand through his hair. It was strange—when I’d first met Zane, I never would have imagined we could end up in a position like this. He had seemed so strong, so gruff, so standoffish. But now he was melting onto me, vulnerable and so not what I’d ever thought he’d be.

And I liked him more than I ever thought I could, too. He was sensitive, maybe more than anyone I’d met before. At first, I had wanted to impress him, but now I just wanted to help him in any way I could.

I only knew one way I could totally distract him. I was a master at asking inane questions. I set to work quickly.

“What’s your favorite color?” I asked.

He turned his head slightly, peering up at me. “What?”

“You heard me,” I said. “What’s your favorite color?”

He turned back, nestling his head back against my chest. “Uh… a nice forest green, I guess,” he said. “Why the hell—”

“Forest green is great. I’ve always been partial to a royal purple, but navy blue is also a contender. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?” I asked, giving him no time to pause and question my methods.

“I… I wanted to be a dentist, believe it or not,” he said.

“You? A dentist?”

“Mhm,” he continued. “My parents got me this little toy tool kit, and I’d practice on my younger sister’s dolls. But once I was a teenager, I realized I didn’t want to have to look at strangers’ weird teeth on a regular basis, so I kind of switched gears.”

“Yeah, wow,” I said. At this point, the facade of asking dumb questions was dropping, and really I just wanted to learn more about him. “How did you get to becoming an accountant from that?”

He shook his head slowly, shrugging. “It’s going to sound weird because I know most people only become accountants for the job security… but I actually like doing it. Sure, it’s a job, but it gives me a feeling I like of being in control. It also makes me feel good to know that I’m helping right at the backbone of all businesses. You can’t really start a good business without a good accountant. I guess… I guess it kind of makes me feel necessary.”

“Wow,” I said. “I admit I know nothing about accounting, but that’s probably the best description I’ve ever heard of it.”

“I do a lot of boring stuff, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’m saving the world one cashflow report at a time.”

I blushed slightly, and I pulled my hand away from his hair. “I… may or may not have Googled your name before you came to Idaho,” I said. “I saw your work on your company’s website. It’s incredible, Zane. You helped with the financials for those sustainable gardens in downtown Los Angeles? I mean, that’s so cool.”

He shifted his head to look up at me again. “You… you looked me up?”

“I know, it’s creepy,” I said. “I just wanted to get some idea of who the groomsmen were going to be before I met you all—”

“It’s not creepy,” he said softly. His eyes were doing the typical Zane Eyes Thing, like looking into my fucking soul or something, and it was kind of driving me crazy. The light was low in the tent, and having him so near to me was making it all the more evident how stunning he was up close.

“No?” I asked, my voice quiet.

“I like that you cared enough to look me up,” he said, shifting back to lying on me. “No one’s ever done that for me before. I honestly forgot my company even had that little ‘about us’ page.”

I paused, not really knowing what to say.

“What did you want to be when you were a kid?” he finally asked.

I took in a long breath. “Well, that’s a little embarrassing, too,” I said. “I wanted to be an actor. How typical, right?”

Zane shrugged one shoulder. “I could see you doing that,” he said.

“Not a lot of famous actors coming from Ellisville, Idaho,” I said. “There weren’t exactly agents filling the seats at my high school plays.”

“Do you still do any acting?” he asked.

“God, no,” I said. “Even if I wanted to, there’s nowhere around here to do it.”

He hummed, shifting slightly on me. “You can… you can touch my hair more, if you want,” he said.

I was glad he was facing away from me at the moment because he would have seen my eyes go wide. He was enjoying that as much as I was?

I returned my hand to his hair and resumed stroking through it. “When did you come out?” I asked. I knew this question ran the risk of being too personal, but I was genuinely curious.

“End of high school,” he said. “I’d known I liked guys for much longer, of course, but I had been… confused. I actually liked girls, too—or at least one girl. I had this sweet girlfriend named Mary for two years in high school.”

“That’s adorable,” I said.

“It really was adorable. She and I were inseparable. But we broke up in senior year, knowing we’d be going to different colleges, and… it just hit me that I finally had a chance to try dating guys for the first time.”

“So you did it in college?”

Zane laughed, and I felt it against my chest. “I actually kissed a guy for the first time on the night of my senior prom. We snuck a flask of very weak schnapps inside, and then we all went crazy on the dance floor. Somewhere over the course of the night, I ended up dancing with this gay guy, and then… he drove me home that night, and we made out for like an hour before I went inside.”

“Okay, forget what I said about the girlfriend—that is truly adorable.”

“It was sweet,” Zane said. “His name was Matthew Evans, and he was the cutest gay guy in school. After that night I knew definitively that I was at least bisexual. In college, I mostly dated more guys, and a couple girls… and then after college, I met Michael. The rest is history.”

“Wow,” I said.

“How about you?” he asked.

“Well, I was always gay from day one, pretty much,” I said. “I think everyone always knew, even my mom—she didn’t like it, though. But I actually came out in early high school. My mom would beg me not to tell strangers—she said it should be ‘my business’ and I needed to keep it private if I was interested in men. But really I think she just didn’t want people to think I was gay at all.”

“God, I’m sorry,” Zane said.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ve had... many years to come to terms with how my mom feels about me. She will never really accept that I’m gay, but at least I don’t have to live in her house anymore.”

“Has she met your past boyfriends?” he asked.

“She has met one of them, yes. But she would never refer to him as my boyfriend. If we went out for dinner, she’d tell the waiter ‘my son and his friend love the beer here,’ and other things like that.”

“That’s… that’s awful, Sebastian,” he said.

“My mom grew up in a very conservative household,” Sebastian said. “I’m fairly certain my grandfather would have hit her if she had turned out to be gay, that kind of thing. It was a hostile environment. She just has it programmed in her to think that society won’t accept you if you’re gay. She loves me—she loves me dearly—but she… worries for me, you know?”

“I understand. It just must be so hard to have someone so close to you not accepting you,” he said. “My parents were tough at first—they couldn’t understand how I could go from having a girlfriend to dating guys—but they came around. They certainly loved Michael. Do you think your mom could come around like that?”

I let out a long breath. “I wish I could say so, but I doubt it,” I said. “I thought for a while she would—she was doing better, for a while—but then the scandal with David—the mayor—happened, and it sent her straight back into deep homophobic feelings. Me coming out to her was one thing, but me being forced to come out to the whole town was a little much.”

Zane wrapped an arm around me, squeezing me tight for a moment. “Well, if she was doing better before, maybe there is still some hope that she could come back around,” he said.

“Maybe,” I said, though I doubted it myself. “Anyway, we’re getting way too off topic. Back to the burning questions. What’s your favorite dessert?”

“Oh God, you’re coming in with the really tough questions, now,” Zane said.

“That’s right,” I replied, “I’m a heavy hitter, Zane. I don’t fuck around.”

“You really don’t fuck around,” he said. “Let’s see. I’ve always been partial to apple pie—you know that by now.”

“True… it made Bessie’s entire week when I told her how much you enjoyed that slice the other day.”

“It was exquisite, what can I say?” he responded. “But other than pie, I also just love a good brownie. I don’t know if I’ve ever been disappointed by one.”

“True,” I said. “You’re a man with good tastes. My winner is always going to be peach cobbler. I cannot get enough of it.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said.

Zane took in a long breath, and then slowly, he propped himself up so he was sitting at my side, looking at me.

“You’re… you’re kind of incredible, Sebastian,” he said.

I laughed, thinking he was making some sort of joke, at first. But his face remained serious, and suddenly my heart began beating harder.

“What?” I said, not really knowing what else to say.

He shook his head slowly as he watched me. “I don’t know how you do it,” he said. “More than once, now, you’ve completely calmed me down when I’m having a horrible time of it. God, even the first night you met me, you helped me out on the back deck at Colby’s… you barely even knew me, but you still took the time to do that. How are you… how are you so good, Sebastian?”

Now my cheeks were really hot. So hot that I was sure Zane could probably see it, even in the dim light. “Oh, come on,” I said, waving a hand. “I just talk too much to everyone. I’m glad talking to you helped you, but it’s really nothing special.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “It is special. More than you know.”

“Ah,” I said, racking my brain for what I should say. Because I was beginning to feel flustered, now. Zane’s eyes always had that effect on me, but right now, I’d been lulled into a state where I was liable to say something I shouldn’t. There was still the alcohol in me, and I’d also been talking to Zane while I stroked his hair for at least the past half hour. It had felt intimate. Like something you’d do with a boyfriend, rather than a friend-of-a-friend who you were a groomsman with.

I was too comfortable and afraid to do anything that might be… too much.

“Austin was dead wrong, too,” Zane was saying, his eyes squinted.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not overbearing at all,” he continued. “You’re kind of the opposite. I can’t remember the last person I met that I felt so comfortable around.”

The soft spot in my heart for Zane was only getting softer and softer with every word he said. How was he doing this to me? How was I supposed to sit and pretend I wasn’t becoming far too affectionate toward him?

And so I just laughed it off. “You’re funny when you’re drunk, Zane,” I said. “It really brings out the kindness in you, though.”

He shook his head slowly, watching me. “I’m not that drunk, Sebastian,” he said, his voice low. He leaned a little closer to me.

“I think maybe we should go to sleep,” I said abruptly, reaching over toward the little lantern.

Zane pulled away from me, his eyes going wide. “Am I making you uncomfortable? Jesus, I’m so sorry—fuck, I’ve said too much, haven’t I?” He dug his fingers into his hair, panic on his face.

“No, no—” I said quickly, reaching out to grab his shoulder. I pulled in a long breath, not sure how much I should say. “You’re… you’re not making me uncomfortable at all. You’re making me too fucking comfortable. Jesus, Zane—” I said, exasperated.

“What is it?” he said, his voice quiet. He looked wounded, and I knew I had to make it right. I couldn’t leave him thinking that he’d done anything wrong.

“I… I’m just going to be perfectly honest, because we are adults, here. So the truth is, I like you. And I know you’re in a vulnerable place. And I’m way too lonely right now, too, and… fuck, Zane, I’m a little attracted to you, okay? And I don’t want to burden you with that, and I know nothing is ever going to happen there. So that’s it. We should just go to sleep.”

I quickly reached over him and switched off the lamp, shrouding the tent in darkness. I moved to go over to my sleeping bag, but before I could go back, Zane grasped my forearm.

“Sebastian,” he said, his voice low.

“What?” I whispered, “I’m so sorry—now I’ve said too much—”

He pulled me back over toward him, and in an instant, his arms were wrapped around me again. But this time it wasn’t the lazy, sleepy, timid version of him that I’d gotten before.

This time, he was holding me with intention.

It was dark, but I could feel every inch of him, close to me, so fucking close. I could smell his clean, woodsy scent. He reached a hand to my hair, dragging his fingers from my head down my back.

I shuddered, completely involuntarily. I leaned in closer toward him, barely able to see until I felt my forehead touch his.

I let it rest there, just for a split second, both of us hanging in that moment, with so many different paths to go down.

Or really, maybe it only could have happened how it did. One of his hands was cupping the side of my face, and the other had found its way to my hip, his fingers slowly finding their way onto my skin, just under the hem of my shirt.

“Fuck, Zane,” I whispered, feeling a surge go through my body all the way down to my cock.

“It’s okay,” he said.

And finally, I let go. I let go of every bit of control that had been holding me back, and I let myself sink into the feeling.

I leaned in and pressed my lips to his, catching him in a warm, slow kiss. I knew in my bones that I shouldn’t have been doing it, and yet I was barreling full-force ahead, anyway. It felt necessary. And when I found that he didn’t recoil—instead, he was kissing me back, harder now, like he needed this too—I felt like every cell in my body had come alive.