I jumped awake, breathing hard and looking around the room, taking a moment to remember where I was. The sun streamed through the half open curtains, and I turned over, covering my face with the thin blanket in an attempt to go back to sleep. Just as I closed my eyes again, there was a loud knock at the door. I paused, listening before realizing that was what had woken me up.

My first thought was the man from last night, and I decided to leave it. There wasn’t anything more I wanted from him now. Not important enough to climb out of bed for.

I closed my eyes again but heard a voice that I recognized beyond everything else.

“Max? Max? You there? You up?”

It was Lewis, and I could tell from the hiss in his voice that he was in a hurry.

I jumped up and scrambled out of the bed, tripping over the blanket pooled at my feet, and landed in a heap on the floor. It took me a moment to free myself and get up just as he knocked again.

“Lewis?” I gasped, opening the door with such force that it banged my arm against the wall. I winced as he looked at me and then craned his neck to peer into the room.

“Bad time?” he asked.

“Uh, no. No, I just…” I gestured to the bed that stupidly looked crumpled and hurried as though someone had tried to escape it. “I just. You… I just jumped out of bed. Sorry. I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“Oh.”

“Come in, come in!”

He hesitantly walked past me into the room, still looking around.

“There’s no one else here,” I reassured him. “Honestly, I’m alone.”

“Yeah, it’s okay. I brought breakfast.”

He handed me a rolled up brown bag and looked out the window.

I opened it and saw it was my favorite from ten years ago. After all this time, he’d remembered.

“Thanks,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around his waist to kiss the side of his neck, but he shifted out of my hold.

“Max,” he warned.

“What? No one can see us in here.”

He turned back to the window.

“Do you think anyone saw me come in?” he asked, “I thought I was being discreet…”

“It’s fine. Honest.”

I sat down on the bed and started eating the cinnamon bun he’d given me. It’d been so long since we’d seen each other and been in each other’s presence that I hadn’t remembered him being so on edge and wary of us being caught. We’d spent weeks meeting up at his parents’ house and in the school gym after hours, and back then, it had been a journey full of excitement and adrenalin-infused rendezvous. We’d laugh as we ran down the corridors dodging the janitor, yet now I sat and watched him nervously look back between both the window and me as though he were waiting for someone to jump up and shout ‘surprise’ at us.

“Come and sit down,” I said, tapping the space beside me. “You’ve got to relax.”

He came over hesitantly and lowered himself onto the bed, but I could still sense the uneasiness in his posture.

“I should probably go,” he whispered eventually, going to stand up, but I gripped his arm and held him in place. He looked across at me, and I could see the worry in his eyes.

“Do you want me to go back to the city?” I asked. Yes or no. He either did or he didn’t. If he said yes, I’d go. I’d change my travel plans and head out immediately. He was the only thing that kept me there. I loved the place—it had been my home for seventeen years—but if he preferred me back in the city, I’d go. Just one word from him was all it would take.

I stared at him, waiting for the answer, my heart pounding in my chest. Did I want to go? No. I wanted to stay and explore whatever it was that we were continuing. I wanted to find out where we both stood.

I watched the many expressions on his face, and I dreaded the answer. I dreaded hearing him say he wanted me to go because to leave him for a second time was going to be so much harder than the first.

He didn’t answer, and I loosened my grip on his arm, freeing him. Silence. It told me everything.

“Fine. Okay,” I said, my voice hoarse suddenly. I got up and ran my hand through my hair trying to gather my thoughts.

He sighed and stood up too, running a hand up my arm and over my shoulder.

“Wait,” he said quietly. “I don’t want you to go.”

His words took me by surprise. I looked back at him and he nodded.

“Listen, Max. So much has changed since you were here. Things aren’t so easy anymore.”

“You mean Faye?”

He shook his head.

“No, I mean everything. Faye complicates things, yes, but…”

“Do you love her?” I interrupted, looking him directly in the eyes. I wanted him to say it. I wanted to know if I was really competing for his affections against a woman. We’d spent long nights bonding over the fact that we liked boys and not girls and couldn’t imagine ever walking down the aisle with a woman, yet now he was about to do just that.

“Max…” he said, his voice carrying the warning tone again. “It’s not as simple as you think. Like I said, a lot…”

“…has changed. Yeah, I know. But do you love the woman? Come on.”

I needed to hear it. He looked at me and sighed again, looking down.

“No, okay? No. My father arranged it.”

“Arranged it?”

“Yes. It’s complicated, but we have a lot more in common than you think…”

“You’re both gay?”

“God, Max, my whole world doesn’t evolve around you. I waited for you. I spent ten fucking years waiting.”

“For what? So that you could marry someone else?”

“You don’t know what it’s been like for me here in this town. You have no idea what I have to endure!”

“Endure? You make it sound like a sentence. You stayed here with our friends and our old life while I had to leave. I was the one that got shipped away, and I wrote to you, damnit. I wrote every week. I’m over there in the city busting my ass while you’re preparing to walk down the aisle with the first bit of skirt your dad pushes your way!”

“It’s not like that. You should meet her.”

“Meet her? Meet her? You’re joking right? Have dinner with the competition? You want us to be friends? The wife and your gay Omega?”

“Max…”

“I don’t wanna share you, Lewis. I want to…”

“Max…”

“...have you and all of you. I’ve thought of nothing else since we both…”

He pressed his lips against mine, silencing me right where I stood, and I remained stunned for a moment before opening my lips to receive him. My hands crept around his neck until I cupped his face in my hands, and I held him there.

In a matter of seconds, we’d gone from arguing to kissing urgently, and he pushed me up against the wall, allowing my hands to wander down the front of his T-shirt, pulling the edge of it up hastily and running my hands over his hard stomach.

He moaned, briefly parting his lips, and I felt his hands grab my ass, pushing his growing erection against me.

So many thoughts ran through my mind as we kissed, as his hands touched me, and as I heard the deep moans coming from within. I wanted him so badly it hurt, and despite his fiancée Faye, I knew as our lips touched that I wasn’t going to give him up. Not without a fight. Years ago, he’d been my everything. My world evolved around him, and now that I had him back within my reach, I didn’t, wouldn’t, and couldn’t let him go.