Jesse guides me through the crowded club. Several of the patrons, most of whom are tourists here for the season, glance our way.

Even though I notice a few interests directed at me, it’s the ones directed at Jesse that catch my attention, leave me feeling overprotective and jealous. Something primal within me wants to mark him, claim him as mine, even though he’s not. We’re just messing around.

As we make our way into the fog-filled room with the dance floor, Jesse finds a space between some of the patrons already dancing, some totally out of it, their eyes wandering and their arms flailing without regard for the beat. They’ve obviously taken pills, and that’ll become a lot more prevalent the later it gets.

Jesse whirls around to me. The navy polo he wears, with a stripe across his chest, is tight against his body, his arms swelling in the sleeves. His chest pushes forward, stretching the fabric and giving me a clear indication of where his nipples are.

The strobe light has switched from flashing a variety of colors to green. As it goes dark and then flashes in succession, he moves toward me, pressing his body against mine without hesitation or regard for the audience around us. Not that anyone is watching us, but I expected a little uneasiness at least.

He moves to the music, and he doesn’t even have to move his body but a minute before I can feel his natural rhythm, not to mention his slight erection.

“Do you go out to gay clubs a lot?” I ask.

“This is my first time, but it seems like fun.”

“Oh…you just seem really comfortable with it.”

“I’ve never had this many people looking like they were interested before,” he says with a grin, and a lump forms in my throat as I tense up.

He’s not mine, I remind myself. He should be able to go home with any of these guys and me be fine.

“I’ve been to dance clubs before,” he adds. “I do actually get out and have a good time, so this isn’t totally outside of something I would do. I like this vibe. Are all gay clubs this much fun?”

“I don’t know. Are all straight clubs lame?”

He presses his lips together, clearly realizing he was making a fairly silly generalization. “That was dumb of me, wasn’t it?”

“Oh yeah. Ignorant, for sure. You should probably shut up and dance.”

He does just that, pressing that hard-on against me as we move our hips in sync.

As I move, I notice him scanning me up and down. I doubt he was expecting me to be able to dance like this, and I like surprising him.

He pushes his hand down against the small of my back, taking the lead as I follow his rhythm, matching it. The way he takes control like this is part of what draws me to him, yet it’s also the thing about him that intimidates the fuck out of me. That’s why I had that breakdown when he started playing with my ass. I don’t have any doubt that as good of a bottom as he is, he’d be as good of a top, and it’s not that I wouldn’t want that—it’s that I can’t give that to him. That’s too much for me.

I’m not weak. I’ve never been weak. But I know my limits.

I lean toward him, pressing my face up against his as I whisper into his ear, “You’re pretty good at this.”

“What can I say? I love to dance. Judging by the way you’re moving, you do too.”

“I do,” I confess. “I just haven’t had a lot of opportunities.”

“Well, I’m glad we’re fixing that issue right now.”

He closes his eyes and keeps up with the beat, and I do the same, allowing myself to push away those darker thoughts he activated—those thoughts I can never entirely escape, that haunt me.

Our bodies are in sync the way they are in the heat of passion, but this experience is much different. There’s a connection on another level, and I’m just listening to my body.

At one point, he turns around and starts moving his ass in circles against my pelvis. I slide my hand under his shirt while holding my other against his chest, pressing him back against me as he assures me he can do a lot more with that ass than I’ve seen so far.

I want to spin around and let him take control, to have my ass against his pelvis to demonstrate my own abilities, but I’m not going to risk triggering myself again.

Yet the mental wall makes those feelings from earlier rise back within me. I tense up as I try to run from the memories I know I’ll never shake.

As I brood on my limitations, he spins around and looks at me. I can see by the shift in his expression he can tell something’s changed—that I’m not enjoying myself the way I was before.

He puts his hand on my face and says, “Hey, hey, hey. It’s all good.” He offers a kiss and then another and another.

Once again, I find myself appreciating how Jesse is able to ground me. He makes me feel like he cares and understands. He’s not pushing to try and figure out why I’m like this. Even though I haven’t discussed the details of why I reacted the way I did, he must know something’s wrong. And he was generous enough to let me know he’s here for me.

It’s amazing how someone who is basically a stranger—aside from the few days we’ve shared together—can have this effect on me. He pays attention to my moods, my feelings, in a way other people just don’t.

Maybe it’s because of his own issues, because of those things in his past that people don’t ask about, don’t pick up the signals he offers about wanting to talk and share. I feel like most people don’t want to delve deeper or ask those hard questions, which makes life easy because even if something happens, they pretend it didn’t. Jesse isn’t like that.

As he kisses me, he continues moving his body with mine, trying to pull me back into the music. He must be able to tell I just can’t, because he takes my hand again and whispers into my ear, “We can go to the bar if you want.”

That isn’t what I want.

I want to dance with him some more, but I know my mind is elsewhere.

Enough years, enough times of being haunted by similar feelings have taught me that I can’t shake myself out of these moods no matter how much I may wish to be able to.

“That would be nice,” I tell him.

He guides me off the dance floor, back to the bar, where we order another round of drinks. I don’t hesitate to down my Jack and Coke.

Jesse notices how quickly I’m drinking it, but he doesn’t call me out or make a joke or try to shame me for it. He’s here for me…and that feels really fucking nice.

I start to feel the uneasiness dissolve.

I take deep breaths, working to soothe myself the way I have learned through therapy over the years—not for my real issue, but for general anxiety.

I’m just coping, getting by.

Is it great? No. Is it enough? Well, I guess it has to be.

I feel like the words are on the tip of my tongue, like some part of me wants to blurt the whole truth out to Jesse, so I press my lips together tightly. Like I have to work to keep this secret from escaping.

It’s just the way I am. I bottle things up. I don’t share. It’s like that moment when I could hardly talk to him about Casey.

“Do you want to get back out there and dance?” Jesse asks.

“I can be game if you want to,” I lie, because really, I just want to crawl away somewhere and hide.

He looks me up and down, and goddammit, it feels like he knows, like he can read me so much more than what I show the world.

“Why don’t we head back to your place?” he says. “I think we’ve had a pretty good date tonight. Maybe if you’re lucky, you can…” He whirls around, his ass facing me as he winks over his shoulder.

I chuckle before moving at him quickly and wrapping my arm around him. “I think that’s something I could be into,” I say before kissing his neck.

He rolls his head back.

Here he is, in a gay club, not caring at all about me having my hands all over him, wanting him, kissing him.

He pushes his ass against my pelvis and arches his back, reaching his arm behind him and pressing his hand against the back of my head. He trails his fingers through my hair. I appreciate the sensation and how he surrenders to me, surrenders his body as if just for my own satisfaction.

My dick is rock hard.

I find myself wanting his body, needing it, to help ease the pain within me. I reach my hand under his shirt and greedily claw my hands up and down his tight torso.

Who the fuck are you, Jesse Morgan?

“Do you want me in that ass again?” I ask him before grabbing his hip and pulling him back tighter against me, creating a pressure in my cock that leaves me hungering for him desperately.

“I’ve been wanting it back in me all night,” he says.

I lean forward, my head over his shoulder, his turned to me, and we kiss.

I meant it to be a brief exchange, but his mouth tastes so good, like the margaritas he’s been drinking, even with a tinge of salt.

And the longer we kiss, the more this tension within me relaxes.

I desperately crave it to the point where I just keep kissing. Finally, when I manage to pull myself away from him, we stumble out of the bar and head back to my condo.

The moment we get out of the cab, it’s difficult for us to make it to my unit because I keep forcing him against the walls and kissing him. It’s only through Jesse’s direction and guidance that we make it.

I don’t know how, but at some point, he ended up with my keys, and he unlocks the door, pulls me in.

My arms are around him as I push him up back against the wall adjacent to my front door. My tongue is in his delicious mouth in no time.

I pull away to tell him, “You’re mine, Jesse. You’re all mine.”

I don’t know where the possessive thought comes from, but I like it. I don’t deny this part of me that’s so selfish about my lust for him, about the things I want to do to him.

As I pull his shirt off, I’m so busy trying to get my lips back on him that I push them against his shirt too soon and force the fabric across my face. My lips burn, but I don’t care because it’s not long before they’re back on Jesse’s, and that’s all that matters.

We stumble toward the guest bedroom, and as we make our way through it, I remove my shorts, accidentally tripping on them and tumbling toward Jesse. My body lurches forward, shoving him down onto the bed so that I’m crushing him beneath my weight.

“Shit. I’m sorry,” I tell him.

He laughs. “It’s fine.”

“I guess I’m drunker than I thought.”

What if he’s too drunk for this too?

He must see the concern on my face because he asks, “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to do anything if you’re not capable or if you feel uncomfortable.”

“I think I’ll feel worse if you don’t do anything to me.”

Now he’s got me laughing. “That seems to be a talent of yours,” I say.

“What?”

“Making me laugh.”

He narrows his eyes like he’s trying to figure something out. “You’re such an interesting set of contradictions, Eric.”

As he says it, it pulls me back to those dark parts of me that he’s noticed in such a short time, that he has this ability to evoke from me, to stir within me, parts of me I try so hard to keep hidden from the rest of the world.

He places his hand on the back of my head, stroking his fingers through my hair. “Eric, I just meant that there are aspects of you that puzzle me. Not in a bad way.”

There’s something burning in my chest, that I feel I have to say. I’m compelled to because for some fucking reason, I want to tell Jesse.

“I’m a terrible father,” I say quickly, and he looks totally thrown.

“What?” he asks.

I shouldn’t say this. Hell, he might even know from Ty, but I don’t care. I feel like I want him to know my side in all this.

“I was with Tricia, Ty’s mother, for a couple of years. I was at Georgia State, and she was at Emory. I met her when she and her friends came into a restaurant I waited tables at. She was pretty and funny. We hit it off, so I tried to make it work...wanted to make it work...but I broke it off right before I transferred to UCLA. A lot of it had to do with me realizing who I really was…that she would be a lot happier with a guy who was into women. And I was honest with her about that. When I left, I thought that would be the end of it, and I didn’t hear from Tricia for years. I’d heard from someone she was married with a kid. Then one day, I received a phone call. From her. She said the kid was mine, from right before we broke up. Said she hadn’t told me because she wasn’t sure she could handle me being a part of her life if we couldn’t be together…fucking load of shit. Ty always knew the guy Tricia married wasn’t his dad because he was old enough to remember them getting together, but she never told him the truth about who his real father was...even tried to keep it from him, but by the time he was sixteen, he was too persistent. She knew she couldn’t keep brushing him off, which is why she’d called. She wanted my permission first. Of course I said yes. Here I had this kid all these years and didn’t know it. I wanted to be a part of his life. I wanted to meet him, see him. I felt violated, like something had been taken from me that was mine all these years. So we met for the first time, and it was everything you would have expected from a Dr. Phil special. We hugged and cried. Did the whole production of being excited to meet each other.”

I tear up just remembering how fucking exciting and scary that time had been. Am I really fucking crying in front of Jesse? Am I so drunk that I don’t give a damn?

“Ty’s mentioned some of this,” Jesse confesses. “About how Tricia wouldn’t tell him who his father was, how he had to press. And then about when he met you.”

“I was so fucking happy, but…a moment of getting to know your sixteen-year-old son doesn’t make you a dad. And Ty learned that really fast. As much as I’ve tried to make time for him, work has me going here and there, and I make time for birthdays, and you can be sure if he needs anything, I’m there for him. But I’m not exactly winning Father of the Year. And I can see it in his fucking eyes…just…disappointment. Like…why did he ever reach out to this bastard who didn’t do anything for him other than give his mother a moment and some sperm?”

“That’s not what he thinks,” Jesse insists.

“Well, it’s not the way it should be. I haven’t lived up to whatever image he had of me in his brain that led him to think he wanted to reach out to me…and in some ways, that makes me feel about as shitty with him as my own dad was with me.”

“And how was that?” Jesse asks.

God, I’ve opened up a can of worms, but now that I have, I can’t stop myself. “My mom left us when I was five, and I could tell Dad always resented the fact he was left with me. And so, even though he was present, he sure as hell wasn’t there for me. He never raised a fist or anything. He didn’t need to. He showed his contempt through just never paying any attention to me. Through never being around. He’d have his girlfriends around town and his drinking buddies he’d spend the weekends with. And I just sort of fended for myself, all the while hating him for not being there.”

“That’s not the same as what happened with you and Ty,” Jesse says. “You didn’t have any say in that. Your father did.”

Somewhere deep down, I know he’s right, but it doesn’t make me feel better.

“It’s been hard knowing I can’t make up for lost time,” I say. “And life goes on…regardless of all the birthdays I missed, the Christmases, the awards, the championships. We can’t go back for a redo. I think Ty and I are both learning that the hard way. Just…most dads, they get to learn how to be dads with their kids. They figure it out as they go. Fuck up and make mistakes, but then have other opportunities to do better. This was just dumped on me, and I feel like all I ever do is fuck it up.”

I look down at Jesse, and he’s a reminder of how fucked up everything in the world is. “This sure doesn’t help. I’m not doing myself any favors by fucking around with you, but I can’t stop either.”

I kiss him, enjoying the tremendous relief he offers me not just physically, but mentally, the cumbersome part of me I’ve suddenly been able to let go of.

When I pull away, Jesse says, “I do get what you mean about why your relationship with Ty is…problematic. It might be harder for you guys than it is for most people, but the game isn’t over yet. You still have time to be a good father to Ty. Trust me. I mean, it was one thing with my biological parents, who I know didn’t want to be a part of my life. But my adoptive parents came into my life later, and even though they weren’t there from the get-go, I feel so close to them, and our relationship is incredibly special. It might not be the same as it is for a kid who’s had a great parent from the start, but it’s better than nothing.”

“But it can’t change the fact that, regardless of the reason, I still wasn’t there.”

Jesse doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. He knows it’s true from his own experience. Just like I know it from mine.

He slides his hand from the back of my head to my face, his touch so soft, feeling so good.

“I do know he wants you in his life, and it’s beautiful to see that you want to be in his. I think you can get through a lot of bullshit when that’s the case, don’t you?”

“I hope so.” I pull out of my pity party, shaking my head. “Sorry. I’m sure this isn’t the kind of night you were planning on having.”

“No, but it’s a nice night anyway. Thank you for sharing that with me, Eric.”

“Again, with my name. I can’t tell you what that does to me. Something about it is just…really nice.”

How can something so simple feel so good?

Those dark eyes survey my face in that familiar way that makes me feel like he’s taking me all in, reading me in a way no one else could ever read me.

“Then I guess I’ll have to say it some more, Eric.” He smiles. “I’m really glad this trip’s worked out the way it has. Not just because of the fun we’ve had in this room, but because I do like getting to know you. You’re a special guy, Eric.” He winks.

I want to credit his compliment to the alcohol we had earlier, but I can hear the sincerity behind his words, and I can’t help myself. “You’re a special guy too.”

“Come here. Let’s just enjoy tonight, enjoy each other as much as we can. Forget about all that bullshit, about the shitty world, about how complicated what we’re doing is. Here we are, hundreds of miles away from home. Let’s pretend this is everything we want it to be and have fun.”

“I’d like that.”

“Good. Now take my greedy ass before I have to go find someone else to do it for you.”

He earns another boisterous laugh from me, and I realize how far I’ve come from that tension I experienced in the nightclub.

All the credit goes to Jesse.

In the morning I may regret everything I shared, but in this moment, I don’t.

All I want is to do exactly what he says and use this whole vacation as an opportunity to escape into this incredible experience we’ve been able to work up together.