CHAPTER ELEVEN

Evan didn’t know who he was angrier at; Miles for making him want to believe him, or himself for nearly doing it.

He couldn’t sleep. Since he’d left Miles’ place, he felt like he’d been half a rationalization away from going back. To telling Miles that he wanted him too, screw how much he might regret it later.

But then he’d probably regret it either way, he thought, as he restlessly switched sides, staring at the bright neon-green numbers of the clock on his bedside table. He’d regret sleeping with Miles, and he’d definitely regret not sleeping with him.

The question was which regret was larger and more life-ruining in the grand scheme of things.

It turned out that the answer was shockingly simple; Evan wanted Miles. He’d tried very hard to fight against it, he’d actively attempted to stifle it, to pretend it didn’t exist, and part of the exhaustion of the last few days was how much energy it took to deny such an obvious truth.

He was up and out of bed before he’d even thought it through—probably because if he let himself, he wouldn’t have gone anywhere anytime soon, and he was done overthinking. It was easy enough to slip on a pair of shoes and scoot down the hallway to Miles’ door.

The difficult part was standing in front of Miles’ door, waiting for him to open it. It took every ounce of Evan’s self-possession to knock, then knock again, and then knock again, the whole time praying that Miles hadn’t taken Evan’s rejection and gone looking someplace else.

After the third prolonged knock, the only thing keeping him rooted in place at Miles’ doorstep was a stubborn belief that he couldn’t have come all this way, through all this shit, and then at the end, Miles had given up on Evan before Evan could give up on himself.

Finally, the door opened. Miles didn’t look happy to see him, in fact, he looked pissed off.

Evan couldn’t really blame him for that.

An apology was right there, but at the last second, his dick just took over, and said what he’d been so reluctant to acknowledge: “I want you, I do.”

A frown creased Miles’ handsome features. “Now? You’re going to get me up in the middle of the night, and tell me that now you’ve finally decided you want me?”

Evan hadn’t considered that this wouldn’t be easy. That Miles would expect some sort of groveling after all the overtures that Evan had rejected.

“Yes.” Evan usually didn’t do groveling. Pride was a hard-won possession, and he wasn’t about to give it up, even for Miles.

Miles must have realized this, because after a long, heart-stopping moment, he pulled the door the rest of the way open, and Evan didn’t move because he couldn’t.

The reason why it had taken Miles so long to come to the door was because he’d already started without Evan. Probably because he’d never imagined that Evan would show up, interested in the bulge he was packing in those tight black briefs.

That was where he had been very wrong; Evan was more than interested. He licked his lips, mouth suddenly dry, and looked his fill. Miles’ solid, slim chest, the tenseness in his biceps, the sweat beaded around his hairline, the mussed curls, how his fingers kept clenching and unclenching. The tautness of his abs as he held himself still and refused to cover up.

Evan approved because he shouldn’t ever. He was gorgeous, a barely contained storm in that laid-back body.

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” Miles said, voice calm but with a tense edge.

Evan wasn’t going to argue when there were so many better things he could be doing with his mouth.

Urgency propelled him forward, through the doorway, almost falling against Miles. Before he could, Miles reached out and caught him. Evan lifted his head towards his, and a long, eternal stare passed between them. Miles’ eyes were smoky in the dim light, and Evan couldn’t help but wonder if his own were darker. Intense. If everything he felt was reflected in them. The desperation. The desire. How hopeless he was against the two together; hopeless against Miles.

Evan could feel just how much Miles wanted him, hard against his stomach, pushing against the thin fabric covering his crotch, but Miles didn’t move.

It was hard enough to take the first step here, it should feel easier to take the last. It wasn’t. But nobody had ever considered Evan a coward, and he wouldn’t act cowardly now.

Lifting his head, Evan fitted his mouth against Miles’, and their lips moved against each other for a moment, uncoordinated and unsure, but then everything slid into place.

Evan had spent his entire life avoiding fantasy. He was practical and prosaic—all by necessity. But now, he had a sudden thought that this kiss wasn’t just a physical manifestation of a deeply physical need, but that it was locking them together, two out-of-sync tumblers clicking uselessly, until one perfect moment when they clicked.

He almost wanted Miles to ask him if he was going to leave again, just so he could tell him that he wasn’t, that he couldn’t. But Miles seemed very uninterested in any more talking, hands moving down Evan’s chest, only breaking apart to pull his shirt off, to pant unevenly into the damp skin of his neck.

It helped that Evan knew exactly where the bedroom was, and so exactly where to steer them, Evan shedding his shoes, then his sweatpants as they stumbled down the hallway, lips fused together.

When they reached the bed, Evan shoved Miles onto the edge, and placed a very possessive hand against the cock throbbing in his briefs.

Miles groaned into his mouth. Something insensible. Something very much like begging.

And Evan was perfectly happy to give him exactly what he wanted. He pulled the fabric down, watching as Miles’ cock sprung from its confines, landing wetly against his abs.

Evan knew many people considered sucking cock to be a demeaning activity, like dropping to your knees somehow made you subservient, but he’d always gotten a power rush from it. Miles’ shocked, pleased expression rushed through him as he lowered himself, flicking his tongue just briefly against the reddened head.

“Please,” Miles said, and he sounded wrecked.

Probably Evan always felt a power rush because he liked making a big production out of a blowjob. Liked to tease. Liked to drive the man above him to barely wrung-out pleas. Some people wrote symphonies, some painted art, some sculpted out of clay and marble. Evan really liked to give a perfect blowjob.

He took his time about it now, wondering how far he could drive Miles with little teasing licks, fingers digging purposefully into the meat of his thighs, a counterpoint to the delicacy of what his mouth was doing to his cock.

Miles quickly fell to a litany of nonsense and moans. He seemed to understand that Evan didn’t want his hands on him, and he kept them fisted in the comforter, knuckles white as he clenched the cotton.

But he must have gotten close before Evan even arrived, because it was too soon and he’d already reached a fevered point of begging. Evan tongued the slit, tasted the rush of salt, and knew he must be close, even though he’d barely given him anything to sink his teeth into.

As far as Evan was concerned, what made him really good at sucking cock wasn’t a preplanned attack, but the ability to improvise in the middle. So he abandoned the delicate teasing abruptly, mouth sliding down Miles’ cock, sucking with all the force he dared.

Miles’ yelp was very rewarding and so was the flood of come on his tongue. He swallowed, taking his time about cleaning up every inch of Miles’ prick as it softened in his mouth.

Finally Miles pushed him off, and there was only the sound of heavy breathing in the dim room. Evan suddenly was acutely aware of his own arousal, pressing against his thigh, sticky and hot.

“Give me a second,” Miles breathed out, voice unsteady, “you might have killed me.”

“But what a way to go,” Evan said, feeling very satisfied—but not nearly as satisfied as he could be.

“If you’d believe it, you were doing the exact same thing in my head when you knocked on my door.”

Evan raised an eyebrow. “Okay,” Miles corrected with a silly little grin that shouldn’t have made both Evan’s heart and dick flex, but it did, anyway, “not quite the exact same thing. I don’t have the same perverse imagination you apparently do.”

“I’m about to get a lot more perverse,” Evan threatened, the thrum of blood in his cock becoming more and more insistent.

“I’ve got you,” Miles said, and the hand he extended to lift him up was gentle and so was his voice.

His hand however, was the right amount of rough friction that Evan didn’t even know he needed as Miles fisted around his length and pumped him hard and reckless. Evan might have been ashamed at how quickly it ended, but then he had a feeling they both knew he hadn’t only been teasing Miles.

Miles wiped his hand on the sheet and rolled over in the bed. Evan hesitated on the edge, not sure if he should stay or go. All of his hookups had always been only sex. Once orgasms were had, it was over, and Evan usually left, because he never liked letting strangers into his personal space. He’d spent too many years doing that.

But Miles was looking at him expectantly, like he expected Evan to roll over and go to sleep.

Evan almost said no. He almost said he was tired and he was going to walk the few yards back to his own place, and go to sleep in his own bed. But then he remembered the way their mouths had fit together, the eerie sensation of two people locking into each other, and though he wasn’t sure he wanted to stay, he didn’t really want to leave either.

So he lay on the bed in the warm spot Miles had vacated and watched as Miles reached over and flicked the light off. “Night,” he said, and hated how uncertain he sounded.

“Night,” Miles returned, all lazy satisfaction, like he’d gotten everything he’d wanted.

They both had; that much was clearly obvious from the way they’d both gone up in flames from the first moment they’d touched. Evan knew he should be feeling more resolved. But tomorrow’s screen test still loomed over them, and there was too much ambiguity about the future for him to relax.

He rolled over and willed sleep to overtake him. It still didn’t come. Even when Miles fell into a gentle patter of snores, too quiet to be annoying, and also too quiet to drown out his uneasy brain.

He told himself that he was making the right decision when he silently slid out of bed and locked Miles’ door behind him with the key he still had on his ring. It was just a night of sleep, and in the grand scheme of things, it really shouldn’t mean anything.

Was it fair of Miles to be pissed that he’d woken this morning and Evan had already been gone? Probably. Was it surprising that he’d opened his eyes to nothing but empty sheets? Not really.

Evan, even after admitting he wanted Miles and thoroughly acting on this desire, was still skittish. Still unsure. Never really convinced that Miles really wanted him, despite all the words and actions that proved otherwise.

A younger, more selfish Miles might have gotten frustrated with Evan before this, but Miles took pride in the fact that he wanted the other man because of how difficult he was to convince, not in spite of it. There was a careful hesitancy in Evan that Miles loved—because when he finally felt secure enough to let go, you knew you’d won him over, heart, body and soul.

And that was the end goal that Miles was really gunning for.

Now they only had to make it through this screen test and hope that it would be enough to convince Reed, because anything else they could fix later.

Miles just needed this one thing to fall their way.

They’d arrived on set to the expected chaos of a show that was just getting underway for the first day of filming. Reed was there, and his boyfriend, Jordan, who wrote the script for Dream Team. Quentin Maxwell and Landon Patton, the talent, were running late, which didn’t seem to surprise anyone.

“That’s why they told us we could do our screen test today,” Evan murmured into Miles’ ear, and with the hot breath brushing his skin, he had to remind himself that Evan wasn’t going to do that hot little nibbling thing he’d done last night.

“Because things are already chaotic?” Miles asked.

“Because they won’t be likely to get much done today at all. Landon and Quen can be . . . tough to wrangle.”

“So it’s not just me, then?” Miles glanced over at Evan, grinning. Evan was not grinning. That was another thing Miles wanted desperately—for Evan to relax.

But asking Evan to relax in the middle of chaos, during one of the most important days of his career, was useless. It wasn’t ever going to happen.

“That was never our problem. Or your problem,” Evan said.

Maybe another day Miles would have asked Evan to detail exactly what his problem was, but the memories from last night—what could be if they could learn to work together instead of against each other—were too fresh. The last thing he wanted to do was dredge up all the shit from the previous weeks.

They hadn’t really resolved it, and it still lay there, stagnant and sour, between them. Maybe Evan thought they could move on without dealing with it but Miles knew they couldn’t.

Even if Miles cared about Evan enough to let it go—and despite how stupid it was, he was edging closer to that place—Evan would never let it go. Miles didn’t think he even wanted to.

“Are you ready?” Evan asked, jerking Miles out of the melancholy fog that he’d felt from the moment he’d woken up and realized he was alone.

“I was born ready,” he said, putting on a confident front that he didn’t really feel anymore. Before he’d come here, Pastry by Miles always made him feel freer, an endless opportunity stretched out in front of him. Now thinking of what could happen to his show, all he felt was apprehension.

It was hard to face that at least half of that was his fault, but he forced himself to.

Without that email, Reed wouldn’t have demanded a screen test, and he wouldn’t have spent the last two days unsuccessfully recording himself baking peanut butter chocolate cookies.

The cookies had been fantastic; his performance had been anything but.

Before, it had only ever been him. Then it had been easy to think it was just him and Evan, for better and worse. And now there was a huge crowd of people, and even though Miles had never cared before, suddenly what they thought mattered.

He swallowed hard, and unsuccessfully ignored the sudden tightness in his chest.

“Just remember that it just needs to be good enough,” Evan said.

The hardest part of the last two days was watching the hopeful light in Evan’s eyes go out as he figured out that Miles couldn’t perform on command. And hearing his words now only proved that even Evan wasn’t sure he could do it.

“Okay,” Miles said, shoving his suddenly damp hands into his pockets, wondering if anyone would notice if he ran away and hid in the bathroom.

He didn’t even have a green room because this wasn’t even his show.

“You’re going to be fine,” Evan said. He placed a reassuring hand on Miles’ back, high enough to be professional. Stupidly, Miles wished that he’d move it lower, make what had happened last night official and public. But that wasn’t Evan’s style. It wasn’t even Miles’ style. At least it hadn’t been before he’d met Evan. Evan made him want all sorts of things he’d always avoided, and the painful irony was that he was the least likely to get them because it was Evan.

“Fine,” Miles parroted back, tongue thick and uncooperative. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d even been nervous but he was undeniably nervous now.

Evan checked his smartwatch. “Time for makeup,” he said, and with his hand still on Miles’ back, steered him over to the makeup station.

Miles had never worn makeup for Pastry by Miles before, and he forced himself to remember that they were trying to up the production quality for the new version.

It didn’t help.

He sat down in front of the mirror and watched as the nice lady put a new, strange face on him.

The bathroom had never looked more appealing. Miles didn’t even think about his little dinky kitchen in Napa because if he did, he wasn’t sure he could keep it together.

Would Miles be better if I had stayed?

The question echoed through Evan’s brain for the hundredth time since they’d gotten to the Dream Team set.

Miles had been nervous and tense from the moment Evan had met him at the set, and instead of relaxing with Evan’s hand on him, he’d only grown edgier.

Evan stood behind the central camera operator and crossed his arms over his chest, careful to keep the frown off his face, but feeling it reverberate through him.

Miles was standing in the kitchen, the place he always looked confident and sure, but he looked nothing like he usually did.

He looked like an apprehensive wreck, and it was taking every ounce of Evan’s self-control to not walk up there and do something—anything—to calm him down.

Evan knew he should have stayed. He never should have left, never should have given Miles a reason to doubt that he liked him, that he cared about him, and Evan had been monumentally stupid enough to do it the day before the most important ten minutes of both their careers.

That was exactly why Evan almost never let himself do what he really craved. Because they were usually really bad ideas, and only made things worse, not better. Last night had been great. He couldn’t even think about it without a little frisson of invisible pleasure, but it hadn’t been worth throwing everything else away.

The director called for quiet. Miles forced out a painful little half smile, and then the worst ten minutes of Evan’s life began.

He knew right away that Miles’ performance this time was even worse than some of the recordings they’d done over the last two days. He’d worried about those, had been afraid that he was too stiff, so he’d pushed and pressed and hoped that they could make some improvements before this moment came.

Now Evan wished he’d just kept his fucking mouth shut, because he would have loved to have those performances be this performance.

“And now, uh, you put these in the oven for ten minutes,” Miles said, and slid the cookie sheet into the oven. Wooden. Dry. None of the playful, laughing charm that had won over so many people who didn’t care about pastry at all.

Evan had counted himself in that group, from the very beginning, and this hurt more than he ever could have imagined it would. Because it wasn’t only his failure, it was the failure of a persona that Miles had believed in. A persona that he’d believed himself to be.

Evan wished he could take it all back, and leave Miles alone. Leave him to his bad production values, and poor lighting, and the single swipe of raspberry puree on one cheekbone. Perfection.

“Cut,” the director yelled, and it blessedly, thankfully, ended.

“What just happened?”

Evan turned and Reed was standing there. Evan’s stomach plummeted.

“He was nervous, uh, a little tense, I think,” Evan said, and because there was nothing else he could do, pushed. “I have a lot of rehearsal footage that you should see. It’s a lot better.” Not by much, but it was better.

Reed raised an eyebrow. “You rehearsed? How much?”

“The last two days,” Evan said, even though he was sure that Reed already knew the answer. Evan was unfailingly predictable.

“What I wanted to see,” Reed said reluctantly, “was a meshing together of your two viewpoints. The organization and production value that you bring to the table, but the spontaneity and charm of who Miles is in the kitchen. Your point of view completely overwhelmed his. You rehearsed him way too much. He knew what he was going to say before he even said it. There was nothing here from Pastry by Miles. It was more Pastry by Evan.”

It was one thing to know it, it was another to have his boss pronounce it. Evan wanted to sink through the floor and die, especially when he saw Miles approaching behind Reed, clearly hearing every word he was saying. The worried crinkle between his dark brows told Evan everything he needed to know. Miles was half a step out the door, half a step away from going back to Napa and resuming a life that he’d already outgrown.

And Evan, for the first time in his life, confronted a problem that he didn’t know how to fix.

“We can do better,” Evan said, because he didn’t know what else to say. He believed they could; he had no idea how to go about doing it, but they couldn’t be so good together sometimes without some potential for success.

Reed just shook his head. “I don’t want better. I want what you had.” He turned and pinned Miles with a single look. “Just because you want in his pants doesn’t mean you should just nod your head and smile whenever he tells you to do something. He’s not infallible. And neither are you.” He threw up his hands. “For the love of god, take a long weekend and figure out how to work together.”

“Uh,” Evan said. Because he couldn’t take a long weekend and not know what that meant for his future. Was he fired? Was Pastry by Miles as a Five Points property over before it had even begun?

“Get out of here,” Reed said sternly, and his expression very clearly stated arguments wouldn’t be tolerated. “I don’t want to hear you did one minute of work. Go somewhere. Clear your heads. And come back here and we’ll figure out this mess you two have made.”

It was bad, but Evan supposed he was grateful it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Miles looked like a thundercloud come to life as Reed walked off to supervise the finalization of the set for Dream Team.

“I’m sorry,” Evan said, because everything else felt painfully inadequate.

“Yeah, you should be. The real question is what you’re actually sorry for.”

Evan swallowed hard. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“That’s your whole damn problem,” Miles said. “And we’re going to fix it.”

Which is how, two hours later, Evan found himself in another rental car, heading towards Northern California.

“You can’t run away every time things get ugly,” Evan said, because he didn’t like where this was going. He knew what had happened the last time Miles had decided to go back to Napa, and they were on thin enough ice as it was.

“That,” Miles pointed out, “is your other problem. You think I’m running away. I’m not. I’m blowing off steam. You’ve never blown off steam in your life. You’re about to self-combust from all the steam building inside you. You put way too much pressure on yourself. Take too much on. We’re going up to Napa to help you learn to let stuff go.”

“Shouldn’t we be working on how to fix the show?” Evan insisted. “We’re half-fired at this moment in time. Blowing off work to drink and party doesn’t seem like the best plan.”

“Reed already told you that you’re not working. And even if he didn’t, I wouldn’t let you. We’ve rehearsed enough. We need to learn to work together, and that’s never going to happen if you can’t fucking relax.”

“So you’re going to . . . teach me to relax?” Evan didn’t know what to make of this plan. Actually, scratch that. He knew what he thought of it and it wasn’t anything good. It was a terrible plan, probably going to result in them being totally, one hundred percent fired.

“Yes.”

“I can relax,” Evan insisted.

“And yet I have seen zero evidence of you actually relaxing,” Miles said. “We tried things your way, and they failed spectacularly. You wound us both up so tight that I could barely breathe. I don’t even know how you survive wound this tight. So we’re going to do things my way.”

“But . . .” Evan tried to point out, but Miles just interrupted him.

“No arguments. No circular logical shit. You’re going to fucking relax if it kills me.”

“It might, because I’ll probably end up murdering you,” Evan said, and he couldn’t help how grumpy he sounded. He was fine. He didn’t need to relax; relaxation never got anyone anywhere.

“Yeah,” Miles drawled, his hand on the wheel relaxed as he smiled, skin crinkling near his eyes, “you can fuck me to death.”

Evan harrumphed.

“Seriously, it might be fun. You might actually enjoy yourself for a minute.”

“Are you going to keep bringing up sex just to remind me what happened last night?” Evan demanded. “Because trust me, I do not need a reminder.”

Miles glanced over, and he was still smiling. Like the further north they drove, the further he unwound. Even Evan baiting the shit out of him didn’t make a dent. “I don’t know, I think I do. A little refresher, we could even say.”

Evan snorted, because he just couldn’t help himself. “Is that how you get guys in your bed? You never stop harassing them?” It wasn’t hard to swallow the question of why Miles wouldn’t stop harassing him. After all, he’d left Miles alone in bed, and fucked up his career.

He wasn’t sure which Miles should be more pissed off about, but Evan knew he would never be big enough to let it go. But instead of biting his head off, Miles was driving them to Napa, relaxed and smiling, like last night had been perfect.

“When it’s perfect, yeah, I’m not going to let that go. Let you go.” Miles smirked.

And it sort of had been perfect, at least before Evan went and overthought everything. Before Evan remembered what the next morning would bring.

Somehow they’d both survived the morning, though Evan had a feeling that had more to do with Reed probably not wanting to deal with them than actually catching a break.

Still. They were still here. Still together. Evan felt the invisible belt holding him together loosen a single notch.

“It was pretty great,” he admitted, and Miles’ smile grew at least ten degrees brighter.

“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Miles teased.

“I don’t know,” Evan said, barely managing to keep a straight face. He was not going to grin at Miles like a lovesick loon. Except he sort of was. Miles was making him begin to believe in fate. “It might be pretty hard later.”