My phone trilled next to me. Over and over again, it rang and rang and rang. “Fuck,” I muttered, throwing my arm out and knocking it to the floor. It stopped ringing, and I moaned in relief, but then it started up again.

“Why is your ringer so loud?” Lachlan grumbled from the other side of my bed.

I pried one eye open and then immediately slammed it shut. “Shit, that’s bright.” I pulled the covers up over my head, but while it blocked out the blinding light, it didn’t silence my phone.

“If you don’t make that fucking thing be quiet, I’m going to flush it down the toilet,” Lachlan threatened as he pushed up to a sitting position.

I rolled over and dropped my hand down beside the bed. Fishing around on the floor, I finally wrapped my fingers around the device. “What?” I croaked after I’d managed to accept the call and bring it to my ear.

“You sound like shit. Are you sick?”

“Shh. You don’t have to yell.”

“Ah,” Sean chuckled. “Not sick then. More like hungover. Enjoyed the festivities, did you?”

“Ugh,” I answered sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of my eye. As I did, my stomach pitched and rolled. “Yeah. Maybe a bit too much. What’s up?”

“Have you checked Twitter yet today?”

“No, I just woke up.”

“It’s nearly noon,” he laughed.

“Yeah, and I didn’t get home until three o’clock in the morning. What’s so urgent?”

“You’re going to want to pull it up.”

I pushed Lachlan, who’d collapsed back down onto his stomach and was holding a pillow over his head. He groaned but didn’t otherwise acknowledge me. “Give me your phone, will you?”

Lachlan’s hand shot out to the bedside table, and without looking, he took hold of it and tossed it my way.

In my ear, Sean asked, “That Lachlan?”

“Yeah, that’s him,” I said, casting my eyes toward my very hungover boyfriend.

Lachlan’s head popped up, and he squinted at me through bloodshot eyes. “Who’s that?” he mouthed.

“My agent,” I mouthed back.

He nodded and laid his head back down, keeping his eyes trained on me as I opened his Twitter app and searched for my name.

When I found it, I sucked in a startled breath. “Fuck.” My blood ran cold, and then hot with fury. Of all the ways this could have happened, this was the very last thing I’d expected. I clenched my jaw and breathed in through my nose.

“Yeah, that’s what I said too,” Sean answered. “I take it you didn’t see him?”

I cursed again and dropped my head back. “No. As you can plainly see, I was occupied.”

Lachlan pushed to his knees and scooted closer. Looking over my shoulder, he swore too and fell back against the headboard next to me, his hands speared through his hair and his eyes raised to the ceiling.

“Hold on,” I told Sean. “I’m going to put you on speaker.”

“Is that—” he started to ask, but I cut him off.

“Sean, you’re on speaker, and Lachlan’s here next to me.”

Across the line, my brother-in-law-slash-agent sighed. “Tell me what you want to do.”

Lachlan propped his elbow on his knee, waiting to hear my response.

“Issue the statement on my Twitter and Facebook page. I’m going back to bed.”

“Liam, we need a strategy,” Sean said before I could hang up the phone.

“Why?”

He sighed again. “Now you’re just being obtuse.”

“No, I’m not. I understand what’s at stake.” I laughed cynically. “Trust me, I know better than anyone. But this is my life, and I’ve made up my mind. Fill in the blanks, and post the damn statement.”

“If you’re sure.”

I looked at Lachlan, his face blank and his body locked tight. I could practically feel the tension rolling off him and into me.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything.” I hung up the call and tossed both our phones to the foot of the bed.

We sat in silence until he eventually cleared his throat. “A statement?”

I swung around to face him, my legs crossed. “I put one together, just in case.”

“When?”

I looked to the ceiling and recounted the days in my head. “Twenty-six days ago.”

He chuckled and said, “That’s very specific.”

I took his hand in mine and rubbed my thumb over his knuckles. My eyes fixed on the ink near his wrist, I said, “You haven’t asked me what the statement says.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Why?”

His eyes found mine. “Because I’m afraid to.”

I shook my head sadly, the knowledge that I’d put that fear in him weighing heavy on my mind. Well no more. “You don’t need to be.

Figuring enough time had elapsed for Sean’s team to have posted, I dropped Lachlan’s hand and grabbed my phone again. Navigating to my page, I saw they’d done as I’d asked. Clicking on the post, I passed my phone to Lachlan who took it with shaking hands.

His eyes skated over the text, as I read over his shoulder, my arm wrapped around his middle.

Earlier today, a man named Conor Henry posted a photo he claims is me kissing an unidentified man last night in Edinburgh, the city where I now live and work. While I feel strongly about keeping my personal life personal, I am not going to hide who I am. Yes, that is me, and the man I am kissing is my boyfriend Lachlan MacLeod. He is an acclaimed chef, and we have been together for several months. I am in love with him, and I have never been happier. If you’re reading this, you’re probably already a fan. If so, I hope you will be as happy for me now as you’ve been during the other important milestones of my life. While I understand learning that I am bisexual might come as a shock, I ask that you respect our privacy at this time. Thank you.

Lachlan set the phone aside, his eyes found mine, and he cleared his throat. “You didn’t have to do that.”

I straddled him and took his face in my hands. Laying a gentle kiss on his lips, I leaned away and said, “Yes, I did. I’d planned on doing it differently, but I crafted the statement just in case. Once I decided I was done hiding, I knew we ran the risk of being spotted. Social media being what it is …” I sat back and shrugged. “It seemed like something that could happen.”

“But Conor?” he asked, his eyes flashing with barely-suppressed fury.

“Yeah, that part shocked me since I thought I was well rid of him, but I shouldn’t be surprised. That’s just who he is. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d come here looking for me.”

“But to find you in a crowd of thousands? It was probably just a coincidence.”

“Or, he’s been following me. I wouldn’t put it past him.” I know I sounded paranoid, but where Conor Henry was concerned, nothing was off the table. Anyone who would do what he did to me was not to be trusted.

“That’s not the end of him in your life. You know that, right?” Lachlan asked.

“Yeah, I know. But I’ll deal with him later. Right now, I have something more important to take care of.”

“What’s more important than this?” he asked with a furrowed brow as I rolled off the bed and moved to my chest of drawers.

Rooting around in the back of one, I pulled out a monogrammed sterling silver keychain I’d ordered from Tiffany. I walked back over to the bed and sat down on Lachlan’s side, the keychain gripped in my fist. I cleared my throat, and my eyes flicked nervously between his. “I’d planned to do this differently, make it romantic. But since I’m terrible at that sort of stuff, I’m just going to ask outright. Will you move in with me?” I reached my hand out, palm up, and Lachlan’s eyes shot down to see what I was holding.

He laughed, his head falling back and his gorgeous throat on display. After a few seconds, he brought his face forward and smiled indulgently at me. “You beautiful, wonderful man. I love you, but I am not moving in here with you.”

A feeling of intense mortification washed over me. How had I gotten this so wrong? My heart kicked painfully in my chest, and my temperature spiked with embarrassment. I closed my fist around the keychain, but before I could pull my hand away, Lachlan placed his palm flat on my chest.

“I’m not saying I don’t want to live with you. I do. I so want that. But I don’t want to live here. This place is a fucking dump, and my place is awesome. If I’m being honest, I was waiting for the right time to ask you to move in with me.”

“You were?” I said, my voice filled with hope.

“Yeah, I was. A couple of months ago, you would have been terrified of people seeing you coming and going from my building, so I was going to wait and see how things went.”

“You mean, how I dealt with being out but not out.”

“Yeah, that.”

“Well, I’m out now,” I laughed, leaning forward for a kiss.

“That you are,” he chuckled. “And, um, that statement was pretty damn detailed.”

“I left a few placeholders for Sean to fill in, but the stuff about you came directly from me.”

“Thank you,” he whispered, his hands dropping to take hold of the keyring. “I know it was a big step for you. It couldn’t have been easy.”

I thought about it briefly. The most startling thing was it hadn’t been a big deal. When I’d initially written the words, yes, I’d been scared imagining the fallout should I have to issue it. But when I’d told Sean to post, I’d been calm. I didn’t want to say I’d been resigned because that sounded negative, but I’d accepted coming out publicly as my fate, and I was looking forward to beginning the next phase of my life with Lachlan.

The only part of this whole thing that made my blood boil was the fact that it had been Conor who’d outed me. That fucker had been a thorn in my side for far too long. If I ever saw him, he better hope he could outrun me because I was going to murder the little prick.

In the meantime, I was going to have to ask Sean what it would take to get the thirty g’s back that I’d paid for Conor’s silence. I didn’t know if I had a legal leg to stand on though. The NDA he’d signed kept him quiet about our hookup. The picture of me kissing Lachlan didn’t fall within the parameters of that agreement. Without saying a word about the hours I’d spent with him, he’d still been able to out me. That wily little asshole.

But I didn’t want to think about him anymore right now.

I had a fascinating, clever, hot-as-sin man in my bed and I didn’t want to waste another second of our time together. Briefly, I wondered why I hadn’t come clean before. Because now that it had happened, I didn’t care about any of the consequences. I had the support of my team and the management chain, my closest friends, and yes, the love of my life. Anyone else could go fuck themselves if they had a problem with who I chose to be with.

“Turns out, it was one of the easiest things I’ve ever done,” I told him. “These last few weeks have been the best of my life. Being with you …” I had to stop because I was choking up. Until I met Lachlan, I wasn’t a crier. Now I fucking cried all the damn time.

I took a deep breath and started again. “Being with you is the best thing I’ve ever done. I have no problem telling the world.”

“As long as you’re sure,” he said, concern written all over his face.

But he didn’t need to be concerned. Nothing had ever felt so right. “Never been surer.”

And then I used my body to show him just how sure I was.