Luke had read a comic strip once. Two parents were lying in bed, having come home from a family vacation to find their house robbed. The dad said, “You always think things like this happen to someone else.”

The mom replied, “We’re all ‘someone else’ to someone else.”

Growing up, that was how Luke had felt. Big splashy tragedies happened to other people. They were things that happened on the news. They didn’t happen to him. Never to him.

Then his dad and stepmom had died, in a plane crash of all the stupid things. A plane crash! It was like a stupid, ridiculous movie.

He had found out on television, and his first stupid thought had been, thank God Seth’s home. It was a Saturday, and if Seth had been in school, he’d have undoubtedly heard about it from someone else.

Telling his younger brother that their parents were dead was probably the worst thing that Luke had ever had to do.

The second worst had been dropping out of college.

It wasn’t like Luke was on the fast track to anywhere, or anything. He’d changed his major three times. He’d had no idea what he was going to do with his life. He wasn’t exactly planning on heading to medical school or Harvard or some shit. He’d really enjoyed college though. He’d loved the friends he made there, and the atmosphere. He’d enjoyed the fact that he could sign up for a class on, say, paleontology and learn about dinosaurs because they were interesting, and he wanted to learn about them, just for the heck of it.

Now all that was gone.

He’d known that it would be tough, going in. Joe’s, the bar that his grandfather had started and his father had continued, was practically a town institution. It had a lot of debt though, no thanks to the developers that had been angling to get the land it stood on for years. Luke was now in charge of raising Seth, a precocious twelve-year-old who could be anything he wanted, unlike Luke who had gotten straight Cs all through high school.

What he hadn’t accounted for was Lyla’s goddamn parents.

Luke’s mom had died when he was about six. She’d been a police officer and she’d fallen in the line of duty. It had absolutely sucked, and Luke had missed her terribly—still did, sometimes—but he’d been happy when about four years later his dad had married Lyla.

Lyla was a blue blood, from this rich old family in New England, and every guy in town had wanted to date her. She was supposed to just come into town for an interior design job, but she’d fallen for Luke’s dad and had ended up staying.

Luke had just been glad to see his dad happy again. Lyla could never replace his mom, but she was fun and she treated Luke like an adult, and he appreciated that. They were friends.

About a year after that, Seth had been born.

Luke had loved Seth from the moment that he’d laid eyes on him. Lyla’s parents, however, were none too keen on their pride and joy marrying a bartender from nowhere who already had one son. A son that was known for playing pranks, causing trouble, and breaking the heart of every single boy in town.

They’d protested for years that Lyla should move back home. Around Seth’s sixth birthday, they had obviously realized that Lyla wasn’t going to give in and that she was genuine when she said she was in love and not leaving either her husband or her stepson.

After that, they’d stopped talking to the family altogether.

Luke had been perfectly happy to forget that Lyla’s parents even existed... and until that plane crash, they hadn’t.

Apparently, however, now that Lyla was dead, in their minds there was only one thing to be done about Seth, and that was for them to adopt him.

Luke was not having any of it.

His brother was twelve when he lost his parents. Wasn’t that enough upheaval? No, Seth was staying at home, where his friends were, in a town he knew, with his brother. That was that.

John and Wendy, Lyla’s parents, had not agreed.

It had been six months of power struggling, and it didn’t look like John and Wendy were going to be giving up any time soon. Luke would have been less worried if the bar was doing better. The Harpers—that was John and Wendy’s last name—were now threatening to take the whole thing to court, as if yelling with them over the phone wasn’t bad enough. Seth didn’t know about what was going on. Luke had done his best to keep it from him, but if this went to court, there was no way he could protect Seth from the nastiness that would follow.

More importantly, how could he afford a lawyer? The bar was barely keeping its head above water. He’d told Dad, he’d told him that they needed to expand, to add a kitchen and serve food and things like that. Dad hadn’t listened. Now look at things. Luke didn’t know how they could keep going like this and it was only thanks to their regulars that he was managing to—just barely—break even every month.

“Hey.” It was Jake, snapping Luke out of his stupor. “You okay?”

Luke blinked, staring down at the wet cloth he’d been using to wipe down the same spot over and over again on the bar top. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Jake didn’t look all that convinced. “Sure. You want me to ask Matthew to help out? You need to take some nights off?”

“No, no, I’m fine.” He couldn’t ask Matthew to keep helping out. The guy had a boyfriend and a whole other job that he worked during the day. Luke could handle bartending. Besides, he couldn’t afford to pay Matthew and he wasn’t going to let his friend keep working for him for free.

Jake shrugged, his body extra loose from the alcohol. “Okay. If you say so. Because you know, I’m very persuasive. I can get him to do anything.”

Unlike most drunks, Jake didn’t actually slur when he got wasted. Instead he just ended up saying things that he’d normally never reveal out loud. Luke rolled his eyes. “Yes, and I’m sure I know exactly how you manage to persuade him. Now how about we get you home, okay?”

Jake sighed, like Luke was the one three sheets to the wind. “You gotta look after yourself too, okay? Not just everybody else.”

“Uh-huh. Is Matthew around here somewhere or do you need me to call him for you?”

Jake just gave him a blank look. Luke sighed, then walked over to the phone hanging from the wall behind the bar. Luke was pretty sure he was the only person in the entire country below the age of fifty who still memorized everybody’s phone numbers, thanks to calling people from the bar to pick up their drunk friends or significant others.

Matthew picked up after the first ring. “Hey, you good?”

“Why do people keep asking me that?” Luke replied, probably snapping a little more than was necessary. He couldn’t blame his friends for being concerned about him. “It’s just Jake, you might want to come pick him up.”

“How bad is he?”

“He hasn’t—” Luke heard Travis’ distinctive yell from behind him and revised his statement. “He’s starting to provoke Travis again.”

“I’m on my way.”

Luke turned around, leaning his hands on the bar and glaring Travis down. “Yo. He’s drunk, stop letting him rile you up like that.”

Travis looked like he was unsure if he should argue with Luke about this, or punch Jake. Lance cleared his throat. “It’s, uh, just me, that’s all.”

“It’s not my fault if I’m telling the truth,” Jake replied. “Lance needs to get that stick up out of his—”

Travis looked like he was about to change his decision from punching Jake to strangling him, so Luke hurried around the bar and yanked Jake away. Jake wasn’t exactly the most tactful person normally, but when he was drunk, it got even worse. Never mind that he was kind of right and Lance needed to put himself out there more instead of letting his shyness win all the time. You just didn’t go up to Lance and tell him to get the stick out of his ass. Not unless you wanted Travis up in your face.

“Okay, I’m going to take you outside.” Luke guided Jake through the bar. “Last call, everyone!” He yelled.

There were collective groans. Luke might not be making a lot of money, but he could take pride in the fact that Joe’s was the place where everyone wanted to hang out. It was kind of like the neighborhood’s living room. He always had to hold in a grin when he announced last call and everyone pouted. It reminded him that he actually was doing something positive with his life.

Matthew pulled up outside the bar a minute after Luke got Jake outside—and thank God for that, because it was starting to rain... and Jake was lecturing Luke about his love life. “You used to be the biggest playboy around, dude, what happened? You need to let off some stress!”

Luke rolled his eyes and passed Jake off to Matthew. “Thanks.”

“Thank you, you’re a saint for putting up with him,” Matthew replied, but he looked at Jake with unabashed fondness.

Jake looked up, surprised to see his boyfriend standing there, then grinned. “Oh, it’s you,” he said happily. He then promptly sank against Matthew, resting his head on his boyfriend’s shoulder, and all but passed out.

Luke knew that Matthew would murder him if he said it out loud, but honestly, that was one of the cutest things Luke had seen in a long time. It made that little ache in his chest, the one he usually tried to ignore, grow larger and sharper.

“Take care,” he said, waving at Matthew as he bundled Jake into the car.

When he got back inside, it looked like people had been pushing Travis’s buttons again. The guy could be a charmer with the men he tried to seduce but man, did he have a temper, especially when it came to people insulting his best friend Lance.

Best friend, Luke’s ass. He was the proud organizer of the Lance and Travis Betting Pool on when and how they’d get together.

“C’mon guys, I’ll serve up the last drinks for the road but otherwise, get out of here,” he told them all, unable to completely keep the fondness out of his voice. His parents were gone and it was still a painfully fresh wound in his chest, but at least he wasn’t without family. He had these guys.

Everyone clapped him on the shoulder and murmured good night or something as they exited. Luke called a few cabs for people who were obviously too drunk off their asses and couldn’t make it home, palming Nancy’s keys so she couldn’t try driving home drunk again, and phoning Ellen to come pick up Bill.

Lance and Travis were two of the last guys out, and both were relatively sober. “Take care,” Travis said, the closest the guy ever got to discussing feelings.

Lance was a bit more open in his communication. He gave Luke a hug on his way out. “Say goodnight to Seth for us. And let us know if you need anything.”

“Yeah, of course.” Luke swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat. God dammit, he’d done enough crying about this already. “Get him home safely, yeah?”

He indicated Travis, which made Lance roll his eyes. “Yeah, idiot’s gonna go home drunk and burn down his house one day, mark my words.”

Lance hurried after Travis, who was trying to walk back to his house through the now pouring rain. Travis lived just up the street, so he normally walked to the bar, but not tonight. Lance guided Travis to his car and they drove away.

After they’d left, Luke turned and began the process of cleaning up the bar. Growing up, he’d been the one to help his dad out with that every night—sweeping, wiping down tables, taking out the trash, all of that—but he wasn’t going to make Seth do it. The kid was probably already asleep upstairs, and besides, Seth had never had any interest in wanting to be a part of the family tradition.

That had been a real point of contention between Dad and Seth. They’d fought like cats and dogs about it. Seth wanted to be a lawyer, which Dad had basically taken as a betrayal of their blue-collar background. Luke could admit to himself, looking back, that Dad had probably been a little harsh about it, because Lyla had come from an upper-class background. Her parents had probably dreamed of her marrying a bigshot lawyer or something like that someday.

With Seth wanting to be one of those rich bastards, at least in Dad’s mind, it had probably felt like a betrayal. Luke had personally seen nothing wrong with Seth’s ambitions. After all, that was what Luke was for, right? Luke was taking over the bar.

That had kind of stung, actually, his own loyalty overlooked in favor of Dad fighting with Seth about it.

But now—now Dad was gone. It was just Luke, and if Seth wanted to be a lawyer then Luke wasn’t going to stop him.

Luke began the process of cleaning everything up. It was kind of soothing, set against the backdrop of the pouring rain outside. He set chairs upside-down on the tables and turned off the jukebox. He gathered empty bottles and put them in the trash. He was just about to grab the broom when he heard the sound of the front door opening.

“We’re closed,” he called over his shoulder, not even bothering to look.

“I know,” a surprisingly deep voice replied, “Sorry, I just—”

Luke turned around. Standing in front of him was the kind of guy who made Luke’s mouth water: slick dark hair, a runner’s build, and eyes like coffee. He was wearing a suit, and a nice one by the looks of it, but it was now soaked and clinging to his skin, revealing the hard, lean planes of muscle.

God damn.

“You okay?” Luke asked, Midwestern hospitality kicking in. The guy looked like he’d been half-drowned.

“Yeah, uh,” the guy seemed at a loss for words, then looked down at himself. “I’m really sorry, but is there a place I can dry off?”

His voice was a smooth baritone, and Luke had to clamp down hard on his jaw to keep himself from suggesting other ways the guy could get warm again. “Yeah, I’ve got a heater in the back office. If you’ll follow me?”

Thank God that Seth was upstairs asleep. Luke’s grandparents had originally lived in a tiny apartment above the bar when they’d first opened it, and it was still a functioning apartment, so Seth would stay up there and do his homework at night while Luke worked.

Luke was actually starting to consider selling their house and moving into the apartment full time. It was the only way he could think of to pay whatever lawyer bills would get slapped on him if the Harpers made good on their threat to sue him for Seth.

How he was going to tell Seth that, he didn’t know.

“I’m Luke, by the way,” Luke said, leading the guy into the back office.

“Adam,” the guy replied. “Again, I’m really sorry. This wasn’t how I was expecting my evening to go.”

“It happens to the best of us,” Luke replied. He turned on the heater. “I’ve got some spare clothes upstairs that you can wear while you’re waiting for yours to dry, if you want.”

Adam looked startled. “Oh. Um…”

Luke grimaced. “That was probably kind of creepy. Sorry.”

“What? No,” Adam replied hastily. “I’m just—it’s really generous of you, that’s all.”

“I’m a bartender, it’s kind of in my DNA to help people out.”

“I thought a bartender’s job was to get people drunk.”

“That’s exactly what I just said.” Luke threw in a wink for good measure. He had it on good authority that he was quite dashing when he winked.

Adam laughed, and even blushed a little. “I suppose next you’ll tell me you’re the neighborhood therapist.”

Luke sat down on the couch and cleared his throat. “And how does that make you feel?” He asked the question in an overly exaggerated way, sounding like every television show therapist ever.

Adam laughed again. Damn, Luke had missed this—the lighthearted goofing off, the edge of flirtation. Letting himself look over a guy’s form, and letting the other guy see that he was looking.

As Jake had oh so kindly brought up earlier, Luke might have been a bit—okay, a lot—of a player in his earlier days. And by ‘a lot’ he meant ‘had broken the heart of every not-straight guy in high school’. This had proven to be a problem in the present day.

Their town had started out as a small town, about an hour out of Chicago, but around the time Luke was a teenager the land in between had started to fill in with suburbs. Now it was to the point that they were practically a suburb of Chicago in their own right. That didn’t mean the small-town attitude everyone had grown up with had gone away though. Luke had burned his bridges with any potential boyfriends all the way back in high school, and now he was too far away from Chicago and too busy with Seth and the bar to drive out into the city every night to maybe possibly find someone who might turn out to be more than just a one night stand…

Yeah. It had been a while since he’d slept with anyone.

The irony was that he’d been planning on settling down once he’d graduated college. High school, college, those were the times to be crazy, to sleep around, to have fun in clubs with strangers. When he graduated, he’d had a plan. He was going to work on his resume and build up experience for about five years. In that time, he’d finally try seriously dating, and get to do all those romantic, sweet little things he’d always missed out on. Then he was going to move back home, take over the bar from Dad, and let his parents retire and enjoy life while he ran the bar and his boyfriend (probably husband by then, Luke hadn’t quite worked out the timing of that in his head) did whatever job his boyfriend—or husband—wanted to do.

Life had certainly thrown a wrench in that whole plan.

Now, Luke had a playboy reputation, and no way to find a proper boyfriend or even let off steam.

Until, well, this guy had practically fallen into his lap.

Adam was looking around at the office, staring curiously at the photos on the walls. It was mostly family photos, the people at the bar who’d been regulars over the years. One showed Bill and Nancy in their early twenties sitting at the bar with Dad as the bartender. It was one of Luke’s favorites.

His throat got that lump again and he swallowed hard. “I’ll just—go get you those clothes.”

Adam nodded. “Thanks, again.”

Luke nodded as well, feeling like an idiot, and then hurried out of the room.

God, he was a mess. He was ready to cry all the time and he couldn’t even flirt properly anymore? He could have smacked himself.

Still, he couldn’t avoid that whisper at the back of his head, the one reminding him how long it had been since he’d last been with someone, pointing out how attractive Adam was. He’d check and see if Seth was asleep while he grabbed clothes for Adam, and if he was, well… it could only help to let off some steam, right?

Right?