Standing outside the Drumchapel tower blocks, Colin scowled down at Andrew’s latest tweet.

But even Andrew’s derision—and the danger it might put himself in—couldn’t dim Colin’s euphoria over the latest YouGov poll: 51% Yes, 49% No.

He’d arrived early for the canvass—which he was helping coordinate, being a local resident—and found the carpark flooded with new volunteers, all in a party mood. Saltire flags flapped in the breeze, which carried scattered strains of “Flower of Scotland” and other patriotic songs. Dozens of smiles reflected Colin’s own feeling of dazed disbelief.

We can do this.

The tide had turned the last two weeks, after the second Salmond-Darling debate and Better Together’s release of an ad suggesting women shouldn’t trouble their wee minds with politics when there were dirty dishes to wash. Meanwhile, the hard work of dozens of grassroots organizations was finally paying off. Though it was the Scottish National Party who had originally asked for the referendum, the independence movement’s strength lay in the men and women on the ground—people who belonged to no party. People new to politics, shedding lifelong cynicism. People like Colin, who’d never dared hope he could make a difference.

He was sitting at the main signup table, dispensing canvassing materials to excited volunteers, when a hand brushed his shoulder and a familiar voice spoke his name.

Colin looked up to see the return of Adam Smith.

He leapt from his chair and hugged Andrew. “You made it!” Despite his lover’s tweets and disguise, Colin was thrilled to see him. “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he whispered in Andrew’s ear, noting the absence of cologne.

“Of course I came. Mind my glasses.” He stepped away and straightened the black frames, then gave the three high-rise tower blocks a look of trepidation.

“Don’t be feart,” Colin whispered to him. “Poverty’s not contagious.”

Colin’s original plan had been to take Andrew canvassing in one of the nicer areas of Drumchapel, not the high tower blocks where he lived. But the toff’s callous tweets showed he needed a dose of reality.

He introduced “Adam” to Roland, the local campaign coordinator. To Andrew’s credit, he didn’t hesitate to shake Roland’s hand or take the materials offered. “This is my first canvass,” he said. “I’ll try not to make a state of it.”

Roland smiled. “You’ve a good coach here in Colin. But I always have to warn the new guys—don’t flip anyone from Yes to No by being a zealous prick.”

Before Andrew could get any ideas, Colin steered him away from the table. “Fancy a contest? See who can turn more No voters to Yes?”

“Ugh, I couldn’t live with myself. The fact I’m not tossing these leaflets into the nearest bin is a testament to my integrity.”

“You sure? Your choice of prize.”

Andrew sighed and adjusted his glasses. His face was drawn this morning, with purple-gray semi-circles beneath each eye. Perhaps he was simply knackered after the late-night flight from Turkey, but he looked…depressed.

“If I win,” Andrew said, “you must never speak of independence in my presence again.”

“Is this where you live?” Andrew asked Colin as they approached the tallest and shoddiest of the three tower blocks. Its facade was made of dilapidated ribbed concrete panels of the most ghastly brain-gray Andrew had ever seen.

“No, that’s ours.” Colin pointed to the middle tower, which like the one beyond it, featured a fresh palette of slate and white with blue accents. “The housing authority refurbished them last year. All new insulation, plus new windows we don’t need to hang blankets over to keep out the wind.” He opened the lobby door for Andrew. “This building here’s to be demolished.”

Andrew entered the lobby, which was as dismal as the exterior. “Where will these people live?”

“Elsewhere.” Colin examined the canvassing sheet on his clipboard. “Why do you care? They’re just ‘subsidy junkies,’ right?”

Andrew groaned. “What I meant in that one tweet was that Scotland as a nation looks like subsidy junkies to the English. Because we each receive twelve hundred pounds more in benefits per year than the rest of the UK.”

“And we provide seventeen hundred more in revenue. Arithmetic tells me we’re each owed five hundred quid a year.” He turned for the ground-floor corridor. “But I know that’s pocket change to you.”

Andrew hurried to catch up, dismayed he and Colin had started the day by bickering, especially after their week apart. “That extra revenue comes from oil, not taxes. Why should it be part of the equation?”

“Because if we were independent, we’d keep most of the oil money ourselves. We deserve it, because when there’s an oil spill, that black sludge won’t wash up on English shores, will it? It won’t kill English birds and fish.” Colin stopped suddenly, then tapped his palm against the wall, the lower half of which was painted a hideous 1970s tangerine. “I don’t want to fight just now.”

“You started it. I only asked—”

“I did start it. I’m sorry.” Colin rubbed his eye, then came over and gave Andrew a soft kiss. “C’mon, let’s make this fun.”

As they took the lift to the tenth floor, Colin started humming Major Lazer’s “Come On to Me,” a song they’d danced to in Edinburgh. That night seemed to belong to another lifetime, when they’d cared only about having fun. Before having a taste of Colin, before seeing that tattoo on his back and realizing the depth of this man’s wounds, Andrew would’ve been happy with just one night.

But here he was, more than a month on, following a radical revolutionary on his quixotic quest. A quest that now seemed impossibly possible.

As they headed down the hallway, Andrew wrinkled his nose at an unpleasant smell he couldn’t quite place. It reminded him of a swimming pool, but it wasn’t chlorine.

“We’ll take it in turns to make the contest fair,” Colin said. “I’ll go first so you can see how it’s done.” He stopped at the second door on the left, checking the flat’s number against the list on his clipboard. “There’s a script in your packet of materials, but I like to improvise.”

Colin knocked on the door. While he waited, he swayed in time to the song he was still singing under his breath. Andrew took a moment to glance at the canvassing script. The patter was straightforward and polite, but utterly devoid of charm.

The door opened to a middle-aged man in a too-small T-shirt. Colin smiled and said, “Hiya, mate. I’m Colin, this is Adam. We’re just out today having a chat with folk about”—the door was slammed in his face—“the referendum. Cheers. Bye.”

Unfazed, Colin made another note and continued down the hall.

Andrew passed him, snatching the clipboard from his hand. “My turn.”

“You sure?”

“You told me not to be ‘feart,’ so yes, I’m sure.” Andrew found the next name and flat number on the sheet.

He knocked on the door, which opened almost immediately, revealing a woman in her late twenties. “Sorry,” she said, “I’m just now away to the—oh.” Her eyes met Andrew’s. He unleashed his highest wattage smile, and she let out an audible sigh. “Y-yes?”

“Ms. McAllister, how do you do.” Going full gentleman, Andrew introduced himself, apologized for interrupting her busy day, and asked after her well-being.

“I’m good.” She smoothed back her red-blond hair and shifted the blue baby blanket in her hands. “Call me Wendy.”

When Andrew gently probed Wendy for her stance on independence, she turned out to be a No-leaning undecided voter. A quick glance into her sparse flat showed she was frugal, voluntarily or not.

“Unemployment and income inequality are grave concerns,” Andrew said, “and yet Scotland is forced to spend millions of pounds every year on an outdated nuclear submarine missile system.”

Wendy nodded and frowned. “Aye, the Trident.”

“Precisely. An independent Scotland would scrap the Trident program.” He recited figures he’d learned from Colin about all the free childcare the Scottish government could supposedly provide with the money saved. Wendy mirrored Andrew’s posture as he spoke, nodding when he nodded and smiling when he smiled. This was criminally easy.

“So you see, Wendy”—Andrew readied his ridiculous catch phrase—“we need welfare, not warfare.”

They left the flat having bagged a new Yes voter.

“I’ve been perfecting my canvassing patter for months,” Colin said, “and now you swoop in and get it right the first fucking time.”

Andrew glowed inside at Colin’s praise, though the Tory in him wanted to retch at the words that had just poured out of his own mouth. “I was merely lucky to find such an open mind as Wendy’s.”

“You stole my Trident argument,” Colin said with a smirk.

“I borrowed it. You should be glad I won her over with the power of reason.”

“You won her over with the power of dimples.”

“I have dimples?” Andrew touched his own cheek. “Never noticed. It’s one-nil, by the way.”

Colin seized Andrew’s other hand. “Admit it, the politician in you enjoyed that.”

“Very much.”

“Hah!” He twirled Andrew around, singing the chorus of the Major Lazer song again.

As they danced together down the hallway, hips shimmying to Colin’s Caribbean patois, Andrew’s spirit soared, leaving him with one shining thought:

I would enjoy anything with you.

“I can’t,” whispered the tight-faced middle-aged woman from behind her barely ajar door. “Boss says I’ll lose my job if I vote for independence.”

“What!?” Colin looked livid. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I telt her she should quit,” a voice thundered behind the woman. A large man opened the door wide. “It’s against the fuckin’ law to threaten people for exercising democracy.”

Andrew wasn’t sure that was true. “Mrs. Shaw, did your employer perhaps mean your company would move south in the event of a Yes result?”

“Let ’em go!” her husband shouted. “Let ’em all fuck off to England. Bunch of fascist pricks.”

Mrs. Shaw gave Andrew a forlorn, here we go again look. Colin tried to insert a rational word or two between the man’s ravings about “Freedom!” and “Westminster wankers,” but seemed to quickly realize it was futile. He recorded them as a Yes and a No, then wished them a good afternoon.

“I only read the Sunday Herald!” Mr. Shaw shouted as Colin and Andrew continued down the hall. “The other papers are full of Tory lies!”

Andrew held in his laughter until they were in the stairwell. “Such a high level of discourse from your allies,” he said as they descended to the next floor.

“Shut it. Your side’s telling people they’ll get the sack for voting Yes.”

“How would her employer know? It’s a secret ballot.”

“They can ask her how she voted,” Colin said. “Most people are terrible liars.”

“Including you?”

“Aye, I’m the worst.” Colin stopped and turned to him at the bottom of the stairs. “Or maybe I’m the best. What do you think?”

“I think you’re somewhere in between.” Andrew gave into the impulse—the need—to pull Colin close. “I like that. You keep me on my toes.”

“Toes, naw.” Colin glanced down. “I like you better on your knees.”

Andrew gave a soft groan, then took Colin’s lower lip between his teeth. They kissed, deeper and deeper, their bodies adhered to each other at chests, hips, and thighs, until Andrew could barely breathe.

When Colin finally pulled back, his eyes gleamed with something more complicated than desire—affection, almost. “I missed you too,” he whispered.

Andrew took a deep breath to clear his head, and as he did, he caught a stronger whiff of that same unmistakable odor. “What’s that smell?”

Colin glanced away, his gaze suddenly shuttered. “I don’t smell anything.” He spun away and opened the door to the next level. Andrew followed, but as he shut the door behind him, he saw a dark, diffuse stain along the top of the stairwell window. Oh.

In the hallway, Colin was already knocking on the next door, though it was Andrew’s turn. A baby was crying behind it, a noise that came closer with a set of light footsteps.

“Just a sec!” a female voice called out, then softened. “Wheesht. We’ve visitors, okay?”

The door opened to a blond teenage lass holding an infant in the crook of her arm. Her harried face lit up when she saw Colin. “Oi, you!”

He gasped. “I didnae know you lived in the towers too.”

“Aye, with my parents and this yin.” She beamed down at the gurgling, red-faced baby. “Jack, mind the nice lad who stopped your diaper bag spilling all over the street?” Then she looked at Andrew. “Oh my God, it’s the guy from the photie.”

Andrew stepped back and adjusted his glasses. Had he been recognized?

“It is him.” Colin put an arm around his shoulders. “Mate, this lassie and her wean were on the bus with me that day after the rave. She’s the one recommended I draw on the pic you sent me.”

“I telt you to draw a mustache!” she said, laughing so hard she snorted.

“Okay, I confess.” Colin winked at Andrew. “The big fat tadger was my idea.”

“Aye.” The girl shushed the baby, who looked on the verge of bawling again. “So are you two boyfriends now?”

“Erm…” Colin straightened up and pulled his arm away. “Nah, we’re just—”

“Actually,” Andrew said, “we’re here canvassing for the independence referendum.” He looked at his sheet. “Are you Samantha Murray?”

“I’m Lexi. Samantha’s my mum. Sorry, I cannae vote yet. I’m only fifteen.”

“Oh, I-I see.” He looked at Colin, whose shocked expression mirrored Andrew’s own feeling. Fifteen with a child already born, and living in this…place.

While Colin salvaged the conversation and gave Lexi a leaflet for her parents, Andrew stood to the side and scanned the living room behind her. That same black stain ran around the perimeter of the balcony doors and dotted the vertical blinds covering them.

As they said goodbye, Colin gave Lexi a card with his address and mobile number. “If you need anything. Anything.”

He and Andrew didn’t speak on their way to the next flat, where an elderly man answered. He was leaning No, but he listened politely to Colin’s calm, reasoned arguments, and agreed to take a leaflet, along with Colin’s card.

“You’re giving your address and number to complete strangers?” Andrew asked him when they returned to the stairwell.

“What are they gonnae do, steal my nonexistent possessions? These people need to know I’m one of them. I’m not some well-meaning middle-class Yesser come to the Drum to rescue them from their own ignorance. If these folk’ll listen to me, then I owe it to them, to myself, to this entire fuckin’ country, to make myself available.” Colin shoved open the door to the next floor, but paused to hold it for Andrew. “I shouldn’t have started this contest. This isn’t a game. It’s dead serious.”

“I know.” Andrew stopped on the bottom stair, then pointed to the window on the landing behind him. “That’s mold, isn’t it?”

“Mildew.” Colin avoided his eyes. “Our tower block had it too, before the refurb. Probably why my sister’s got asthma.”

Andrew’s heart twisted. “I’m sorry.”

“Okay.” Colin pushed the door open wider. “It’s your turn.”

They canvassed for another two hours, and though Colin was his usual animated, charming self with the people they met, between flats he was silent. No more singing or dancing, no more flirting. Andrew wasn’t sure if Colin was angry with him, or if he was still reeling from the fact Lexi was only fifteen, or if he was ashamed Andrew was seeing how his neighbors lived. How he lived.

“Not so much noise in that flat, at least,” Andrew remarked as they left another divided household—this time, unusually, the woman was Yes and the man, No.

Colin jotted a note on his clipboard. “Yeah, life gets real quiet without electricity.”

“What?” Andrew stopped short and looked back at the door to the flat. It had been rather dim, with daylight the only illumination. “Why don’t they have electricity?”

“No money.”

“What do they spend their benefits check on?”

“Rent. Food. Clothes for their kids, who apparently have this annoying habit of growing bigger. Or perhaps a man or woman would like a haircut or a decent shirt to wear to a job interview. Mad, extravagant things like that.”

As Colin paged through the sheets on his clipboard, Andrew examined him, as if seeing clearly for the first time. His torn jeans and duct-taped trainers weren’t a fashion statement. He didn’t wear ragged clothes to make himself look tough. He wore them because they were all he had.

Colin brushed past Andrew on his way to the stairs. “That’s us finished.”

Andrew’s stomach went cold. “You’re breaking up with me? Because I was an idiot about the mildew and the electricity?” He hurried after him. “I know I’ve been unfathomably naive, thinking the welfare system provided at least the basics. I’m truly sorry. But don’t let this be the end of us.”

“God, would you shut it?” Colin spun to face him. “I meant we’re finished canvassing. We’ve visited all the names on our sheets.”

“Oh.” Andrew swallowed, catching his breath. “Did you want to stop at your flat before we—”

“No.” Colin turned again, too quickly, and gave a grunt of pain.

“Here, let’s take the lift.” Andrew backtracked and pressed the down button.

“It’s only two floors.”

Andrew had had enough of Colin’s bravado. “Look. A few years ago I hurt my knee whilst playing—well, never mind. Anyway, I remember how painful stairs can be, especially going down. So we’ll take the lift, then I’ll take you home where you can have an ice pack and some anti-inflammatory tea.” He cut off Colin’s protest. “I won’t tell your manager or captain. If you want to play hurt, that’s your business. My business is making you feel better.”

Colin pressed his palm to the stairway door, then dropped it. He slowly moved to join Andrew, no longer hiding his limp. “Playing what?”

“Sorry?”

“You hurt your knee playing what?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Was it polo?” Colin asked, voice dripping with sarcasm. When Andrew didn’t answer, Colin scoffed. “Fuck’s sake.”

“Yes, I play polo. I’m a poncey toff who’s had his eyes pried wide open today. Go on and laugh.”

“I would, if I didn’t hate your pity even more than your scorn.”

“I don’t pity you.”

“The fuck you don’t!” Colin slammed the side of his fist into the lift door. The bang made Andrew jump. “Can you at least respect me enough not to lie about that? Please?”

Andrew tried to speak, but fear had dried his tongue.

Colin met his eyes and turned away, shoving his hands through his hair. “I’m sorry. I didnae mean to lose the rag there. It’s been a long day.” He rubbed his hand where it had struck the door. “I’d never hurt you.”

“I know,” Andrew said, perhaps too quickly.

The lift dinged then. As the doors slid open, Andrew went to take Colin’s hand, but something made him pull back.

Colin noticed, and his face twisted with sorrow. “Maybe I should just go home instead of going to yours.”

“Is that what you want?” Before Colin could reply, Andrew added, “At least respect me enough not to lie about it. Please.”

Colin slumped back against the wall, eyes downcast. “I don’t know what I want.”

“Me neither.” Andrew reached for Colin’s hand again, and this time he had the courage to take it. “But I think we should figure it out together.”

Colin sat alone on Andrew’s couch, an ice pack on his knee and a cup of blood-red tea in his hand, wishing he could forget today.

Andrew’s “dose of reality” had tasted bitter indeed, judging by his silence. Since they’d left the Drum, he’d barely spoken—not on the drive here, not while he made Colin’s tea, and not as he’d left twenty minutes ago to fetch them a Tony Macaroni dinner.

The oven timer beeped, signaling it was time for Colin to remove his ice pack. He got up, stalked into the kitchen area, and chucked the pack into the sink, which was as spotless as ever.

How could Andrew not be repulsed, when everything in his flat here—when everything in Andrew’s world—was clean and beautiful? Money made that possible, but it was more than that. Colin knew many of his neighbors had lost all hope, and with that hope, their pride as well. They stopped looking after themselves and their homes. They left rubbish in stairwells and carved words like Fannybaws into the simulated-wood walls of lifts. Some of them were the dregs of society. But all of them were just trying to survive.

Like most Brits, Andrew probably watched “poverty porn” like Benefits Street and The Scheme, TV shows that made the poor look like lazy con artists. Did he see Colin as one of them now, someone to fear and avoid—or worse, someone to pity? Did he finally understand what he was dealing with?

Sometimes, Colin, you’re not worth the bother.

He shook his head hard to dislodge his mother’s voice. It was never her talking, his therapists had reminded him. It was her disease saying those words.

That didn’t mean the disease was wrong.

The oven timer gave a reminder beep. “Shut up,” he told it, jabbing his thumb against the Off button. Then he picked up his tea mug and moved into the dining area, hoping the aquarium would work its magic calming spell upon him.

Staring at the fish didn’t help, so Colin began to pace. His knee still ached, but his simmering rage wouldn’t let him rest. He wanted to smash everything in that kitchen—the four-hundred-quid blender that made Andrew’s precious smoothies, the ceramic dish-soap dispenser, those pretentious stemless brandy glasses.

Brandy. That would help.

He hurried over to the place where Andrew kept the booze, whipped open the cupboard door—

—and smacked it against the side of his sore knee.

“Fuck!” Colin jerked back, spilling tea all over himself. He cursed again. The liquid was no longer scalding hot, but it had left a giant red-brown stain down the front of his shirt and jeans.

He set down the mug, wanting to shatter it against the worktop, then headed back to the main bedroom. Before Andrew had left, he’d invited Colin to help himself to a clean T-shirt and pair of shorts, as the warm day in the tower blocks had left them pure sweaty.

As Colin changed his clothes, he had a look around Andrew’s bedroom. It was the first time he’d been in here alone. When the two of them were here together, the decor was the last thing on their minds.

His gaze settled upon the four-foot-wide, rustic-looking family tree hanging above the chest of drawers. The piece was made of pale linen, its lines and letters a dark, earthy brown. As far as he knew, this hanging was the flat’s only nod to Andrew’s heritage.

Colin examined the hanging as he pulled on a pair of cotton shorts. The tree’s staggering number of branches each bore a name—some with titles, some without. Near the top, at the culmination of six generations, were three names: George, Elizabeth, and Andrew.

Above George and Elizabeth were two names each—their children, Colin assumed. And there Andrew was, the end of his line.

If Andrew married a man, Colin wondered, would the rest of his family consider his sons and daughters legitimate? Would those names ever be added to this tree? Technically they’d be bastards, because even a biological child would be the offspring of either Andrew or his husband, not both.

Colin’s gaze drifted down the tree, over the names of men and women who’d done their sacred duty to continue the bloodline. How many of them were in love with the people they married? It didn’t matter. The aristocracy was built entirely on genes. Love was literally irrelevant.

He was just now beginning to grasp the depth of Andrew’s courage. Being gay—and more importantly being out, with no intention of taking a wife and impregnating her—upset the allegedly natural order of things. Even without a title to pass on, Andrew must have had the notion of marriage and children drilled into his head from an early age. Yet here he was, standing up to his archaic society and telling them what the modern world already understood—that the future meant more than the past, and that love was thicker than blood.

In the upper right corner of the hanging was the family crest, a shield flanked by two rearing white horses that looked like hornless unicorns. Beneath the shield, a pair of fish swam past each other, head to tail.

Colin froze, remembering something he’d seen in the aquarium a few minutes ago. Or rather, something he’d not seen.

He hurried out to the reception room. Walking around the tank, he peered within, examining every visible inch.

Oh no.

Out in the hallway, the front door opened with a rattle of keys.

“Sorry that took so long.” Andrew swept into the reception room and set a pair of paper bags on the dining table. “Usual Sunday crowd, I guess. Everyone’s talking about the YouGov poll, of course. I even overheard what sounded like an indyref-induced breakup. Not sure that couple even stayed for the main course.” He pulled a bottle of red wine from one of the bags. “How’s your knee? Better? That tea is amazing, isn’t it?”

Colin touched the corner of the aquarium. “Where’s Cristiano?”

Andrew’s face went soft and sad. “He died while I was on holiday. It’s kind of you to notice he’s gone.”

Colin could barely breathe for the ache in his chest. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. He was my favorite.” Andrew fetched a corkscrew and started opening the wine. After half a minute he said, “The fish caretaker I hired said Cristiano wouldn’t eat for her, which wasn’t surprising, as he wouldn’t eat for me at first either. He nearly died the first week I had him.” He wrenched the cork from the bottle. “Perhaps it was a kindness to me that he died now. If Cristiano had somehow survived and I’d come home to learn he’d languished without me, I would’ve stopped traveling, for his sake.” Andrew looked into the distance out the window as he untwisted the cork from the corkscrew. “He was quite the bother, but he was worth it.”

Colin nearly wept at the sound of those words, so like his mother’s and yet the opposite.

“We’ll let that breathe.” Andrew pushed the bottle away, then turned to face him. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“What is it?” Colin managed to say, though his jaw was too tight to open his mouth. Perhaps after a long ponder alone, Andrew had come to the conclusion they were too far apart for this to last.

Andrew stood back against the worktop, holding onto its edge with both hands. “Until today, I’d no true grasp of what you faced growing up.” His gaze lowered, then flicked up again to Colin’s face. “I knew about the bullying, of course, and your mum’s illness. But I didn’t appreciate the-the challenges which lay beneath all that.”

“Okay.” Colin felt like he was under the glare of a spotlight and the peer of a microscope at the same time.

“While I was waiting for our dinner, I used my phone to look up some of what you told me. About people not getting what they need, about how hard it is to climb out of-of poverty.” His tongue swiped his lips, as if the p word tasted foul. “I know you love statistics, but I won’t quote them. How pupils from your background rarely attend uni. How deprivation can affect one’s ability to learn. How my neighbor’s new baby is likely to live two decades longer than Lexi’s son, Jack.”

Colin shifted uncomfortably. He already knew these facts and didn’t fancy having them recited at him. “I don’t need your pity.”

“No, what you need is—” Andrew cut himself off, then drew the heel of one hand over his forehead, as if pressing the right words into his brain. “You need me to try to understand, even though I can never truly know what it’s like.”

Colin could barely nod as hope hatched within him. This could be a start, or at least the start of a start.

“What’s most amazing,” Andrew continued, “is that despite all obstacles, you’re making something of yourself. You’re at university, and you’re campaigning for independence—oh, and in your spare time, you’re a star footballer for a history-making side.” He finally released his death grip on the worktop and stepped forward, halving the distance between them. “I’m in awe of you, Colin MacDuff.”

Colin blinked hard. This was definitely not a breakup—or if it was, it had the most flattering prelude he’d ever heard.

Andrew came closer, almost near enough to touch. “Do you remember that night in Edinburgh, the first time you were inside me?”

“Of course I remember.” Colin’s voice felt and sounded like gravel.

“You said we’d never be equals. But you were wrong.” Andrew stepped up to him, then drew his fingertips along the collar of Colin’s T-shirt. “You’ve always been more than equal to me, in every way that matters. And if I ever, for one moment, acted as though that wasn’t true, then I am more sorry than you can possibly imagine.”

Andrew kissed him softly. For a moment, Colin was too paralyzed to kiss him back or even close his eyes. This wasn’t a rejection. This was…

He didn’t know what this was. He only knew he wanted it, and that until this moment, he hadn’t known how badly he needed it. Needed Andrew.

Colin bent his knees and lifted Andrew off his feet. Andrew wrapped his thighs around Colin’s hips as he carried him to the sofa, where they crashed down together onto the firm leather surface.

As they ground together, kissing deeper and deeper, Colin marveled at the familiar way they fit. In just six weeks, he’d learned exactly how far his fingers could curl around Andrew’s arse, depending whether it was clothed in jeans or chinos or nothing at all. He’d learned how the brush of a tongue against the roof of his mouth would make Andrew convulse with desire. He’d learned how hard and fast Andrew needed to be fucked in order to come.

But there was much Colin hadn’t learned yet. How to hear the hitch in Andrew’s breath that told him to slow his pace. How to make a proper mojito. How to say goodbye and really mean it.

Beneath him, Andrew pushed against his shoulders.

“Am I crushing you?” Colin asked.

“No.” Andrew gazed up at him, his lips swollen and ruddy from the rough kisses. “Last night you said that when you got me alone, you’d give me twice as much of yourself as usual. That’s what I need.”

“Need for what?”

Andrew swallowed. “To know if this is real.”

Colin stared down, panic rising within him. But when he tried to pull away, Andrew’s arms and legs held him fast.

“I don’t want it to be real.” Andrew’s voice trembled, almost sounding threatening. “It would make things dreadfully complicated.”

Complicated. “I don’t know what you mean. We’re just having a laugh.” He slid a hand between them, down over Andrew’s cock. “We’re just fucking.”

“No, we’re not.” Andrew grabbed his hand. “And right now I don’t want you to fuck me. I want you to make love to me.”

Colin froze for one long moment, immobilized by that lustrous blue gaze. Then fear gave him the strength to pull away. “No, I don’t—” He lurched to his feet, stumbling against the coffee table. “Make love? I don’t even know—”

“Yes, you do.” Andrew reached for him. “Please.”

Colin turned away, rubbing the scars on both his arms. If this was a test, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to pass or fail. To let down all his barriers and just…be with Andrew, what would he have to give up? Something he might never get back?

“I don’t know if I can,” Colin said finally.

Behind him, Andrew didn’t speak. He seemed to be holding his breath. Colin took a step toward the door, then another, then stopped.

Then he closed his eyes and whispered, “But I’ll try.”