Owen ducked his head and pressed a paper towel to his face, wanting to avoid any conversation with a stranger about why he looked like a pale, shaking drug addict, when the familiar squeak of boots made him pause. Slowly, he dropped his hands and looked up.
Chad stood in front of him, eyes red, fists clenching and unclenching.
He still looked sexy as hell, while Owen was a mess, and that pissed him off the most. “You. Lied,” he growled as he balled up the paper towel and threw it in the trash can. “You lied to me! You said you’d be at work!”
Chad’s jaw clenched. “Technically I am at work—”
“Oh, fuck you, Chad. Fuck you.” Owen pointed a finger at his chest and stepped closer. “You know exactly what I mean.”
Chad pressed his lips together. “What about you?” he asked, passing the blame. “You said you were going to be at a work meeting and instead you’re here flirting with some guy.”
“Those are two of the clients I had dinner with. I’m not flirting with either of them. So yeah, I’m still technically at a work meeting. They wanted me to come, and I want them to contract with us, despite the fact that I just wanted to go home and sleep so that I could see you tomorrow.”
Instead of softening Chad’s expression, that only seemed to make him angrier. “Oh, sure, of course you’re going to say that now.”
“Why are you turning this on me? I’m not the one who lied. You are!”
Chad was exposing a hell of a lot of skin, and most of it was flushed red with anger. “Look, I am at work, okay? And I do work at the Blue Moon. I worked there earlier, and now I’m here.”
Owen probably looked like a bull, because his nostrils flared and his lips curled. “And when were you going to tell me you worked at a strip club? When did you plan on telling me that?”
“Come on,” Chad scoffed. “That isn’t fair. We finally stopped hating each other three days ago.”
“Yeah?” Owen fired back. “Well, how am I supposed to continue to not hate you when you lie about something like this?”
Chad’s eyes blazed, and his lips twisted in a cruel way Owen had never seen on the man. “Goddamn it. We’re not boyfriends or whatever. We’re barely fuck buddies.”
That hurt, like a knife sliced across his belly. Why was Chad acting like this? Like they hadn’t decided to have a talk? Like they both knew there was more to this than sex? Or…Christ, had this really been that one-sided? Owen took a step back, and Chad’s face changed, a hint of something, before his angry mask slipped back over, and he spat out a final dagger. “You’re not entitled to every aspect of my life. Even though you think it’s okay to make calls to your professor friends on my behalf.”
Owen didn’t understand where these words and feelings were coming from. He hadn’t realized Chad had the power to hurt him this bad. But God, he did, because this was painful as hell. “I was just trying to help.” His voice shook, and he cringed.
Chad hadn’t lost steam yet. The storm was still raging behind his hazel eyes. “It was a little much, don’t you think? Because Chad’s just a bartender, right? He can’t be trusted to do important adult things. It’s not like I have aspirations to work at a strip club. I need the money to go back to school, and this opportunity presented itself.” He tilted up his chin in defiance. “I think I’m being pretty resourceful. I can handle my own life, O.”
Why was Chad so angry? Why wouldn’t he just listen? “You don’t even wear a helmet when you ride that death trap and perform illegal traffic violations—”
Chad threw up his hands. “Holy shit with the fucking helmet and driving! Is that how this will be going forward, you bringing that up and holding it over my head to show me how irresponsible I am? Because I don’t need that in my life.” When he stopped talking, he gulped in a huge breath and his nostrils flared. He looked like he was running out of steam.
And Owen was completely out. He no longer had the energy to rage. His shoulders slumped and more than anything, he just wanted to be home. “So that’s it, then?” he asked softly. He wasn’t angry anymore, he was defeated. Why had he ever thought he was in Chad’s league, that he was someone Chad would want to keep? “I’ll admit seeing you here made me feel possessive. I didn’t like it. But if this is your job and you want to do it, then okay. But you lied to me, and don’t act like it was anything other than a lie. You know you should have told me.”
Chad didn’t answer, his face as expressionless as stone.