Tate couldn’t help the loud laugh that escaped him. He could only imagine how annoyed Cole had been to find Logan on his steps every day.
Then, Logan confirmed it. “He was furious. We got into a fight that first day. He punched me right in the mouth.” Logan chuckled. “I thought he was going to do it again today.”
And there they were, back where they’d begun. “Why? What made him so mad?”
“You did.”
And with those two words, Tate felt his breath leave him at the blunt confession.
* * *
Logan put the bottle down next to him and sat up. God. The alcohol was making him run his mouth even more than usual.
“What do you mean, I did?” Tate’s voice finally filled the silence.
“He’s worried about me.”
“Well…yeah.”
Logan ran a hand over his face and up through his hair. What the fuck? Might as well put it all out there. Tate heard everything anyway.
“You asked me the other night, if I’d ever dated anyone else…” He trailed off, finding that for the first time, he was uncomfortable with discussing his sexual encounters—well, this particular encounter. When Tate stayed quiet, he rushed out, “If I’d let anyone else be with me like you are. And obviously, you heard I was with a guy named Chris.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
Logan nodded and waited. When he heard nothing at the other end, not even breathing, he probed, “Tate? You there?”
“Yeah,” Tate sighed.
It sounded to Logan like he had been holding his breath.
“Sorry. I was just thinking.”
“About?”
“You and Chris.”
“And?”
“It pisses me off.”
Logan felt the nice buzz in his head finally relax him a little. “I told you, you’re always pissed-off at me.”
“And I told you why.”
“Because you like me,” Logan repeated Tate’s words from earlier. “A lot.”
“I like you too fucking much, Logan.”
Logan swallowed and let that admission warm the rest of his body. “Chris and I met at college. We had the same algebra class. I was good at it. He wasn’t. So, I tutored him.”
“In algebra and…”
Logan could hear the veiled question hiding in Tate’s comment.
“And nothing. I only taught him algebra.”
“But he taught you things?”
“He taught me everything,” Logan confided and sat back in his chair.
He tried to picture Chris in his mind, but he came up blank. All he could see were Tate’s brown eyes and unruly curls and the lips that snarled or smiled at him, and he had to stop and really focus to even remember who Chris was.
“I don’t like him,” Tate’s voice interrupted matter-of-factly.
“You don’t know him.”
“I still don’t like him.”
“Because…” Logan drawled.
“Because he had you,” Tate told him much more boldly than Logan would have expected. “He fucked you, didn’t he?”
Enjoying Tate’s jealousy a little too much, Logan answered, “Yes. Quite a bit.”
“How much is quite a bit?”
“Want all the juicy details, Tate?”
Logan heard a long-suffering sigh, and then Tate cursed, “Fuck.”
“Tate?”
“What?” he barked at him.
Logan couldn’t help the way his dick reacted to it. “I can’t even remember what he looks like because all I can picture is you.” Logan’s heart ached as he waited for what felt like hours until Tate finally spoke.
“You really mean that, don’t you?”
“I do, and it scares me.”
“Why?” Tate whispered into the phone.
His voice had Logan wishing he hadn’t gone home alone and that he was instead lying in bed beside him.
“Come on, Tate. Don’t you think I wonder what will finally change your mind? What will make you think, what the hell am I doing?”
There—he’d finally voiced his biggest fear.
He could hear movement through the phone, and then Tate asked, “Is that what he did? Is that why Cole’s worried? He thinks I’m playing you?”
Logan sat back in the chair, and answered the question. “Yeah, that’s what Chris did. It wasn’t so much he changed his mind as denied everything when people found out.”
“Why? Was he straight?”
Logan almost choked on the bitter laugh that left his mouth. “In public, yes, but in my dorm room? Not even a little bit.”
“But you said he taught you. As in he’d been with others before, right?”
“As in, yes, he was gay, and it was my first time with a guy. And when someone found out and told all of his friends, he denied it and stopped talking to me.”