As Tate swallowed, he was aware, for the first time, of his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.
“It can’t be at the bar.”
Logan laughed loudly, and Tate actually looked around his empty room as though he’d been caught jerking off.
“Well, I wasn’t thinking of doing this at the bar. Kind of unhygienic.”
Tate wasn’t so sure. He knew Logan liked taking opportunities whenever he could get them, and Tate needed to be crystal clear that this, whatever this was going to be, needed to remain separate from work.
“Okay. Well, you need to leave me alone at work if you want me to—”
“To?” Logan urged.
“To try this—in person.”
This time, instead of the silence coming from Tate’s end, Logan seemed to be waiting for him.
“That is what you want, right?” Tate started to slightly panic, thinking that maybe he’d misread everything.
“Are you messing with me, Tate?” Logan demanded, voice serious, tone flat.
“No,” he answered and quickly added, “I don’t think so. I need to know what this is, whatever it is, and the only way I am going to do that is to do what you said, and try it out.”
“Wow.”
Tate felt his chest shake as a laugh came free. “I’ve shocked you?”
“You’ve almost killed me—twice tonight.”
Tate licked his lips. “I want to talk to you about this first though, somewhere private. I have questions and things I need to know before—”
“Yeah, okay, whatever. You just say when.”
Tate thought about it for a moment and decided he wanted some time to think this all through before he went ahead with it.
“How about Sunday night? I can be there by nine?”
There was a pause before Logan’s voice came through from the other end. “Okay. And until then?”
“Until then, let me think about this some more.”
“What if you change your mind?”
This time, Tate felt a genuine smile hit his lips as he told Logan sincerely, “I won’t change my mind about meeting up with you.”
“But maybe about the other?”
Tate couldn’t make any promises, so he decided to be candid. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. But Sunday works best for me.”
Logan let out a long sigh. “Okay. Sunday, it is.”
Just before Tate was about to say good night, he requested one last thing. “Oh, and Logan?”
“Yes?”
“Keep your zipper closed until then, huh?”
Logan groaned. “Okay, but I won’t be held responsible for what happens to it on Sunday.”
Tate decided to end with a tease—why the hell not at this stage? “No. I will be.”
Chapter Nine
Sunday morning, Tate was at church from nine until approximately ten thirty. By noon, he was seated at his mother’s kitchen table right alongside his sister, Jill, and her husband, Sam, for lunch until two thirty. It wasn’t as though he was consciously watching the clock, but he couldn’t seem to drag his eyes away from it.
It was around that time he excused himself and rode home to sit in his crappy apartment and further contemplate everything he’d been thinking about since he woke up this morning.
Now, here it was, Sunday night, and he was standing in front of Logan’s condo door after traveling up the elevator, at exactly nine fifteen.
Tate had never been so aware of a timeline in his life, but as he stood twenty-two stories high, he tightened his fingers around his motorcycle helmet and counted back from thirty.
For the last couple of days, Tate had thought about nothing except what would happen right here, this minute—and now that the time had come, he still had no idea what that was going to be.
Tate was about to lift his hand to knock on the door when he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. Shuffling the helmet to his other hand, he pushed his left into his jeans and pulled out the cell. A smirk crossed his mouth at the name currently flashing on his screen. Logan—whose personal number he now had, as of a day ago.
Bringing it to his ear, Tate answered, “Impatient much?”
“I buzzed you up over ten minutes ago. I’m just making sure the elevator didn’t get stuck.”
“It didn’t.”
There was a pause that didn’t help Tate with his indecision.
Then, Logan asked, “Where are you, Tate?”
Tate bumped the helmet against his thigh. “Standing at your door.”
He could hear shuffling through the phone and presumed Logan was moving closer to open it.
“And how does it look from out there? I always thought it was pretty boring—cream paint, doorknob, standard black peephole to look at strange men lurking in front of my place.”