Chapter 6
Chapter Six
DALLAS
“Dallas. Fuck. Please touch me.”
Dallas’s hand curled around Kylen’s cock, stroking him from root to tip. He wasn’t cut, so his foreskin slid, slick and wet. Kylen groaned, fucking his hips in time with Dallas’s hand. Their gazes met.
“Kiss me,” Kylen begged.
Dallas pressed a hand to Kylen’s warm, rough cheek. Their lips met, tongues touching gently. His cock twitched in his jeans, the feeling of white-hot heat spreading through him. He was kissing a man. He was kissing Kylen. He was ? —
He woke with a start, his heart hammering in his chest. His limbs ached with newly released tension, and he was breathing like he’d just run a marathon. Pressing one hand over his face, Dallas breathed in and then sat bolt upright.
His blue sheets had darkened. He hadn’t had sex dreams or come in his sleep since he was seventeen. And holy fuck, what was that?
Kylen? Really ?
Yes, the man was objectively good-looking, and yes, he was definitely flirting, which Dallas was used to at this point. The moment any of his friends got tipsy, they hung all over him. He and Frey had even kissed once before he and Renato had gotten together.
But he wasn’t into men…
…Right? He couldn’t just wake up and be into men. Lane had called himself straight before Bowen, but he readily admitted to having had feelings for men before Sana had come along. Dallas had never felt like this before.
Not once.
He found men attractive plenty of times, and yeah, a little sexy in porn, but he’d never wanted to be with a man. He barely wanted to be with women. This was his brain being ridiculous. Foolish. Weird.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and headed for the shower to clean himself up. He felt oddly empty and unsatisfied, which shouldn’t have been a surprise. Jerking off never really did much for him. In fact, he’d never been a particularly sexual guy.
When he and Katie had first gotten together, it was good. It was hot, and he felt wanted, and he’d wanted her back. But it hadn’t lasted. By the time he caught her in bed with another man, they hadn’t had sex since the positive pregnancy test. And he hadn’t even really wanted it.
So what the hell could all this possibly mean?
It was Saturday, and while Kylen had agreed to meet up and talk things over—because he really was happy to go along with the ruse for as long as the poor bastard needed it—he cancelled at the last minute. His gran wasn’t doing very well, and Dallas’s heart bled for him.
They’d stayed up talking until Audra woke up for a diaper change, and then he’d put her to bed and passed out with his phone in his hand. The shower helped get his blood flowing, but it didn’t erase the strange, heavy feeling that had settled over his limbs.
He needed to tell someone about this. He just didn’t know what he was going to say.
Throwing on sweats, Dallas walked into the nursery and found Audra standing up, holding the railings of her crib and gnawing on the top. They’d covered it with teething-friendly silicone, so he didn’t panic.
Instead, he swept her into his arms and bounced her until she giggled.
“Thank you for letting me sleep, pumpkin.”
“Dadadada!”
“Mm. That’s me. Have you said mama yet?”
“Daaaadadada.”
He grinned to himself, viciously hoping it was driving his ex up the wall as he laid her down to change her. She kicked her feet but didn’t put up a fight as he got a fresh onesie on her, then a little pair of pants to protect her knees.
He snagged his phone on the way to the living room, then set her in her crawling space before turning on his coffeepot and checking his messages. The last one to Kylen was unread, and Dallas hoped the poor man was getting some sleep. His life was chaos at the moment, and his family wasn’t helping.
Kylen hadn’t given him too many more details, but some was enough. The man was on the edge of burnout, and Dallas hated there wasn’t more he could do to help. Though he supposed playing boyfriend with family was a step further than most people would have taken it.
And maybe it should have been creepy. Under any other circumstances, he would have been terrified. But something about it made him feel good. Like Kylen had wanted to feel safe, and the first name that came to mind was Dallas’s.
His hands began to shake as he was overwhelmed with that feeling again—the strange, unfamiliar, alien one. He didn’t like it.
He fumbled for his phone and hit Lane’s contact, pulling up their last text thread.
Dallas: Are you at work today?
Lane: When am I not?
Dallas: Can I come see you?
Lane: Sounds serious.
Dallas: Call it panic. Do you have time today?
Lane: Eleven-thirty. Bring me my baby.
Dallas quickly texted a photo of Audra in her morning outfit, then grabbed his coffee mug and attempted to caffeinate himself as much as possible. He had things to ask—questions that were plaguing him and ones that he wasn’t sure he’d get an answer to. Whatever he was feeling, none of it was simple.
It was confusing. Headache inducing. And he might have been on the verge of panic, but luckily, he had friends who loved him and who would quickly talk him down.
Dallas was not surprised in the least when he walked up to the bar at Lane’s restaurant and found Frey there nursing a very tall iced tea. He turned on the barstool, and his face broke out into a huge grin.
“I heard we’re in crisis mode? What level are we?”
“Orange? Blue? I don’t know levels,” Dallas told him. “Lane called you?”
“Yep.” Frey made grabby hands for the stroller, so Dallas rolled it over and let him unbuckle her. Audra made happy noises as he bounced her, and Dallas felt something settle in his chest. Being a single father from before she was born had terrified him. Finding the group, he thought he’d have a place to be able to complain about the difficulties of parenthood. He hadn’t expected this.
But he was grateful for it.
“How’s my princess?” Frey cooed. He sat her at the edge of the bar, holding her with one hand, his other lifting to sign. They were all working on it with her so everyone could converse with Rex easily. ‘How-you?’
She clapped her hands.
“Lane will be out in a second. There’s some inventory emergency he had to handle,” Frey said, setting Audra on his knee. He grabbed her teether from the seat, and she began to gum happily as he gently rocked her from side to side. “Are you okay with me being here?”
Dallas passed a hand down his face. “Yeah, actually. I just…I’m kind of freaking out. Things happened.”
Frey lifted a brow. “You knock someone else up?”
“Fuck no,” Dallas blurted, then slapped a hand over his mouth. “I mean, no. No, I didn’t.”
Frey snorted. “Don’t worry. She won’t pick up on it for a while.”
He knew that, but it wasn’t the verbal foundation he wanted to give her. “Yeah, but if I get lax, her first words will be go fuck yourself . And I’ll also end up slipping in the classroom and get fired.”
Frey grimaced. “That’s…yeah. That’s fair.”
“Anyway, I haven’t had sex since before she was born, so there’s no risk of new babies. It’s…something else. It’s complicated.”
“And you need Lane’s advice?”
Dallas felt his stomach squirm. Lane was the only one who might have understood him because he was the only one who hadn’t realized he had feelings for men—a man—until it smacked him in the face. And Dallas was a little…stunted, he supposed. There was no other word for it that he could think of.
He hadn’t even realized he liked Katie until she was blunt about it, and then he had to sit with his feelings for days before he could give her an answer. He knew it wasn’t normal, but he didn’t know what it meant.
“Hey, if I’m pushing boundaries,” Frey started, “just say the word.”
Dallas quickly shook his head. “No, no. It’s…I’m.” He stopped and took a breath. “Fellas, is it gay if a guy you just met told everyone you’re his boyfriend and you went along with it?” He tried to mimic Frey’s voice whenever he said, “Fellas, is it gay if…”
Frey blinked at him. “You’re gonna need to back all the way up and start from the beginning. Actually, shit. We need the whole crew here for this, don’t we?”
“I think I need to talk to Lane first,” Dallas admitted.
Frey’s eyes went wide. “Yeah. No, yeah. That’s a good idea.” He glanced down at Audra. “Want me to take her for a bit? You can pick her up from my place when you’re done with Lane. ”
Dallas hesitated, torn between needing his friend and not wanting to give up what precious little time he had with his daughter. But Audra was happy, and she was with someone he trusted to care for her like she was his own.
What was an hour or two, anyway?
“Yes,” he finally said.
Frey hopped up off the stool and put her back in Dallas’s arms. “I’m gonna go get Lane so he can get a few baby snuggles in before I take her.”
He was gone, and Dallas held her close. She squirmed, not wanting to be cuddled the way she used to, and his heart broke a little at how quickly time was passing. She took his finger in her tiny hand and gummed at his knuckle. It stung when her bottom teeth dug into his skin, but he was willing to endure for a moment.
“My baby!”
Dallas turned to see Lane coming through the swinging kitchen door. He was in his chef’s whites, his hair mussed, his eyes bright. Dallas had always thought he was a very good-looking man—but he’d never felt anything for him. He’d never wanted more than friendship.
Same with Frey. Same with all the guys in their group. They were objectively gorgeous, and they were fun, and they were so very kind. But he’d never wanted more than this.
The only problem was that was how he felt with a lot of women in his life too. He’d had a girlfriend in high school because it had been the thing to do. They tried to have sex because all her friends were doing it, and she wanted to stop being left behind.
But he couldn’t get hard.
She’d dumped him, but she’d been kind enough not to spread rumors .
He lost his virginity his junior year of college, high on a low dose of mushrooms. He’d taken a girl—Caroline—to a concert. The look on her face was pure joy, and that had done something to him. They’d talked all night, and he felt this strange pulsing in his chest, and then…
Then he’d kissed her. And they kept kissing. They got back to his dorm room, and his roommate was out, so they slipped between the sheets, and he fingered her until she shook and begged for his cock. Then he’d fucked her.
They didn’t see each other again after that, but when he thought back about her, he didn’t think about the orgasm. He thought about the way she laughed, and how she’d held his hand, and how it made his heart beat so hard.
How he felt like he could talk to her for the rest of his life and never get bored.
Apparently, he was the only one who felt that way, but he didn’t have regrets. He just had more confusion because it was years before it happened again. His friends were all obsessed with sex, and he just didn’t get what he was missing out on.
Then Katie had come along, and in the beginning, it was amazing. He wanted her. The feeling was new and different and kind of profound in a way he didn’t have words for.
But it hadn’t lasted. It never lasted. He settled back into his normal life of not really thinking or wanting sex, and that hadn’t been enough for her. Now he was here, more confused than ever and wondering what it all meant.
Dallas kissed Audra’s forehead, and she blinked sleepily at him before Frey buckled her back into the stroller and headed for the doors. When she was gone, Dallas sagged forward over the bar, and Lane put a cautious hand on his back.
“Want to talk in my office?”
Dallas laughed. “Yes, please.”
Lane grabbed his hand and swung it between them, making him laugh again. “Come on, I have some good snacks in there Bowen brought back from his last day on set in Savannah.”
Dallas followed quietly through the narrow kitchen hall, then into a small space that smelled like it had recently been used as food storage. It was cold, but he didn’t mind that. Lane gestured for him to sit in a worn banquet chair while he plopped into his desk chair and leaned back.
“So,” Lane said, then dug into his desk drawer. He pulled out a white paper box that ended up being full of chocolate truffles. He took one, then handed the box over to Dallas. “Let’s hear it.”
Dallas wasn’t sure how to open the conversation politely. Did he make small talk first? Was there even a good segue into “How did you come to realize you wanted to suck Bowen’s dick?” Which wasn’t actually his question, but everything in his head felt about as crass as that.
He popped a truffle into his mouth and chewed, profoundly aware of the silence between them.
“Are you okay?” Lane pressed.
Dallas blew out a puff of air after swallowing down the chocolate. “Remember how I told y’all about the guy on the plane? The one who helped keep me from panicking?”
“The pilot,” Lane said. His brow furrowed.
Dallas licked chocolate from the corner of his lip, then nodded. “Yeah. I…he. Uh.” He couldn’t start with Kylen telling everyone Dallas was his boyfriend. That sounded like creepy stalker behavior, and he knew this wasn’t that. And it wasn’t even the issue.
The issue was he was pretty sure he kind of liked it. He liked the idea that he could be someone like Kylen’s boyfriend.
And he had no idea what that made him.
Lane rolled his chair around the desk and set his hands on Dallas’s knees, meeting his gaze. “Hey. What happened?”
“It’s a really long story.”
“Okay,” Lane said, “so start from the beginning. I have time.”
Closing his eyes in a long, slow blink, Dallas did. He told Lane about the conversation he and Kylen had on the plane—about Kylen’s shitty family and Dallas saying he should make up a boyfriend. He left out the part where more than half his thoughts were consumed by thoughts of Kylen and the dreams he’d been having. That part could wait. But he told him how safe Kylen had made him feel. How good. And how he hadn’t stopped thinking about him for the rest of that week.
“…and the next thing I know, there he is, in my classroom because apparently, I’m teaching his daughter.”
“Was he alone?”
Dallas shook his head. “He was with his sister.”
“The one being an asshole about him being gay?”
Dallas nodded. “There was this kind of awkward pause, then she asks if I’m the Dallas. I was too afraid to say anything. Kylen looked mortified, and then his sister asked if I was the guy dating him, and I realized he’d taken my advice literally. He made up a boyfriend, but he used my name.”
“Oh,” Lane breathed out. “Well…shit. What did you do?”
Dallas let out a high, tense laugh. “I played along. I didn’t want to let him get humiliated by her, and honestly, she was so nasty to me when she picked up Kylen’s daughter. I kind of wanted to watch her eat crow.”
Lane grimaced. “That was kind of you.”
Dallas shrugged. “I wasn’t really trying to be nice. But Kylen was totally freaked-out. He told me he was going to tell her the truth, and I, uh…I told him not to.”
Lane’s eyes widened. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said, throwing his hands in the air. “He obviously gets a ton of shit from them, you know? It seemed cruel to force him to admit he made up a boyfriend.”
“Yeah, okay. I get that. But what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. He wants to meet up this weekend to talk about it.”
“And you said yes?”
Dallas shrugged. “I mean, yeah. I figured if I’m going to play along, we should have our story straight, you know. And it’s not like seeing him again is a hardship. I’ve only really known him those few hours on the plane, but it was nice.”
Lane cocked his head to the side. “May I ask something?”
“Anything,” Dallas said, desperate to not control the conversation for a moment so he could catch up to his thoughts.
“Did it occur to you that you don’t have to do this?”
Dallas let out a trembling breath. “I guess so. But there’s something else that made me say yes.” He licked his lips, then asked, “When did you know?”
Lane blinked, looking confused. “When did I know what?”
“About…about Bowen? About how you felt? ”
Lane’s eyes went wide, and he sat back against his chair with a quiet thud. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Dallas said, rubbing his hands down his face.
Lane steepled his fingers and pressed them under his chin. “Okay. Are you attracted to him?”
“I don’t know,” Dallas admitted miserably. “That’s what’s making me feel like I’m losing my mind. I think about him a lot. I had a dream about him—a s-sexy dream, but does that actually mean I’m into him?”
“Well,” Lane said slowly, “when I met Bowen, it took me a little while to figure out it was more than just aesthetic attraction. Objectively, he was hot, and I’d found other men attractive before, so that wasn’t new. But it took me a few weeks to realize I wanted to put my mouth on his mouth.”
Dallas laughed, but it wasn’t funny because he wasn’t sure he’d ever really felt that way. Yeah, he’d been sexually interested in his ex from time to time. But he hadn’t ever just looked at her and wanted to put his mouth on her mouth. The need to touch her like that, to kiss her and be with her, had come after long nights of laughing and cuddling and feeling a deep warmth in his chest.
Fuck. Was he broken ?
“Dallas?”
He blinked at his friend, then panicked. “Uh. Thanks. This was helpful. I should probably let you get back to work, and?—”
“Dallas.”
He froze, halfway to standing. His thighs burned.
“Sit, sweetheart. And breathe.”
He collapsed back down and covered his face with both hands, letting out a trembling breath. “I think something’s wrong with me. I really liked him. We were on the plane, and it wasn’t just that he was nice or told me some terrible dad joke to calm me down. Something about him made me feel good. I didn’t want to walk away from him. I kept thinking, I need to get laid, you know? It’s been so long. But I don’t actually want to get laid. I don’t…that’s…I’ve never cared that much. I mean, I like sex when I have it. It feels good. I think I used to want it more when I was younger, but I don’t even remember what that was like. Then I meet this guy and have these dreams , and I feel…”
“Dallas,” Lane said again.
His jaw snapped shut.
“Your face is really red, and you’re breathing superfast. I need you to try and calm down. Can you do that?”
It was only then Dallas realized his heart felt like it was beating out of his chest. He took more shallow breaths, and eventually, the thudding against his ribs stopped. He swallowed heavily as humiliation crept over him.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.
“Don’t you dare.” Lane reached for him, taking his hand in both of his.
“Am I bi?” he asked, his voice a little broken. “I wouldn’t mind if I was. But I don’t even know if this is allowed to count. I don’t know if I like him like that.”
Lane hummed in thought as he stroked his thumbs over the top of Dallas’s hand. “Is this how you always feel?”
“Like…all the time?”
Lane chuckled very quietly. “No. I meant when it comes to someone you might want to date. Is this how you feel about women?”
Dallas blinked rapidly. The question didn’t make sense to him. Not entirely. “I’m talking about wanting to fuck someone. Dating’s totally different.” That feeling left butterflies in his stomach. Holding hands, eating a quiet dinner, being able to put his arms around someone? It wasn’t until he started to think about the expectations of what came after the date that he got all…muddled. “I think I might be broken,” he admitted very quietly.
“I think,” Lane said, squeezing Dallas’s hand even harder, “you might be asexual.”
Dallas burst into a short peal of laughter. “Trust me, I’m not. I have a kid. I’ve had sex. I like sex when I have it.”
Lane’s smile was very small, but he didn’t look angry at Dallas’s immediate rejection. “Look, I’m old, and I’m only just learning about a lot of things. But one of my employees recently came out to me as asexual, and I started looking into it. Like everything, it’s a spectrum. I can’t tell you that you are or you aren’t. That’s all on you to figure out. But it might be something you want to read up on.”
Dallas wasn’t old. He was in his early thirties. He’d grown up with those words being used. But that couldn’t possibly be him.
Could it?
He felt like the world was tipping over on its side. He didn’t have time for this, damn it. His life was complicated enough without some sexuality crisis. Why was nothing ever easy for him?
“You’re breathing really fast again,” Lane said. He reached over and laid his hand over Dallas’s. “I’m so sorry I upset you.”
Dallas clenched his jaw and shook his head. “It’s not your fault.” He licked his lips and took a calming breath. It wasn’t helping much, but the world stopped spinning a little too fast. “I don’t want this.”
Lane gave him a long, steady look. “What were you looking for today when you asked me to talk?”
Dallas squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t know.” The reality of that hit him like a ton of bricks. “I wanted to know why I was okay with Kylen lying about me being his boyfriend. Why…why I kind of liked it.”
“None of us will be able to answer that for you. Sometimes things don’t make sense until they do.”
Dallas hated that answer, even if he knew it was the right one. He turned his hand over and squeezed Lane’s fingers before pulling away. “I’m sorry I’m so messy.”
“We’re all messy,” Lane answered him with a laugh. “And not everything has to fit neat and tidy into little boxes either. You don’t have to be anything except happy with who you are. Some people like labels. Some people are content without them. You just have to figure out what kind of person you are.”
He hated that too. Dallas was the kind of man who liked strict rules and strict routines. He wanted to know what was expected of him so he could live up to that. He hated ambiguity and change. He hated when things were opaque.
He hated not knowing where he fit or what shape he was supposed to be in. But he understood why he was the only one who could figure out the answers.
“I should take off,” he said, sounding as miserable as he felt.
“Did I make it worse?”
Dallas smiled in spite of himself and shook his head. “No. You gave me important things to think about, and as much as I’m just so damn tired, I know I needed it. It’s why I came here.”
Words were already burrowing in his brain, setting down roots there, and he wouldn’t be able to pull them out until he explored every inch of himself to see if he should allow something to grow. He leaned forward and kissed Lane on the cheek before stretching his back and turning toward the door. He missed his baby. He liked having time for himself on his days off, but she was growing so fast, and before he knew it, she’d be walking out the door with car keys in her hand.
“See you later?” he asked.
Lane nodded. “You know it.”
He had no answers, no comfort, and more questions than he’d started with. But he wasn’t out to sea. He had a family here that kept him anchored, and that would make a difference in the end.