Chapter Fourteen
“This is a really big deal,” Eric said, reaching out to smooth down the collar of Wyatt’s shirt.
Ryan had to stop himself from pushing Eric’s hands away, and doing it himself. He wasn’t sure if Wyatt’s eye roll was more to do with Eric stating the obvious or Eric invading his personal space.
“Believe me, I’m aware,” Wyatt retorted dryly, at the same time, shucking the hand off his collar with a shrug of his shoulder.
So, maybe both.
Ryan wished that Eric hadn’t decided that he needed to show up to give them a last-minute pep talk on their first public outing, because he had a few much more fun ideas to give everyone the indelible impression he and Wyatt were definitely together.
But apparently showing up with their hair and clothes messed up, looking like they’d just fucked on the car didn’t give the impression Eric was looking for.
Ryan maintained it still would’ve been a lot more fun than the lecture they were currently receiving.
“I don’t want you to spend the whole evening together,” Eric continued, even though Ryan knew he was barely paying any attention and Wyatt had clearly tuned him out altogether. “Constantly hanging on each other gives the idea that you’re insecure in your relationship.
“The car will be here any minute. I just spoke to the event concierge at Temple, she’s going to make sure you guys have a great time, and will let you know when there’s something you need to participate in.
” He paused, and Ryan thought for one miraculous second that Eric was done talking, but then he kept going.
“It goes without saying that you need to both be on your best behavior tonight. Have a few drinks, but don’t get drunk.
No crazy antics. No semi-public sexual exploits. ”
“Awwww, there goes everything I wanted to do,” Ryan teased and to his disappointment, Wyatt’s expression didn’t change.
Instead of the melting smile that he’d grown to expect, Wyatt looked stiff and nervous.
Withdrawn, almost, which had been the norm since they got back from Napa a week ago.
There’d been a few times when Ryan had really been able to get him to relax, and laugh with him like he had at the beginning—usually after a few beers or a really intense workout—and he still approached sex with a fierce intensity that Ryan definitely enjoyed.
More than once, he’d considered asking Wyatt what was wrong, but in his head, that conversation fell exclusively into the “relationship” category, and since he couldn’t go there, he avoided it.
Eric shook his head, amused despite his own lecture, and went to go see if the car had arrived yet, finally leaving them alone.
Maybe Ryan couldn’t ask Wyatt what was wrong, but he could make sure this was still something he wanted to do.
It was hard to doubt that Ryan was still something he wanted, because the sex was so raw and consuming, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
“Is this still okay?” Ryan asked, turning towards the other man. Wyatt looked up, surprise in his expression.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
Ryan might be a baseball player, but he wasn’t dumb. Even he knew that answering a question with a question was a great way to deflect.
“You just seem quiet, that’s all,” Ryan observed. It occurred to him suddenly that he’d made this exact same comment before they’d gone skydiving.
Ryan didn’t think he was getting bored; the very nature of their relationship was designed so he wouldn’t, so he couldn’t get bored, but maybe Ryan had miscalculated?
Maybe even though they weren’t technically in a relationship, they were doing too many relationship-like things—like going to Napa, spending time with Flor and Wyatt’s nana and his brother, going to brunch, now this couples outing to Temple.
Boredom was something that wasn’t allowed to happen. Ryan couldn’t let him pull away, and not only because of the fake relationship that Wyatt had committed to, but because the more Wyatt retreated, the more attached Ryan realized he’d become.
He needed to fix this, because whatever this was, because it definitely had morphed into something more than Ryan had ever anticipated or expected.
“It’s gonna be great,” Ryan said, feeling stupid because he kept saying that and he wasn’t sure that Wyatt believed him anymore.
But Wyatt smiled this time, and pulled him close, and brushed a brief kiss across his lips. “It will,” Wyatt agreed, “I’m just disappointed we couldn’t take the bike. Re-enact the night we met.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” Ryan said, hating the hope that bloomed through his system.
All he wanted was to get back to how good they were together.
The fantastic sex they were having should have been enough—it had always been enough before—but now he wasn’t sure.
They were missing something else; Wyatt was holding it back, and even though Ryan didn’t know what it was, he craved it anyway.
“The car’s here,” Eric announced in the foyer.
Ryan slipped his hand into Wyatt’s, and gave him a bright smile. “Let’s do this,” he said.
The concierge, Anne-Marie, met them at the private back entrance of the club. Eric had decided, in his fake-relationship wisdom, that it would be better for the photographers to get them on the way out of the club, instead of heading in.
Ryan didn’t know why this was, but he’d learned to save his energy to argue with Eric on the major points, not the minor ones.
“Around midnight, we’ll bring you up to the stage, as you’re our VIP hosts for the evening,” Anne-Marie said, as they walked into the back of the dim club.
“What are we supposed to do?” Wyatt asked.
“On stage?” Anne-Marie questioned as she tucked a strand of bright-red hair behind her ear. “Whatever you like. Dance. Kiss. Each other? The dancers?” She waved a hand. “You two are so cute, I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”
Wyatt raised an eyebrow, like this wasn’t something they heard all the damn time. Like it wasn’t something they had planned.
“I mean, your Insta pictures are so gorgeous, like some sort of fairy tale,” Anne-Marie said. “And obviously, yeah, you set them up to look that way, but there’s a truth in them that you don’t see very often. I can tell you’re both very fond of each other.”
She turned to them. “I’ll escort you to the VIP booth now, if that’s okay?”
Ryan was officially pathetic. He wanted to beg her to tell him more about how they cared about each other, even while he argued with himself that caring about each other had never been the point of this.
They were only supposed to seem authentic, while having great sex, but something had gotten crossed along the way.
“Sure, yeah, that’ll be great,” Ryan said when Wyatt stayed quiet.
The VIP area was the exact same one that Ryan had occupied the night he’d gone looking for a fake boyfriend and had found his personal chef instead.
He wanted to ask Anne-Marie if that was something Eric had arranged, but decided against it because it exposed too much of his nostalgia and stupid feelings in front of Wyatt.
“I’ll see that the waiter brings over your bottle service,” Anne-Marie said, as they settled on the plush velvet couch.
Wyatt looked way more comfortable than Ryan felt, but he tried to copy the other man’s relaxed posture.
The reason, Ryan realized as Anne-Marie left, was because he’d never been here with another man before.
Definitely not with one that he was pretending he was in a relationship with.
Definitely not one that he apparently had stronger feelings for.
When you fell in love with someone, Ryan reasoned as the waiter approached, you were supposed to feel excited and happy, not greet the discovery with dread.
Except that was all he could feel, as he envisioned Wyatt growing bored, just as his ex had described, and then having zero choice but to seek excitement somewhere else. In someone else’s bed.
“Welcome to Temple,” the waiter said, and for the first time Ryan looked up at the man.
He was dressed in a pair of tight black leather pants, riding low on his hips, his rippling obliques exposed, and a pair of black feathery wings.
His light-blue eyes were rimmed with black, making them pop even more.
He looked like a just-debauched fallen angel, which was just the sort of fantasy theater that Temple liked to indulge in.
There was no excuse except that the guy was objectively hot, there was undeniably interest in his baby blue eyes, and Ryan was both miserable and desperate.
“I feel like I must have died and gone to heaven,” he teased the waiter.
The waiter perched a hip on the edge of the couch, leaning in closer, and Ryan didn’t have to be looking at Wyatt to imagine his expression. “I’ll tell you a secret,” the angel murmured low, so Ryan had to scoot even closer to hear, “I got kicked out of heaven.”
Ryan heard Wyatt’s incredulous scoffing noise behind him, and yes, it was silly and ridiculous and over-the-top dramatic, but the guy was gorgeous and no doubt this was a very common fantasy.
“Were you very, very bad?” Wyatt asked from over Ryan’s shoulder, in a faux-serious voice. “I bet you were super naughty.”
The angel rolled his eyes, but his voice kept that faux-conspiratorial tone that had pulled Ryan into the fantasy from the first moment. “I discovered being bad is a lot more fun than being good.”
Ryan sympathized; he’d discovered this same thing himself, at sixteen. And at eighteen. And at twenty-one. And again, at twenty-five, when he’d been unable to stay away from Wyatt Blake.
It was a lesson he kept re-learning. Maybe it was a lesson he could re-learn tonight.