Chapter 26
Dinner had been so easy—well, eventually—and this silence was anything but. Sam didn’t like it. He was supposed to feel comfortable with quiet between them, but he had to clamp his teeth together to keep from babbling nervously while Ian parked the truck in a guest spot at Sam’s apartment building.
And actually, the night hadn’t been comfortable so much as exciting and fun and omigod Ian was turning off the engine. Sam froze like a scared rabbit, staring out the windshield with all his might.
“Do you want to come over to my place tonight?” Ian asked, and Sam nearly jumped.
Well, he might have a little. Hopefully Ian wouldn’t notice, but it would be hard not to since there were parking lot lights everywhere and the whole cab of Ian’s pickup was bathed in that sort of orangey color of the kind of lights that they put in parking lots—
“Sam?”
Deep breath. What was wrong with him? He’d had sex with this guy. Why was this so different?
Duh. Because it was a date, not a hookup. “That wasn’t just sex.” He forced himself to turn his head and look at Ian across the cab. “That was, like, dinner and conversation and a date.”
Ian looked at the steering wheel, following its curve with a fingertip. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I might, um, have feelings for you.”
Ker-thump went Sam’s heart. “Like, friendship?”
Ian twisted his fists around the steering wheel. “Well, yeah, and maybe more stuff . . . I mean, it’s more than sex, yeah,” he said in a low voice.
Oh my God, how sweet was this shy, nervous guy where that uncaring bastard used to be? It was enough to give Sam courage. “When did you decide that?”
Ian muttered what sounded like a string of curses, then cleared his throat and spoke up, still barely loud enough for Sam to hear. “I kinda thought that since I came to your place last Saturday.”
Well, that was just . . . irritating. “What was with your parameter, then?”
Ian huffed a big breath, still gripping the steering wheel like he was choking it. “I just . . . I didn’t want to hurt you if I was wrong and it wasn’t more than sex, or maybe not enough more, I don’t know. Hell.”
What a completely adorable idiot. Couldn’t he see what was going on here? Obviously not. “What if I hurt you?”
Ian jerked his head around to look at him, eyes wide.
Sam barely kept himself from smirking. Take that little dose of reality.