If he broke up with Kelly, he wouldn’t have any of Kelly’s problems.

  He actually pondered that for a moment, and then remembered Chloe, as she’d been when he’d snuck up to Sacramento that spring break. She’d spent as much time as possible on Seth’s lap, making him read her cardboard books, making him play violin for her, making him sing. The stuffed animal collection that had started out as Kelly’s and then, piece by piece, had become the girls’, had been passed down to Chloe, and he’d brought her a new set of them, complete with a backpack to carry them. She’d worn the backpack every day, and Seth had played with her until she’d fallen asleep.

  The rest of the family had assured him that they needed the break—and he could believe it. Chloe needed. Constantly needed. He only had to fill her void for a week at a time.

  But he’d loved that week. Besides seeing Kelly and his father, he loved being her person, the grown person she loved more than anything.

  The thought of Italy was killing him.

  “They’re my problems too,” he said softly. “I… I can’t—”

  Guthrie actually touched his hand. “I hear you. I’m sorry I even brought it up. Here. Let’s finish. We can have dessert.”

  The trip home was easier. They talked about what Guthrie’s dad’s band would do without Seth, and how Seth had put in a word at the conservatory to see if they could find themselves another “fiddler.” There were lots of kids who liked country music, Seth told him. He was pretty sure they’d have a replacement before Seth’s plane took off.

  “For the band, maybe,” Guthrie said as they pulled up to the gates of the conservatory. It wasn’t actually in the city proper—it was situated on the peninsula, another big campus like Bridgford but so much closer to the sea. “Not for me.”

  Seth opened his mouth, and Guthrie held up a hand.

  “Look, I’m going to ask something huge,” he said. “And you can say no, and either way I’ll still be in the audience when you graduate because you’re my friend. But I’m going to ask anyway, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m going to get you to your dorm and then you’re going to look at me like this was an ordinary date. But before you grab your violin from behind the seat, and your bundle of clothes, just close your eyes and let me kiss you. Like we might have another one. Like….” Seth could hear it, how hard it was to ask. “Like you might love me someday, like I might have a chance. I know I don’t. I know you can’t. But… but maybe, just maybe, one kiss and I can go on with my life, okay?”

  “Guthrie—” He was going to say no.

  “Because you’re right. I do love you. And I don’t love you any less after tonight. And I won’t love you any less when you leave. It’s going to take time, you understand? And maybe when you’re in Italy and not… not in my truck four times a week, saying things that don’t make any sense to anybody but the people who know you, maybe then I can fall in love with someone else. But right now, I just want one kiss, so when I kiss someone else, I know what it’s like to kiss someone I love.”

  “Okay.”

  Guthrie swallowed quickly, like he hadn’t expected that. “Okay?”

  Seth gave a wobbly smile and grabbed his stuff first, because he could see the exit was going to be everything here. “Good night, Guthrie,” he said, his lips quirking just a little. “I had a really nice time. The meal was wonderful. And I really enjoyed your company.” His voice hitched at this next part. Maybe because it was a little true. “It would be nice to do it again sometime.”

  Guthrie nodded, like he understood this game. “Good night, Seth. I had a great time too. I loved getting to know you some more. I’d love to do it again sometime too.”

  He lowered his head then, and Seth closed his eyes, accepting the warmth of Guthrie’s mouth on his. He didn’t expect the attraction or the urge to respond, but he opened his mouth and let the kiss deepen, giving back some, letting Guthrie cup his cheek and tangle tongues together.

  Guthrie pulled back then, his eyes bright and shiny. “That was real good,” he whispered.

  Seth nodded. He knew now—knew it didn’t have to be Kelly to make his body feel good. But he also knew kissing anybody else but Kelly only made his heart lonelier than the moon.

  “You’re a really good kisser,” he said, lips twisting. “Drive safe, Guthrie. Text me when you get home. I don’t have many friends I care about like I care about you. I need you to keep safe.”

  “Will do.”

  Seth slid out of the truck with his clothes and his violin case in hand, and waved as Guthrie pulled away.

  He got back to his dorm room and pulled out his phone, unsurprised to see a text from Kelly.

  So, how’d recording go?

  Good. Butch thinks we’ll make some money there.

  How’s Guthrie?

  Seth swallowed. He never could hide things from Kelly.

  He decided to walk away. I gave him a kiss goodbye—I hope that’s okay.

  The phone buzzed in his hand.

  “Are you okay?” God, his voice sounded so good. So warm. Seth’s eyes spilled over again.

  “Not really. I mean, we’re still going to be friends but… but it hurt. I hurt him. I didn’t ever want to hurt him.”

  “Yeah, baby. I know.”

  “He asked me how I knew I loved you.”

  He heard Kelly’s gasp on the other end. “What did you say?”

  “I said you were a perfect chord. You were so beautiful you made light and sound better. Looking at you, I heard the best music, the kind not even angels can play.”

  Kelly let out what sounded to be a half-broken laugh. “Wow. That’s how you feel about me?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be honest, Kelly. If I didn’t know what I feel about you, I’d be tempted to say what I felt for him was love.”

  “But it’s not, right?”

  Seth’s heart constricted. “No, baby. Just as a friend. Like I love Amara. You’re… you’re Kelly. It’s like comparing Folsom Lake to the ocean.”

  “It’s a good thing you’ve got game, Seth, or I’d be worried.”

  Seth couldn’t laugh. “It’s not a game,” he said roughly. “This thing in my chest, for you. I mean… it’s been there so long, right? We were kids. It’s been… what? Five years? And you’d think it would get weaker. Like, we see each other maybe twice a month. But it’s not. It’s getting worse. It’s getting more painful to be gone. It’s getting harder every time we have to walk away. And most days, I can put a damper on it, I can muffle the sound of my heart screaming. But… but tonight my nerves are all raw, and I can’t… I can’t make it silent tonight. I’m sorry—”

  He cried then, helplessly, like he did sometimes when they were in bed and Kelly had to leave, or like Kelly did, usually their first day alone for a long week. His body had to purge, the loneliness, the anger, the things it held back when the other half of his heart was far away, connected by the fragile string of love.

  SOMETHING ABOUT their trip to Mendocino was different.

  Maybe it was the hotel room—small and close, with the roar of the sea right outside. They ran on the beach together in the morning, did something in the nearby town in the afternoon, and then….

  There was nothing but them and the king-sized bed.

  All Seth knew was that the evening they arrived—Kelly driving, of course, because it was something he’d still never had time to learn—they had checked in and set the bags on the ground, and Kelly had suddenly been… hot.

  His skin had been heated from the car, of course, but Seth couldn’t look at him without his heart hammering in his chest and his breath catching. He’d dropped his suitcase in the middle of the floor and stared.

  “What?” Kelly rubbed irritably at his nose. “Cliffhanger?”

  Seth squinted at him. “No.”

  “What?”

  Seth’s skin prickled—everywhere. His scalp, his neck, his shoulders, his buttocks… his cock.

  He opened his mouth and closed it, and finally managed to croak, “I want.”

  “You want what?” But Kelly was smirking, his eyes lighting up from within, and he removed the baseball hat he’d worn to shade his face.

  “I want.” Seth licked his lips, and his palms broke into a sweat. He could hardly breathe.

  They’d gone out for dinner after his graduation, and then everybody had gone home, leaving Seth in his dorm room again.

  Alone.

  He’d shown up for Kelly’s graduation from junior college and slid in through the crowd, ignoring anybody who looked like they knew him. They didn’t know him, even if he’d had classes with them in high school, in junior high, in grade school.

  The only people who knew him were sitting in the middle, saving a seat for him.

  He took it, and Chloe clambered over Lily and Lulu’s laps to come coo on his. It was just that easy. Every damned time.

  After the morning graduation, they’d gone out to eat again, mostly, Seth suspected, so he could talk to the girls and hold Chloe. Lily and Lulu were finishing up their first year of high school, and they wanted Seth to know that they were tied for third in their class, right behind Sheila Thompson and Alex Crawford, and that they would overtake their foes on the field of academic battle if they had to leave blood on the ground.

  Agnes had rolled her eyes and whispered, “I get to be in plays next year. Eighth grade is gonna rock.”

  And Chloe—Chloe had clung to him, humming her favorite lullaby, saying his name occasionally and showing him the new stuffie he’d sent her the week before.

  They’d had to pry her out of his arms when he’d gotten into Kelly’s Toyota to leave.

  And that had been it. So familiar. Seth comes, Seth throws everybody into an uproar, Seth leaves. He’d chatted with Kelly, catching up as human beings, listening to him destress about finals, filling in with details about Italy they hadn’t discussed yet, and it had all been very… normal.

  Very… everyday. Happy, but with that undercurrent of not enough that had tempered every heartbeat of his life for the last five years.

  Until this moment here, when Seth couldn’t fucking breathe, and his cock felt like it was going to split at the seams, and Kelly was all he could see.

  “You want?” Kelly asked, his voice suddenly gruff, low.

  A man’s voice.

  Seth’s mouth was so dry. “I want.”

  He took two strides across the room. Kelly met him halfway, and they were on each other, devouring, voracious. Seth couldn’t taste him enough, couldn’t touch his skin enough. Their clothes fell where they stood, Kelly’s capable hands splitting Seth’s old T-shirt from the neck down where it fluttered to his feet.

  “Lube,” Kelly muttered, shoving Seth’s pants down around his ankles while Seth kicked off his shoes. “Now. Not joking. Fucking now.”

  “Cocoa butter in my pocket.” Seth always kept a small tube, because his hands got chapped on the strings.

  “Bend over.”

  For a moment, he was exposed, his ass thrust out behind him as he leaned over the bed. Kelly’s fingers shoved lube roughly around his entrance, and just the rasp of his skin, in and out, was enough to make Seth spurt precome over the comforter.

  “Good enough?”

  “Now,” Seth gasped. “Fuck me right now.”

  His body was shaking, needing—it was beyond want. It had become air and water, sun and rain, how he needed Kelly inside him.

  Kelly wasn’t gentle, but they’d worked up to this, to roughness, to every touch not being spun glass and cotton batting. They were human, made of flesh, and their flesh had its demands.

  Kelly’s cock demanded entrance to his asshole, and his asshole demanded Kelly be inside him. Kelly battered his way in and both of them groaned, but Seth’s arms still shook as they supported him, and he felt a droplet of Kelly’s sweat spatter in the small of his back.

  “Yes,” Seth growled. “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Now!”

  Kelly held nothing back. His hips shot forward, bounced away, and shot forward again. He mauled Seth’s exposed body—his flanks, his thighs, his ass—with greedy hands, and he fucked and fucked, hard and without apology, while Seth saw fireworks behind his eyes at every stroke.

  For a wild moment, there was nothing in that room but the sound of their flesh slapping, their grunts, growls tearing from both throats.

  Seth was close, so close, driven to climax brutally fast, and Kelly was panting like a runner behind him. “Harder!” he begged, and Kelly squeezed his backside hard, his hand stuttering, rubbing sweetly when Seth needed the bite of pain.

  “Do it,” he begged. “Harder!”

  “Baby—”

  “Harder!”

  Kelly’s hand came whistling out of nowhere, cracking across his ass in a stinging slap.

  Seth convulsed, squeezing Kelly’s cock unmercifully, groaning from his toes as he came. Kelly cried out behind him, rutting in a frenzy as he poured himself into Seth’s body, rocking them both with aftershocks.

  Kelly toppled over his back and Seth sank to his knees, his chest sliding through the semen puddle on the comforter.

  “We’re here,” Kelly said weakly.

  “Go us.” Seth blinked against the spots in front of his eyes. “I’ll get on the bed if you get off me.”

  “Sure. In a minute.”

  Seth chuckled as Kelly draped over his shoulders. “Don’t want to get up yet?”

  “I don’t want to stop touching you.”

  Seth sighed, his face mashed up against the bed, knees aching. “Then don’t. I’m good right here.”

  Eventually they did get up. Seth pulled down the covers and got in bed while Kelly ran to the bathroom and came back with a warm washcloth that he used to wipe himself off.

  “I’ll take that.” Seth extended a hand, but Kelly waved him off.

  “Nope. Gonna do it.”

  Seth grunted, uncertain, and rolled to his side.

  “You’re embarrassed now?” Kelly shoved playfully at his shoulder. “Sorry, mijo. That boat has sailed.” He started rubbing the cloth along Seth’s stomach and groin, making observations as he went.

  “And who gave you permission, that’s what I want to know.”

  “What did I do now?”

  “Hair. You’ve got hair on your chest, you’ve got hair on your upper thighs, hair on your balls—” Seth moved to cover said balls, and Kelly batted his hands away and washed him tenderly. “Gonna have to stop calling you mijo and start calling you papi.”

  “Doesn’t that mean daddy? I mean, isn’t that icky?”

  Kelly shrugged. “Vote’s still out. As far as I can tell, it’s pretty evenly divided among Latino gay guys. Some of them go ‘Ick!’ and some of them go ‘Hello Daddy!’”

  Seth snickered. “Let’s not.”

  “Well, I could call you papacito, but, uh….” He ran the washcloth lovingly up and down Seth’s shaft, which was starting to fill again with his touch.

  “Not small?” Rulers had never been Seth’s thing, but he was pretty sure he’d grown in the past few years.

  “No, Seth. It wasn’t small when we started, and it isn’t small now.”

  Seth smiled slowly. “Natural ability—not gonna knock it.”

  Kelly snickered and rubbed the washcloth along Seth’s stomach. “It would be a totally sexy washboard, but you don’t eat enough.”

  Seth grunted. “Always too many things to do,” he said plaintively. “It’s so weird, when we take vacations. There’s nothing to do but eat and practice.”

  Kelly pinned him with a hard glare. “You had better be talking about practicing sex,” he ordered, and then his hot mouth engulfed Seth’s rapidly cooling prick.

  “Yeah, sure,” Seth gasped, rolling over to his back. “We should totally practice that some more.”

  Kelly chuckled around his head and then reached around to rub Seth’s backside. Seth hummed, because he could still feel the sting, but it had been a slap, not a blow, and he knew Kelly had flattened his hand for maximum sound, minimum force.

  “It’s fine,” he murmured, massaging Kelly’s scalp through his longish hair. “You did it just perfectly.”

  Kelly pulled Seth in to the root and then sucked backward, releasing his head with a pop.

  “Don’t want to hurt you again,” he said gruffly before plying his tongue.

  “Won’t—ahh!”

  Kelly was relentless, sucking hard, and harder, then using the cocoa butter again to relube Seth’s entrance and play with strong fingers. Seth braced both feet against the bed and spread his knees, hands flailing on the comforter.

  Kelly pulled back and said, “Play with your nipples, dumbass. You know what you like.”

  Seth propped himself up on his elbows and wrinkled his nose. “While you watch?”

  Kelly’s eyes—pupil’s blown with passion—went to half-mast. “I could watch you do things to yourself and come all over your face without touching my cock,” he threatened. “Do not underestimate how sexy I think you are.”

  Seth groaned and fell backward, fingers plucking at his nipples, thighs already trembling, Kelly’s fingers lodged solidly in his ass.

  His body hit a high, a plane of existence where pleasure was the only goal, and he sailed there, shaking, until he couldn’t have stopped himself from begging if he’d been gagged with Kelly’s cock.

  Kelly shoved his thighs up to his shoulders and thrust inside again.

  Round two.

  When they were done, they finally went out to eat, and when they came back, they took a walk under the stars.

  Seth turned Kelly in his arms and kissed him, their blood heating to a boil at the first touch of their lips.

  Kelly took him a final time that night, bent over a picnic table under cover of fog on the deserted beach.

  Round three.

  They were just getting started.

  By the end of their first week, they were both deeply grateful for Seth’s cocoa butter—and Seth was starting to feel like he sloshed when he walked.

  The morning of their sixth day, Kelly started kissing his way down Seth’s chest and Seth stopped him, kissing Kelly’s shoulder, his bicep, his nipple, all the way down to Kelly’s cock, which had gotten thicker since they were younger, if not longer.