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Whether he was going to ask me about it later, I had no idea, but he let the subject drop for now. Instead, he leaned against me and egged on Andrew as the stripper did her thing.

I didn’t pay much attention to the dance or everyone’s reactions to it. I was mostly trying to peel myself off the ceiling and get back into the moment. Matt hadn’t known. No one in the booth knew. I needed to pull myself together enough that nobody caught on to what Riley already had.

As the stripper finished and got off Andrew’s lap, he craned his neck to look past her at me. “See, Nolan? She doesn’t bite!”

The stripper offered me an uncertain look, as if she’d picked up on more of my discomfort than my brother had.

I laughed it off. “Nah, not my thing, man.” I patted Riley’s thigh and said to her, “No offense.”

She smiled, and she seemed genuinely relieved. As she climbed down from the table, she said, “That’s okay. You two are a cute couple, by the way!”

From the warmth in my face, I was blushing. So was Riley. Eh, I could live with that, just like I could live with all the guys thinking I’d shied away from a lap dance because I was gay.

But oh my God, I was grateful for Riley’s intervention.

Fortunately, we didn’t stay at the strip club all night. We walked across the street to an all-night dive bar that Matt and Tristan swore had the best wings on the planet. There were also pool tables and darts, and the whole thing was way more low-key than the strip club.

We commandeered a six-top round table near the games and away from the blasting TVs, and everyone shifted to beer instead of hard liquor. We ordered wings, and I had to agree with my brother—they were pretty damn good. Tristan and Riley both thought they could be spicier but conceded that they still tasted great.

Riley sat beside me now instead of in my lap. Probably safer in a place like this, since I didn’t really get a queer-friendly vibe when I walked in the door. There was nothing outwardly hostile toward us, but my spidey senses told me this was like a lot of the places I went with my fellow Marines—best to just be one of the guys and not stand out as gay. Maybe it was just a habit. Maybe I was just on edge tonight. Either way, I erred on the side of blending in as a straight guy.

Riley had either picked up on the same thing or he was following my lead. He didn’t bring his chair closer to mine, and neither of us touched or held eye contact. We just bantered and laughed with each other the same way we did everyone else in our group.

Normally, that didn’t bother me too much. It was the reality of being a gay man out in public, and I’d mostly made peace with it even if I didn’t particularly like it. After the strip club, though, I itched for that constant contact with him. Not in my lap, but close to me. Touching me.

The moment he’d parked himself in my lap to let the stripper know I was off-limits had been… weird. Ihatedhaving someone on my lap. Cats were fine. People? Absolutely the fuck not.

Riley, though… Having him there hadn’t left me feeling threatened or cornered, though. It left me feeling safe.

BecauseRileywas safe.

Everything about him was safe.

And at the club, he’d seen my discomfort over getting a lap dance. He had no idea the reasons why—no clue what rocketed through my head just thinking about having her on top of me—but he’d stepped in anyway, no questions asked.

Very few people in my life had ever made me feel safe.

No onehad ever made me feelprotected.

And he didn’t do it in an emasculating or belittling way. He didn’t make a big deal out of it or draw attention to how much I didn’t want that lap dance. He’d just jumped in and played the possessive, jealous boyfriend who refused to share. The guys might give me shit later about being whipped, but I could live with that over people asking questions about why a lap dance freaked me the hell out.

I thumbed the label on my beer bottle as I stole a glance at Riley. Was it time for us to go back to the hotel yet? Because I didn’t want to be here anymore. I wanted to be alone with Riley. Like… now.

We still had a couple of hours yet, though, so I took a swig of beer and settled in to enjoy the rest of the evening.

It was a lot more fun than I’d expected. The guys were still drunk, but they’d slowed down a bit, especially now that we were all drinking beer. We played darts and pool, and we ate wings, and we sat around shooting the shit. Riley and I told some stories from the military that had everyone doubling over laughing. Matt told us all about the misadventures he and Sophia had when they went up to Whistler Mountain lastsummer; apparently there’d been a snafu with the timeshare condo, Matt had turned his ankle really badly on a hike, and Sophia’s kayak had overturned three times before they realized—two miles away from where they’d started—that it was cracked.

“Good thing the timeshare place upgraded us to make up for the crappy one they gave us to start with,” he’d mused. “We spent the whole last day there because I couldn’t walk and Sophia was justdone.”

“Just think,” Tristan said. “With all that shit out of the way, you’ll both be ready for whatever chaos happens on your honeymoon.”

“Fuck. You.” Matt tipped his beer bottle toward Tristan. “If anything happens, I’m telling Sophia you jinxed us.”

“Yeah?” Tristan challenged. “And?”

Matt inclined his head. “You want to explain to your wife why you don’t get homemade cheesecakes at every party anymore?”

Tristan sobered and put up his hands in surrender. “Okay! Okay! You win!”

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