Page 102 of Captivated

Nate’s lips curved into a slow smile. “Sounds about right.”

Zeeb’s eyes flicked to him. “I wasn’t gonna say anything more about it to you unless it came up. You know, beyond what I already told you. You got enough to deal with. You don’t need me babblin’ on about my sexual preferences.” He snickered. “Except nowthey’regonna be doin’ the babbling. Nothing they love more than talkin’ ’bout sex. Who’s getting laid, who isn’t.” He grinned. “I just handed them a gift. This is all they’re gonna yak about fordays.”

“Thank you for trusting me with this.” And he meant it. Zeeb had never once pushed him. Never prodded at old scars or asked for stories he wasn’t ready to tell. He’d just sat with him. Talked. Listened.

Been there.

“I’m glad you felt you could tell me,” Nate said in a quiet voice. “And I’m glad the others took it how they did.”

Zeeb pointed to the wire. “Let out a little more, okay?” He swung his hammer at the nail securing the wire, and just like that, Nate was staring again. “They’re good men. Rough around the edges, sure, but their hearts are in the right place.”

Nate looked down at the grass, the sunlight glinting off the wire in his hand.

“About you spending nights at my cabin… You’re really okay with that?”

And is the only reason you stayed because I asked?

He knew what he wanted to ask—if Zeeb had noticed Nate the way Nate was starting to see Zeeb now. As an attractive man.

“’Course I am. I wouldn’t have stayed otherwise.” He met Nate’s gaze, his eyes warm. “Besides, I like bein’ around you.”

Nate nodded, his throat thick. “I like being around you too.”

They were back to that silence again, the kind that didn’t need filling. The fence stretched out like a spine across the land, and the dust danced in the sunlight.

Zeeb nudged his shoulder. “Come on, cowboy. Still got a few more fence posts to finish before lunch.”

Nate smiled. “Lead the way.”

The sun was at its highest, the fence posts were solid, the wire taut. Nate’s hands had grown familiar with the rhythm of it, and the soreness in his muscles felt good, steady.

His mind kept drifting back to Zeeb.

He said he’d told his fellow ranch hands so casually.I’m bi.As though it was simply a part of him, no different from the way his boots fit or how the weather smelled in the mornings. Zeeb didn’t apologize. He didn’t even seem to wrestle with it much. It was just... there.

Nate couldn’t stop turning it over and over in his head.

I spent years drowning in doubt.

His whole life had been measured by what he wasn’t supposed to feel. The therapy. The rejection. The voice that told him, every day, for years, that being who he was would burn his world to the ground, to say nothing of an eternity of pain, and all for wanting to love someone.

He’d lived with that shame, that fight to bury what his body and heart craved.

Zeeb stood there, steady and sure, as if it didn’t need any explanation at all. It confused the fuck out of Nate, but it was also something else. Something Nate didn’t know how to name.

He paused in the middle of tightening the wire, the pliers slipping from his hands as a thought rose unbidden.

What if I could have just been me, all along?

It was a simple question, but it crashed over him with all the force of a Dodge Ram.

“Zeeb?” Nate’s voice was quieter than he meant it to be, as though he was stepping into a room full of ghosts.

Zeeb looked up from where he was fixing a crooked post. “Yeah?”

Nate shifted on his feet, trying to collate his thoughts. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” Zeeb straightened, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

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