Page 88 of Tangled Up In You
I rolled my eyes at him, hating when gay men were asked that.
Therewereno girls in a gay relationship. That was kind of the fucking point. Same went for being asked who the top was and who was the bottom. There were a lot of us who didn’t prefer one over the other, and even for the ones who did, it was personal and not something we wanted to tell random people about.
“Dude, you don’t fucking ask that,” Grant slurred to Brandon, slapping his chest.
Brandon’s eyes went wide. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”
The tension vanished, and within minutes, we were all laughing again. Tyler—the groom—wanted to take a group selfie, so he held out the phone with one arm, and we all gathered around him and made crazy faces. That inspired Corbin to want to take even more pictures, and he had us all posing and acting like jackasses.
Funny how when I was drunk, I wasn’t shy anymore. Go figure.
Corbin put his arm around me and kissed my cheek before taking a picture of us. He showed me the picture, and I was surprised I actually liked it. In it, I had a soft smile and my eyes were closed as I leaned against Corbin, who stared at me with a lovesick smile of his own.
“I’m posting it,” he said, clicking his social media app. “People are gonna lose their shit.”
That sobered me up.
“Wait. What?” I tried to grab his phone, but he held it out of my reach. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, no one knows who I am yet.”
“Yeah,” Corbin answered, still grinning like the demon he was. “But I want the world to know that I love you.” His smile faltered, and he lowered his arm. “Do youwantpeople to know, Hunt? Because if you don’t want me to tell anyone who you are, I won’t. I just…I fucking love you and I’m tired of hiding you.”
The hurt in his eyes crushed me. He thought I didn’t want people to know I was with him?
“Post it,” I said, grabbing his hand.
In a huge way, it was my own public coming out—telling a shit load of strangers I was gay. That was something I’d have to do for the rest of my life anyway. Any new person I met and friended, I’d eventually have to tell. Which was a major case of bullshit, but it’s just how the world worked.
“When y’all get married, can I be the best man?” Grant asked before finishing off his beer.
Tyler took away the empty bottle—that Grant was still trying to drink out of—and bopped him on the head with it. “Dude, you can barely be the best man for mine.”
I knew they were best friends, and had been for a while, when Grant shot Tyler a smug smile before jabbing him in the ribs. Tyler countered the hit with one of his own, and the two drunk men started giggling like school girls as they wrestled in the booth.
Corbin tilted my face back to him and lightly kissed me. “I love you. You sure this is okay?”
I nodded, pressing my face against his hair.
He typed out a message to go with the photo and posted it.
***
“Hey, babe, you need to see this,” Corbin said from the other room.
After pouring water into the coffee machine and starting it, I left the kitchen. Corbin was laying on the couch, one leg on the floor and the other stretched outward across the cushion, and scrolling on his phone.
I was a little hungover from the night before and had popped some pain killers earlier, but the damn headache refused to go away. A reminder as to why I didn’t like drinking.
“What is it?” I plopped down between his legs and lay backward; my back on his chest.
“We’re trending,” he answered, holding his phone out to where I could look at it with him as he scrolled down his page.
He clicked on the picture he’d posted last night, and I read the message he’d sent with it.
Corbin_Taylor:Out with my guy. We’ve been through a lot of ups and downs, but through it all, we found our way back to each other. He’s my heart, my soul, and makes me a better man.
“Wow. I didn’t see what you’d actually said with it,” I admitted, blinking back tears.
“I meant every word too.” Corbin kissed my nape before tightening his hold on me. “Looks like some of my fans are trying to find us a ship name.”
