Page 91 of The Fire Line
Harris considered the mornings Jay had been gone. The films. Nell’s emails. The relief when the SUV returned.
“No.”
“Honest?”
Harris met his eyes. “Honest.”
Some of the tension left Jay’s shoulders.
There was another part of it, one Harris had understood before he ever kissed Jay and had not particularly wanted to examine.
“You leaving… helps.”
Jay blinked. “That is also impressively unromantic.”
Harris glanced at him, worrying now that he’d said too much.
“Knew it had an end before it started,” Harris said. “Shoot finishes. You go back to New York.”
Jay nodded slowly.
“Made it feel…” Harris searched for a word that did not sound ridiculous. “Safer.”
Something passed through Jay’s expression too quickly for Harris to identify. Then one corner of his mouth lifted.
“Nothing says carefree summer fling like a confidentiality agreement and an existential crisis.”
Harris’s mouth moved despite himself.
Jay nudged his boot with one bare foot. “I get it. I do.” Jay’s voice lost the joke without becoming heavy. “I’m leaving. You have a life here. I have one somewhere else. Neither of us exactly wandered into this thinking we were picking out curtains.”
“Right.”
“Wow. Try not to sound devastated.”
“Navarro.”
Jay smiled.
The ease of it loosened something in Harris’s chest. “Doesn’t mean I wanted this any less,” he said.
The words escaped before he could decide whether they needed saying.
Jay’s smile changed slightly. Softer, maybe, though he saved Harris from having to look at it for long by reaching for his shirt. “I know.” He pulled it over his head.
Harris watched him find his overshirt near the chair. “No one can know.”
Jay glanced back while pushing one arm through the sleeve. “I know.”
“Dinner doesn’t change that.”
Jay paused. “I didn’t think it did.”
“They know about you now.”
“They know I date men.” Jay pushed his other arm into the overshirt and looked at him. “That’s not the same as knowing about us.”
Harris knew that. His brain had spent most of dinner refusing to believe it.
