Page 2 of Returning the Runner

He watched me approach and didn’t move, didn’t look away. Those gray eyes tracked me like I was an incoming aircraft on his scope, and for a second, I feared he would make a run for it. That he would set down that drink and disappear into this ship, and I’d spend the whole week wondering if I hallucinated him.

But he didn’t. He stayed.

I stopped in front of him, close enough to see the fine lines around his eyes, the tension in his jaw, the freckles on his nose. He smelled delicious, some expensive eau de cologne, no doubt. The man had always loved fragrances. He looked like a stranger who lived inside the body of the person I’d once loved more than I’d ever loved anyone.

“Hanson,” I said.

“Porter.” His voice was the same. Low, measured, a little rough at the edges. “Of all the cruise ships in all the world.”

I huffed out a laugh that was more air than humor. “You’re on a gay cruise.”

Something flickered behind his eyes. “Looks like it.”

“You’re on a gay cruise.”

“You said that.”

“I’m processing.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. Almost a smile. Almost. “Take your time.”

I stared at him. He stared back. The party surged around us—someone brushed past with a tray of shots, the DJ crossfaded into something with a heavier beat, a cheer went up from somewhere near the pool—and we stood there, two forty-six-year-old men from Forestville, Washington, looking at each other like the world had tilted sideways.

I had a thousand questions. I had a million things I’d rehearsed saying in the shower, in the car, in the dark for over two and a half decades. Angry things. Hurt things. Things I thought I’d never get to say because I’d never see him again.

Except here he was.

I swallowed. “Buy you a drink?”

Hanson looked at me for a long moment with that gray gaze, steady and unreadable. Then he glanced down at his glass, back at me, and something shifted in his expression, something cautious and careful, like a door opening half an inch. “Yeah, okay.”

2

HANSON

Of all the things I’d imagined when I’d booked this cruise—rest, anonymity, maybe some uncomplicated sex with a stranger who didn’t know my name, and did I mention rest?—running into Porter Waugh had not been on the list.

Yet here he was, sitting across from me at a high-top table in the Mermaid bar, nursing a beer he’d already critiqued twice, looking like everything I’d spent twenty-five years trying not to think about.

He’d gotten broader. That was the first thing I’d noticed, back on the Lido deck when my brain had still been short-circuiting. He’d been lean at twenty-one—all long limbs and restless energy—and now he was solid. Wide shoulders in that perfectly tight T-shirt, thick forearms, the kind of build that came from years of physical work.

He had a beard now, full and dark with threads of silver running through it, and it suited him so well it almost made me angry. His eyes were the same though. Brown and warm and dangerously direct, the kind of eyes that made you feel like you were the only person in the room.

I’d forgotten what it felt like to be seen by Porter Waugh.

No. That was a lie. I hadn’t forgotten. I’d just gotten good at filing it away.

“So,” he said, turning his pint glass slowly on the table. “Forestville’s favorite runaway. How’ve you been?”

There it was. Light enough to pass as casual, sharp enough to draw blood. Porter had always been able to wrap something pointed inside something warm and let you decide whether to acknowledge the sting.

“Busy,” I said. “Good. You know.” I took a sip of my gin and tonic. “You?”

“Oh, fantastic. I opened a brewery. It’s called Holdfast. We’re doing a smoked porter right now that would make you cry.” He grinned. “No pun intended.”

“Porter makes a porter.”

“I’ve heard every joke. Try me.”