Page 3 of That Defining Moment

“I know you don’t. That’s why you’re going to. Go find Janet, stick her on your lap, and order yourself some gaeng hung lay. I won’t have you eating room service in a blacked out room like a depressed businessman.”

Lysander pressed the heel of his hand against his eye. “Fine.”

“Good. Go eat, Sander. I’ll talk to you again tomorrow.”

They hung up with no drawn-out goodbyes. There was just the click of the call ending and then the silence of an empty hotel room pressing back in around Lysander.

He immediately reached for his laptop. He balanced it on his knees and opened a browser tab. The Qantas homepage loaded with a photograph of the Sydney Opera House at sunset, and he typed Chiang Mai to Melbourne into the search bar.

He’d been in Thailand for nearly five months, and he’d spent the last two of those pretending that his restlessness was just because of his homesickness for London and his family.

Come find me in Melbourne when you’re done sunning yourself, Hamish had said at their hotel lobby, right before he was due to be picked up to be taken away to Chiang Mai airport.

Well, Lysander was done sunning himself.

He selected a business class seat on a flight departing in four days, typed in his card details, and hit confirm before he could talk himself out of it. The booking email arrived within seconds. QF014, Chiang Mai to Melbourne via Bangkok. Departing 14th March. Business Class. 1 passenger.

Lysander closed the laptop, dropped it onto the mattress beside him, and went to find Janet.

Chapter Two

Hamish McNally’s house was a worker’s cottage at the end of a narrow brick row. It used to shelter factory workers a hundred years ago, but now cost more than a Knightsbridge studio because it was three streets off Lygon and had exposed beams. The front garden was a mad profusion of green; there was jasmine climbing the fence posts, a banksia that had outgrown its pot and some kind of trailing succulent spilling over the low brick wall onto the pavement like it was making a break for freedom.

Lysander stood on the front path with his suitcase and his heart hammering in his ears.

He hadn’t told Hamish he was coming. That had seemed romantic and spontaneous when he’d booked the flight in Pai, slightly less romantic during the four-hour layover in Bangkok, and by the time his Uber from Tullamarine had pulled up outside the cottage he’d only ever seen through the tiny rectangle of a video call, his excitement had curdled into mild panic as he ran through the possibilities in his head.

Hamish might not be home.

Hamish might be home but busy.

Hamish might not even be happy to see him.

Lysander forced himself to ring the doorbell.

It opened after a while, and then Hamish was there in a soft grey t-shirt and bare feet, his glasses slightly crooked, his hair sticking up at the back. His face stayed completely blank for longer than was good for Lysander’s cardiac health, then he flashed the most unguarded grin Lysander had ever seen on him.

“Surprise,” Lysander said.

Hamish stared, his mouth open. “You’re here!” he cried out.

“Where’s your banana?” Lysander’s hand was already on Hamish’s belt buckle, his fingers hooking into the waistband of Hamish’s jeans as he stepped forward and pushed them both through the doorway and into the narrow hall. “Come on, show it to me, I flew nine hours for it.”

Hamish laughed, his hands landing on Lysander’s waist. His mouth found the side of Lysander’s neck, and Lysander tipped his head back into the scratch of that beard against his jaw — finally — when a movement at the far end of the corridor stopped him dead.

Someone was standing in the kitchen doorway. He was tall, willowy, blond, and completely naked, holding a mug of tea as if this were a perfectly standard way for him to spend an early morning. He was, without question, one of the most beautiful people Lysander had ever seen. Fine-boned, delicate, and with a wide soft mouth. His pale lashes and eyes made him look like something that had wandered out of a Nordic folklore illustration.

But it wasn’t just the man’s face or his nudity that made Lysander’s stomach drop through the floor. It was the smell of him. The unmistakably sweet biological scent was one that Lysander knew intimately, as a male omega.

Hamish had a naked male omega standing in his kitchen drinking tea.

Lysander’s hand came off Hamish’s belt. The hallway suddenly felt extremely narrow, the cottage too small, and the spontaneous romantic gesture of flying nine hours to surprise the man he’d been obsessing over for weeks felt like the stupidest thing he had ever done in a life that included letting his ex/former co-star upload a video of him losing his virginity to the internet.

“Right,” he said. His voice came out bright and perfectly controlled. “Sorry, I should have called first to check if your place had already hit its male omega quota.”

He was already turning, reaching for the suitcase he’d left on the front path, when Hamish caught his arm.

“Sander. Stop.”