Sympathy touched his next smile.
Their conversation continued as a quartet, Brandon politely asking questions too. Luc came across clever, amusing. A little snobby—intellectually. He dropped big words where small ones would have sufficed, and there was always a furtive glance at Noah when he did.
Luc could rest easy. Noah would never be quite so eloquent. If that was what connected Luc and Wade, let it remain so. They all were a product of the people they chose to hang around, and Luc had many good qualities.
I’m not trying to replace you.
The rest of the evening, he tried to deliver the message wordlessly, through smiles and showing interest.
It never landed.
Noah thanked his volunteers on the ridge of a windswept hill and watched their backs shrink around a bend toward the road. Above, albatrosses glided with the gusts. His boots sank into wet soil, rooting him in place. Six more penguins were now free.
A few weeks ago, when he’d stood here, he’d felt in harmony with nature. Like he was one part of it. Today, he was missing something. A tree that had been riddled with lightning and needed to adjust to the new configuration of its limbs.
His eye caught on a growing figure turning off the path towards him. His heart leaped and dove. He’d been expecting Wade. They’d made plans to spend the evening together, and after last night, Noah needed that. Needed to know where he fit into Wade’s picture.
This was not Wade.
“Noah! What a coincidence.”
Luc trotted primly over the grass, as if his nice red shoes needed protection.
“Are you sure it’s coincidence? I mentioned working here last night.”
“Busted!” Luc laughed, long lashes copper under a sky of golds. “I might have wanted to find you. Can we” —he gestured to the boardwalk— “walk a bit?”
Noah obliged, but not without a hopeful look toward the carpark. No Mustang.
They moved down the walkway, the clump of their footsteps the only conversation between them, until—
Luc halted and turned. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? What for?”
“I was . . . not at my best, last night. When we met. I should have been kinder. I guess. It’s just” —he lifted his hands and rubbed his face, and this time when he looked up, Noah noted lines of exhaustion under his eyes— “complicated.”
A gust rushed between them and flooded up Noah’s sleeve, making him shiver. “I’m having a hard time following, Luc.”
Luc shut his eyes. “I’m messing all this up again. I shouldn’t . . . I shouldn’t have come here.”
“Obviously something’s weighing on you.”
“We’re not together anymore. We broke up weeks ago, before he moved here. He’s never kept his attraction to you a secret. No one’s done anything wrong. But I . . . I . . .”
Noah barely processed the words past Luc’s first sentence. Not together anymore. Wade and Luc had been more than friends.
It made immediate sense, and none at all.
All Wade’s hesitation. How he’d told Zach he wanted him and Noah to be friends. How he’d seen Noah’s illustration of him and grasped Noah’s attraction. How he’d hesitated before their first kiss. All along, Wade had worried. Not about Noah. About jumping into something new so soon.
Wade should have said something.
Why should he, when Noah never mentioned his own romantic past? There was a rule about bringing up exes at the start of something, wasn’t there?
They barely knew one another.
Noah’s stomach squeezed.
“Shit,” Luc said, staring at him. “You didn’t know.”
“I’m sure he would have told me eventually.”
“Of course he would have. Wade is . . . Wade is the most wonderful man in the world.”
The reverence with which Luc said it.
Noah stepped back, arse hitting the railing.
“Are you . . . still in love with him?”
Luc bowed his head. “You’ve got to understand, we’ve known one another forever. We were each other’s firsts. Every time we broke up, we always found a way to get back together. I’d do anything for him. Even . . . even let him go, if I had to, but . . . I have to tell him how I feel. He has to know. And I feel horrible that he’s dating you, but you’ve only known one another a week in person, right? It’s better to be honest right now, than have it come out later.”
It was all too much to take.
His dinner with Wade punched into him with painful precision.
Making the right choice can be difficult.
Wade hadn’t meant the choice between Noah and coming out to his family. He’d meant this. Noah and Luc.
Wade must have sensed how Luc felt. Must have realised things hadn’t been quite as over with Luc as he’d thought.
That was why he hadn’t stayed over. Why they hadn’t touched again.
He wanted to curse Wade for not telling him everything.
He wanted to curse Luc for coming here, for loving Wade at all.
