Tierney swallowed, trying to unstick some kind of response, but his throat clogged up on him, strangling his words.
Dalton leaned forward, and now their chests were touching, his hoodie sliding and catching against Tierney’s coat, and his lips so close Tierney could feel them move just below his ear. “And in the future?” he whispered. “Anytime you start thinking you’re better than me because you pretend to be straight? You just remember you wanted to tap this.”
Tierney couldn’t breathe. Fuck, what if it was an allergic reaction to too much reality? Dalton stepped off, releasing Tierney from his field. Enough so he could sip some air.
But of course the dude wasn’t done slicing and dicing him. “I’d recommend not taking it out on other people either, if you want to have any friends left.” He started to go, then stopped, pointing his finger at Tierney. “And if you try to do anything to ruin Sam and Ian’s relationship, I’ll make sure you regret it.”
Panic had filled his gut and petrified his diaphragm, and the rest of Tierney’s emotions began their eddying dance. They were starting to really whirl by the time Dalton shoved past him, leaving.
Don’t let him go. In his addled state, the guy suddenly looked more like a life preserver than the cause of Tierney’s internal rough seas. He whirled around. “I could drink coffee,” he croaked, then cringed. He may as well have sliced open his torso and invited Dalton to have a peek inside the asylum. Jesus fucking Christ, he was pathetic.
But the dude had stopped. “Are you saying you do want someone to talk to?” Dalton stood there, still within inches. Waiting for Tierney to answer.
What’s my answer? He stared at Dalton’s ear, right in front of his face, and the dude’s hair where it had been clipped short over the curve of it.
It seemed like a trustworthy ear. “I do.” Tierney cleared the frog out of his throat. “Want someone to talk to.”
Fuck. Dizzy spell.
“Enough to not be a dick?”
He swallowed. “Um, could you define that for me?”
Dalton sighed, turning to him. “Can you try not to pick me up?”
“I can try that.”
“Just platonic.” Dalton pointed at him, index finger an inch from Tierney’s nose. “And don’t make me regret this.” He dropped his hand, giving Tierney a warning look. “I’m taking my own car.”
“Of course.” Tierney nodded. “I’ll follow you. Lead me where you want me to go.”
Tierney had been endearingly unkempt, with his head in his hands and a defeated slope to his spine as he’d sat on the curb outside Ian’s place. That was Dalton’s thin veneer of an excuse for why he’d offered to listen to the guy’s woes.
Groan. Completely shameful that he still had a weakness for guys like Tierney. Wounded, self-hating assholes who needed reforming. Guys who had flash and cash, but no substance. What he needed was to meet an attractive, wounded, self-healing asshole, then he could trick himself into liking the guy but wouldn’t have to deal with the drama of the guy not liking himself. In his experience, men who didn’t like themselves made selfish boyfriends, and that was the most polite thing he could say about them.
Not that he considered Tierney potential boyfriend material. Dalton was simply being kind, and the slight twinge of emotional pain in his chest was simply the sympathy he’d have for any human being in the man’s position.
Giving himself a firm nod and ignoring pangs of empathy, he gripped the steering wheel tighter and drove in a straight line until he had to turn at an intersection, randomly going right when—ta-da!—a coffee shop appeared. They were on the west side of the city, which Dalton wasn’t very familiar with, but he’d be damned if he’d ask Tierney whether he knew of a place nearby.
“We roast our own beans,” a sign proclaimed, and Dalton could smell the truth of it—the typical scents of sour and burnt—before he turned into the asphalt parking lot. Tierney’s car was pulling in behind him when Dalton glanced in the mirror. His own gaze caught him for a second, a bright strip of Tierney’s headlight reflected onto his face. “I cannot believe I’m doing this.”
As he parked and got out, then watched Tierney do the same on the other side of the lot, the man’s car registered for the first time. The color was a dirty cream, and in the low light of dusk and streetlamp, he mistook it for a Jaguar. It had that sports car in sedan’s clothing look that high-end automobiles had adopted recently.
He felt less derisive when he remembered noticing the signature BMW headlights in his rearview. Beemers weren’t as pretentious, if just as poorly designed in recent years.
Then he realized how much time he’d spent dwelling on Tierney’s choice of ride and he lost all derision.
Sigh. This was going to be such a trial, battling his own susceptibilities and Tierney’s douchebaggery. But standing there, watching the man approach, he began to revise that thought. Tierney’s swagger was missing. He walked toward Dalton with his hands shoved in his pockets, head down, and shoulders hunched in. It was windy, blowing through Dalton’s sweatshirt, but not so cold he shivered, so he doubted Tierney was chilly. Nervous, and possibly a little cowed. Exposing a hint of the soft underbelly that Dalton had been secretly (and traitorously) hoping the man had.
Someday, empathy would be the death of him, wouldn’t it? “Is this place all right?” he asked, as if it mattered what Tierney thought. But it did, even if he tried to deny it.
Tierney stopped in a pool of yellowish light right in front of Dalton. The buzzing of the bulb made a very appropriate soundtrack for the man’s fidgeting. He licked his lip in quick movements, shifted his weight, and avoided Dalton’s gaze, or answering his question.
He stood there so long Dalton reached out to touch him, a quick brush of fingers across his arm. “Are you okay?”
Tierney swallowed. Then again. “Did you . . .” He took a huge breath and blew it out, straightening his shoulders and looking Dalton in the eye at last. “When you said that about not doing anything to ruin Ian and Sam’s relationship, what did you mean?”
Oh no. He’d been angry and he shouldn’t have said it, but it had all fallen together in his head in that instant: Tierney’s expression when Ian put his arm around Sam, and the way he’d come into the office last Friday and to Ian’s place today, wanting to talk. Dalton would lay money on Tierney being in love with his friend. No wonder he was such a douche bag. The guy was in horrible pain, wasn’t he?