He climbed in, shut the door, and stared across the passenger seat. There was a cake crumb. This should piss him off. A week ago, it might have. But this morning, all he felt was a strange pang in his chest.

He knew that everyone had struggles. Everyone was human, even the infuriating Bailey Alexander, who was as hostile as he was beautiful. Since their families used to be close and their mothers remained so, he knew that Bailey’s parents were divorced, and he had split his time between them while growing up. He knew that Bailey had dealt with bullying – not the bickering between the two of them – but real bullying, like that kid in the bathroom during middle school.

Although, most of that had cleared up by the time they reached high school. Sitting in the seat of his truck and thinking back on it, Nate began to wonder if the bullying had cleared up because of him. He’d basically peed a circle around Bailey when they started hounding each other constantly. Nobody else dared mess with Bailey if Nate was already messing with him. And if anyone ever tried to step in and gang up on Bailey with him, Nate would whirl on them and knock them the fuck out in an instant. Just like in his dream last night.

This was another reason why the teachers ended up easing off his and Bailey’s fights, treating them more like kids who were getting a little too rowdy in the halls than kids who were trying to rip each other’s heads off. If someone ever did try to step in and hold Bailey’s arms behind his back so Nate could get in a good punch, they would end up with the black eye, sitting in the principal’s office explaining why both Nate and Bailey were accusing them of bullying.

But it seemed like Bailey had been dealing with a whole lot of shit that he had never known about. Nate had always thought he was the biggest thorn in the other boy’s side. Knowing that there had been something more serious going on during high school—and beyond, given that he had seen Tanner still fucking with Bailey last night—made something uncomfortable clench in his stomach. Something a little like the kind of shame he felt when he lost a boxing match because of a stupid mistake he knew he should not have made.

He sighed and pulled out his phone to check his messages. Jared had responded to him at some point last night, telling him not to worry about flaking out. He texted him to see if he wanted to meet him at the gym so they could work out together or go a couple of rounds in the boxing ring.

His mom’s gym was modestly sized, nestled into the historic district of town between a coffee shop with an edgy bone theme and a three-generation-strong law practice. As soon as he passed through the door, the sounds of traffic and pigeons gave way to clinking weights and hushed conversation. The room echoed slightly, especially since one entire wall was of ancient, exposed brick.

“Morning sunshine,” Marian waved from where she was watching over one of her clients doing lat pulldowns on one of the cable machines. The kid manning the front desk—one of several on a rotation with a never-ending turnover rate for some reason—glanced up from his phone. Nate nodded to them both and wound his way through the equipment to the back rooms.

His mom’s voice drifted through the cracked door to her office, so he slipped by without poking his head in and went straight to the employee break room to dump his bag off in one of the lockers and refill his coffee. He slammed it back and wondered if his trouble sleeping last night had been because of the coffee he drank while driving Bailey home.

He had to shake his head and chuckle to himself at the absurdity of that pathetic excuse. His coffee addiction already ran deep enough that one little cup in the middle of the night would barely be a blip on the radar. He gulped down what was in his cup so he could grab his water bottle and head back out to the gym floor before he ended up zoning out in here while thinking about Bailey again.

Most of the thin early morning crowd had already dispersed to go to work, so he had his pick of the benches. Still, he tucked himself into a corner, popped his earbuds in, and put on his unapproachable face. Nearly everyone who came to the gym knew he was the owner's kid, which seemed to invite them into conversation with him even when he was just trying to get his own workout in. Usually, he did not mind, but he just wanted to lose himself in the repetitive burn.

That was too much to ask of even his own brain at the moment. Maybe he really should cut back on caffeine because he found himself jittery and anxious, thoughts straying to Bailey no matter how hard he tried to clear his mind. Each time he realized his thoughts had run away from him, he tuned back into his body to realize that he was breathless—and not from the workout. Counting worked fine during sets to keep him occupied, but as he rested in between, he began to slowly lose his mind.

So, he gave in and followed his thoughts until he hunched over his phone on the bench, pulling up Bailey’s Instagram.

He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and panted down at the screen, trying to catch his breath after a set of dumbbell rows. Bailey stared up at him, grinning into the flash of the camera. He was at some kind of restaurant or bar, seated outside beneath the streetlights with a group of friends from college.

And there was a picture of his newest tattoo. Nate pulled it up to look closer at how the dragon curved around Bailey’s side. He told himself it was the intricate linework he was so interested in, not the way Bailey’s waist looked soft and sloped down to his narrow hips. The picture captured just the barest hint of definition in his abdomen.

Someone plucked his earbud out of his ear.

His heart rocketed into his throat. He fumbled with his phone to turn it off or flip it over or both and ended up dropping it between his feet. Marian stood to the side, holding his earbud and arching one manicured eyebrow.

“You alright, sunny?”

He scowled at her and swiped at her hand for the earbud. His low and bass-heavy music sounded tinny in the air between them. She jerked her hand back and tutted.

“I’m fine,” he groused. ‘Sunshine’ was her ironic nickname for him, born out of the fact that no matter how much coffee he had or how happy and content he felt at any given moment, he usually looked about ready to twist someone’s head off their neck. She teased him endlessly about, as she put it, the worst case of resting bitch face she had ever seen on another human being.

“You’ve been staring at your phone for the past ten minutes,” she handed the earbud back.

He grunted and looked down at the offending device, which had thankfully landed screen-down. “Didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Heard you got lucky.” Her smirk was audible in the shape of her words. “They keep you up all night then?”

He frowned up at her. “How—”

She jerked a thumb over her shoulder to where Jared was leaning up against the check-in counter, talking to the front desk kid Nate had ignored earlier. “Said you bailed on him. Figured you found someone more interesting to spend the night with.”

Nate scrubbed a hand over his face and sighed. “Nah, I just…it was a weird night.”

“Alright,” Marian flipped the thick ponytail of her drawn-back box braids over her shoulder as she shrugged. Thankfully, she left it at that, and when Jared came over, he was practically walking on air, unable to keep the cheesy grin off his face as he told Nate about running into Sarah at the bar last night and taking her home again. As Nate listened, he wondered if Bailey had known Sarah was there, and maybe that had also been one of the reasons why he did not want to go back into the bar when his cheeks were tear-stained and his hands were trembling.

Seemed no matter what, Nate’s thoughts were destined to return to him.

After he had showered off and changed into fresh clothes, he stood in the break room staring at a bowl of breakfast hash his mom had put in the fridge for him as it spun around and around. He pulled out his phone and remembered as soon as he turned it on that he had been stalking Bailey’s Instagram. Since then, Bailey had reposted an advertisement from a bar in the next town. Nate knew the one because it was one of the only gay bars available outside of driving for three hours to get to the city.

On Tuesday night, The Shoe Strings would be playing live music. Nate vaguely remembered that had been the name of a band one of Bailey’s friends had been a part of back in high school. The fact that they were still together was impressive. The microwave beeped and he slipped his phone back into his pocket—just in time because Jared came waltzing into the room, even though he was not an employee. Nate had barely managed to avoid being caught in the act twice in one morning.