It definitely didn’t pay to ruin Warren York’s good time. One didn’t argue with my father unless one wanted to be punished severely. He was a ruthless, egotistical businessman who’d inherited the wealth acquired by hundreds of years of Yorks who came before him but acted like he’d earned it all himself.
Sadly for my mother, my sister, Gigi, and me, he wasn’t any better at home than he was in the office. My father’s favorite brand of punishment involved tightening the purse strings, not on the offender, but on someone the offender loved. When I upset my father, he punished Gigi or my mother.
And there was nothing my father cared about more than keeping up appearances.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ll do it.”
Suddenly the room went oddly quiet. I glanced up and noticed a server had, in fact, entered the room. But it wasn’t the redhead.
It was Grey Blackwood.
The kid from the projects who’d caddied at the country club for years.
The business student prodigy who’d landed himself a full ride to Yale.
The guy in my calculus class last semester who’d leaned over and asked to borrow my graphing calculator, and whose unique scent—coffee and limes or some shit—had made my dick move when it had never, ever moved for a guy before.
The gorgeous man I’d low-key been obsessing over every day since then, which accounted for all the times I’d hung out at the country club this summer, hoping to catch a glimpse from afar, and for all the soul-searching I’d been doing about my sexuality.
My heart beat so fast I thought I might faint right there.
Grey strode over to one of the high-top tables on the far side of an empty pool table and began loading dirty glasses onto a tray. When one of the guys made a crass comment about one of the female servers, Grey’s jaw tightened. I wondered if he felt as uncomfortable here as I did, as frustrated by the pretentious bullshit as I was.
I felt everyone’s eyes on me as I watched Grey focus on his task. As soon as he left the room again, the guys around me burst into noisy chatter all at once.
“Dude, obviously we meant a chick,” Drake said with a laugh.
“What?” I asked, still trying to shake off the haze I seemed to get when I was around Grey Blackwood.
Someone slapped the back of Drake’s head. “Don’t be a homophobe. What’s wrong with the dude? It’s just a kiss in the closet, for fuck’s sake. C’mon, York. You got game either way, right?”
Several of the guys hooted and high-fived, but Drake seemed upset about it. “For real, guys. I meant a girl. Obviously.”
Tanner Young rolled his eyes. “You saying there’s something wrong with kissing a guy? Do we need to have a conversation right now?”
Tanner had been out of the closet since our last days of Little League. Or at least it had seemed that way. Drake’s foot was fully in his mouth. He looked at me in slight panic. “Not what I’m saying at all. It’s just—”
“It’s fine,” I said as nonchalantly as possible. Inside, I was a nervous wreck. Somehow, I’d agreed to kiss Grey Blackwood in a closet on a dare? Was I dreaming? “I’ll do it. No big deal.”
Maybe it was the liquor speaking, or maybe it was the bi-curious asshole in my head, who seemed to have taken over my better judgment. Either way, I wasn’t one to shirk a dare, even if I hadn’t known exactly what I was agreeing to.
Besides, this was like permission from the universe to do the thing I’d been dreaming about for weeks. The perfect excuse had just been handed to me on a silver platter.
Someone asked Kirby, “Isn’t that the scholarship kid who’s going to work for your dad after graduation? They doing charity work now or something?” Several other guys laughed.
“Yeah, dude, but supposedly he’s hella smart,” Kirby said. “Better him than me. I’d rather earn my money the old-fashioned way, you know?”
A chorus of voices sang, “Inheriting it,” before breaking into laughter again.
I ignored them and slid off the stool, barely catching myself before stumbling. Great. If I could find Grey and then find the storage closet, I’d be golden. “Be right back, yeah?” I said, once again trying my hardest to act not-drunk and not-overly-interested in the dare.
Everyone cheered me on and slapped me on the back as I made my way out the open doorway and into the hall. I glanced toward the dining room, hoping like hell Grey wasn’t in the process of serving drinks to my father.
“You lost?”
I whipped my head around in the other direction and saw the man I’d been looking for.
“Yeah, um. No? I mean… no?” Super. This was off to a stellar start.
Grey’s eyebrows lowered. “You okay, man? Need the men’s room?”
I met his eyes. They were fucking gorgeous. Clear blue-green and intense as shit. “Um.” I swallowed. “No. No, I need…”
You. This. Us.
I cleared my throat. “I want…”
He frowned and approached me, reaching out to clasp my elbow. “Come with me. I’ll get you a glass of water.”
Good. That was good.
“Can we… can we go somewhere private?” I asked, forgetting about the guys and thinking only of Grey Blackwood and finding out what it would be like to be alone with him for only a minute. My head spun with images of what it would be like to kiss him, to touch him. Belatedly, I remembered this was his workplace. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
He chuckled. “My supervisor’s smoking weed outside. You’re good.”
Within seconds, he’d pulled me down the hallway to a closed door. Once he opened it, I saw the storage room everyone talked about. Shelving reached all the way to the ceiling, and most of it was covered in pristine club hand towels folded into neat stacks. A large ice machine hummed in the corner, and right next to it was an old-fashioned water cooler.
Grey grabbed a paper water cup shaped like a cone from the stack on top of the water cooler and filled it before handing it to me. I sucked it down greedily, if only to get that godforsaken butterscotch flavor out of my mouth.
“Thanks,” I mumbled before moving forward to refill the cone. I brushed my shoulder against his chest as I stepped past him. Suddenly, the room seemed much smaller than it had before. The scent of coffee and laundry detergent surrounded me, but it was overlaid with the barest hint of apple shampoo.
I turned my head to see if that smell was coming from him, but at the same moment, he turned his head toward me to ask me something. The words died on his tongue as we found ourselves nose-to-nose. From this close, I could see his hair was hundreds of different shades of blond. A hank of it had fallen down over one eyebrow. It made him look vulnerable, unlike the proud man who seemed to have his shit together on the golf course and in class.
“Hi,” I breathed.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a weary voice. The air between us was thick and heavy. If I’d been any more sober, I would have chickened the fuck out and run out with my tail between my legs.
But I wasn’t sober.
“I just… I…”
“Ellison.” He spoke my name like a warning.
“You’re smart as shit,” I said stupidly.