After that day, Bailey didn't shed another tear—at least none that Matt saw. He untangled from Matt's arms and left the barn, disappeared to the bedroom with a bottle of liquor and slept until dinner. The next day, it was as if nothing had happened. He cared for the chickens in the coup and carried hay until his arms bled, showered every morning and again in the evening until his skin was red and scraped from scrubbing. Then back to bed he'd go.

Every night, he slept away with his arms over his chest, and Matt ran his fingers through his wet, scented hair. Every night, he watched the faded nape of his neck and the tattoo on his shoulder and begged himself not to ruin it all by doing too much—until one night, Bailey turned to face him, shadow eyes heavy with sleep.

"I'll pay you back for the console," he said.

"I've got a better one," Matt told him.

"You do?"

"Play Station. I've hardly used it."

"Can we play it?" Bailey asked.

"Tomorrow," Matt said.

The next day, Matt stopped at the store after work and bought a new Play Station. He hid the box in his father's garage and set it up while Bailey slept, tucked away in the cupboard of his entertainment system. And when Bailey woke at nearly six that night, they played games until his stomach rumbled. Matt barbecued steaks and Bailey waited on the porch steps, while the sun slipped behind the trees.

For the first time since that night, Bailey spoke of the incident in the pub. "What did Bronx do with the bodies?"

"Dunno," Matt said, prodding at the steaks. He pictured Billy with his long, coiling tongue and the splattered beige spot on his nose. His stomach unfurled at the thought of eating them. He turned the steak over. "Just took care of 'em, I guess."

"Wasn't you, was it?" Bailey asked. The sunset reached his eyes and something green flared awake in the pits of them. "It was Raven that killed them."

"Yeah." Matt forked the steak onto plates and delivered one to Bailey, stalking back up the steps. In the distance, his father sprayed down his cruiser with a garden hose. He eyed them occasionally, but hadn't said a word to Matt about Bailey's return—which usually meant they would never discuss it again. Which mean Matt wouldn't have to explain why it was none of Jack's business what Bailey was to him.

Bailey followed him inside as Matt dropped his plate onto the table and picked up the counter where his spices and rubs were laid out. Steak used to be his favorite meal, but beef tasted a lot like rot now.

"I could tell," Bailey said. "He didn't have your accent."

"I don't have an accent."

"Maybe not to you. To everyone else, you sound like you crawled out of a horse's ass."

When Matt looked over his shoulder, the hound was sitting at the table, prodding his meat with a fork but making no effort to eat it. Matt had expected this. Since finding out he'd lost his wolf, food was a burden. It didn't matter what Matt made—nothing was ever worth the time it took to chew.

"Eat," Matt said, wiping the crumbs from the counter. "Please."

"You can have it," Bailey said. The chair clattered as he stood up. "I'm tired."

I'm tired. Matt's heart sunk. For the third time now, Bailey had rejected food under the premise of I'm tired. He tossed his rag in the sink and it slapped against an empty glass with a rattle. "Will you just tell me? Tell me what the hell I can do to make you feel better."

Bailey's face went blank and the surprised look it bore ate at Matt. He turned back to the counter, shoving bottles of steak rub and pepper into the cupboard above him. The silence grew until the only sound between them was the clamor of Matt, shoving things away in their respective places.

"You don't have to do that," Bailey said. "It's been a decade since anyone gave a shit about whether I was dead or alive."

Matt shot a look over his shoulder. "So?"

"So I don't need you to care about my problems—"

"You—" Matt reigned himself back—swallowed down the anger in his own voice. Wasn't Bailey's fault he felt so fucking useless. Wasn't Bailey's fault he felt like everything he'd ever wanted had been given to him and torn away again. It wasn't Bailey's fault andhe was tired of shouting at the world. So softer, Matt said, "You are the only thing I care about."

Silence overcame them both. It sat in Matt's throat like an itch, and though he felt Bailey's presence behind him, the hound was quiet too. There was nothing left to clean, but Matt stayed there at the edge of the counter, staring at the scuffs in the laminate. The ground shifted behind him.

"What would you do?"

Matt lifted his head to the shape of Bailey, reflecting in the window panes. "What?"

"If you could make me feel better," Bailey said, moving closer. A hand gripped Matt by the hip and drew him back hard. He slammed back against Bailey's chest, the air knocked rattled out of him. Over his shoulder, Bailey said, "What would you do?"

The heat of his skin crawled into Matt's shell. Sparks scattered in his stomach. "What—what do you mean?"

A hand moved up his hip, bunching the shirt at the hem. Those fire fingers ran up, up, up his ribs. And in his ear, Bailey whispered, "Would you let me fuck you?"

A trill moved up Matt's spine. Heat prickled his cheeks. Burned at his ears. "Like last time?"

"No."

One hand slid up Matt's stomach, one slid down. He ignited beneath Bailey's splayed fingers. "Will it make you feel better?"

Bailey's lips brushed the cartilage of his ear. "No."

"Has to be like this?"

"Has to be like this," Bailey said, fingers slipping just beneath the belt on Matt's waist. His stomach clenched under the heat of his wrist.

"You didn't like it before?"

He pushed against Matt, hips demanding. Hands riding up his shirt, fingers spreading over his hard-beating heart. "I did. But I can't...not like that. Not right now." 

The thought of him—of Bailey doing to him what he'd done to Bailey that night in the barn. He wished Jay was around. Wished he could ask what it felt like. If it hurt, the first time—if it hurt every time. 

But if it meant Bailey would touch him like this...if it meant he could touch Bailey...

"Okay."

Bailey pushed him forward against the edge of the counter, shoved him down against the laminate top. A saltshaker toppled over, clattering into the sink. He tore the belt from Matt's waist and dropped it to the kitchen floor.

"Wait," Matt said, reaching back for his wrist. "Wait."

Bailey let go and Matt twisted around to face him, pressed against the hard edge of the counter, trapped against his wanting hips. "Not yet," he whispered, his face burning and his chest heaving and Bailey so close—so close. The hound bowed forward, his eyes low, his breath warm on Matt's lips. If he inclined just an inch, he could kiss him, but Matt knew himself. Knew he wouldn't stop if he did. Knew he couldn't.

"Tonight," Matt promised, finding the warm glint in his gaze. "After I bring the cows in. After I shower." Bailey huffed out an impatient breath and leaned in closer, searching for Matt's lips. Matt leaned back to escape him, arched against the counter edge. Bailey's lips brushed his cheekbone. "After you eat your fucking steak," Matt said.

Bailey let a soft, humorous sound against his cheek and withdrew slowly. "Fine, Cowboy." His hands left Matt's hips and he stepped back, snatching his plate from the table. "I'll be in the bedroom."

Matt couldn't eat his steak after that. It wasn't only Billy, it was the nerves that coiled in him, wild and alive. The moths climbed the walls of his stomach and he couldn't decide if these were the ones he liked. He wrapped his meal in foil instead and carried it out to his father's house, left it on the kitchen table with a sticky note labeled, "Eat me". When he turned around to leave, his father stood in the doorway, clapping the dirt from his hands. He bridled in surprise when he saw Matt.

"Steak," Matt explained. "Can't eat it. You can have it."

His father sighed and the clean lines of his wrinkles relaxed through dirt film on his face. He always stood a little straighter when he was sober. "I ever tell you about Piko?" He brushed past Matt and pulled two beers from the fridge. Snapped them both open on the table and handed one over. "Sit down."

Matt did—despite everything, he always did what his father told him to do. Despite everything, he still respected some shadow of the old man. Still saw his footprints stamped into the dirt of every path he took.

Jack began, "When I was a boy, we took in a family of cattle dogs. Blue heelers. The fattest I chose for my own. Named her Piko. When she was old enough to breed, my pop sold her off to a puppy mill for forty bucks. Slapped me when I cried about it. Said it was a man's job to make sacrifices."

"Yeah, well. If we could all blame our fathers for our mistakes, I'd have a spotless record," Matt said.

"Billy was getting old, he was gonna—" Jack stopped himself, set down his beer and sighed loud through his crooked nose. "Point is, I was raised by callous hands, boy. I know the world is changin', I see it." Matt's stomach tilted a little when he realized his father wasn't talking about Billy. "It's not my world anymore. I just wanna know that when I leave it, you know how to survive this place."

"Survive it like you?" Matt asked. "I don't think I want that advice, dad—"

"Not like me," Jack said, shaking his head. "Never wanted you to be like me, son." He tipped back his beer and let out the kinda rough, beaten breath that came from hours of slaving in the sun. "I'm the reason your mom left. Not you, not Clara. It's hard to admit that sometimes."

"Dad," Matt said, watching the amber of his beer glint in the kitchen lights. "I think we got problems. Both of us. I think we're sick in the head and I don't think it's ever gonna go away."

"I think you're right," Jack said. "Drink your beer, boy."

Matt's shower ran especially long that night, the ghost of his mother running through his head. He recalled the day she left in scattered strobing flickers—shouting and crying, and a cab loaded with so much crap, the driver was exasperated. He remembered taking a seat next to his dad on the porch steps, seeing the tears in his eyes and thinking how strange it was that a father would cry like mothers do. After a long bout of silently sitting together, his dad ruffled his hair, took him fishing until the night bit down on them, fierce and chilly. Matt was tired and bored and he begged to go home, but they stayed in the boat. Stared at the stars 'til the sun came up.

After his skin was sufficiently scolded and his head was bleary from the heat, Matt left the shower with a towel around his waist—found Bailey in the bedroom, sitting on the ledge of the open window. "It's never been this quiet before," he said, peering up at the starlit sky. "Can't hear anything. Just the trees, the wind. Can't smell anything, either."

"Is that good?" Matt asked.

Bailey rolled his head against the window frame to look at him. His eyes flickered down to the towel—up again. "Haven't decided." He rose from the window, limber and tall, and moved across the room to Matt. "Don't have to do this if you don't want."

A part of Matt leaped at the idea of backing away. A part of him stayed exactly where it was, cemented. Decided. If this makes you happy, he wanted to say. If even for a second, this makes things okay, I want to do it.

"There are other options," Bailey said in his hesitance. He advanced a step, reached out and touched the towel on Matt's waist. "I can feel my hands again."

He felt so much taller when he stood so close—mostly because Matt had to tilt his head up to look at him. His lips just reached Bailey's jaw and he wanted so badly to lean in—taste the skin. Feel it sink against his teeth. "Is it gonna hurt?" he asked.

"Probably," Bailey said. "I know how to make it hurt...less."

"If I hate it?"

"Then we stop."

Matt reached forward fingers curling under the shirt on Bailey's chest. He drew it up over his stomach, careful not to make contact with the skin beneath. "If I like it?" he asked.

Bailey pulled the shirt off over his head and let it fall to the floor, shifting to that close space where their chests brushed and their breath met. "Then I fuck you like I've wanted to fuck you for weeks."

Matt grinned a little. "Weeks? What about that blond you were bangin'?"

"Not my type."

"And all the other men?"

"Not my type," Bailey said again. He grew nearer as he spoke, so close, Matt had to step back to deny him the kiss that would break him apart. The single touch of lips that would shatter him to stars.

"Thought your type was men," Matt said, recalling their stay at the hotel on Perigee. The way they couldn't stand each other. The tense, static air between them.

"I did say that, didn't I?" Bailey smirked and moved closer. Matt moved back, the floorboards creaking beneath them. "I take it back. That was the first time I wanted to fuck you."

Matt hadn't noticed he'd backed up to the bed until Bailey gave him a push. He fell back into the sheets, mattress shifting as Bailey moved over him, hot fingers sliding up his bare thighs. Matt's skin flared, his heart thundering in his ears. "And I just wanted to fight you," he said, watching Bailey's lips as he grew near—as he eclipsed everything, the tips of their noses brushing.

"We can do both," Bailey whispered.

Matt shut his eyes, felt the fire-hot of their lips graze. His hand clasped in the back of Bailey's hair and he took them as his own—breath escaping between the moments their mouths met. The moments their tongues brushed, the moment lips grazed teeth, the moment his towel unknotted from his waist and cold air rushed his hips. And all of the moments moved into one another at the touch of Bailey's hand. The single stroke of his fingers that tore Matt apart at ever weak seam.

Then Bailey was kissing his neck—biting, sucking on the flesh trapped between his teeth—and all Matt could do was huff and shiver beneath him. All he could do was feel while that mouth moved against his shoulder, tongue against his collarbone, teeth against his chest. Matt had never paid much attention to his own anatomy—nipples especially. But when Bailey took the flesh into his mouth, those terrible moths caught fire inside of him.

Jesus Christ, they were just nipples—useless fucking nubs. But there was something magical about Bailey's lips—something that made Matt rise and shudder against his mouth. Something about the way his tongue curled—the way his teeth grazed that tore him from his own self restraint. The knots in his stomach tightened for every ribs Bailey moved down, kissing his way to his pale, too-soft stomach, the skin below and further yet.

He wanted that mouth again—God he wanted it. But there was something else he wanted more. "Wait," he huffed. "Bailey, wait."

He raised his head to Matt, searching his face with those night eyes. "What's wrong?"

"I need to know something," Matt said. He sat up and pulled the towel over his lap. Bailey's face was a tint pinker than usual, his lips swollen from putting all those bites and hickeys down his body. "Did you mean what you said that night by the freeway?"

Bailey let out a breath. "Jesus Christ—"

"Did you mean it?"

"Mean what?"

Matt's throat went dry. His voice cleaved when he said, "That you loved me."

Bailey hesitated—and that hesitation seemed to make him hesitate even more. "Why's that so important right now?"

"Because I don't want to be the only one that feels this way." He held Bailey's gaze, as unsteady as he felt himself. As large as the knot in his throat had grown, as heavy as his heart beat within his bones.

Bailey's eyes glinted in the dark. His throat bobbed and his lips parted, but he said nothing.

"If you don't, you don't." Matt's palms sweat and he gripped at the towel, his nervous pulse drumming in his ears. "But—I didn't think I could feel like this. And then you left and every second of every day you were gone, I thought of you. I didn't stop thinkin' about you." When Bailey said nothing but stared at him with that swallow in his throat and those ever-dark eyes, Matt let out a dry, struggling laugh. "Didn't mean it, did you? Slip of the tongue."

Still, Bailey said nothing. Matt's heart dropped, plummeting slow and deep into the depths of him. He looked down at his hands—the ones that ran through Bailey's hair night after night. The ones that weren't allowed to touch. The ones that burned for him.

"I meant it," Bailey said.

He snapped to those dark eyes, and the look on Bailey's face was nothing Matt had seen on him before. Soft and raw and afraid. Matt reached for his face, stopped himself he could ruin the moment by touching what he wasn't allowed to touch. But Bailey caught his wrist and brought his palm to the unmarred cheek. Matt's fingers splayed against the warm skin and this time, Bailey didn't flinch.

"Don't make me say it again, Cowboy."

Matt pulled him in against his lips and kissed him, slowly, deeply, fingers in his hair and hand on his cheek. And Bailey's mouth—somehow fiercer than before—urged Matt back against the sheets. His fingers traced the tight waist of Bailey's jeans until he found the fly, then Matt tore the zipper open. Shoved the denim down his waist, panting against his mouth in the moments their lips couldn't meet. Meeting them for every moment they could. Bailey let him touch—so he touched, and he touched and he touched. He ran his hands down the curve of Bailey's back. Squeezed his bare cheeks beneath his palms, while those hips moved against him. While they pressed flush and naked to one another.

And when Bailey gripped him hard by the hips and coaxed him to turn over, Matt followed the lead of his hands. He shifted onto his stomach, hands tangled in the blankets, that fire mouth on the back of his neck, his shoulder blade, the skin between.

He had never wanted this—never in his life. He remembered Senior year of high school, when Jaylin desensitized him to gay porn. He remembered the scrunched faces and the fisted sheets—the wet eyes, the red chests.

But as Bailey's lips moved down his spine and his body bowed to the chills they produced, it was suddenly the only thing he wanted. Because it was Bailey. Because it was Bailey, and that was the only reason.

Matt took a breath and pressed his face into the sheets.