“Something like that,” I mutter wryly, although my lips twitch. “I like it here, Ez. I always have.”
“And you’ve always been welcome.”
“I know.”
“But it’s just now hitting you.”
“Yes,” I agree.
Ezra rolls off the couch with a groan, the reflection of his silhouette getting closer in the window. He stops beside me, his presence warm. Big, too, even though he’s not quite my height. He’s always been…big.
“I would have had you here years ago, Grayson. If you were ready.”
My swallow is a harsh thing.
Ezra opens the slider door in front of us. “Come on.”
The air is cool outside, the lights surrounding the pool making it easy enough to see. Ezra plops onto one of the poolside loungers, his hands behind his head. I sit down beside him, looking up at the night sky. The stars are hard to spot here, both because of the glimmer of sunlight still spreading over the horizon and the city’s light pollution.
I ache to visit somewhere I can see the sky in all its natural glory. It’s been a long time.
Ezra’s voice splits the quiet air. “Gray. There’s never been anything wrong with you. I know you know that deep down. But Camilla made it hard for you to accept because she saw your lack of interest as a problem. It wasn’t. You and her were just never meant to be.”
He’s not saying anything I don’t already know, but having my friend speak aloud those thoughts that continue to plague me at times is a relief. Aloe on a healing, scratchy burn.
“And us?” I ask, turning my head to see his profile.
Ezra smiles, the corner of his lips drawing upwards. “We’re inevitable, Grayson Fox. Bound by fate or luck or maybe even gravity. The moment I found you, I knew there was no escape.”
“There’s a name for that, you know,” I tell him, my heart so full it’s a wonder I can speak through it. “When two stars are drawn together. Their energy shared.”
His head lolls my way. “Yeah? And what’s that?”
I can picture the blast of light in my mind’s eye clearly. A collapse of two stars and an explosion so great it can be seen across the universe, causing ripples in the very fabric of space-time.
Cataclysmic. Ruinous and miraculous.
No words better describe what Ezra is to me.
There’s a smile on my face when I answer my friend, the world around us dark. “Supernova.”
Chapter 22
Ezra
“It’s starting.”
At Grayson’s words, I drop the dish I’d been rinsing in the sink and round the island, drying my hands on my pants as I go. “Let me see.”
He shifts his phone screen in my direction. In bold letters is a headline from an online rag.
“Could Ezra Gold and Grayson Fox’s bromance be a romance?”
“Oh, good grief,” I mutter. “So unoriginal.”
Grayson starts to read, paying me no mind. “‘Movie star Grayson Fox has been spotted arriving at Gold’s home at all hours of the day and staying through the night.’”
“Ooh la la,” I intone, waggling my eyebrows. Grayson shoves my face away without even looking, and I laugh.
