“Kevin,” I said again.
“I’m sorry, Ronan.” His voice came out soft and a little shaky.
“How long have you felt this way for?”
He shrugged. “It comes and goes. It just hit me really hard tonight.”
“What about tonight set you off? Do you know?” I glanced toward the window. The sky was still pitch black, the sun hours away from rising. Fatigue settled in my bones, and I steeled myself for the long haul. I wouldn’t sleep until there was a path to resolution for the man I loved.
“We…” Kevin cleared his throat. “We were supposed to be pretending we were strangers, and the way you were…with me…that’s not how you were when we were strangers.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I’d done way more depraved things to him the night we met than I’d done hours before, but it wasn’t a calculated decision. It was my mood, my feelings, and shit…Had I gotten so wrapped up in my own comfort and complacency with our relationship that I’d stopped noticing Kevin’s mood? Kevin’s feelings?
“You’re right,” I admitted.
“I am?” He looked surprised, eyebrows raised toward his hairline.
I reached for him, my hand on the table palm up, and without thought or hesitation, he tangled our fingers together. So, there was at least that. I still had that.
“I miscalculated.” I squeezed his hand. “I was happy with things, so I assumed you were happy with things. I stopped checking in.”
“It’s not all that bad,” he tried to backtrack, no doubt to ease the worries and concerns he knew to be running through my head. I wasn’t an over thinker, but I thought more than most.
“Kevin.”
“I know we agreed it wouldn’t be an all the time thing.” He reminded me of the conversation we’d had when we decided things were going to be serious between us. “But it’s not the same as it was before.”
“It’s an easy fix,” I promised. “We renegotiate our limits and try some new things.”
“What kinds of new things?”
“I don’t know. This is a chance to think outside the box.” With my free hand, I pushed the plate of eggs toward him. “First you eat, and then we’ll talk.”
“You should eat too,” he grumbled, obediently picking up his fork and stabbing at the eggs. The simple act had the tension that had been building in my spine unwinding, just barely. Things weren’t to the point of being beyond repair. There was still desire and trust, and those were things I could work with. I could make things right again.
“I will when you’re done.”
Kevin ate half the eggs on the plate, then slid it toward me. His stare darted up to catch mine, a tentative and expectant look on his face. I wasn’t hungry. In fact, the thought of eating anything made me want to throw up, but I forced the bites down, wondering if Kevin had done the same. He smiled after I finished eating, collected the plate and forks, and took them to the kitchen. He came back and sat down, taking my hand again and waiting patiently for me to speak.
“Earlier when we were pretending, we talked about limits,” I said, picking my words carefully. The limits Kevin had given me during our game were not his limits as I understood them to be in our life. “You said yours had changed. That was real?”
The flush continued up his throat to his cheeks, to the tips of his ears. It was enough of a confirmation for me, even though he answered just the same, “Yes.”
“Have your limits changed because you think the things we’ve been doing are boring?”
“No,” he answered quickly, before wincing and cutting himself off. “At least, I don’t think so. I trust you and we’ve been together long enough that I think we can try new things together.”
“So, you want to try breath play?”
Kevin swallowed. “We kind of did.”
“My hand on your throat is hardly breath play,” I said.
“It could be,” he rasped.
“Knives,” I murmured, and he nodded again.
