Gambling On Maybe by Fae Sutherland (romantic love story reading txt) 📕

sense told him. At first, he'd thought maybe something had happened, but he was a police officer. He had access to every crime in the city, for God's sake. Zach was fine; he just wasn't answering and wasn't calling back.

Which left Stephen with brush-off as the logical conclusion.

Only it wasn't exactly logical. Three nights ago, they'd spent hours together, not just fucking, but touching and kissing and talking and cramming into Zach's tiny shower 37

Gambling On Maybe

by Fae Sutherland

together to make out some more under the pretense of getting cleaned up the next morning.

And it'd been good. Really good. It'd felt likeE Well, it'd felt like a beginning, not an end. He'd had one-night stands, plenty of them, and he knew what they felt like when they were over. Slightly awkward, both of you trying not to say you'd call because you knew you wouldn't. Followed by a sense of relief when you got out the door without anyone getting hurt or getting weird.

This hadn't felt anything like that. They'd had breakfast—

Cocoa Puffs and soy milk—and made out at the door as long as they could without one or both of them being late for work.

Zach had given him a beaming smile and a chipper wink and told him he'd better call or he'd be showing up with breakfast for the boys again.

Never once had Stephen gotten the impression he'd only been saying it not to hurt his feelings and it hadn't seemed insincere in any way. So why was Zach avoiding him now?

Was Stephen's dating sense so off-kilter he couldn't even recognize when a pretty boy lied to him to spare his pride?

No, he didn't think so. Not even a little.

So that left him with—what to do now? Let it lie and go back to where he'd been a few days ago? Surely it wouldn't be too hard. How much of an impact could one man make in such a short amount of time?

Stephen already knew the answer, though. A big one.

Maybe it was just the new bloom of infatuation, maybe not, but Zach was all Stephen could think about. He wasn't stupid.

He didn't think he was in love or anything, but, you know, 38

Gambling On Maybe

by Fae Sutherland

maybe it was a possibility. Maybe there was something there that could become something real, something life changing.

Maybe.

Was he willing to gamble on maybe? He'd never been a gambling man. But damn it, hadn't he, the other night with Zach, thought about how he wished he could be like Zach, could really live and taste life and the world?

What would Zach do?

He was halfway to the door before he finished asking himself the question.

It was a sad day when even the new fall collections coming into the boutique where Zach worked couldn't get him excited. He'd had half a dozen people already ask if he was sick, if maybe he needed to go home. He couldn't blame people; his co-workers and regular customers had to be looking for the pod right about now with how off he was acting.

Stevie had stopped leaving messages. He hadn't stopped calling completely, and Zach's heart tripped every time he saw the precinct number come up on his phone, right before he hit ignore. He'd stop calling. Eventually.

Zach wasn't even trying to fool himself into thinking he was looking forward to that day.

Jordy had asked him the night before, while watching Steel Magnolias and drinking dirty martinis, why he had listened to that bitchy cop. Why was he avoiding someone he liked because of what some bigoted asshole had to say?

Normally, Zach would agree. He never hid his sparkle, he never tried to hide it and he damn sure never apologized for 39

Gambling On Maybe

by Fae Sutherland

it. But that was him. His choice. He took the consequences for it, and there were consequences. He got laughed at, he got shit from strangers on the street, he got hassled by people he didn't know for no reason other than he didn't hide his little light under a fucking bushel.

But while he was willing to take responsibility for who he was, willing to be himself and fuck the world, take what they dished outEhe didn't have any right to ask that of anyone else.

There were a hundred different ways to be a gay man in this world. From the straight-acting, butch, manly men like his Officer Hotness, to the twinkiest twinks who ever lived, like himself, and everywhere in between. He didn't have any right to tell anyone how to "be gay," nor did he have any right to expect anyone else to be willing to shoulder the burden Zach willingly carried in order to be himself.

Which meant he had no right to ask Stevie to become someone he wasn't in order to be with him. Zach didn't have any problem being anyone's secret boy-toy. It was kind of sexy if you asked him—all hidden liaisons and very undercover lover. But the fact of the matter was that, unless they never went anywhere together, there was no way to keep people from finding out about them. People who could damage Stevie's career.

Phoenix wasn't as big a city as the population said it was.

You ran into people you went to high school with, people you knew from the gym, from the clubs, from work. And with a job like Stevie's, it'd be even more impossible to hide completely.

40

Gambling On Maybe

by Fae Sutherland

Eventually, someone would know and someone would tell.

He did give a damn about Stevie, more than he'd thought he could so fast. He wasn't going to fuck up Stevie's plans for his life. Zach might be a selfish diva at times, but coming out was one thing he wouldn't ask anyone to do. Not for him.

So he'd told Jordy he was just doing the right thing for once. Jordy knew him well enough to let it drop, even though Zach could tell he didn't agree. Well, it wasn't