Walking into the natatorium, heat rolling off the surface of the pool and fogging the windows and glass ceiling, I gazed at the water, tempted to dive in. I was alone, and it had been ages since I swam, but I wasn’t here to play.

I spotted a half-wall about fifteen feet beyond the other side of the pool and headed over to inspect. Probably some sort of dressing area or something.

As I got closer, though, I heard water running, but it wasn’t until I’d rounded the wall that I saw it was showers.

I stopped, seeing Will—naked, wet, flexed, and…

My stomach dropped.

And hard.

I quickly backed up, dashing back behind the wall.

Shit.

Pool showers.

What the hell? Aydin was naked in plain sight yesterday. Will was naked in plain sight today.

I breathed hard, but I didn’t move, remembering the last time I saw so much of him. He had been fit, his body unmarked back then, but before I could stop myself, I peered around the corner again, taking in the sight of him now, years later.

He’d changed on the outside, too. I let eyes fell down his body, the soap spilling down his skin and little bubbles dotting his stomach and arms.

I gazed, heat rising up my neck as he tipped his head back, smoothing hot water over his hair, steam billowing around his golden, wet skin. Tattoos covered both arms, drifting onto his chest and back, and they lined his collarbone and hands, but I couldn’t see them well enough to decipher everything.

I made out his basketball number on the back of his right hand, his Devil’s Night mask on his left arm against the backdrop of Thunder Bay, the cemetery, the Ferris wheel, and St. Killian’s easily visible. His other shoulder and arm featured a cascading vine of leaves surrounding a skull, words written on the forehead I couldn’t make out, and the rest of his body was covered in big and small pictures as well as words, some even draped around his collarbone like a necklace.

I wanted to see everything. I wanted to touch him.

He had shaved, and every muscle on his body had doubled in size since the last time I’d seen him, too.

I dropped my eyes and froze, staring at the other hard muscle standing damn-near upright, long and thick between his legs.

My lungs emptied, and he turned around, leaning into the wall with his hand as the water cascaded down his face, and he grabbed his cock, stroking it slow and tight.

I gripped the wall for support, heat pooling between my legs as I chewed the inside of my mouth.

I stared at his hard-on, and in the not-so-far recesses of my mind, I wondered what he was thinking about.

Me?

Or her?

A whisper hit my hair. “You want him?”

I sucked in a breath and whipped around, swiping my fist with the claws.

Aydin jumped back, slivers of red opening up on his chest where I’d caught him with the hooks.

He looked down and then up at me, reaching out and grabbing me by the throat with one hand, and my wrist with the glove in the other.

I whimpered.

Slamming me into the wall, the showers on the other side, he pressed his body into mine, staring down at me hard.

“You said you wouldn’t hurt me,” I told him.

“I’m not hurting you,” he cooed as the shower ran behind me. “I’m scaring you.”

He pressed my wrist to the wall out to our side, and he looked over, studying my glove.

He grinned. “It’s clever.”

Staring down into my eyes, he breathed across my lips and sweat covered my stomach and back. I needed air.

“What happened between you two?” he asked. “It’s not a coincidence that you’re here, you know?”

I studied him. Yes, I knew that. It had something to do with Will. “So you think whoever dumped me here is giving Will a present?”

“Perhaps.” He eased his grip on my neck. “They are definitely no friend to you, though.”

Spinning me around, he forced me to the edge of the wall, both of us leaning in and watching Will.

“Do you think he’ll protect you?” he whispered.

I tried to jerk out of his hold, but he held tight. Will fisted his cock, leaning into the wall, eyes closed, and breathing hard.

“Does he have to?” I asked, my eyes trailing down his body again. “Why are we watching this?”

“You’re watching this,” he explained. “I’m watching you.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer, and I turned my head, looking up at him. His amber eyes watched Will and his brow knit, troubled.

“I don’t know,” he finally answered. “Maybe to remember what it feels like when you weren’t alone. When you weren’t the only one looking out for yourself.” He looked down at me. “Maybe to remember what we left behind. And to remember what we didn’t.”

What was he talking about?

“Will and I are about the same age,” he said, “but I think we were probably very different in high school. He was the talker, right?” He smiled at me. “I was the quiet one.”

Now it was the other way around, it seemed.

“I wasn’t always like this,” he told me. “I was miserable. Six feet of weakness, fear, and cowardice.” He gazed at Will again as he talked. “‘You’ll be a doctor,’ they said. ‘You’ll study that. Work there. Go here on vacations. Spend your free time doing this. Marry her. Have three children. Live up there in that house after the honeymoon tour of London, Paris, and Rome.’”

I tried to picture him as he described himself, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t imagine him docile.

“Until one night, buried in my books, I saw her,” Aydin continued.

I listened, but I turned my gaze back on Will as Aydin spoke in my ear.

“It wasn’t her body or her face,” he told me. “It was how everything with her was effortless. Every movement. Every look.”

Will sucked in air between his teeth, his strokes harder and faster and the muscles in his arm tight.

“She loved to love,” Aydin said. “She loved to touch and to feel and to wrap her every breath around someone and hold them with it, because she was an artist.”

Everything warmed, and I envied how he described her. Whoever she was.

What would Will say about me?

“It wasn’t her job,” Aydin said, “but it was her calling.”

He paused, and then he dropped his voice as if thinking out loud. “It wasn’t her job,” he said again. “Then.”

It was like Will. He loved to love. He loved to be happy.

He’d wanted to make me happy once.

“I’d never wanted anything more in my whole life,” Aydin went on, “and I was studying to be a surgeon who would’ve gladly cut off his own hands to have her.”

Will squeezed his eyes shut, and I dropped my gaze to his cock again, my breathing nearly in sync with his strokes. What was he thinking about?

“Maybe I’m to blame,” Aydin told me. “In the end, I didn’t claim what was born to be mine because I was a shit twenty-two-year-old kid who knew nothing.” He trailed off and then continued, his voice lower again. “But later when I could finally stand up and claim her, I spit on her instead, because every effortless breath she wrapped around everyone else became another nail through my heart, and I couldn’t look at her.”