He cleared his throat. “We’re not here to talk about liquor, are we?”
“No.” Jason’s shoulders sank. He faced Blake, features taut and eyes nearly as intense as they’d been in the alley. “I was actually surprised that you left last night.”
“What was I supposed to do? You wanted me to go, so I did.”
The clicking started again—subtle, but pronounced enough to emphasize the silence between them until Jason finally spoke. “I half expected you to come back in. Try to persuade me.”
Blake’s shoulders sank beneath an invisible weight. “What good would it have done? I said my piece. You made your decision.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t there to harass you.”
“I know.” Jason was almost whispering now, avoiding Blake’s eyes. The clicking slowed. Stopped. Started again. “But you’re not the first to come to me and say you’ve fallen in love with me. You were . . .” He met Blake’s gaze. “You were the first to take no for an answer.”
Blake had no idea what to say to that.
Jason exhaled. “There’s something I need to know.”
“Okay.”
“If I hadn’t contacted you today, would I have ever seen you again as a john?”
The thought of not seeing Jason in any context tightened Blake’s throat, but he made himself shake his head anyway. “Probably not.”
“Why?”
Blake swallowed. “Because things have changed. Maybe not for you, but they have for me. I mean, I would never tell you that you can’t keep working at Market Garden if it makes you happy, but I don’t think I could come back as a john. I . . . I can’t put a price tag on how I feel when I’m with you.”
Jason’s breath hitched. He lowered his gaze, kneading the back of his neck. “Look, after the things you said, I . . . I guess I don’t know what to think. The thing is, johns fall in love with us all the time. It’s . . . it’s sort of a natural progression, you know? Guys like me, we provide things that men aren’t getting elsewhere, and sometimes the line blurs between a transaction and, well, intimate human contact.” He half shrugged. “So we’ve all had to learn to gently pull back and walk away.”
Last night was “gently” pulling back?
“Why are we having this conversation, then?” Blake studied him. “Am I missing my flight for you to remind me of what you said last night?”
Jason winced. “No. No, I don’t . . .” He raked a hand through his hair. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t sleep last night because I couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation we had. After you left, I couldn’t . . . It doesn’t matter. I came back here.” He gestured at the table where the Rémy Martin had been a moment ago. “Then I sat here most of the night with that bottle because I couldn’t sleep. And when I wasn’t thinking about how awful it tasted, I was thinking about you. And what you said.”
Blake shifted uncomfortably. “And . . .?”
“And . . .” Jason gulped. “The thing is, anytime some guy has claimed he’s fallen for me, I’ve asked him the same thing: how do you know it’s real? And they never have an answer.” He pressed his fingers into the bridge of his nose, and didn’t speak for a while, but Blake had a feeling he was going to say something, so he let the silence continue.
After a solid minute, Jason lowered his hand. “After I went back into the club last night, I had every intention of finding someone else for the evening, but I couldn’t stop thinking about this. I thought you’d come back in like every other man does because how dare I turn you down? But you didn’t. I couldn’t concentrate on anybody else. So I went home. And I had a few drinks. And I . . . I spent some time thinking.” He squared his shoulders and looked Blake in the eye. “And I kept going to back to . . . I mean, yeah, how do you know it’s real, but how do I know it’s not?”
Blake’s stomach flipped. “How can I show you that it is?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. But I can usually blow it off as infatuation because for guys like you with guys like me, that’s what it is. But . . .”
“I don’t think infatuation usually hurts like this.”
Jason’s eyes widened. “Hurts? What do you mean?”
“I mean, the way it felt watching you walk away last night. Or before I made it to London, not being able to think about anything else, to the point that I dropped everything and—” Blake cleared his throat. He stared at the floor for a moment, choosing his words carefully. “For what it’s worth, all the way here—from my house to the airport, that entire fucking flight, I . . .” He swallowed, and finally met Jason’s eyes. “I never once thought about having sex with you.”