Chapter Five

Room 412

He’s halfway there before the whole plan starts to look considerably worse than it did in his own driveway.

Wine advice, he thinks, gripping the wheel a little tighter than necessary at a red light. You’re driving across town on a Tuesday morning to ask a man you had dinner with once for wine advice. That’s the story. That’s what you’re going with.

It isn’t even a lie, not technically. Sam had called again that morning, this time about the anniversary. She does need advice. The bottle does need choosing. But underneath the practical, defensible version of events is the much less defensible truth: Adrian has been turning up in Jack’s thoughts with irritating regularity since the second he pulled away from that curb the previous evening, and Jack, despite himself, has been remarkably good at finding reasons not to stop it.

Sam’s call, the excuse practically falling into his lap, is the first legitimate reason he’s had to see him again before those three days run out.

Legitimate is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and Jack knows it.

At the next light, he rehearses the explanation out loud, quietly, feeling faintly ridiculous. Hey — sorry to just show up. My sister needs help picking a wine, and I realised I never got your number, so...

It sounds normal enough. At least until he imagines himself standing in a hotel lobby, trying to convince someone to let him see a guest with nothing to support the story beyond his own face and a fairly thin explanation.

What if Adrian isn’t even there? What if he’s already gone out? What if he opens the door and looks at Jack exactly the way a reasonable person should look at a near-stranger who has somehow found his hotel room?

He almost turns around twice.

Both times, he keeps driving.

By the time the hotel comes into view, his hands are damp on the wheel, which is a new and mildly humiliating experience for a man who has, on multiple occasions, remained perfectly calm while lying underneath a running engine. He wipes them on his jeans before getting out of the truck, squares his shoulders in the reflection of the glass doors and reminds himself one more time that this is about wine.

It is not, in any meaningful sense, about wine.

The woman at the front desk is polite and entirely unhelpful at first.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t give out guest information.”

“I don’t need his room number. I just need to talk to him. It’s a small thing — wine advice, for my sister.” Jack hears himself explaining, aware of exactly how it sounds, and presses on anyway. “I know him. We had dinner last night.”

She studies him for a moment, not unkindly, before reaching for the phone.

“I’ll need to contact security.”

“Of course. That’s completely fair.”

A few minutes later, a hotel security officer joins them. Jack explains the whole thing again, and it sounds no more convincing the second time.

“I can take you up,” the officer says, “but the guest will have to confirm at the door that he knows you. I’m not giving out his room number.”

“That’s fair. Completely fair.”

They ride the elevator together in silence, the officer clearly still deciding whether this was the right call, and stop outside room 412. He knocks, professional and brisk.

“Hotel security. Sorry to disturb you.”

There’s a pause, then quick footsteps, uneven, someone clearly not expecting company. The door opens on the chain first, then — once whatever’s on the other side registers as familiar — swings fully open.

Adrian is standing there in nothing but a pair of tight black briefs that leave very little to the imagination, his close-cropped hair still damp from the shower, his glasses slightly crooked as though he’d grabbed them from the nightstand without checking. He’d clearly been halfway through getting dressed for brunch. A shirt is draped over the back of a chair behind him, and he already has one shoe on.

“Jack?” His eyes go wide behind the glasses, darting between Jack and the security officer. “What happened? Is it Mike? Did something happen at the shop—“

Jack, for a solid three seconds, says absolutely nothing.

He’d noticed the build under the shirt the first time — knew, in a general sense, that there was more to him than the loose fabric let on. But knowing and seeing turn out to be very different things, and Jack finds himself doing the thing he’d been quietly proud of not doing the first time they met: staring, openly, for a beat longer than is even remotely appropriate with a hotel employee standing right beside him.

Solid shoulders. A broad, well-built chest, grey-flecked hair across it exactly the way Jack had pictured, except he’d pictured it badly compared to the reality now standing in the doorway. Below it, a firm stomach and the dark waistband of those briefs.

Something low in Jack’s chest gives a very unhelpful, very immediate lurch.

The security officer clears his throat, the universal sound of a man pretending not to notice something. “This is who you were asking about, sir?”

“Yeah.” Jack’s voice comes out rougher than intended. “Yeah, that’s him.”

“Very good.” The security officer is already retreating toward the elevator with the brisk efficiency of a man who has seen far stranger things in this job and has no intention of getting involved in whatever this is. “Enjoy your morning, gentlemen.”

Adrian watches him go, then glances once down the corridor.

“Inside,” he says quietly.

Before Jack has time to answer, Adrian steps back and gestures him in, closing the door quickly behind them.

“Jack?” he says again, turning to face him, one arm instinctively crossing over his chest. “You’re scaring me a little. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Jack manages, finally. “Nothing’s wrong. Sorry — I should’ve said that from the hallway.”

“You had hotel security bring you to my room and then stood there staring at me.” Adrian’s panic is easing into something closer to bewildered amusement now, though his arm stays where it is. “I thought someone had died.”

“No one died.” Jack drags a hand back through his own hair, trying, with limited success, to look anywhere other than directly at him. “I’m sorry. This was a bad plan. I should’ve figured out another way, except I don’t have your number, which is actually the whole reason I’m standing here.”

Adrian blinks. “You got hotel security to walk you up here because you don’t have my number?”

“When you say it like that, it sounds worse.”

“I’m not sure how else to say it.”

“Fair.” Jack finally lets himself look somewhere safer — the doorframe, the carpet, anywhere that isn’t Adrian’s bare chest currently making a very persuasive case against Jack’s ability to form full sentences.

“My sister needs wine advice. For her anniversary. Tonight. I told her you’re a sommelier, and I apparently panicked and decided showing up in person was easier than admitting I never got your number in the first place.”

There’s a pause. Adrian looks at him for a second, clearly recalibrating from emergency to this, and something in his face shifts — surprise, then a slow, disbelieving kind of amusement.

“You had someone verify your identity,” Adrian says slowly, “so you could ask me, in person, for wine recommendations. For your sister’s anniversary.”

“When you put it that way, it sounds worse.”

“I’m just repeating it back to you.”

“You’re enjoying this far too much.”

Adrian glances down and seems to remember just how little he’s wearing. A faint, satisfyingly red flush rises across his face.

“Oh my God.” He takes a step back, suddenly aware of how close they’re standing. “I was getting ready for brunch. Give me one second.”

“Take your time,” Jack says, though he wouldn’t have minded a few more seconds before Adrian covered up.