Page 67 of Men in Shorts

He stumbled out into a new corridor, and for a moment he was relieved he’d not gone in circles, stuck in some Moebius Strip of a world, like the Black Lodge fromTwin Peaks.

Until he saw what was in the corridor.

So that’s where everyone is.

Lurid red light cast shadows down the hall, which was lined with narrow doors spaced several feet apart. Beside many of the doors loitered a man, waiting.

Watching him.

Fergus looked back at the darkroom. At least in there no one would see the beginnings of the hard-on he was sporting beneath his towel. But John could be waiting for him behind one of these doors.

So Fergus tightened his towel again, literally girding his loins. Then he began to walk. He straightened his shoulders and added a swagger, pretending each man he passed was an opposing footballer, to be neither feared nor fouled.

Murmurs of admiration preceded and followed him, making his face flush. He walked fast enough to avoid contact but slowly enough to peek inside each open cabin.

Not all were empty.

“Sorry,” he said to the first few couples (or threesomes) he came upon, but soon stopped apologizing. They’d obviously left their doors open on purpose.

He quickened his pace, narrowing his mental search parameters to exclude all but John’s features, letting every other face and arse and cock blur into the background. None of these men mattered. Not the gym rat flexing his arms against a door frame, not the pair of faux-hawked twinks dry humping against the wall.

“Oi, big fella! Here’s your man.”

Fergus stopped without turning.

“Aye, you,” the voice said. “I think I found who you’re looking for.”

Fergus spun on his heel. The door of the final cabin had been half-shut, so he’d passed without glancing inside. Outside the cabin stood a kindly looking gent who reminded Fergus of one of his dad’s old mates.

“Thanks,” he said, pushing open the door.

Stretched out on the cabin’s thin mattress, still wearing his towel, was?—

Fergus stopped just past the threshold.You’ve got to be kidding me.

Faint light caressed the smooth skin of a Nordic god, a long-limbed, chisel-jawed blond whose sky-blue eyes stood out even in this dim red room.

“Hello,” the man said in a soft-but-commanding voice, sounding enough like Evan that Fergus took one confused step closer.

Mistake.

The man undid his own towel, revealing a long, stiff cock that curved slightly to the right. Just like Evan’s.

“Wh-why did he—” Fergus’s tongue shuddered through his stammer. “I’m not looking for you.”

“Oh?” Evan’s doppelgänger stroked himself, eyelids hooding. “Then why are you still here?”

Fergus stepped back, fumbling for the door. “Because I-I thought you were someone I knew.”

“I could be.” The man’s gaze locked on Fergus’s towel, now tented with an obvious and regrettable semi-erection. “It seems you want to know me.”

“I want—” Fergus stopped, his throat, mouth, and mind paralyzed by the phantom in front of him.

Ghost-Evan reached out with a hand bearing a gleaming platinum wedding ring. “How ’bout it, then?”

Fergus blinked. That was John’s line. He’d last used it to propose a terrifying act of trust, to let their bodies join with no barrier between them.

Thatwas what Fergus wanted. Andthiswas what stood in his way. Evan, who’d kept fucking him without a condom for months after he’d started cheating. Evan, who’d taught Fergus never again to put his heart—much less his life—into the hands of any man.

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