Chapter 99: A Racing Heart.

Just as expected, Instagram was already filling with pictures of Vincent and Bryce, people secretly snapping photos of them and posting them online.

Dave scrolled through the posts as he made his way back to the hotel, a bag of the very ripe, juicy strawberries and a tin of ice cream Bryce had demanded in one hand.

Seeing the two of them together should have stirred something vicious inside him. Anger, jealousy, possessiveness, something sharp enough to remind him that the man he loved with everything he had was slipping away while he stood there and watched it happen.

Instead, all he felt was an unsettling calmness he could not explain.

Perhaps it was because, in the space of barely a day and one night, Vincent had somehow gotten into his head and disrupted everything Dave thought he understood about himself.

The way Vincent had taken care of him despite not liking him, stepping in whenever everything became too overwhelming for Dave to hold himself together, and quietly reducing him to a dependence he had never allowed himself to experience was beginning to unsettle something deep within him.

It was messing with Dave’s head in ways he could neither understand nor dismiss.

What unsettled Dave most was the way Vincent soothed him. There had been no restraints in his words, only a strange tenderness that sounded almost like the way someone would soothe a baby.

Vincent had protected him with the same intensity, fiercely putting himself between Dave and danger despite having no reason to do so.

Even until now, Vincent’s earlier words refused to leave his mind.

*Didn’t I make myself clear?! I warned you not to touch him again.*

The words still echoed through Dave’s mind with the same force they had carried when Vincent first spoke them, and remembering them sent goosebumps across his skin.

For a brief moment, the sheer authority in Vincent’s voice had made his heart stop, and Dave had hated himself for the reaction it had drawn from him.

He wanted to believe that he hated the way those words had affected him, that he hated the strange feeling that had settled somewhere beneath his ribs when Vincent had fiercely defended him. But the truth was far more unsettling.

He did not hate it.

And worse, he did not want to.

Before now, Dave had never understood what made him fall in love, much less why he always fell so hard that he seemed incapable of stopping himself.

It had happened with Eli, then with Bryce, and each time he had been consumed before he even realized what was happening.

This time, however, he was watching it unfold in real time, and that frightened him more than either of the previous times had.

What had begun as simple fascination with the way Vincent treated him was rapidly becoming something far more addictive.

Dave could not tell whether he was simply becoming attracted to Vincent’s dominance and protectiveness or whether something deeper was pulling him toward the man.

Worst of all, something inside Dave had eased when Bryce admitted that he could not choose between them.

The relief had come before Dave could stop it.

And for one terrifying moment, Dave had imagined there being no choice at all. Bryce with both of them. The three of them together.

He had crushed the thought almost as soon as it surfaced, horrified by how natural it had felt.

Even now, he refused to look too closely at it. Because the more he thought about it, the harder it became to dismiss as a passing thought.

And Dave knew, with a growing sense of dread, that he was venturing into territory he had no business even considering.

Bryce had only said he needed time to figure out his feelings. That did not mean he intended to keep both of them, and Dave had no right to turn uncertainty into an outcome that suited a fantasy he had barely begun to entertain.

How could he even start thinking about something like that so suddenly, simply because Vincent had treated him with a little kindness?

If Dave knew what was best for him, he needed to stop whatever foolish fantasies were beginning to form around Vincent and focus on himself, particularly on what would happen if Bryce ultimately chose to stay with Vincent and leave him behind.

That was the reality he needed to prepare himself for.

Because if he let himself develop feelings for Vincent too, how could he stand by and watch the two people he cared about end up together?

It had already been difficult enough watching Bryce slip away from him.

Now Vincent was beginning to occupy a place in his thoughts that Dave had never intended to give him, and he was allowing the man’s treatment, which had probably come from nothing more than sympathy, to affect him far more than it should.

He was being so stupid?

If things actually went in that direction, how was he supposed to heal from losing two people at once when losing only Bryce already felt unbearable?

_

It was surprising even to himself how it didn’t bother him that these people were not entirely human.

When he had first discovered the truth, the shock had been so overwhelming that he could barely breathe, but after that initial disbelief faded, all he could see were people who had shown him more care than anyone else had throughout his life.

Their nature had become almost irrelevant beside the way they treated him.

_

By the time Dave reached the hotel, he had managed to push those thoughts aside.

He immediately spotted Bryce and Vincent at a table, and the moment he noticed that they had chosen one with three chairs, something warm moved through his chest.

The reaction came so naturally that he almost let himself enjoy it before forcing the feeling back down.

There was nothing to be fascinated by. Of course they had chosen a table with three chairs because they knew he was coming.

"Got them exactly how you wanted them, ripe and juicy." Dave said as he lowered himself in the seat, placing the bag on the table.

Bryce’s face brightened instantly. He reached for the bag without hesitation, looking as though he could barely wait to consume everything inside.

The anticipation was so obvious that both Vincent and Dave noticed it at once, and they reached for the bag at the same time.

Dave’s hand landed on it first, only for Vincent’s to settle over his.

The contact lasted barely a second before Vincent pulled his hand away, allowing Dave to take the bag.

Vincent did not seem bothered by the contact in any way, treating it as exactly what it had been, an accidental touch that meant nothing.

Dave, however, felt as though his heart had stopped.

"Just hold on a little longer," Vincent said to Bryce, his voice soft and gentle while still carrying an unmistakable firmness. "You eat first, then you eat the fruits. If you eat them now, you’ll be full and won’t be able to eat your food."

While Vincent spoke, Dave’s heart slowly found its rhythm again.

He had barely recovered from the brief contact between their hands when Vincent’s tone reached him, and somehow, that affected him almost as much as the touch had.

How could someone sound soft and firm at the same time?

More importantly, why was that combination fascinating him at all?

Vincent’s effect on him was developing far too quickly, and Dave could feel himself losing his grip on how everything was unfolding before him.

Every small thing the man did seemed to leave some new impression behind, one Dave had no idea how to suppress.

"Did... Did you already see the pictures spreading?" he asked, partly to pull himself out of his own thoughts.

"What pictures?" Bryce asked.

He did not sound particularly concerned. It was nothing more than a question, and Vincent looked equally unbothered.

In fact, there was something almost indifferent about his reaction, as though he would not mind if more pictures of him and Bryce spread simply because they would make it obvious that the two of them had something going on.

Dave looked between them.

"It seems like people have been secretly taking pictures of the two of you and posting them."

"What are they saying?" Vincent asked.

His tone suggested that he did not particularly care about the pictures themselves. He only wanted to know whether anything else had been said that could condemn Bryce or damage him further.

Dave already knew that Vincent had asked Kyle and Jim to handle the lies and anything else in Leah’s post intended to damage Bryce’s reputation.

"I haven’t read the comments yet. I only saw the caption..." Dave lowered his gaze to his phone and read it again. "’Vincent Walker looks much greater and happier beside Jones than with that deceitful woman.’"

A faint smirk touched Vincent’s lips for a brief moment.

It looked almost as though the words were precisely what he had expected to hear. He didn’t hide his amusement.

_

Bryce, on the other hand, was still watching Dave after asking his question. Even when the food arrived at the table, his attention did not shift.

He had not missed what had happened when Dave’s hand collided with Vincent’s. He had heard the brief pause in Dave’s breathing and the way his heart seemed to skip before suddenly racing faster.

Had Dave really reacted that strongly to Vincent’s touch, or was Bryce simply reading too much into something that had meant nothing?