Free Only You by Willa Okati Page B

me, if you’re pouring.”
    “I could do that.” Nick filled one of the two glasses he carried to the brim and passed it over. Ruby droplets spilled across the back of Barrett’s hand. “But I always saw you as more of a glass half full kind of person.”
    A lame joke, that was, and it mostly fell flat. Barrett hummed noncommittally as he cleaned the drops of wine off the back of his hand by licking them. Quick laps of pink tongue over sun-browned skin. Nick watched as he poured his own portion. Not half, not full. Three-quarters.
    “Messy,” Nick said, taking his seat on the right hand side of the couch. He sat sideways, all the better to watch Barrett without a crick in his neck.
    “Never did get the hang of being housebroken,” Barrett said. He touched his mouth. “Damnedest thing. I’m not doing it on purpose, but everything I say…” He took a slower sip of the wine.
    Yeah. Nick knew what he meant. He tipped his head back and watched Barrett’s hand drift from mouth to neck. No idea how and why he hadn’t seen it before. Too focused on his own problems was the only reason he could think of, and he didn’t like that. Didn’t seem worthy enough. With Barrett’s face turned in profile, he’d bet he would have been able to see the soulmark if Barrett hadn’t covered it. How dark was it by now? Nearly black, or getting there fast.
    Barrett stopped, hand frozen at his nape. Red bloomed high on his cheeks. “I owe you a few dozen apologies for bitching about all the fiddling. I didn’t know.”
    Apologies were the last thing Nick wanted to waste his time on. He waved it aside with a wry grimace he hoped Barrett would understand, and left it there. “Does yours itch?” he asked. “Like a hair growing the wrong way?”
    “It didn’t at first. Now it’s like being tickled with the tip of one paintbrush bristle.” Barrett rubbed restlessly at the square of gauze taped over his skin. “Not that scratching helps, but talk about resistance being futile.”
    Nick traced the pattern of his soulmark, despite nearly having the complicated whorls memorized. He licked his lips, carefully, and spoke before he lost his nerve. “Have you looked yet?”
    Stroke, stroke, stroke . “Not yet,” Barrett said. “I don’t want to…”
    Don’t want to know for sure it doesn’t match yours. Don’t want to see that yours doesn’t match mine. Don’t want to make it that much more real. All of the above.
    “There’s still a chance,” Nick said. “If you haven’t looked yet, you can’t be sure.”
    Barrett shook his head. Nick heard what he didn’t say more clearly than the words emerging from his mouth after— don’t make this harder than it already is with false hope. “There’s a chance. But you know it’s not likely.”
    “I’ve heard stories, though,” Nick insisted. Just couldn’t give up, he guessed. Not yet. If there was even a thread of hope… He moved his wine glass to the coffee table, out of harm’s way. “Proximity and triggers.”
    Barrett left off fiddling with his neck and plucked at a strand of his hair instead. “I’ve heard the stories too. That it’s what draws mates together.”
    “Do you believe them?”
    “Yes and no. I don’t know. Daniel was talking about that earlier.” He made a face. “Don’t ask. Not my story to tell.”
    Which would only make anyone who heard that crazy to know, but Nick bit it back. “I think that’s what happened to Ivan and Robbie at the game. Neither of them knew the other would be there. See, they’d made a deal a long, long time ago that when the powers that be finally opened that coliseum, they’d go to the first game. Only it’d been so long, they both forgot.”
    Barrett propped his chin on his hand in momentary distraction. “Yet they both kept their promise.”
    “So it would seem.”
    “Where’d you get all this? Abram?”
    “Who else? That burly bastard dishes more gossip than a three-church sewing circle.”
    Barrett