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Dink’s unrequited love for Mac or Mac’s love for Zianne could break.
    Dink was looking at him now like Mac had taken leave of his senses. Then he sighed, and the sound spoke of so much pain, Mac really didn’t want to dwell on it.
    “I wish you could have trusted me enough to tell me the truth.” Dink gazed into Mac’s eyes, almost as if he could see his thoughts. “That hurt, but at the same time—ah, hell, Mac. Who’s to say what I might have done while I was selling my soul to make it.” He chuckled softly. “Well, I’ve made it now, so I think you can trust me. You know I’ll do anything for you, Mac. Whatever it takes, but I’m not leaving you alone tonight.”
    He reached into the car and pulled out a well-worn leather travel bag, threw an arm over Mac’s shoulders, and steered him toward the house. “And yes, I will get drunk with you, and I will listen to your story, and I will believe it, because I know that whatever you tell me will be the truth. And I promise to carry your secrets to my grave.”
    Mac shot him a quick glance. That was a new twist on an old promise. “And then what?” he asked, because there was something else going on, something he realized he wanted as much as Dink.
    Dink kept walking, but he turned and shot Mac a grin that reminded him of some of the trouble they’d gotten into as kids. “Then we’re going to get naked and we’re going to spend the night fucking until neither of us can get it up again.”
    There was no answer to a promise like that.
    They stepped into the house. Dink closed the door behind them. Mac took a deep breath, remembering. Twenty years ago, he and Dink had become lovers or, as Dink had described it, fuck buddies. While Dink had openly loved Mac, Mac had loved Zianne. Dink accepted it. He’d said he was happy with whatever Mac could give him. They’d only had sex a few times, but the best of those times had been with Zianne.
    The three of them, together. It made Mac hard, remembering.
    Then Dink went off to San Francisco for a shot at his dream to become a newscaster and investigative reporter, while Mac and Zianne started work on the projects they hoped would lead to the rescue of Zianne’s people, the Nyrians, who were held captive on a ship in orbit behind Earth’s twenty-first-century moon.
    She’d risked traveling back in time to 1992 to find Mac when he was young enough and there were years enough to develop the technology they’d need to mount a rescue in 2012. She’d planned to work with him, juggling time while moving between Earth and the Gar star cruiser, but it hadn’t worked that way.
    Zianne had disappeared, and Dink’s star had risen as he’d followed assignments around the world, reporting on wars and famines, international corruption and third-world politics; Mac had continued working on the project, working on DEO-MAP, knowing he had just twenty years to get it right.
    Twenty years to bring Earth’s technology to a point where he stood now—so close to attempting the rescue that had become his life’s goal.
    Not nearly as close as he now stood to Dink. They’d stayed friends all these years, gotten together whenever they could, but never again as lovers. Not since Zianne disappeared. Mac stared at his friend, fighting a smile that somehow seemed totally inappropriate. “It’s been a damned long time, Dink.”
    His buddy shrugged. A curl of dark blond hair slipped over his forehead and his mouth curved up in that familiar, rakish grin that made him look twenty-six, not forty-six. “I know. Twenty years. But I’ve never forgotten. Not you, not Zianne, not the way you made me feel.” He sighed and swept a hand across his forehead. “Look, I’ve been traveling for hours. I need a shower and we need to talk. Then later, if it feels right ...”
    Mac stopped in the hallway, turned, and cupped Dink’s face in his palms. He felt the roughness of a day’s growth of beard against his fingers, saw the exhaustion in his