Lie.
I hated how attractive I found him, and when I returned to the sitting room, that attraction only intensified. Liam sat on the couch, still sprawled out, his fingers stroking long and easy lines over Gus’s back. He looked comfortable. He looked at home. I stomped a little louder than necessary, and Gus startled, barking, before getting up and joining me near the stove, where I set the candles down.
He nosed against my leg as I lit them and turned, finding soft shapes dancing in the corners, casting shadows across Liam’s worried face. I bit the inside of my cheek and went wordlessly into the dining room to get a chair, dragging it to the other corner and setting the remaining candles on the seat.
“Is this your idea of a generator?” Liam asked, his voice a little less shaky than before.
“There’s something wrong with it,” I admitted. “I was low on propane, but there should have been enough. I can’t do much about it until the morning.”
“Will that,” Liam asked, pointing at the wood stove, “heat the entire house?”
I barked out a sharp laugh despite myself, then collapsed with a huff into the overstuffed side chair tucked against the bay window. “No, but it’ll warm this room.”
Liam blinked, a flurry of blond lashes fluttering, and I stared out the window with a frown, desperate to pretend this wasn’t happening, that this wasn’t my life.
“So, uh,” Liam continued talking, “you live here alone?”
I inhaled slowly. “With Gus.”
“Just the two of you?”
“Yep.” I popped the P and continued to do my best to not look at him, hoping single syllables would end the conversation.
“It looks old,” Liam offered.
I closed my eyes, resigning myself to the fact that Liam would not leave me alone and would not stop talking until he fell asleep.
“It was built in 1885,” I said, giving him what I hoped to be a flat and uninterested look.
“Have you owned it the whole time?”
“Not personally.”
“Oh, the lumberjack has jokes.” Liam settled onto the couch, stretching out his legs and rolling back onto his side.
“I’m not a lumberjack,” I said.
Liam rolled his eyes and pulled the waistband of his pants—my pants—down again a little lower than before and I choked, clearing my throat and standing up. I turned away, pacing into the family room at the back of the house, arms folded across my chest protectively.
This was fine. It had to be fine. It would be fine.
I was allowed to be attracted to other men. It was completely reasonable. Even when Michael was alive, we’d talked together about other people we found attractive. If it was okay to do when my husband was alive, how could this be any worse? I reached the back of the house and stared out the window into the darkness. Snow fell in thick flakes, settling on the branches like a blanket.
I’d never liked the winter.
It was the death of everything.
I looped my way around the first floor and climbed up the stairs to my bedroom. I hadn’t remade the bed after I’d taken off the sheets earlier in the day, and the empty mattress stood out like a white beacon in the room's darkness. I grabbed some candles from the hall closet when I went to get clean sheets and lit one on the nightstand before circling the bed to remake it.
I smoothed my hand over the dark blue sheets, then unfolded the thick, patchwork quilt my grandmother had made as a wedding gift for my parents. The fabric was older than the quilt, pieces she’d picked up along the way, some that had been passed down from her grandparents. Like everything else in the house, there was history and there was family in the threads of it all.
I didn’t want any of that to end with me.
I let my jacket slide down my shoulders, then stripped out of my dirty jeans and flannel before pulling on a long sleeve thermal and a pair of sweats. I lit the candle, then pulled a pile of blankets out of the closet and went back downstairs. Liam was still on the couch with his pants pulled down. The candlelight flickered, casting shadows along the dips and valleys of his hip and ribs. I tried my best to not pay attention. I really tried.
From the doorway, I cleared my throat and his head snapped up, eyes widening at the noise before falling halfway closed. He looked back down at his hip, lifting the ice pack and revealing a bruise so dark I could even see it in the dim candlelight.
“Do you want some ibuprofen?” I asked.
“Will it help?” He laughed and stretched his arm out toward me to hand back the ice pack.
I nodded, coming to him and setting the blankets on the arm of the couch before taking the ice.
“I’ll get you some.” I turned away so as to not let my eyes linger.
Gus barked as he stretched, then he followed me into the kitchen, circling around my legs as I tossed the sealed ice bag into the sink.
“You ate already,” I reminded the dog, filling a glass with water with a pitcher from the fridge.
He barked at me like I was a liar and barked again when I fished the ibuprofen bottle out of the junk drawer.
“Be quiet,” I grumbled, taking everything back into the sitting room.
Liam had thankfully pulled up his pants, and I gave him the glass and water, returning to the chair under the window. I listened to him open the bottle, listened to wood popping in the stove, listened to the way the wind whipped around the tall corners of my home just beyond the interior wall. I pressed the tips of my fingers against the frosty glass and took a steadying breath.
“So,” Liam said, setting the glass down on the table. He hauled the pile of blankets onto his lap and set to fanning them about him. “Not a lumberjack.”
“No,” I said again.
“Mechanic.”
“Yes.”
“And you live here in this very old house, all alone with your dog?” Liam’s stare drifted to the dining room, no doubt counting the eight chairs around the long, hand carved table that hadn’t been used in years.
“Right.”
“But you’re wearing a ring,” he said, still staring away from me.
I looked down at my hand, almost surprised to find the gold band there. I traced the shape of it with my fingers, spinning it around and testing it against my knuckle to see if it would come off.
“I am,” I told him.
“Divorced?” he asked.
“You talk a lot.” I turned my attention back to the window.
Liam was attractive, but it hurt to look at him; it hurt for him to be here. For another man to be inside the home that I shared with Michael. But the sheets were in the garbage and it was just a Wednesday night. Another handful of hours and then things would be back to normal.
“I do,” Liam agreed with a small laugh. “You evade questions a lot.”
“Maybe you’re just asking the wrong ones.” I bit the inside of my cheek and adjusted my weight, stretching my legs and crossing them at the ankle.
“All right, then.” Liam sat up, tucking his small frame into the corner of the couch, decades of blankets piled on top of him. “Let me ask the right ones.”
“I’m not a big conversationalist,” I warned him. “And you make me want to drink.”
It wasn’t so much that I wanted a drink, but I worried I couldn’t exist in the same room with Liam without one. He was everything I wasn’t, everything Michael wasn’t, but I didn’t know why my chest tightened when he bared his skin, when he smiled, when his lashes fluttered.
I didn’t enjoy being aware of any of those things.
Without a word, I went into the dining room and poured myself three fingers of whiskey. When I returned to my chair, the cushion was still warm. I sat down carefully, taking small drinks to draw out the burn of the amber liquor as it ran down my throat.
“Whiskey?” Liam asked.
I grunted and took another drink.
“I’ve never been a fan,” Liam continued, unhindered. “I do love wine though. That mulled wine from
the gay bar was great.”
“What gay bar?” I asked.
“The place in town.” Liam pointed out the window, but in the wrong direction. “Where you picked me up from.”
“It’s just a bar,” I said.
“They had the rainbows.” He pointed again.
“Just a bar.”
“All right.” Liam tightened the blankets around him and cast a doubtful glance toward the stove. “Are you sure that’ll keep this room warm enough so I won’t freeze tonight?”
“I’m sure.”
“If this was a romance book, we’d snuggle together naked for warmth.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but no sound came out. Instead, I poured what was left of the whiskey down my throat and set the glass down on the table; a little harder than necessary.
“But we don’t have to, obviously,” Liam went on, his tone a little less sure than before. “Because you’re clearly married.”
The last part of his sentence hung between us and I didn’t have a reply for him. I wasn’t legally married anymore, no. I hadn’t been for years, but my heart? That was another story entirely.
The sheets are in the garbage, I silently reminded myself.
“I was,” I told him. “My husband…”
I stopped, biting my tongue between the tip of my teeth. With a grimace, I pushed out of the chair again, taking the glass back into the dining room. Instead of pouring another like I’d planned, I took it all back to the sitting room. I set the glass on the arm of the chair and refilled it, then left the bottle open next to one of the flickering candles.
Outside, the wind whipped louder and harder around the house, and the beams in the attic creaked and moaned against the assault. Gus barked, because Gus always barked, and then Liam spoke again, because that seemed to be what Liam always did.
“He left?”
I snorted derisively, my face twisted into a grimace. “Yeah, he’s gone,” I said.
“Does it get lonely?”
“Yes.” I took another drink.
“Do you ever get tired of being alone?” Liam asked, and I dared a look up at him. He sat there, perched on the couch like a little bird with those bright eyes of his, and even in the dim light of the room, I could see the question there. I saw the same thing in his eyes that I saw when I looked at everyone in town, the sympathy and the pity, the sorrow. But with Liam, there was something different, another question or a promise that lingered just below the surface. There was a want in Liam’s eyes that set off alarms in my head, but I answered him anyway.
“Yes,” I finally answered, my voice barely loud enough for my own ears. “I do.”
6
Liam
I knew it was a bad idea to flirt with the man who was going to fix my car and get me back on the road, but the wood smoke must have done something funny to my brain. Jasper sounded so sad when he said that, and it was practically impossible to not try to comfort him in some way. It was just my bad luck that I wanted to comfort him from the inside.
If hookups happened on the road, they happened. It hadn’t been a nightly occurrence, but there’d been a handful of eager kisses in the bathrooms of bars, and one time I’d even made it back to someone’s house before he’d dropped to his knees and choked himself on my cock. He’d asked me to sing again, so I had, doing my best to remember the lyrics to a love song from the 90s as he drew every drop of cum out of my balls.
But there was something different about Jasper.
He wore a wedding ring, but the house was quiet and completely devoid of the presence of another person, man or woman. He looked at me like he wanted me, but his words, his movements… Jasper managed to tell two stories at once, and I didn’t know enough about him to recognize which was true. Though, he didn’t know anything about me either, so that seemed fair.
What I did know was that I liked the way my stomach hurt when Jasper looked at me too long. And that was a new feeling and probably really fucking bad and dangerous, so I needed to ignore that. I needed to move Jasper back into the middle of the hot, reclusive stranger box he needed to stay in.
A refreshing thing about Jasper was he didn’t want anything from me. I knew that to be true because, while he wasn’t answering my questions, he wasn’t asking any of his own either. Jasper had no idea who I was, and he’d given me the distinct impression he didn’t want to. It was a relief to be in a place like this, where no one knew the name Luckett.
“Anyway,” Jasper said, clearing his throat. “I’m not anyone interesting. We don’t need to talk about me.”
“I disagree, Sparky. You seem interesting to me.”
“Sparky?” Jasper arched a thick brow and poured himself some more whiskey.
I shrugged, not wanting to tell him the nickname had tumbled out of my mouth unwillingly, not wanting to tell him it only had a little bit to do with cars and a lot to do with the way my chest ached when he frowned, like someone had set off an explosion behind my ribs.
“What about you?” Jasper asked, and I nearly choked.
“What about me?”
“How did you find yourself here?”
“You brought me home,” I said, my voice a little huskier than normal.
Home?
This wasn’t my home.
“I meant Vermont.”
I shivered, a loud gust of wind and snow banging against the large bay window behind us. I pulled the blankets tighter and glanced at the fire. As if sensing my thoughts, Jasper heaved his body out of the chair and went toward it. He opened the front grate and threw a couple small pieces of wood in. The flames sparked and fanned out, and he closed the stove back up.
When he stood and turned, I don’t know why, but I gathered the blankets around me and patted the empty cushion to my right.
“You can sit here,” I said. “We can share the blankets.”
I was a liar. I knew exactly why I said it.
Jasper hesitated in the middle of the room, then sat on the couch, closer to the arm than to me. He stared ahead at the fire and I took the time to appreciate his profile. His strong nose and high cheekbones, and his eyes. God, he had gorgeous eyes. Dark and mysterious, and a little sad, or a lot sad really. Like, even if Jasper was happy, his eyes would still be sad. He had a small beard, which maybe would have been better classified as a few days more than stubble, but either way I wanted to touch it.
Jasper had looked hot in the bar, all gruff and short-tempered, but here, with his knit wool socks and his melancholy eyes, he was… breathtaking. I turned away, unable to look at him a second longer without embarrassing myself completely or, worse, risking him sliding out of the sex only box.
“So?” he asked, still looking to the fire. “Vermont?”
“Road trip,” I answered, very much the truth.
I’d lied to everyone else I’d met. Every man I’d kissed, every promise I’d made on the road had been a lie. No one knew I was a handful of months away from my Master’s degree. No one knew my dad was the most well-liked and popular Senator in the state of California. No one knew I was supposed to start an internship with his office once I finished my degree. No one knew about the life I was running away from like it would eat me alive if it caught me.
And I liked it that way.
“Where did your trip start?”
I nibbled at the inside of my lower lip. Jasper was a good question asker, that asshole.
“California,” I answered.
“North or south?”
“South.”
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Why do you care?”
Jasper’s eyes widened, but in a tired way, like he’d known the question would make me snap. His expression made me feel bad, and I sighed, shuffling the blankets around me to redistribute the warmth. But there were a lot of them and they were heavy, and the whole collection slipped off my shoulder, taking the collar of Jasper’s too big sweatshirt with them.
A burst of cool air landed against my arm
and I shivered, but before I could move to re-adjust myself, Jasper’s big hand was there, all the blankets clutched between his fingers, and then he stilled, like he realized what he’d just done.
“You should get under here,” I rasped, all the while wondering why it hurt to breathe. “That stove is hardly keeping this room warm.”
“It’s fine,” he said, but he didn’t move to fix the blankets.
“Jasper,” I whispered, swallowing thickly. “It’s cold.”
Jasper licked his lips and blinked a few times, then slid the blankets back up my arm, his fingers grazing over my shoulder. Sparky was definitely going to stick, because if I thought he’d made things pop off in my chest, the way my skin fired when he touched me was out of this world.
I reached up after he’d gotten the blankets over my shoulder and grabbed his hand. His skin was cold and he jolted, maybe from my touch or maybe my body heat, and the way he looked at me right then? I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to move him into another box that had a label more like… the man every other man who comes after him will be compared to.
I had a feeling in my chest that if I confessed everything to Jasper, he would know what to do. If I told him about my fears and the expectations that waited for me in California, he would tell me how to be brave. If I told him how I didn’t want to be a politician, if I told him how I found my guitar… he’d have a suggestion or a word that would make everything click into place.
“How old are you?” he asked again.
The top of his hand had warmed beneath my touch, and I flexed my fingers around him.
“Twenty-four.”
“Jesus.” He pulled his hand away and leaned toward the chair, picking up his whiskey.
“What about you?” I asked.
“Thirty-one.”
“Seven years isn’t a lot,” I said.
“It’s…” He took a drink and didn’t elaborate. “It doesn’t matter.”
“No,” I agreed. “I suppose it doesn’t.”
Silence fell between us and wood crackled in the stove. The only other sound was Gus’s soft snores as he slept on the floor in front of the couch. I’d never had this before, never done this, which was a weird thing to realize. I’d never just existed in a moment before, and with the flickering candles and the smoke in the air… with Jasper right beside me, so big and sad and unintentionally sexy.
Daybreak Page 4