He took another step.
“Liam,” I said gently, holding up my hands like I’d watched Devon do when he tried to soothe a skittish horse.
“I can do more Saturday night,” he said, taking another step toward me. The board at the base of the stairs creaked as he crossed over it, and then he was in the sitting room, and then the family room, inches away from me.
It took a minute for his words to register, and he reached for me just as the realization dawned on me.
“Are you propositioning me?” I asked, eyes flicking down to the place his fingers toyed with the hem of my shirt.
“You’re a smart man, Sparky.” Liam’s eyes flashed, defiance and confusion tangled together with a painful aching want. “You tell me.”
16
Liam
I flattened my fingers against the sliver of skin I’d exposed on Jasper’s belly. He sucked in a soft breath, staring down at me with a hooded expression. Things were better this way; he’d been right to snap at me before. But Jasper confused me—he made me want more and less and everything all at the same time.
I wanted to make sense of him, and of my feelings, but also knew in the long run it didn’t matter. I’d have a water pump and an alternator and a running car before the end of the day tomorrow, and then I’d be on my way to another state. One thing I did need to think about was what I wanted to tell my parents when I finally made it back to California, but that answer had so far evaded me.
The whole point of the trip had been to break away, to play music and do something foolish like find myself on the road. Judging by my fucked up head and the niggling doubt in the back of my mind about my dad tracking me down in the middle of nowhere Vermont, I had only done one of those things.
I lost the thought entirely when Jasper dipped his head down and pressed our mouths together. A whimper tumbled out of my mouth, and Jasper’s arms slid around me, holding me as my knees turned into jelly. He tugged at my waist and I jumped, wrapping my legs around his middle and my arms around his neck.
Jasper walked, and I wondered if he was going to take me to his room, but the thought went out the window when my back landed against the soft cushions of the couch. His weight came down on top of me, and he braced himself above me, one hand on either side of my head. My leg fell from the couch onto the floor, and Jasper notched himself between my spread legs, the evidence of his arousal hard and clear.
“This is an unexpected turn of events,” I muttered against his mouth, and Jasper smiled, the edges of his lips curving against mine.
He pulled away for a breath, hovering over me, eyes searching my face for… something.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head and bent closer, taking my mouth again in lieu of a reply. I tried to not care about the secrets that flashed behind his eyes, because God knew I had my own, and none of that mattered anyway. This thing between us was electric, but it had an expiration date.
And we both knew it.
“Let me make you come,” I said, trying to use sex to give myself an upper hand. I felt off kilter around Jasper, but if it was sex, I could make sense of that. And if it was sex, he would be too busy to ask me where I was going or why I’d come.
“All right.”
“Get up.” I tapped him on the outside of his hip and he leaned back, giving me room to wriggle out from beneath him. I pushed Jasper onto his ass and fell into place between his legs, my knees plenty padded against the thick rug on the floor.
I made quick work of his fly, easily freeing his sizable erection. Making a fist around the base of his cock, I leaned down and sucked his crown into my mouth. Jasper made a surprised noise and clenched his fingers, banging both hands against the cushions with a grunt.
I smiled and slipped deeper, taking as much of him into my throat as I could manage. He made another noise and I hummed in approval, the moan in my throat vibrating up the length of his dick.
Jasper fisted my hair and arched off the couch, his cock swelling against the roof of my mouth. He grunted something that sounded like my name and he came, hot jets of cum streaking against my tongue and down the back of my throat. I smiled around him, sucking and lapping at him as he finished in my mouth, holding him there as he softened.
The whole time Jasper held onto my hair like I was a life preserver, but I didn’t mind. It comforted me in a weird way, and I rested my cheek against his thigh, blinking up at the blissed-out expression on his face.
“Let’s never talk about that again,” Jasper murmured, dragging his hand down his face and looking toward the entryway.
I let his cock slip out of my mouth, pressing a soft kiss against the pink and sticky slit.
“That bad?”
“Jesus.” He shook his head, cheeks darkening to match the color of his dick. “No. I shot off without asking. Down your throat like it was my first time.”
“Well, it kind of was, right?” I adjusted myself between his legs until I was sitting. “At least in a while.”
“A while.”
“Do you want me to…” Jasper gestured at me.
“No.”
He opened one eye and gave me a doubtful look. “No?”
I shook my head and reached back, tugging my shirt over my head and off, using it to clean his orgasm away from the corners of my mouth and the length of his cock. I didn’t tell him that, more than anything, I wanted him to… do the things he wasn’t capable of putting into words yet, but I didn’t want him to do them until he was ready.
And he was clearly not, considering he still didn’t have the words for it.
I got that, I really did.
I wanted Jasper probably as much as I wanted my next breath, but I wanted him on his terms, not mine. He’d get there… or not. But I’d always have this. whatever this was, and that’d be enough. It would probably be too much, but I didn’t want to think about that just yet. The moment was quiet and almost perfect, and I wanted to have that for a little while.
“I’m good, Sparky,” I assured him. “But if we don’t eat, I won’t be.”
I stood up and balled my dirty shirt in my fist, then walked out of the sitting room, leaving Jasper on the couch. I tossed the shirt onto the top of the washing machine, wishing I’d grabbed a spare out of my bag, but not willing to go back and face him. Sure, I’d told him I could do more Saturday night, but every time I touched him felt less like a repeat and more like a revelation.
Above my head, the ceiling creaked, and I took it to mean Jasper had gone upstairs, so I opened the fridge and busied myself with the contents. He didn’t have much food, but he had some steaks and some vegetables. I doubted he was saving any of it for a special occasion, so I pulled out the ingredients I needed and set them down on the counter.
“Making yourself at home?” Behind me, Jasper’s voice startled me and I jumped, clutching my hand to my chest.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I managed the words and a choked sounding laugh.
“It’s my house, you know.” His mouth twitched in the corners.
“Right, but one of the top stairs squeaks.” I pointed behind him toward the staircase. “It normally gives you away.”
Something flashed across Jasper’s face, but before I could decipher it, his entire expression shuttered. He reached forward, shoving a shirt at me and, based on the soft and threadbare feel of it, the shirt belonged to him.
“What’s this?” I asked, letting the cotton unfold in my fingers.
“A shirt. So you don’t get cold.”
My breath caught in my throat and I obediently pulled Jasper’s shirt on. It was as big as he was, the V-neck dipping down almost to my nipples, the hem grazing my thighs. It wasn’t going to do anything to keep me warm, but it smelled warm, so I didn’t much mind.
Jasper watched me pull the shirt over my head, his stare thoughtfully raking over my body so intently I could feel it. He worked his way from my throat down, and lower still, then back to my face. Frozen on the s
pot, I barely managed a breath without him noticing and cataloguing it.
I opened my mouth, painfully aware of the sound it made when I swallowed, but there weren’t words. The only thing that existed in the kitchen was the way Jasper looked at me. It made me think, for the briefest moment, that maybe I wasn't the only liar in the room. Maybe he wanted more than Saturday nights ad nauseam, but before I could gather the courage to say as much, Gus barked.
A shocked laugh burst out of my mouth and my cheeks heated. Jasper finally looked away, his calculating eyes dipping down toward my knees, where Gus batted against me with his nose, no doubt after the steaks on the counter.
“The steaks aren’t for you,” I said, listening to the way my voice trembled when I spoke. I reached down and petted Gus’s head anyway.
“Actually, they are.”
“What?” I squinted my eyes and dared a look at Jasper.
“Well… one of them is.”
“Pardon me?”
“I let Gus eat human food on the weekends,” he explained, tipping his chin toward the two steaks on the counter. “One for me and one for him.”
“Right.” I straightened up and cleared my throat. “Silly me. That clearly makes perfect sense.”
“I spoil him, I know. But I think maybe tonight he can survive on dry food and scraps.”
Gus barked his disagreement.
“I don’t want to ruin whatever thing the two of you have going,” I said.
“It’s just tonight,” Jasper said. “We’ll all survive it.”
I wasn’t sure I would survive anything, but I wasn’t going to say that.
“I don’t think I’ve ever cooked a steak before,” I admitted. “I was going to try, but…”
“I’ll cook,” he said quickly, coming toward me and pushing me gently out of the way. “You can go… do whatever. Play guitar if you want.”
“I don’t want to bundle up.”
“Inside.” He squinted like it made all the sense in the world. “You can play inside. Anytime you want.”
“Okay.”
Jasper set to work preparing the steaks with Gus at his feet, so I did as he suggested. I settled into the chair in the sitting room he seemed to favor and started working my way through the song I’d been trying to write since I started the trip. I wasn’t a composer, but stringing chords together was easy enough. Finding words that rhymed with lies and secrets and misery was a lot harder, which was why I often stuck to humming.
It wasn’t long before I got lost in the song, in the way it made me feel to pour myself into something I could project into the world. I truly never fancied myself as a songwriter or even a proper musician, but I couldn’t think of anything I enjoyed more than being with my music.
In the doorway, Jasper cleared his throat and I slapped my hand across the strings, abruptly silencing the song.
“How long were you there?” I asked.
“A while.”
“Why didn’t you stop me?” I set the guitar down and turned away from him, busying myself with packing it up into the case so I didn’t have to look at his stupid handsome face.
“I tried.”
The floor creaked, and footsteps grew softer as Jasper returned to the kitchen. I waited long enough to compose myself, then followed behind him, taking the spare seat at the table under the window.
“Do you ever eat in the dining room?” I asked.
“Not anymore.”
The steak and carrots Jasper had cooked smelled divine, and between our feet with his tail thumping madly against the leg of the table, Gus clearly agreed.
“Thank you for cooking,” I said, hoping to avoid an awkward silence based on my earlier question. “Thank you for letting me stay here, and fixing my car, and being generally nice to me.”
“It’s nothing,” he said, slicing into his steak, which was clearly cooked rare based off the blood that leaked out around the edge of the plate.
Jasper forked a piece of meat into his mouth and, after he swallowed, looked up and gave me a smile so transparent and honest it almost broke my heart. I didn’t know what the deal with Jasper’s husband was, why he wore a ring, or lived in a house so weighed down with stories from the past, but the way he looked at me… it felt for the first time since I’d met him, he was doing it with clear eyes.
That had to be it because I had no other explanation for the words that fell out of my mouth next.
“I stole my guitar from my dad. He doesn’t know I took it.”
17
Jasper
Liam’s admission came as a bit of a shock. He’d always struck me as the type to do as he pleased, clearly by his pursuit of me, but he hadn’t struck me to be a thief.
“You what?” I begged for clarification.
“I stole it. But it was my dad, so it wasn’t really so bad.” Liam used the edge of his fork to slice one of his carrots into slivers, which he then used the tines to mash against the plate. He stabbed a piece of steak and dragged it through the carrot mash, shoving the whole bite into his mouth. I tried to not grimace.
“That sounds like a story,” I said after he’d chewed and swallowed.
Liam stared down at his plate and flicked a glance up at me through the thick, blond fan of his lashes.
“Are we doing stories?” he asked.
I pulled my lower lip into my mouth and stared down at my plate, knowing we weren’t doing stories, we didn’t do them on Saturday and we weren’t supposed to be doing them now. I had evaded Liam’s inquiries about my past, hell, he didn’t even know I was a widower, and there I was asking him about his stolen hand-me-down guitar.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“I don’t mind telling you,” he said, the words barely over a whisper. “If you want to know.”
“I was just trying to make conversation.”
“You don’t strike me as the type.” He smirked and moved a carrot around his plate.
“You’re right again.”
How did this man, this stranger, see through me so readily? Why did he feel like he could belong in my house? Why did he look so good in my clothes? Nothing that had happened the past few days made any sense to me at all, and I had the fleeting thought that maybe I should stop worrying about it so much.
The day I met Liam, before I even knew who he was, I’d spent the whole morning pacing the second floor of the house, overthinking the idea of throwing away a set of three-year-old sheets that I didn’t even like. As soon as I’d turned my brain off, I did it and enjoyed the rest of my day. A few days after that, I had a good stress cry in the shower, then washed away the guilt of my attraction and came all over Liam’s hand on my couch.
It seemed to me, if I could just keep letting go…
“My family is complicated,” Liam said like he was picking the words with the utmost care.
“Most are.”
He jerked his head to the side and gave me a tight smile. “Mine a little more than most.”
I had a feeling there was quite a story, but I wasn’t going to push. The guitar seemed to be enough of a confession for the limited nature of our relationship.
Was it a relationship?
That might have been a stretch, but it was… something.
“I’m in the last year of my Master’s program, or at least I was. I found the guitar in the attic when I still lived at home, before I started school.”
“Did you not play instruments as a kid?” I asked.
“Did you?” Liam gave me a doubtful look.
“Piano,” I answered.
“You never said…” Liam looked up at me with sparkling eyes and a soft smile, then as quick as it had happened, he looked back down at his plate. Beneath the table, Gus breathed heavily, awaiting his chance at table scraps.
“Anyway,” I broke the silence for Liam, “go on.”
“My dad is not the guitar playing type. He’s barely the music type at all. He only listens to whatever the band is playin
g at whatever kind of po…” Liam snapped his mouth closed, biting off whatever he’d been about to say. “He’s not the kind of man to be a musician.”
Another story.
Another time.
“Maybe that’s why the guitar was in the attic,” I offered.
“Yeah. It’s just apparently he used to be the type.” Liam dropped his fork onto his plate and leaned back in the chair with a shrug. “The guitar was his and there was music sheets all annotated and erased, like he’d been trying to write songs, or that he had written them, rather.”
“But something changed?”
Liam sucked his tongue across the front of his teeth and answered me with a sardonic smile, like he knew exactly what had changed and sent the guitar to the attic in the first place.
“My dad doesn’t know I took it,” Liam went on. “He wouldn’t be too pleased if he found out.”
“Does… does he know that you’re playing gigs in random bars?” I asked.
Liam shook his head.
“Does he know you’re in Vermont?”
Another no.
“Does he know you’re not in California?”
“No,” Liam said softly. “He doesn’t.”
“Would it be a problem if he did?”
“Probably.” Liam let out a breath and reached for his plate. “Can I give all of this to Gus?”
I glanced at his half eaten dinner. “Are you done eating?”
“Don’t have much of an appetite,” he said.
“I’m sorry. That’s my fault.”
“It’s not. I promise.” Liam pasted on a smile that didn’t even start to reach his eyes. “So, can I give him this?”
“He’d love you forever.”
“He only has to love me for another day or two.” Liam set the plate at his feet and Gus scampered out from beneath the table and had the steak down his throat in less than six bites.
I tried to not react to what Liam had said, but something had to have flashed across my face. Liam gave me a thoughtful look, then drummed his fingers against the table like he was thinking about what he wanted to say, but wasn’t sure he should. I was on the verge of offering him a question in return for the one he’d answered for me, but I knew he would ask about Michael, and I still wasn’t ready to talk about that yet.
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