“Waiting for my car to be fixed.”
“What’s wrong with your car?” he asked.
“Water pump.”
“Why are you really in Vermont?”
“Change of scenery,” I answered weakly.
“Go to Aspen for a change of scenery,” my dad barked. “What about school?”
I swallowed.
“Liam”
“I’m on break.”
“I’ve told you repeatedly, I’m not making exceptions for you just because you’re my son. If you want the job, you must have the education to back it up.”
“I don’t want the job!” I snapped. “I don’t want the fucking job.”
“Watch your tone with me, child.”
“I’m not a child. I’m twenty-four,” I reminded him.
“Clearly not capable of making adult decisions since you’re in Vermont in need of a car repair.”
I could hear my father rolling his eyes at me from across the country.
“I’m taking care of it. It should be fixed today.”
“And then you’ll be home in how many days?” he asked. “There’s an event next weekend I expect your attendance at. Mitchell Wellington’s daughter is home for the break from Princeton and I’d like you to escort her.”
“Jesus,” I muttered under my breath. My dad kept talking like I hadn’t said anything, something about a new tux, the menu, the speaker, the expectations.
“Are we clear?”
“I have plans,” I tried to tell him, but he wasn’t hearing it.
“You’ll be home as I’ve asked and you’ll do what I’ve told you, or I’ll send someone to come find you and bring you home to do as you’re told. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled, and the call disconnected, a shrill beep sounding softer on my ears than my dad’s words had.
I took time to collect myself and then sucked in a deep breath and pushed open the door. I’d expected to find Jasper on the couch, but he was at the table in the kitchen, a bottle of cider in his hands and his stare focused on the spot where I stood.
“Hi,” I said, throwing my phone onto the counter and taking the empty seat across from him.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“Clearly not.”
“I wasn’t eavesdropping.”
I answered him with a weak laugh. “That’s twice today then that you’ve given me that courtesy when I don’t deserve it.”
“Why don’t you deserve it?”
“I feel like I’m a fucking fugitive.” I propped my elbows on the table and cradled my head in my hands. Jasper pushed the bottle of cider toward me and I shifted my position to take a drink. “Jesus, that’s good.”
“I know,” he said with a nod. “Anyway, did you want to tell me what’s going on?”
I shook my head and poured the rest of his drink down my throat. “Not really, but you’ve been honest with me and I probably should be honest with you.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“I do.”
Jasper pushed away from the table and went to the fridge, bringing back two more bottles of cider. I took a drink and gave him what I hoped was a grateful smile. There wasn’t an easy way to admit who I was, who my family was, so I just blurted it out.
“My dad is a long-sitting congressman from California.”
Jasper looked at me with wide eyes and shrugged.
“Okay?”
“Liam Luckett, Sr.,” I said.
Jasper’s expression remained unchanged.
“Have you really not heard of him?” I scratched the side of my nose with the brim of the bottle then took a drink.
“I’ve never really followed politics.”
I let out a weak laugh. “That’s… admirable.”
“Why does who he is matter to who you are?”
Wasn’t that the question of the hour.
“He expects me to finish my Master’s, then take an internship at his office this summer.”
“So you have a job?”
“My dad doesn’t know I’m gay.” I chewed my lip between my teeth and traced my finger over the whorl of the oak on the table. “Is this homemade too?”
“Yeah,” Jasper answered. “My great-grandpop.”
“Of course.” I continued tracing the swirls and twists of the wood with the tip of my finger.
“Would it be a problem that you’re gay?” he asked.
“Yes.”
It would be more than a problem. My dad had partnered with a handful of congressmen from the South and Midwest to introduce legislation detrimental to LGBT people, and even though none of it ever passed a vote, he didn’t stop.
He would never stop.
“I don’t know when he changed,” I whispered, rubbing my palm against the wood. “When he went from being a guitar-playing teenager to a fucking money-minded bigot.”
“Life changes people sometimes.”
“Anyway.” I shrugged and sucked down a healthy swallow of cider. “He says it’s time for me to come home.”
“Is it?”
“I don’t have much of a say, Sparky. I live on his dime.” A dismissive laugh tumbled out of my mouth and I smiled, eyes feeling heavy with unshed tears.
“Liam.” Jasper reached for me, but I shook my head.
“Any update on that water pump?” I asked, biting my tongue when I realized I could hear the tears in my words.
Before he could answer, I shoved my chair back and walked out of the kitchen. I finished the cider and set the empty on the side table and grabbed my guitar and Jasper’s heavy denim and wool jacket, then slipped out onto the porch. The screen door banged into a box. I shoved the door harder, pushing all of it out of the way. I didn’t need to look at the label to know what it was.
Everything was falling into place, it seemed. Just not the way I wanted it to fall.
The screen door closed behind me and I bent over to grab the box. When I straightened up, Devon was there. He gave me a discerning look, his mouth pulled into something that resembled a frown, but didn’t quite reach the expression, like he wasn’t fully committed to whatever judgement he was passing on me.
I gave him a rushed smile and cleared my throat, shoving the box at him before turning away so he didn’t see me start to cry.
“Devon,” I said, hoping my words didn’t wobble. “Jasper’s in the kitchen. Can you give him this?”
Devon answered with a grunt, then stepped inside the house without a word. The door closed behind him, the screen banging shut as well, leaving me alone in the silence of the porch.
It was still cold, but the sun was bright, and beneath my weight, the rocking chair creaked in a way that had already become familiar to me. I was glad I’d made it out of the house before Jasper saw me cry, because I couldn’t bear to admit to him how scared I was of my dad, how much control the man had over me because of his name and his money. I hated how I’d let myself be reliant on him, but for so long I hadn’t seen another option. I also didn’t know how I was supposed to just pack up and go back to California and pretend that I hadn’t broken down in Vermont and accidentally fallen in love.
21
Jasper
Loud footfalls stomped through the house and I gathered the empty cider bottles and tossed them in the trash.
“That kid’s still here.” Devon said from behind me, not a question. He set a box down on the kitchen table with an ominous, yet gentle, thud.
“Perfect timing.” I picked up the box, pretending it didn’t hurt to know the only thing that stood between Liam leaving and staying was a two-hundred-dollar hunk of aluminum. “I’ll be fixing his car right now.”
I pushed open the door to the garage, letting it hang open in invitation.
Devon pulled two drinks from the fridge and followed me out, zipping his jacket after he closed the door to the house behind him. He set the bottles on the workbench and fell into one of the folding chairs with a groan.
&n
bsp; “He looked upset,” Devon said casually, but I’d known him long enough to hear the implication in his voice.
“He was.” I tore open the water pump box and stalked across the garage to Liam’s car.
“Shit.”
“What?” I glared over my shoulder.
“Are you sleeping with him now?” Devon asked.
I didn’t say anything.
“Shit.”
“I know you say Michael wouldn’t like him,” I said quickly, shoving my arm into the engine bay of Liam’s SUV.
“Michael would…” Devon sighed. “Michael would like the way he makes you feel.”
“And how do I feel? Are you an expert?” I bristled, slamming around the garage like Devon was wrong.
“You look like my best friend again.”
I angled a sharp look at him and Devon folded his arms over his chest, looking smug and full of himself.
“I don’t even know what that means,” I said back.
“You keep telling yourself that.”
“Why are you even here?” I asked, finding the socket I needed and returning my attention to the water pump.
“Ran into Emmett in town. He asked about Gus.”
“Gus is fine now and he knows it,” I snapped.
“Sure he does.” Devon laughed. “Then checking on you, clearly.”
“I’m fine.”
Devon didn’t say much after that, letting me work in silence for the hour it took me to replace the water pump. When I finished, I grabbed a blue shop towel from the bench and wiped the oil off my forearms, joining him in the corner, where he passed me a room temperature cider.
“So, that’s it, then,” he said, looking away from me and toward the shiny white SUV.
“I need to replace the alternator, but yeah.”
I frowned, thinking about going back to what life had been like a week ago. How had Liam blown in and changed…well, everything? When had I given permission for that? When had I approved?
“You shouldn’t have slept with him,” Devon said.
“Probably not.” I sighed. “But I don’t regret it.”
“You’re attached.”
The truth of that settled, forcing me to admit some other things I wasn’t quite ready to face, and Devon gave me the space and the silence to work through all of them. It was true I was ready to move on when Liam had stumbled into Burlington, but it had been a figurative idea in my head.
Like, I’d been ready to meet someone, sometime in the future. I’d talked myself around to being interested in the concept of having feelings for someone else, having sex with someone new, but it wasn’t something I’d entertained as being a real thing. And then there’d been Liam, with his eyes and his fingers and his voice, and he didn’t know a thing about me or Michael.
Liam hadn’t known that I was a widower. He didn’t know that I’d planned a whole life with a man who was taken away from me too early, and that had been… refreshing. He didn’t look at me with pity or sympathy; he looked at me as he saw me. A man he wanted to touch, to taste, to fuck.
“When is he leaving?”
I waved dismissively at the car. “As soon as I’m done, probably.”
I didn’t plan on going into detail with Devon about any of the things Liam had shared with me earlier in the morning or even the night before. “He needs to get home.”
“Does he?”
I scoffed. “Actually, yes.”
“It’s not that you just want him gone?”
“Of course I don’t want him gone!” I flew out of my chair. The words had left my mouth before I realized I’d said them, and the amused noise Devon made had me thinking that the response was exactly what he’d been aiming for.
“Well.”
“Shut up,” I mumbled, resting my ass against the door of the Mustang and staring up at the roof.
“Michael’d like him,” Devon said, the sentiment soft and easy.
I pursed my lips, and he made a derisive noise in the back of his throat.
“You can’t have it both ways,” he said. “You can’t argue with me when I say Michael wouldn’t like him, and then argue with me when I say he would.”
“I know.”
I turned away from him and curled my fingers around the frame of the driver’s side door of the Mustang, peering inside. We’d pulled the seats out years before to weld the floor pans and I’d never bothered to put the seats back in properly. The shifter lay on the dash pad, which was in desperate need of replacement after years of weather and neglect. I leaned through the open window and traced my fingers over the curve of the steering wheel.
“You gonna finish it?” Devon asked.
“I should.”
It had been long enough. My heart had been broken and my life had been on hold for long enough.
“Good road trip car.”
I snorted and looked over my shoulder. “I’m not taking a road trip.”
“You’re gonna let that little thing take off back to California tonight and be done with him?”
“That’s the plan.” As I said the words, my chest tightened in an unwelcome way and I knew the truth then. I didn’t want Liam to leave.
Shit.
When had I developed feelings for him?
Feelings were never part of the plan. It was sex at the most. Only sex. We hadn’t even shared a bed with the exception of earlier in the day when he’d plowed me into the shitty thread count sheets I’d bought to replace the fall colored flannel.
“Okay, Jasper.”
Devon stood up and I heard him step onto one of the rickety stairs that led back into the laundry room.
“What?”
“You’ve never been a good liar,” he said, shaking his head.
“It’s just… it’s just a sex thing,” I told him. “We never talked about more and he’s always been ready to leave. I’m not… I can’t give my heart to someone with a foot out the door.”
“You already have.”
Devon pushed the door open and was immediately greeted by Gus, whom he gave obligatory pets to before walking through the house toward the front. The front door opened and closed, and then the faint hint of Liam’s guitar playing stopped. From the garage, I listened to Devon’s truck start. His tires moved over the gravel, the engine faded into silence, and Liam started to play his guitar again.
I wasn’t ready to face him and whatever had shifted between us, so I finished fixing his car. The alternator went easy enough, and I cursed Devon under my breath the whole way. After dropping the hood on Liam’s SUV, I climbed into his driver’s seat, leaving one leg hanging out the door, and I stabbed the ignition button with a little more force than necessary.
The engine roared to life, and I sighed, dropping my head forward onto the steering wheel. The thing didn’t even rattle. I pulled the door closed, and the cabin of the car went nearly silent.
Fucking luxury vehicles.
The comfort and the silence took all the fun out of driving, all the fun out of cars in general. I turned the car off and jumped out, stalking back to the Mustang. She’d be loud and rough once I got her going, a lumpy cam that everyone in town would probably hate, but they’d get over it.
Feeling invigorated to at least do something, I snatched my socket from the workbench and pulled open the driver’s side door of the Mustang. I situated the front seat on the rails and then slid under the body of the car, wrenching the bolts into place. It was easy, but it was a big thing—the first step. Standing up and brushing the dirt off my ass, I was feeling more emotional than expected.
I rested my palm against the hood of the car and squeezed my eyes closed, fighting back a surge of emotion that had my knees trembling. I thought I’d feel guilt once I started putting the car back together. Because it was only me and Michael was gone; because even though I’d realized on my own it was time to move on, the final push had come from someone else. Another man.
I swallowed and flexed my fingers against the hood, fee
ling the cold and unforgiving metal press against my fingertips. And I smiled. It was like relief and pleasure and hope for the first time since Michael died. A tear slicked down the corner of my face and I wiped it away, sniffling and patting the hood of the car with a steady hand.
This was good.
So good.
Devon had left the door open and I snuck back into the house, grabbing a notepad and pencil out of the junk drawer before taking a seat at the small kitchen table and starting a list of everything I needed to get done on the Mustang to get her running again.
For good measure, I put the seat install at the top so I could cross it off. Success.
Gus’s nails clicked against the floor, followed by Liam’s gentle footfalls and I looked up when the two of them entered the kitchen. Liam’s expression faltered and he gave me a quick smile.
“Are you okay?” he asked, eyes narrowed.
“Fine,” I told him. “Just making a list of things to do on the Mustang.”
“Why?” Liam joined me at the table, his expression still weary.
“So I can get her running again.”
His eyes flicked down to the notepad under my greasy fingers. “Can I see?”
I slid the paper toward him and he studied it carefully, smiling when he touched his fingers across the marked out top line.
“I don’t know what any of this is.” He laughed and slid the pad back toward me. “What’s a lumpy cam?”
“The camshaft. It has to do with the exhaust and the intake valves,” I answered.
“Do I have one?”
“You have a camshaft.”
“That sounds…” He smirked and glanced toward the garage. “Really dirty, Sparky.”
An awkward silence settled on us and Liam sucked in a quiet breath.
“Have you been crying?” he asked.
I startled back. “What? Why?”
“Your eyes are a little red and there’s finger smears all over your cheeks.”
I reached up and wiped my face, and Liam laughed, standing up and coming around the table. He batted my hands away and notched himself between my spread thighs. He reached up and swiped his fingers over my cheeks, gazing down at me with eyes that looked a little scared and a little sad.
“That’ll do,” he said, threading his fingers through my hair.
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