The First Hello

by Willa Okati

  “I’m sorry.”

  Shawn bristled. Long habit. “Don’t you feel sorry for me. She did the best she could. Just wanted to keep us safe.”

  Raleigh opened his mouth, then apparently thought better of what he wanted to say, and shut it. “Okay. I’m sorry.” He turned away—embarrassed, maybe—and cast about for the book he’d dropped. “I know what you’re probably thinking, but this is mine,” he said. “I brought it with me.”

  Had he? Shawn wasn’t any too sure. The way Raleigh said it didn’t ring true, but…it was just a book. Wasn’t like he’d tucked the keys to the kingdom in his pocket. Still, Shawn was curious enough to poke at the question. “What’s it about?”

  Raleigh rolled his eyes. The impatience almost made Shawn smile despite himself—and it seemed like Raleigh sensed that somehow too. Intuitive kind of guy. He rested his hands on his knees and, still crouching, said, “Part diary, part household accounts. Handwritten. Old. Nothing special unless you like that kind of thing. “

  “So you say.” Shawn watched as Raleigh carefully dusted away snips of dried grass and a smudge of crumbling dirt. “I’ve seen mothers not as careful with their babies.”

  “Well, this is my baby. In a sense. More like a lucky charm.” Raleigh blew a puff of air at the cover before tucking the book away in his hip pocket. “You don’t carry any kind of talisman about with you? Most guys do.”

  “I’m not most guys,” Shawn fired back.

  And for some reason, that made the perverse bastard crack the biggest grin yet. Like Shawn had damned near delighted him by saying that. “I know. I mean, I can tell. You look like a handful and a half.”

  “More like a fist.”

  “That too,” Raleigh said, undeterred, undaunted. He stood, dusting himself off with far less care than he’d used to clean up his lucky-charm book, and when he ran his fingers through his hair, he left a smudge of dirt on one cheek like a great big towheaded kid who’d been playing cops and robbers. “Shawn, you said it was? Your name’s Shawn?”

  Shawn frowned but nodded once.

  Raleigh either didn’t notice or didn’t let it bother him. He held out one big hand that Shawn took without thinking. Intuitive and charismatic. Dangerous. Warm and hard but gentle in a way that Shawn wanted to resent but couldn’t quite. “It’s good to meet you, Shawn. No matter what the circumstances.”

  He meant it. Shawn couldn’t wrap his head around that. Which made him either the best liar Shawn had ever met, or…

  Careful to keep the distance safely between them, Shawn disengaged their locked hands. He could still feel the warmth of Raleigh’s palm after it’d gone, tingling against his fingers. Disconcerted, he tucked both hands in his pockets. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  If his deliberate withdrawal bothered Raleigh, the man showed no signs of it. Hell, he acted like they were already friends. He moved abreast of Shawn, with maybe twelve inches to spare between the points of their elbows, and tipped his head back to look up at the old house. “The estate sale.”

  Which—oh. Right. “You’re the one Della told me wants to buy this place,” Shawn said. He couldn’t help but copy Raleigh, standing back and drinking the house in, ivy and cracks in the edifice and all. He might like the place, but that was pride of ownership and a healthy dollop of Christmas morning. Didn’t change the fact that on its own merits, it was a hell of a white elephant. “Why on God’s green earth would you want to do that?”

  Raleigh laughed. He had a compelling sort of timbre to his humor. Some sort of resonance that teased at Shawn’s reserve, chipping steadily away at it. “That’s for me to know, and you to find out.”

  Shawn wanted to huff, but he couldn’t deny fair was fair. “Suit yourself. So, that book that you swear isn’t from here…”

  Raleigh made a small, noncommittal humming noise.

  Shawn lifted his chin at the house. “Does what’s in it have anything to do with this old place?”

  “Sharp,” Raleigh murmured. He gave Shawn a sideways grin. “Very sharp.”

  “Like a treasure map?”

  Raleigh waggled one hand from side to side. “In a way. If you love history, which I do. Cultural anthropology is a hobby of mine.” Correctly interpreting Shawn’s look as a what the hell now? he chuckled. “The history of places and the people who lived in them. It’s fascinating to me. Always has been. Especially places like this. Can you imagine what went on behind these walls?”

  Maybe so, but… Shawn wrinkled his nose. “Pretty specific history for just one house. Can’t be that much of it.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Raleigh said. He gazed at the house, but Shawn wasn’t sure he saw the actual walls. “And even if it isn’t much in the grand scheme, that doesn’t change the fact.”

  Shawn gave up. What skin off his nose was it if Raleigh had a crush on the place? Weirder shit happened every day.

  Raleigh had pulled another of his sideways drifts. “The stories I used to hear,” he mused out loud. He’d moved closer to Shawn when Shawn wasn’t paying attention. Their elbows were nearly touching now. “Maybe it wasn’t a huge span of history or an ensemble cast’s worth of people, but they had a hell of a life. Lives. All of them.”

  “Eh,” Shawn said, trying to make himself shift away. Not easy now that the wind off the sea had turned chilly with the true arrival of night. God, Raleigh was warm. Shawn could feel the heat of his skin without even making true contact. You’d never need heat in the winter, sleeping next to him.

  Oh.

  Shawn took a step back. Fucking damn it. There wasn’t a hell of a lot of time in his life for partying, but he’d done enough to know how his tastes ran. Raleigh was an attractive man, but so what? The last thing Shawn had time for just then was indulging himself in scratching an itch. He doubted Raleigh was the kind of guy who’d go for a quick fuck without a fare-thee-well anyhow.

  At least Raleigh hadn’t noticed Shawn’s sudden change in perception of him. Shawn thought he hadn’t. Hoped.

  Shawn cleared his throat, feeling abruptly aware of the trailing threads on his jeans, the frayed collar and cuffs of his flannel shirt, and the stubble on his jaw. “Yeah. Well. The same is true for most places. Everywhere has its history.”

  “I know.” Raleigh smiled slowly, then blinked his way back into the real world—and looked right at Shawn. “Have you ever been inside?”

  “Not as much as you, apparently,” Shawn said, dry as he could manage. “Actually never. Too rich for my blood. Why?”

  “Never? Really?” Raleigh looked as if he didn’t quite believe that but would indulge Shawn all the same. “Okay, then. Want me to show you around?”

  Now Shawn was the one to laugh, though it sounded—even to him—more like a bark. “What?”

  Raleigh raised one shoulder but didn’t budge. Still smiling. Quieter, smaller, but still a smile. “You ought to at least see what you’re selling before you sign it away. Let me show you around. Give you the nickel tour.”

  “Nickel?” Shawn gestured at the house. “More like fifty cents.”

  “I can spare a whole dollar if need be.” Raleigh made a beckoning motion with just his hand and added in a coaxing tilt of the head. “Come on. I can tell you all about what it was like back in the day. And in my day as well. I haven’t been inside since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, but I remember plenty.”

  It was tempting. God, was it ever tempting. But Shawn reasoned that if he liked it too much, it’d be all the harder to let go when the time came.

  He should say no, now. He should.

  Raleigh jumped on his hesitation the way sharks went after fat seal pups on a beach. Or maybe like a dog after a stick. Eagerness to please and to be pleased. “An hour out of your life. You can spare that.”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Shawn countered. “No more.”

  “Forty-five minutes,” Raleigh replied.

  “Thirty,” Shawn said without meaning to. He bit the inside of his cheek too late. “And
that’s it.”

  Raleigh regarded him for a long moment, that smile of his turning almost sad, then taking a left turn into something else. “I always did have a weakness for someone who knew how to drive a hard bargain,” he said. Then, he made for the door, still standing open. “I can work with thirty minutes. Follow me.”

  “What, now?”

  “Now,” Raleigh said. He looked back over his shoulder. “Unless you’re backing out on the deal?”

  The hell he said. Shawn’s head came up. “I keep my bargains,” he said, shouldering past Raleigh.

  He wasn’t sure if he heard Raleigh say, “I know” or not, but he would almost have sworn to it. Thirty minutes? He could work with thirty. It wasn’t that big a house. Do a quick walkthrough and they’d be out in less than that.

  * * * *

  Or not.

  Shawn thought at least he could content himself with the grim certainty that he’d been right. Walking inside the old place was a mistake of the highest degree. Stepping inside the old doors, setting his feet on the sturdy old floors, breathing in the cool air that was at once both musty and sharply fresh…

  Oh yeah. Mistake.

  And then he’d opened his eyes—though he wasn’t sure when they’d fallen shut—and gotten a good look at the place. A beauty, he’d said? Wasn’t strong enough. As much care as elegance showed through everywhere he turned his head to look. Whoever had lived there, they’d loved the place. Loved it so much it’d left echoes as far as the eye could see.

  His head swam after the first three rooms out of fifteen.

  Didn’t help that, working on a thirty-minute deadline or not, Raleigh took his sweet time and never, ever drifted more than three feet or so away from Shawn. He kept his hands to himself at first, but as he warmed to his subject, he started to forget himself or push his limits. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. He rested his hand on Shawn’s shoulder to direct him to the millwork over a door or the quality of stone in a mantelpiece, or to guide him to the right height to see a child’s clumsy carving on a windowsill. One room, redolent with lavender and roses even now, had a closet deep enough for a trip to Narnia and a wedding gown as fragile as spider silk hung at the very back.

  And books—books everywhere. Only one room had paperbacks of the kind Shawn knew, most of those dating to the 1970s if their yellowed covers were anything to go by. When he picked one of those up to flip through it, the paper was so brittle that a dog-eared corner snapped off in his hand. The leather-bound volumes had survived much more gracefully, though Shawn figured he’d better not take the risk of handling them. Raleigh had a story for every room anyway, and Shawn could only take in so many details of those without overloading his head. The man hadn’t been lying. He knew this place inside and out, all the way back to the first cornerstone and the first man who’d laid it in place.

  He did see a suspiciously empty gap on a shelf about Raleigh’s shoulder height, but he let that pass.

  “So many lives in here,” Raleigh said, running his fingertips along the shelf. He stopped to glance over his shoulder at Shawn. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

  Shawn frowned. What? He shook his head.

  “Hmm.” Raleigh seemed almost disappointed by that. “I didn’t think you would. But then there’s this, over here,” he said, nearly taking Shawn’s hand but seemingly contenting himself instead with a brush across his knuckles to direct his path. “By the window. Look down, and tell me what you see.”

  The window wasn’t a wide one. Shawn pressed his lips together, eyeing Raleigh.

  Raleigh waited, patient as the day was long. Still kind. “I’m not going to throw you through the panes,” he said. No, teased. “I doubt they’ve been opened in twenty years or more. The fresh air is probably coming from holes in the attic.”

  Right. The repairs that’d need to be done. Shawn winced.

  Raleigh misinterpreted. He held out one hand. “Please? I’d really like you to see this.”

  Good God. No grown man had a right to look that winsome and that masculine at the same time. Shawn could take care of himself, and look after his own interests, but despite appearances he wasn’t made of stone.

  He joined Raleigh all the same, with a sigh, and pulled his sleeve over one hand to rub at the dusty glass of the window. As best as he could tell, what Raleigh had wanted to show him looked mostly like an empty fountain. “What am I looking at?” he asked, dubious.

  “An empty fountain.”

  Ask a stupid question…Shawn thought.

  Raleigh’s shoulders moved gently as he responded to Shawn’s wry glance with a quiet chuckle. “I know; I know. That’s not the point. It’s a wishing fountain.”

  Shawn’s interest sharpened. “Any old coins down there, you think?”

  “Probably. I know Miss Anna never cleaned it out.” Raleigh gave him a slightly troubled look, but hey, if Raleigh could steal books, Shawn figured he could steal coins and they’d be square. Old coins fetched a hell of a price if you knew the right people. Maybe enough to fix his car, or even to get the materials he’d need to fix the place up before the sale could go through.

  Relief made him loosen up. “What’s special about it?”

  “Do you see the carving in the middle?” Raleigh leaned their shoulders together as he pressed closer to the glass. “The very middle. It’s mostly covered with weeds, but you can just about make out that it’s there.”

  Shawn thought he saw a faint white gleam of what might have been marble. He shrugged. “And?”

  “It’s old,” Raleigh said. He laid his palm flat on the windowpane. “Very old.”

  “Roman?”

  “Older than that.” Raleigh chuffed quietly. “There are some who say it should be in a museum, but Miss Anna turned down everyone who wanted to buy. Her grandmother had brought it home, and home was where it was going to stay.”

  Weird to care so much about a chunk of stone buried in a tangle of dead, salt-blasted weeds, but… Shawn frowned to himself. “It’s worth a lot of money.”

  “It’s priceless,” Raleigh replied. He’d gotten that odd glossiness to his eyes again, as if what he saw and what Shawn saw weren’t the same things at all. He made a small, impatient noise and moved his hand to the back of Shawn’s neck. “Look at it. Really look, Shawn.”

  It’s just a rock, Shawn wanted to say. He opened his mouth to do just that, and—

  And—

  * * * *

  “What did you wish for?”

  Lips touched the back of Sionn’s neck, warm as the light from the candle burning by their bed, pressing on him sharp kisses laced with playful bites. Sionn leaned his head backward, resting it on his lover’s shoulder, and tilted to the left to let the man nuzzle at his cheek. He reached up to touch his lover, sifting the man’s light blond hair between his fingertips. “Mmm. If I tell you, then it won’t come true. Isn’t that the way it works?”

  “You can tell me anything,” his lover insisted. He stroked Sionn’s side from shoulder to hip, drawing him ever closer with each pass until their bodies were aligned. His cock nudged at the cleft of Sionn’s ass, though that was already slick from their joining not half an hour before.

  Sionn laughed low in his throat, careful not to wake the household—though the household had already agreed to a polite pretense of deafness to this room after darkness fell. He could see the marble statue in the fountain from this window, he realized, even by night. Imagine that Delia had gone to the trouble of transporting it all the way here. Such a stubborn little miss this time around.

  She came by it honestly. He’d taught her well, and willfulness was in Sionn’s blood. Once he’d set his mind to a thing, that thing would happen. Whether gift or curse, he couldn’t say.

  He put it from his mind for the time being. “Will you make it worth my while, if I do tell you?”

  “Always,” his lover promised. “Now. What did you wish for?”

  “All things in time,” Sionn replied. He reste
d his head against his lover, content for the moment to enjoy only this. He could feel his lover’s cock plumping up again, growing firmer and harder against his backside. “You tell me first what you wished for.”

  His lover caught Sionn’s earlobe briefly between his teeth. “You.”

  Sionn let his eyelids fall halfway shut. “As always.” He drew in a quick breath at the sensation of his lover’s cock nudging into his cleft, running one hard stroke between the cheeks and catching at his well-used entrance. “Mmm. Please…”

  “I’ll give you what you want when you tell me what you wished for,” his lover teased, with another far too shallow stroke. He kneaded carefully, lightly at Sionn’s hip. “But tell me quickly.”

  “And then you’ll have me?”

  “I already have you,” his lover said, cock hardening where it nestled almost inside him. He rested his palm on Sionn’s stomach, then slid down to take Sionn’s cock in hand and stroke. “But then I’ll take you, yes. I’ve missed you, my love…”

  * * * *

  “Shawn!”

  Shawn bowed forward, as startled as if he’d been dunked in icy water. His head knocked against the glass of the old window with a sharp sting and a shock of cold. “What—”

  He remembered, then. When he opened his eyes to find Raleigh nearly nose to nose with him.

  “What?” he asked again, lips numb. Oh God. He saw.

  But did Raleigh know what he’d seen? His eyes were wide with worry. He gave Shawn another firm shake, jostling him fully out of the mind fuck. “Hey. Are you with me?”

  Shit. Panic made Shawn draw a too-sharp, jagged breath that hurt going down. Shawn would have jerked back if he could have. Raleigh held him too tightly for that, knuckles gone white on Shawn’s forearm, and he was so close. One wrong blink and their eyelashes would tangle. Too close for strangers. Hell, Shawn didn’t let the men he’d fucked come this near to him.

  He licked his lips, finding they’d gone dry, and shook his head. He couldn’t speak.

  Any other man would have let it go. Not Raleigh. He frowned down at Shawn, the warmth of his breathing brushing across Shawn’s cheeks and chin. “Are you all right?”