by Jay McLean
I flip over so I’m on my back, my legs spread. “Are you going to give me what I want, or are you going to make me beg again?”
He runs the tip of his finger between my folds, then slides all the way in. My eyes roll back, my breath caught in my throat.
“You’re going to be late,” he says, tugging on my legs until my ass is on the edge of the table. “Maybe you should take a sick day.”
“Tempting,” I whisper, and then he’s inside me, filling me.
We moan at the same time. “I could do this all damn day, Red.” And then he’s undoing the tie of my robe, revealing every part of me. His mouth covers my nipple, while my hands find his hair, and he’s going slow, slow, slow, and I can feel every inch of him, every—
“Shit! Condom, Logan.”
“I’ll pull out,” he says against my neck. “I promise.” He’s back to worshipping my breasts, his movements faster now, rocking the table with his movements. He bites gently on my breast, murmurs, “Cookies and pussy: breakfast of champions.”
And I can’t help but laugh, my entire body shaking beneath him. I tug on his hair, giggle when he grunts in pain. I wait until his eyes meet mine before saying, “You’re an idiot.”
“You’re the idiot for wanting me.”
And then he’s moving again, fucking me harder, faster. The table creaks beneath me, then cracks. “Logan!” I tap his shoulder. “Logan, the table’s going to break!” But his eyes are closed, and he’s so focused on his task that I don’t think he hears me. “Logan!” He pumps into me harder again. “Logan!”
“That’s it, baby, say my name!”
“Oh, my god!” I laugh out, wrapping my arms around his neck, hoping he can hold me up.
And then the table gives way, breaks in half, and I’m holding onto him while he lifts me, tries to steady me in his hold. “Did we just break the fucking table?” he laughs out, his cock still deep inside me.
“I tried to warn you!”
“I was having too much fun.”
“You owe me a table.”
He carries me, effortlessly, from the kitchen to the couch, and sits down, never once shifting our connections. With my knees bent on either side of his hips, he grabs onto my ass, starts setting the pace. “You feel so fucking good,” he says into my neck, and then his hands are on my hips, stopping me from moving. “Fuck, Red. I’m gonna come if we keep going. We need to slow down.”
I start riding him harder, faster, the way I know he likes it. The way I like it. I set a steady rhythm, feel my insides start to build, build, build until my head throws back, my arms reaching behind me, hands on his knees for leverage. His mouth is all over me, kissing my breasts, my neck, my shoulder, all between whispered words filled with filth and encouragement, and I come all over him, cursing at the ceiling, screaming his name.
“Fuck,” he laughs out, kissing me. “I’ll never get tired of that. Ever.” Then he links his fingers behind his head, smirks at me. “Now take care of your man.”
My head throws back with my laugh, and I salute him. “Yes, sir.”
And then I take care of my man.
We shower together afterward. He can’t keep his hands off me, and I can’t stop touching him, looking at him, kissing him. My man.
When we’re both dressed, I ask, “So… about my surprise?”
“Right.” He smiles, leads me by my finger down the hallway and toward the sunroom. For the second time this morning, I freeze in the doorway. Sitting in the middle of the room is a brand-new easel, larger than my old one, definitely better quality. A canvas sits on the stand, blank besides the words You + Me written in thick black marker.
It’s not the most eloquent of words, and definitely not a declaration of his love, but it’s You + Me and it’s all I ever wanted and needed from him. I face him, my eyes wide, my jaw unhinged, my breath caught in my throat. “You bought me an easel?”
He smiles, his cheeks warming, and never in my dreams did I ever think I’d see Logan Preston blush. “I made you an easel, Red.”
“Shut your stupid face.” I rush over to my surprise, pulling on his arm to follow, and run my fingers over the wood. It’s made to perfection, every inch, every joint. “You made this?”
“Your other one’s old, Aubs. Like, falling-apart old. Besides, I had a lot of spare time these past two weeks.”
“Yeah, but…”
“Don’t make a big deal of it, okay? I got bored, I made it, it’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” I tell him. “You’re stupid for thinking it’s stupid, stupid.”
He wraps his arms around me from behind, presses his lips to my shoulder. “So, you like it?”
I run my finger across the words he’d written just for me. “This is my favorite part,” I whisper.
He laughs. “It took me forever to come up with it.”
Logan drives me to work a half hour late. There are people already lining up outside. He stops in the middle of the road, giving zero shits about the cars behind us. “Thanks for breakfast,” he says, and I bust out a laugh. “I need your keys.”
“For what?”
“To fix your table.”
“You don’t have to—”
A car honks behind us. “Keys, Red.”
I hand him the keys.
He shows up to work fifteen minutes before I close. There are still customers in the store, so he busies himself by tidying my stock. He leaves for a minute, returns with a measuring tape, and starts measuring things in the store. The windows first, then the floor. He looks up at the ceiling, then at the walls, and then he’s on his phone, but I’m too distracted with my customer to hear his conversation. Five minutes later, Tom and Luke show up with a giant ladder. They wait outside until my last customer leaves. Logan lets them in and sets up the ladder.
I tug on his sleeve, and he turns to me. “Hi,” I say, the first word we’ve spoken since he walked in.
He smiles. “Hi.” And then he kisses me on the lips, chaste and perfect.
“So… what are you doing?”
“Just checking something.”
“What exactly are you checking?”
He pats my head, as if I’m a kid.
Tom says, “We can get you a new window by Tuesday.”
“The insurance money hasn’t come in yet, so…”
“So, you can pay for it when it comes in,” he says.
“Um…”
“Or,” Lucas cuts in. “If you let us put a company sticker on the window, we could write it off as advertising.”
“That’s a good idea,” says Tom.
“No, it’s not,” I tell them. “You have a shop two doors down with a giant Preston, Gordon & Sons sign on top.”
“Yeah, but that’s high. Not pedestrian level. We need pedestrian marketing.”
“You can put your sticker there, but I’m paying for the—”
“It should work,” Logan cuts in, and he’s already on top of the ladder, his head poking through a board he’s removed.
“How much?” Tom asks.
“A good ten feet.”
“Structural?” Lucas asks.
And Logan sighs, glares at his older brother.
“Right,” Lucas says. “Sorry.”
I narrow my eyes. “What are you all talking about?”
“I could probably get this part done in a day,” Logan states, ignoring my question.
“I’ll help you out after hours if you help me with the house a couple Sundays,” bargains Lucas.
“Sundays are Red’s only days off. Can we do Saturday?” Logan asks, climbing down the ladder.
“Deal,” Lucas states, while Logan folds up the ladder again, and his dad takes it from him.
“Help with what?” I ask.
Tom says, “Jot down the supplies you’ll need. Luke can order them Monday morning.”
“What supplies?!” I almost shout.
Lucas laughs. “LTT night at the house, you guys coming?”
&
nbsp; Logan looks to me, his eyebrows raised, as if he’s waiting for my answer. I don’t even know what the question was. “What’s LTT?”
“Lachlan’s Tasty Tacos,” Tom says. “We’ll see you there.”
“Okay,” I say, having no idea what I just agreed to.
Logan drives us to his house where we all have Lachlan’s Tasty Tacos for dinner. Pancakes with candy. He lets me choose what candy to blend to make the sauce. Apparently, it either goes really well or really, really bad. Mine goes down well.
The Preston house is such a contrast to mine. It’s so full of people and love and laughter, and I never want to leave. I tell Logan that, and he smiles, kisses the tip of my nose.
I wave to the Preston crew, all standing on their porch, while I sit in the passenger’s seat of Logan’s truck. When we get back to my house, Logan doesn’t wait for an invite to come in, to stay the night. He doesn’t need one.
My kitchen table is gone, and when I ask him where it went, he tells me it’s in pieces in the back of his truck. I didn’t even notice. He leads me by my sleeve into the garage. I think he’s going there to smoke, but instead, he shows me what he’s been doing all day: building me a new table. There are power tools all in my garage—a garage that’s basically sat empty since I moved in. “It’ll be sturdier than your old one,” he says. “I just need to finish up on the edges and then sand it down. We can go to the hardware store sometime this week so you can choose a finish.”
“You don’t need to do all this,” I say, my stomach flipping, my heart beating for the boy wrapping his arms around my waist. “I could’ve just bought a new table.”
He holds me to him, walking me backward until my butt hits the edge of the table gently. Then he lifts me, as if I’m nothing but an exhale. As if I weigh the same. I sit on my new, unfinished table with him between my legs, his hands coasting my thighs. “I have a secret,” he tells me, and I smile, nod for him to reveal it to me. “I like doing this stuff, Red. And I especially like doing it for you.”
“You do?” I ask, biting my bottom lip. Heat blooms in my chest at his admission, at the tenderness in his voice.
“I have another secret.”
My hands make their way up his abdomen, to his solid chest. They stay there, while my smile widens and my feelings for him deepen. “What’s that?”
“I’m excited, Red.”
“For what?”
“For everything.”
“Like…?”
“Like that autumn festival you want to go to.”
I laugh, not because it’s funny, but because of the nerves swarming my insides. This… this is what it feels like to be content, to be sated, physically and emotionally. “It could be lame.”
He clucks his tongue, throws in an eye roll. “Things are never lame with us.”
“That’s true. What else are you excited about?”
“Everything.”
“Like what? Tell me.”
“Like, Sunday Family Breakfast tomorrow.”
My eyes widen. “You want me to go to your family breakfast?”
He nods, so sure of himself and the words he’s speaking. “And every Sunday Family Breakfast after.” He shrugs. “I’m just excited to be with you, Red.”
I can’t stop smiling.
“You know, there have only been two things in my life I care about enough to try. My family and work. And now there’s you. I might not be the best guy for you right now, and I know that, but I’m going to try, Aubrey. I’m going to try really fucking hard to be the guy you deserve. Because you’re here. For You Plus Me. And that makes everything worth it.”
I lose my breath somewhere in between his words. “You know, for a guy who thinks that romance is dead, you sure are romantic, Logan no-middle-name Preston.”
His hands land on my hips. “Only because you believe, Red.”
“In romance?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “In me.”
Part 3
40
Logan
Aubrey dresses for seasons. And I’m not just talking like how fashion labels release a new line of clothes every season. I mean, Aubrey dresses as seasons. It took all of fall and all of winter—when she smelled like chestnuts, wood fires, and pine trees—for me to realize this. It’s also the length of time it took me to realize that I was wrong about being with her. The way things started off with us, I was sure we were destined to fail. But… being with Aubrey is easy.
Cheesy? Yes.
Truth? Also, yes.
We spend every night together, every spare second.
I don’t know how we got to this point. It’s kind of like Lachlan with Mom’s chair. There was no conversation. It just kind of happened. One day, she called me while I was at work, asked what I wanted for dinner. She didn’t ask if I was coming over or what time I would be. She just assumed. And she assumed right.
The best part, though, is that somehow, Aubrey’s managed to replace Mary. The night after I had my first “flashback”—so the therapists like to call them—I smoked every night I was there. Then I noticed I started to run out. I smoked less and less. On the first day I was dry, I left work with every intention of seeing Denny, my dealer. I ended up at Aubrey’s instead. I haven’t smoked since. Because Aubrey—she knows what to do, how to settle me. She doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t ask me what’s wrong. She… makes me a bowl of cereal, waits until I’m settled enough to breathe properly, and then she helps me get back into bed and curls up next to me. Then she sings me a song, as if I’m a goddamn baby: “My balls, my balls, put it in your booty hole, my balls, my balls…” Her version is so much better than the original. And she—she’s so much better than I ever thought I deserved.
During the second week of my grounding, I found one of Laney’s books in Dad’s office about dressing up homes to sell or rent. She’s a realtor who sells a lot of the houses we flip, so I knew it was hers. There was a section in the back about retail stores and storefronts, and that’s when I got the idea to update Aubrey’s shop. She didn’t do a lot to it when she set up, and prior to her, it was a pet store. So, it didn’t really suit what she was trying to sell.
Luke and I worked after hours and on Sundays to get it just right. And when it was done, I spent Saturdays helping him build his and Laney’s forever home on the property.
Dad was surprised at how well her shop turned out and asked me if I’d one day be interested in running Preston, Gordon & Sons Commercial. I told him I’d think about it.
I’m still thinking about it.
Aubrey spent Christmas morning with her mom, then they drove up here to spend Christmas evening with my family. She got me a new stereo for my car. I got her a matching bra and panty set—cookies—and the first Preston, Gordon and Sons jacket I ever owned. Everyone thought it was stupid, but Aubrey—she knew what it meant. That day, Melissa took charge of the cooking, and we all did our best to chip in… besides Cameron, Lucas, and Leo, who did their best to keep Lucy out of the kitchen. Melissa had met my family a few times prior. The first time was when Lachy had a track meet in Raleigh. The second was for my birthday—when she gave me a picture of Aubrey as a kid. Missing teeth, fiery-red hair, too many freckles. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard. Then Dad showed Aubrey a picture of me as a toddler, taken from behind. I’d obviously removed my own shit-stained diaper, my bare ass proof, and I held it in both my hands, looking up at the spinning ceiling fan. Dad says the picture was taken about a second before I tried to throw it up there. I didn’t get enough leverage, so he says, but the picture was solid proof that even as a toddler, I was a pain in the ass.
New Year’s Day was the first time I got Aubrey behind the wheel of my car, tried to teach her how to drive so she didn’t have to peddle around everywhere. Swear, it was easier teaching Lachy how to drive the go-kart, the four-wheeler, the jet skis, and the boat than it was to get Aubrey to understand that the brakes are pressured and pressing down on them full force means being jolted out of
your seat. I’d promised myself to try to get in an hour of practice with her every day. I gave up within the hour. The following day, I went to the only person I thought could help: my dad. So far, he’d taught six of his seven kids to drive. Laney, too. Hell, I could drive by the time I was twelve. Within a month, Aubrey had her license and Dylan—Cam and Lucy’s friend—helped her purchase a used car. My old man’s a miracle worker, and if he and Coach Taylor ever went head to head, I’d put my money on him.
Now it’s the start of spring, and Aubrey’s been smelling like citrus and flowers.
Spring might be my favorite season of all.
It’s Chicken’s second birthday, and we’re all celebrating it as if he were a human kid. Lane made him an outfit. Aubrey made him a cake. Dad thinks the party is the dumbest thing in the world. He refuses to sing “Happy Birthday” to a “damn pig” and we all laugh at how unreasonably grumpy he is about all of it. All eleventy-three of us are out in the front yard after Sunday Family Breakfast with balloons and party poppers, and I ask Dad, standing next to me, “Is there such a thing as male menopause?”
He playfully smacks the back of my head.
Chicken shoves his snout into the cake, and we all cheer.
Lucy puts a party hat on the pig.
Dad rolls his eyes, then nudges me with his elbow. “We need to talk.”
“About what?” I ask, smiling when Aubrey takes the leftover cake and smears it all over Lachlan’s face. He squeals, then warns: “You know I’m fast, right?”
“Oh crap,” she says through a giggle.
“I’ll give you a thirty-second head start.”
Leo yells, “Hide and seek!”