by E M Lindsey
Birdie went pink in the cheeks and ducked his head. “Call me soon to meet?”
Antoine promised, then let Gwen lead him around a bit longer. By the time they did the second circle around the market, Fitz had packed up his booth and was nowhere to be found. It was better that way, he’d told himself. And then, of course, he’d run into him, and the damn goat, and everything fell to pieces—including his control.
By Sunday, though, Antoine was feeling a little bit more himself. He wasn’t the kind of man who could lie to himself when he gripped his cock at night and muffled his groans into his pillow. He was absolutely thinking about Fitz. But, during the day when he was in meetings, when he was Skyping with his web designer in Rene’s office and talking about how to highlight the best parts of Cherry Creek, Fitz was the last person on his mind.
Even now, as he made his way to the Tavern, his mind was free of most stress. He was plotting, trying to frame out the best shots before he started his photographer hunt. There were a lot of great angles, and getting the shops with the mountain background wouldn’t be hard. Hiring a local would be in their best interest though, he knew that much. The town was unique, and he wanted to display that.
His only other real business that day was Sonia and Rose that morning, then Wilder at the cupcake shop. He had dinner planned with a couple of the Motel brothers at the end of the night…and that was it. Then it would be going home to finish paperwork, and it would be planning, and testing, and everything else he needed to get the ball rolling for Rene.
It was the least fun part of his job, but it looked like it could close on schedule, if not early.
He just hated the way that made him feel sad, almost, like he was losing something. A job in a town like this had never affected him that way, and it was strange.
Pushing the thought out of his head, Antoine made his way into the Tavern and spotted Rose immediately. She was setting a couple drinks down at the booth and she waved him over. “Hey, Antoine. I just need to grab my laptop, but this is my wife, Sonia.”
Sonia was very much like Antoine had pictured. She was shorter than Rose, but curvier with light brown skin and black hair tied in a braid that almost hung to her waist. She had thin features but full lips, and black-framed glasses that rested on her nose. She extended her hand when Antoine approached, and he took it.
“Nice to meet you. I promise I’m not contagious.”
Antoine laughed and he slid into the booth as she took the other side. “Not worried about it. I travel so much, my immune system is basically like the Hulk.”
She grinned at him and clasped her hands under her chin. “I heard about what happened the afternoon you met with Rosie. I hope you don’t think we’re all a bunch of maniacs.”
He remembered that the kid who hit him was their nephew and he tried to let himself feel easy about it. His ribs were still sore, but he was healing, and he wasn’t looking to destroy the kid’s life.
“Did Dmitri get into trouble?”
Her face fell. “He got charged with reckless endangerment, but they think he’s going to get community service. He didn’t…he’s trying, Mr. Tremblay.”
Antoine waved her off. “I know. I’m not going to sue him or anything, okay? Or his guardian. I know things can be complicated.”
“My brother-in-law is…” Sonia licked her lips and shook her head, eyes going closed behind her lenses.
“We don’t have to talk about this,” Antoine assured her.
She let out a puff of air. “The situation here wasn’t good, and we found out what was going on the same week we found out I was losing my sight. I tried to focus on the issue, but… it’s hard to explain,” she said, and waved her hand at her eyes.
Antoine sat back and regarded her a long moment. It was obvious she had some usable central vision, the way she tracked his movements, but he was more than familiar with the visual limitations. “My twin brother is blind. He was diagnosed with glaucoma a few months after we were born.”
“And you weren’t?” she asked.
Antoine shook his head. “I get tested twice a year. I don’t know what it’s like to go through something like you are. Marcel’s vision hasn’t really changed much since we were babies, but I watched him live differently from other people in order to feel the same. Even though he’s been blind all of his life, every time we had to move, or change schools, or when he got a job—it was an adjustment. I can’t imagine throwing problems with your nephew into the mix. I’m not angry with him, okay? And I don’t think any of you are doing a bad job at getting him through whatever this is.”
She let out a small breath. “I promise I’m not trying to play the pity card.”
Antoine felt bad she had spent her time worrying about what he might do. “Let’s do business stuff and maybe we can…I don’t know, talk later? Maybe Dmitri and I can meet under better circumstances.”
She was grinning when Rose finally appeared with her laptop, but Antoine was ready to be on task, so he took over and showed them both his plans for the website and for their marketing. “Tristian,” he said, and they both nodded. “He’s got a massive following, and I know he’s out of town a lot, but I’m going to try and convince him to showcase a local business once a month. His followers might get annoyed that he’s showing nepotism or something—but he lives here too. Having him cook with you…”
Sonia was grinning wider now. “Two blind chefs. That could be an adventure.”
Antoine snorted. “Maybe it’s the start to something new, who knows. But it will get people in the door. The rest will be up to you. Your food is good, but you need to give them a reason to want to come back. Something they’ll tell their friends about, you know?”
“I know,” Rose said from behind a sigh. “Do you have any ideas?”
Antoine pulled a face. “Trust me when I say I’m better at concepts than actual ideas. But…try canvassing. Ask around, find out what brings the locals back.”
“Besides a convenient place to day drink?” Rose offered.
Antoine grinned at her. “I’m sure it’s more than that.” His phone buzzed and he knew his time was up. “I’ll pop in next week and see where we’re at with the website. If you can get me a couple of things to feature on your home page—something that says this is uniquely you and no one else, I can hand that off to my designer.”
The pair followed him to the door and offered hugs instead of handshakes. His side was tender, but he accepted them anyway and hated—hated—how at home it made him feel. He loved his apartment, and he loved his friends, and he loved everything about the city. But it didn’t have this.
He took a breath of the late afternoon air, then headed down the street toward the cupcake shop. It was set in one of the older and taller buildings near the town square, with wide windows and an apartment above the shop where the owner lived. The front was a wide window, polished glass with a script font reading Indulgence over a cupcake with a cherry on top. The door looked more modern than the building itself, painted white with squared windows, and he wondered how much of it had been changed after Wilder bought the place.
The inside was bright in cream and soft pastels, and the bakery counter had a wide array, frosting nearly every color of the rainbow, and then a few more for a touch of elegance. It smelled like sugar and coffee, and Wilder was there behind the counter waiting with a soft grin.
Wilder came around the counter to greet him. “How was the Tavern?”
“Not bad,” Antoine said. He’d learned to moderate his voice, just a shade louder than normal, but he didn’t speed up or slow down. Wilder was Deaf, but told him his hearing aids made conversation easy so long as no one else was talking, and they always met during the shop’s dead hours which made it simpler. “I think we can get them up to speed, they just need a couple of signature dishes to highlight the restaurant. Something that sets them apart from the usual pub food.”
Of course, he’d said the same thing to Wilder, who was now grinning as he
turned back to the counter and then walked them to a table with a plate holding two cupcakes. “I was working on these all week. This one is a bourbon cherry. It’ll be available seasonally so I can bake from the local harvest.” The cupcake was a rich chocolate with a light pink frosting, and a whole cherry garnish on the top.
“I like it. I like the idea of showcasing what the town is famous for,” Antoine told him.
Wilder smiled, the grin lighting up his entire face, and Antoine had to wonder how often he held that expression considering he had almost no laugh lines at all. “I figured that would help. I mean, I know I’m not a huge draw because I’m not a local.”
“No, and I know some people here are a little sore from losing the former bakery, but gluten-free has its own market. People will drive for gluten-free baked goods that don’t taste like literal cardboard.”
Wilder snorted. “Trust me, I’ve been working on this a while.” He poked at the second cupcake. “This is vanilla with a goat’s milk mascarpone filling from Collin’s farm, and limoncello frosting. I thought it might be a fitting tribute to the event of the year, it feels like.”
Antoine couldn’t help his scowl, which made Wilder laugh because of course the entire town now knew about Robert’s brush with certain death. Antoine hadn’t actually been out to the farm yet—and wasn’t sure he was going to since the only thing the website would really feature was Spencer’s cat shelter and that had offices in the city.
Also, he wasn’t quite sure he was ready to face the three-legged goat who had started this whole mess, even if it wasn’t really the beast’s fault.
“Am I ever going to live that down?” he finally asked.
Wilder’s eyes were gleaming. “Probably not, but it’s not like you’ll be here too long, right? You live in Hollywood?”
Antoine scowled harder. “Jesus. It’s like Fitz is bound and determined to make me look like the biggest asshole.” He swiped a hand over his forehead. “I live in San Francisco, but I’m hardly ever there.” And there it was, the crux of why this place was getting to him. It was home in the way he’d always craved. And yes, he always had an apartment to come back to, but it was hard to feel attached to a place he rarely set foot in. This job was the longest he’d stayed put since college.
“You okay?” Wilder asked after a beat.
Antoine realized his melancholy was filling him all over again, and he pushed it away. “I’m good. Do me a favor and write down the descriptions of these again. I’m going to send them to my designer. I’ll be looking for a photographer in the next few days, and we’ll probably want to do some food shots.”
Wilder nodded, and he grabbed some receipt paper, scribbling it all down. “Talk to Rene. His husband does some artsy photography, but I also think Ronan might know a guy.”
The one person Antoine didn’t think he’d get to meet was the illusive park ranger everyone talked about, but never made an appearance in town. All he knew about the guy was that he was married to Parker, and that he was a recluse. It was worth a shot, though, because the sooner he could get the photos done, the sooner he could leave and shake this feeling of unwanted need for Cherry Creek to comfort him.
“Text me if you want to add anything,” Antoine said as he reached to push the door open.
Wilder came around the corner and met him at the door. “Take this.” He shoved the cherry cupcake at Antoine who was forced to grab it or drop it. “You look like you need some sugar.”
Antoine was pretty sure Wilder was just fishing for compliments, but he didn’t really mind it. The cherry looked amazing and he wasn’t huge on frosting, but he liked the idea of a bourbon filling. Looking Wilder in the eye, he opened wide and bit the top. The cherry popped against his teeth, sweet flesh before they bit into something hard.
The pit, he realized, just seconds before it slipped through his molars and down his throat. His eyes went wide, and the rest of the cupcake fell to the ground as he groped for the wall. His air wasn’t entirely cut off. The pit was large, but if he could just swallow…
“Fuck, are you choking?” Wilder’s voice was piercingly loud with his panic. “Oh my god, I don’t know the Heimlich.” He gave Antoine’s back a furious pat, but it only succeeded in making him inhale harder, lodging the pit even further.
His eyes began to tear up, and he wanted to gag, but his body felt paralyzed. Then, out of nowhere, large hands had him. There was a violent, searing pain where his ribs were cracked, then air forced up through his lungs. Once, twice, and a third time before the damn thing dislodged and he hurled everything in his guts onto the front step of the bakery.
He was shaking all over, and gasping, and those same hands were holding him, soothing both his fear of choking and the utter mortification that he had just thrown up. In public. In front of strangers.
Antoine blinked tears away, then turned his head. “Oh god. Oh no.”
Fitz’s mouth turned up in the corner and he shook his head. “Hey, Hollywood. We have got to stop meeting like this.”
“Why?” Antoine groaned, his voice raspy.
“The universe really seems to have it out for you.” Fitz’s voice was softer than before, surprisingly so, which made Antoine angry.
He didn’t want fucking pity, he wanted to stop nearly dying every time the man was around. He took a breath and pushed Fitz away from him before stepping around the mess. “I can clean that up.”
“Yeah, no,” Wilder said, sounding devastated. “I almost just murdered you because I forgot to pit the cherry.”
And well, that was fair. He definitely hadn’t expected that. His face was still pink, he knew, because it was burning in spite of standing in the shade. He glanced over at Fitz who had taken a few steps back, but he looked as good as ever in his t-shirt and uniform pants. “You’re not going to make me go back to the clinic, are you?”
Fitz’s face had gone from soft to unreadable, and after a beat, he shrugged. “You’re a big boy, Antoine. I can’t make you do anything.”
Antoine wasn’t entirely sure Fitz was right about that, though, and that was the entire damn problem.
Chapter Eleven
Once upon a time, Fitz appreciated that living in a small town like Cherry Creek meant that his job was spent knitting, and planning charity events, doing paperwork, and actually rescuing kittens from trees. The week before Antoine arrived and turned everything upside down, Fitz and Spencer had spent two hours trying to scale a ninety-foot pine two small kittens had scaled and then got stuck on the branches.
Spencer had two new faces for his shelter, and Fitz had a spot on the front page of the Gazette with the two fuzzy bodies perched on his shoulder like parrots. It was life as usual. But now, life as usual wasn’t enough. Life as usual had him sitting at his desk looking at a couple of events in Colorado Springs to help raise money for the department, except he couldn’t focus because all he could feel was Antoine in his arms.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the alley—Antoine hot and bothered and willing and ready. Fitz felt guilty for charging in and taking, because that was so unlike him. But Antoine had opened to him, moaned for him, gripped him, leaving half-moon marks on his wrist out of desperation for more. Fitz had shouted his orgasm into his pillow that night just remembering it.
He was determined to stay away after that, to keep as much distance as possible. Except he only managed a couple of days, and only because he was off work. He went to the small lake and hunkered down in a tent in the grove just off the shores where Antoine wouldn’t see him if he came down to the water again. Which he didn’t—not that Fitz had looked.
It was bad, and it hadn’t even been this bad after Chance left. A couple of nights getting black-out drunk, a couple of days dealing with hang-over consequences, and he was fine. Even throwing himself into knitting and swimming again hadn’t been about his feelings. It had mostly just been to create a new routine in spaces Chance used to fill. But Antoine was different, and that terrified him. The distance was h
elpful, but he wasn’t sure it was going to last.
He was leading a workout session in the courtyard that afternoon, and he saw Antoine walking out of Indulgence. Wilder was behind him, a smile on his face which was foreign, and Fitz would have allowed himself jealousy if he hadn’t known Wilder never dated. Even so, he was annoyed because Antoine seemed to look at everyone with a soft kindness except him. And yes, Fitz hadn’t given him much reason to soften, but Antoine wouldn’t even try with him.
He was ready to go back to his workout and ignore him once more, but then he saw it. All of his training and certifications allowed him to notice the subtle signs of choking. The cupcake he held fell to the ground, and one of his hands groped for the wall, the other going right to his throat. Fitz was running before he could stop himself, and he was very near out of breath by the time he got to Antoine’s side.
Wilder stood there in a mute panic, horrified, but Fitz ignored him as he pulled Antoine into his arms. His ribs, his brain reminded him, but he couldn’t afford to be gentle. Antoine was breathing still, but it was raspy and labored. He curled his hands together and tugged Antoine close, then pushed them in and up into the other man’s gut. Once. Twice. He heard Antoine gasp in pain, but the third was successful.
This wasn’t the first time Fitz had to give the Heimlich, so he was prepared for what came next. He side-stepped as Antoine bent in half and unleashed his stomach on the steps. His hands shook as he gripped the railing, and Fitz kept one hand on his back until he was sure Antoine wasn’t going to fall over. Once he was sure Antoine was properly breathing, he took a step back and shoved his hands into his pockets as the other man regained his composure.
Antoine’s face was red, and his eyes were still bulging a little, but his chest was moving with a steady rhythm. When he realized who was standing there, horror crashed over him, and any chance Fitz thought that maybe the alley kiss had softened him went out the window.
Antoine’s words were unkind, sharp, maybe even a little humiliated. He understood. Antoine seemed to be getting the shortest, sharpest end of the Cherry Creek stick. As much as Fitz wanted to lay the blame on his shoulders, most of it wasn’t Antoine’s fault.