Lucas smiled and handed me the envelope. “Open this. It’s from Norah.”
My lips twisted, “Norah got me a gift?”
“Open it.”
I lifted the flap and freed the colored drawing from inside. “Aww. She’s gotten so good at staying in the lines. When did she start liking owls?”
Lucas bit his lower lip. “Baby, you might want to sit.”
I grimaced. The last time I had to sit for news, my dad’s doctor had started throwing around scary words like ‘biopsy’ and ‘malignant’. “Oh my God, you are freaking me out. What is this?” I held up the picture, which, while adorable, did not fit in the various horror stories my brain was working over.
“Just sit and I’ll explain.” I took a seat while he poured me a bourbon. “Here.” He handed it over. He moved to the desk and freed a stack of papers from the drawer. “That’s a picture of a Northern Spotted Owl. Have you ever heard of them?”
I shook my head, dismayed. “Did you buy an owl, Lucas? I know we talked about getting Norah a pet, but I was thinking a cat. We cannot have a pet owl.”
Lucas rolled his eyes at me. “Let me get this out. I promise to answer your questions at the end. That owl was on the endangered species list eleven years ago. That spot where I proposed. Do you remember? There was a nature preserve behind it.”
“Yeah.” My answer was as drawn out as his story.
“Shortly after I proposed, I bought that land.”
“You did what?”
“I found the owner, and I only wanted to buy the spot we picnicked at. He was anxious to get rid of it, but he would only sell me the full acre.”
“You have an acre of land in Oregon and you never told me?”
“I was embarrassed. I was young, and it was a romantic impulse. I used almost all my savings. That student loan I took out for the last semester? I sort of needed it because of this.”
“You told me you didn’t have savings.”
“Kyle, I’d done over seventy porn scenes. Of course I had savings. But there’s more. Do you want another drink?”
“No, I’m okay. Keep going.”
“Tonight you said you’d follow me anywhere. Was that true?”
“Of course.”
“Good, because the Northern Spotted Owl is no longer endangered.” He handed me a thick stack of papers, survey maps and real estate contracts. I flipped through the papers, pausing at the ‘sign here’ sticker with my name on it. “I got the approval, appraisal and survey last month. I had a lawyer draw up the paperwork, and once we have it notarized, we’ll both own an acre of residentially-zoned Oregon lakefront property, and I want to build our dream house.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No. Are you mad?” He teared up. “I didn’t mean to keep it a secret for so long. That year that was so tight. I investigated selling it, but there was no point. Please, don’t be angry.”
“Lucas, of course I’m not mad.” I started crying, too. “Just shocked. I can’t believe it.”
“There are no utilities, but the lot alone is worth over ten times what I paid for it. I know we could sell it, but I want to do it. I want you to get out of the business with Rocco. He’s taken terrible advantage of you. I’m ready to go back to work, and Goldenboys is expanding. They want to move forward with the new sister studio, and Robert offered me a chance to run the entire business. I’d make enough that we can do this, and if you want to work after the house is done, so be it. You can start your own business or, if you’re still game for it, we can get serious about adoption and you can stay home this time. All I know is it’s time, before Norah gets too far in school. You sacrificed your dream house for me—”
“Norah was for both of us.”
He smiled. “You know what I mean. We could have had a family for a lot less money.”
“I can’t believe you did this.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Are you kidding? The only thing I’m mad about is you upstaged my gift. I worked hard on that.” I pointed to his ring.
Lucas laughed, tension flowing out of his body. “I absolutely love it, too. So, we can do this?”
“Hell, yes. This is…indescribable. I can’t find the words. You leave me speechless.”
“That’s only fair, because you leave me breathless.”
I kissed him and we lost ourselves in the moment. Lucas had made all my dreams come true.
We finished our night making love the way I preferred, slow and sweet, with my body fully enveloped by Lucas’. He wrapped his legs and arms around me so tight that all I could do was rock gently inside him while whispering sweet endearments and placing tender kisses on the curve of his neck. Too soon, the heat of Lucas’ release and my name moaned low and breathy in Lucas’ sex-drenched voice pushed me to orgasm. Lucas clung to me, panting and insisted on prolonging our connection as long as possible until my spent cock slipped free. I rolled on my back and he followed me, shaping his body along my side. He drifted off in my arms.
Lucas’ head was on my chest, and I combed my fingers through his hair, thinking of all the years we’d shared together and all the memories we’d yet to create in our new home. The words I couldn’t remember came to me in the middle of the night—ineffable joy. That was what Lucas brought to my life.
I was an ordinary man transformed by an extraordinary love.
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Enough
Matthew J. Metzger
Excerpt
He could smell the fire.
He was blind. His eyes streamed. The curling wallpaper crackled and hissed. His skin was burning. The air in his lungs seared him from the inside out. And there was nowhere to go—no escape from the heat, no escape from the orange towers and acrid black smoke, no air.
“Ezra!”
The smoke wrapped itself around his teeth and tongue like a grotesque mockery of a kiss, and there was no reply but the roar of hot air and climbing fire. The house was burning. The house was burning!
“Ezra! Ez!”
A scream. A piercing scream, like nothing he’d ever heard, but before he could move, the wooden boards crumbled to ash and he was falling, tearing through the shreds of stairs into the inferno, and—
Jesse hit the carpet with a thump and jarred himself awake.
The flat was quiet. The streetlight touched the other side of the curtains with a faint orange light. There was no smoke, no fire, no sound. Nothing.
Jesse dragged himself back onto the bed. The sheets were impossibly tangled and his tank top stuck to him with sweat. His wrist ached in its brace where he’d bumped it, but the panic hadn’t quite eased its grip on his heart or his lungs, and he fumbled for his phone, ignoring the pain.
Thank God for speed dial.
The clock on the side said two-fifty-eight, and the phone rang six times before the line coughed and crackled and a sleepy voice, tinged in the early hours with the fading edges of a Welsh accent, mumbled a vague sort of question.
“Ez?”
There was a rustle of sheets. “Jesse?”
“Oh, God,” Jesse breathed. The air escaped in a rush, loud and hard. His lungs shook with the effort. “Shit. I just— I needed to check—”
“Jess? What’s happened, sweetheart?”
The soft roll of his vowels, the accent entirely muted when he was properly awake, was as comforting as a hug, and Jesse coughed out, “Nightmare,” before thinking twice. Ezra was okay. He was okay. It was all okay.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Ezra murmured, low and crooning. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
“I need—can I come over? I know it’s late and I know you have work in the morning, but—I just—I need—”
“No,” Ezra interrupted, and Jesse’s stomach twisted violently.
“Please, Ez, I—”
“Hey, hey, hey.” Ezra cut him off. “Hey, stop, calm down, sweetheart. I meant you can’t come here
. You don’t sound okay, not to me, and I don’t want you to go out like this, so I’ll come to you, all right?”
Jesse exhaled, the twist easing. “Okay.”
“You okay if I hang up, or do you want me to put the phone on speaker?”
“Can—speaker,” Jesse swallowed against the nausea. He was still shaking, he realised faintly. “I just—I couldn’t find you, Ez. The house was burning and I couldn’t find you, and I—I need to hear you. You don’t have to talk to me, but I need to hear you.”
“Okay.” The phone crackled again and clunked, and suddenly Ezra’s voice was loud and echoing. Soothing. The Welsh hint was fading, and Jesse could suddenly hear him dressing, but he was there. “Was it my house or the one last week?”
“Yours,” Jesse said. “I was on the stairs, and they gave way, and I woke up. I couldn’t find you.”
“If my house was on fire, I would probably be in the kitchen having caused it,” Ezra said, and yawned loudly. “Make yourself useful, sweetheart, and make up a brew for me? I’ve not slept long.”
Jesse knew better than to apologise. He shrugged out of his sweat-soaked pyjamas and pulled on a pair of jogging bottoms before taking the phone through the narrow hall into the kitchen. The kitchen window overlooked the main road. A police car trailed idly by on the prowl. Phone to his ear, he listened to Ezra swear sleepily at his cupboard, and the soft sounds of those narrow feet padding downstairs.
“Sweetheart?”
“Mm?” Jesse listened to the front door and the heavy sound of the key.
“I’m going to hang up while I drive. You all right for ten minutes until I get there?”
“Yeah,” Jesse croaked. His heart had come down out of the rafters, and he could breathe. The streetlights didn’t look threatening anymore. He just felt…shaky. Sick and shaky and scared. “Yeah, Ez, I’ll be fine.”
“Okay. Love you.”
The dial tone was immediate. Jesse dropped the phone to the counter and switched on the kettle, staring out of the window and waiting, arms folded against the chill. It wasn’t the first nightmare, and it wouldn’t be the last. He usually managed one a week without fail, and the injury hadn’t helped matters. But they didn’t usually involve Ezra in burning buildings. They didn’t usually involve losing him.
And Jesse couldn’t stomach the thought of losing him.
Which was a bit scary in itself. They’d only met eight months ago. At a gay bar, of all places—the one place where he went to meet sex partners, not partner partners. Jesse had thought the freckled blond with the dark eyes was pretty in the neon lights and had bought him a drink, talked him into a dance, bought him another. Kissed him at the back of the dance floor—and had promptly found himself alone, but with a phone number in his back pocket.
He’d wanted sex. That was all he’d been after. Sex with a pretty guy. But then they’d gone on a date and he’d met Ezra properly, and he was lost. Ezra wasn’t just a handsome face and nice legs. Ezra was the world. He was Jesse’s world, and it had only been eight months, but Jesse still knew that this was it, for him. Ezra was it. There would never be anyone else like him.
So he stood in a tense vigil at the window, waiting for the faithful little Peugeot 207 to creep around the corner. Waiting for Ezra to come, because there was emotional shock and there was sense, and the two weren’t in line right now. He knew Ezra was okay. He knew it. He’d answered the phone. He’d been sleepy and understanding and sworn at his cupboard. He was fine.
But Jesse still needed to reach out and touch him, just to make sure. Somehow.
The little blue car was lonely on the three-in-the-morning road, and Jesse propped the door of his flat to creep down the communal stairs and open the main door. Ezra had gotten sort-of dressed, in jeans and an open check shirt, feet shoved into his trainers without socks, and his hair was wild and fluffy, in gleeful disarray, as he locked the car and wrapped himself around Jesse in a tight, warm hug.
Jesse clung back until something creaked, and pressed the side of his face against that wild hair.
“You’re all right, sweetheart,” Ezra murmured.
Jesse squeezed again until Ezra’s grip on the nape of his neck tightened in warning, then he let go and dragged Ezra up the silent stairs by the hand. Concrete stairs. They wouldn’t collapse in a fire until the whole building came down.
He didn’t say a word until he’d pressed the requested tea into Ezra’s hands, locked the door again and bundled them both back to the messy bed. Ezra was equally silent, taking a couple of mouthfuls before abandoning the tea, stripping to his underwear and crawling into the mess to mould himself into Jesse’s arms.
“There you go,” he murmured lowly, kissing Jesse’s encroaching stubble and stroking a hand gently through his hair. “Feel better now?”
“Mm,” Jesse pressed his nose into Ezra’s neck, tangling their legs together. He could feel a strong pulse in Ezra’s jugular. He could feel the rough skin of the bumpy scar on Ezra’s shoulder under his fingertips. He could feel the fuzzy mess of Ezra’s hair, usually styled and stiff in that messy-but-it’s-on-purpose-so-it’s-okay manner, now just loose and wild. He could feel him. “Thank you.”
“Thank me again tomorrow afternoon when I’m grumpy and exhausted after two hours of the Year Nines.”
“Okay,” Jesse agreed, sliding his arms completely around Ezra’s back until he enveloped him. They didn’t often sleep cuddled together—or even together at all, between Ezra’s eight-to-four and Jesse’s shifts—but he needed this. He needed it.
“Mind if I go to sleep?”
“No,” Jesse squirmed until Ezra got the hint and tucked his head under his chin. His hair tickled. Jesse kissed the top of his head and wished he had the easy grace with language that Ezra did. Wished he could express himself properly. Wished he could talk as easily as he hugged. But all that came out was, “I just needed to touch you.”
Ezra said nothing to that, simply shifting until he was comfortable, one arm over Jesse’s ribs and the other tucked over his own waist in a casual sort of drop. Ezra was long—long limbs, long neck, all willowy lines and bendy joints, and he settled like water into the bulkier, stiffer contours of Jesse’s body.
But he fit, and he fit perfectly, and Jesse wrapped him up and held him, breathing in the smell of store-brand shampoo and cheap aftershave until the last traces of the nightmare-induced fear washed away.
It was still a long time before he slept.
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About the Author
Logan Meredith began writing as a teenager when beautiful boys started keeping her company at night. Unfortunately, the voices she heard were imaginary, and their conversations resulted in horrible insomnia. They only let her sleep when she started typing their words down. Thankfully, being awkward as hell and a head taller than anyone else in the school afforded plenty of spare time for writing.
At first, she tried to make them play with characters from her favorite television series or books. She found her lost tribe with a ravenous, crazy group of fan fiction lovers online and started sharing her stories publicly. Then something amazing happened: new characters arrived and started demanding their own stories. Only they wanted their own world to play in and they wanted to find their true loves. So between her day job and making time for her family, she tries to keep up with the demands from her beautiful men for their happily-ever-afters.
A native of San Antonio, Texas, and a graduate of the University of Texas-San Antonio, Logan is an accomplished cross-country mover having honed h
er skills bouncing between five states. She currently resides in Houston, Texas. In addition to writing, she spends her time reading and re-reading her favorite books, cheering for the San Antonio Spurs, playing Words with Friends, and procrastinating pretty much everything else.
Logan is a proud member of the LGBTQA community and vocal advocate for mental health awareness suicide prevention, and equality campaigns.
Logan loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website details and author profile page at https://www.pride-publishing.com
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