by Beth Bolden
Xander blushed bright red. The wall in question was the wall right behind Damon. “Uh no, just . . . thinking of a new dish.”
“What is it?” Damon asked, because of course.
“Uh, uh, it’s . . .” Xander was usually a lot quicker, even with a lie, but not much of his blood was in his brain at the moment.
“Sounds really good,” Damon said solemnly.
Xander resembled the color of the radishes Damon was growing outside. “Really good,” he managed to agree.
Damon laughed. “Whatever it is, I think I want some.”
The culmination of all of Xander’s problems: Damon probably didn’t want any, and probably wasn’t ever going to want any.
“Yeah, yeah,” Xander grumbled, turning back to his own pile and getting back to work before his inconvenient erection could be any more obvious.
The work wasn’t particularly hard, but it was time-consuming. There was a lot of crap tucked into the corners of the barrel house. Xander was pretty certain it hadn’t been cleaned out after it had stopped being used. They’d just kept everything in here, a mausoleum to the old-fashioned method of winemaking. Over time, it had rotted and broken down and then finally fallen apart.
“I’m hungry,” Damon said after a few hours of work. “I’ll go grab us some sandwiches from the corner market.”
Xander considered protesting, and saying he’d make lunch instead, but his arms and legs were streaked with dirt and grime. He’d have to shower to feel ready to enter a kitchen. And he knew the “corner market” was actually a pretty high-end country store that catered to tourists who wanted a picnic to take with them on their wine tasting tours.
“Sure.”
“Any preference?” Damon said, removing his gloves and setting them on one of the barrels in a long line he was breaking down.
“Anything that looks good. I’m not picky.”
Damon looked surprised.
“Don’t look so shocked,” Xander teased. “We’re not all Gordon Ramsay.”
“Gordon Ramsey isn’t picky,” Damon protested. “He wants to eat food that’s edible that wasn’t prepared in a kitchen that looks like a garbage dump. He doesn’t want food poisoning. Can you really call that picky?”
Xander burst out laughing. “Are you in the Gordon Ramsay fan club?”
“I actually watch a lot of bad reality television,” Damon admitted in a quiet voice, like he was almost ashamed to admit it, but not enough to change the subject. “Gordon is pretty cool.”
Xander raised an eyebrow. “He is?”
“He’s good to kids. He tries to help people that don’t always know how to help themselves,” Damon defended.
“He also yells a lot, which, as you can imagine, I’m not a fan of,” Xander said. “That was all I knew about him.”
“You should watch Kitchen Nightmares sometime,” Damon said. “I have pretty much the whole show saved on my DVR.”
“Do you watch Real Housewives too?” Xander asked in a teasing voice. “Orange County or Atlanta?”
“I used to, but I got into food shows in the last year or so,” Damon said, and he sounded self-conscious again. “Chopped and Food Network Star and Holiday Baking Championship. Even watched Kitchen Wars on-demand.”
Xander definitely did not ask if the sudden interest in food was because Damon had decided to open a restaurant or if it was meeting him. “I keep trying to get my friend Miles on Holiday Baking Championship. He’d do so great. Right now he hosts a show on Five Points. But he could do a lot bigger things, if he wanted.”
“You’re friends with Miles Costa?” Damon asked. Undeniably starstruck. “I never miss his show.” He hesitated. “Duh, of course, he worked at Terroir with you.”
“He was one of my roommates, before he left for LA,” Xander explained.
“I’m going to need to meet him sometime,” Damon said. “Okay, I’m off to the corner market.”
It was only after Damon walked away that Xander realized they’d had an extensive conversation about bad reality TV. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have those conversations with straight guys sometimes, but wow, he could still feel the echo of it, the same as he’d had with Kian or Nate or any of his other gay friends.
Instead of asking about Real Housewives, he should have asked about RuPaul’s Drag Race instead.
This particular fact wouldn’t have told Xander what he wanted to know, but it might have given him a clearer idea if he even had a chance.
Fifteen minutes later, Damon returned with a plastic bag full of sandwiches.
“What is all this?” Xander asked as he dug through the bag. “There must be six sandwiches in here.”
“I wasn’t sure what you wanted. Bonus points: anything we don’t eat today, I can have for dinner.”
Xander glanced up. “You eat cold sandwiches from the corner deli for dinner?”
“Long days,” Damon said, and he sounded almost apologetic. “I don’t have the energy or the inclination most days to make a dinner for one.”
Xander tried to remember the last time he’d made a meal for just himself. Even in the mornings when he and Kian were rushing to get to Terroir and Nate was headed to the winery, he’d often make a big scramble with whatever was left in the fridge.
And at Terroir, there was the big meal they all shared before the dinner service started.
In fact, Xander couldn’t even remember the last time he’d truly eaten a meal alone. Suddenly it made a lot of sense why loneliness seemed to emanate from Damon. Every single time Xander had been over to his house, there’d been zero evidence of any other visitor.
It made Xander’s heart hurt for him. Divorced, estranged from his family, and dealing with the sort of demons that haunted men, Damon needed a friend, badly.
A little voice deep inside Xander told him that Damon needed a partner—and not just in his business ventures. Xander just wasn’t sure that was him. Even if Damon was genuinely interested, Xander had never even had a boyfriend before. And if Nate was to be believed, that was because Xander couldn’t put himself out there enough to make it happen. If he couldn’t even convince a guy to date him, how could he be the sort of rock that Damon might need?
“It’s pretty sad, isn’t it?” Damon scoffed, and there wasn’t even bitterness in his voice. Simply resignation.
“It’s not, it’s really not. Not sad anyway. I was thinking that I couldn’t remember the last time I ate alone. You don’t do it much in my world. You tend to eat in packs. Either at our house or at the restaurant.”
“That sounds really . . . nice.” Damon sounded plain wistful now.
“You need to come over to our place,” Xander said, picking at the label of the roast beef and Havarti he’d selected. “It’s not fancy, but we can make a mean meal.” And, unspoken was the fact that Damon wouldn’t be alone.
“You don’t have to do that,” Damon said, picking out a turkey with cranberry cream cheese. Xander’s second choice. Damon, whether he realized it or not, had good taste.
After all, he’d picked Xander to be his head chef, hadn’t he?
“I want to,” Xander insisted.
“I guess you’re going to have to do a lot of recipe testing,” Damon suggested hesitantly. “I guess you have to feed the possibilities to someone.”
“Exactly,” Xander said, shooting Damon a quick grin.
“I’m going to go wash my hands,” Xander said. “I’m gross.”
He stood, leaving the wrapped sandwich on the wine barrel that was serving as their impromptu table.
“You’re dirty, not gross,” Damon corrected, and this time when he smiled, even his dimples came out. Xander got the briefest, most tantalizing peek of what a younger Damon, less lonely and less tormented, might have been like. And even though he was already hooked, it felt like that single moment was enough to reel him right in.
“House is unlocked,” Damon continued when Xander hesitated. Torn between going to wash his hands and telling Dam
on very firmly that he could not say that sort of thing to him because he might get ideas and he already had enough of those swirling around his head.
“Great,” Xander said shortly, and turned toward the house.
He washed his hands quickly and efficiently, forcing away any and all of his curiosity to poke and prod around Damon’s very clean hall bathroom. Xander didn’t even think Damon used it, but the temptation was stronger than it should have been.
Clearly, Xander wanted to know more about him, but he wasn’t sure Damon would open up if he asked.
He returned to the barrel house, to find that Damon had waited for him to start eating. Xander didn’t point that out, but it was hard not to feel, again, that Damon was that real deal he’d kept telling himself he was waiting for. Someone kind and thoughtful. Someone who put Xander first.
They ate their lunch and then continued working, mostly in silence, which was something Xander was fine with. Unnecessary chattering was heavily frowned upon at Terroir, and at pretty much every other restaurant he’d ever worked at, so he’d long ago killed that need inside him to fill up emptiness with words.
Xander figured that if Damon had something important to say, he’d say it, and assumed that Damon understood the opposite was also true.
Four rolled around, and Xander looked up as he wiped a dirty forearm across a forehead that was damp with sweat.
“You about finished?” Damon asked.
“Yeah, I just have the remains of this pile.”
“I just broke down the last wine barrel. I think . . .” Damon let out a short, almost incredulous laugh. “I think we might almost be done lugging out all the shit in here.”
“A miracle,” Xander said dryly. He’d known this would be hot, heavy, unpleasant work. He wouldn’t have been caught dead doing it, if this wasn’t going to be partly his place too. And, Xander figured, he had done far worse things with a far worse view, all in the name of culinary advancement.
“As soon as we’re cleared for burning, I’ll have a big bonfire with this pile,” Damon said.
“A bonfire?” Despite his own best intentions, that sounded fun. And maybe even a little romantic.
“Maybe tomorrow night. Maybe the night after. You wanna come and hang out, watch it all burn?”
Xander wondered if Damon realized he’d been leading him into the invitation. If he’d wanted to invite him anyway. But in the end, it didn’t matter, because he’d been asked, and he was definitely not going to turn it down. “Sure. Sounds like fun.”
“I have a schedule,” Damon said next. “Next on it is refinishing the floors, which I plan on doing next week. You want to help with that too?”
Xander knew, from his stepdad’s work in construction, that refinishing floors was back-breaking, unpleasant and messy. He still nodded.
“I’ll let you know about the bonfire,” Damon said. “But in the meantime, I’ll be tending the garden. Thinking about clearing some more land, maybe put in an orchard. It won’t be ready right away, maybe not even for a few years, but eventually, we’ll have fruit.”
An orchard. Xander shaded his eyes and looked the way Damon was pointing, far in the distance. Yeah, he could see apple trees there. “Can you text me a list of vegetables that you’ll be ready to harvest for the restaurant opening?” Xander asked. “I’m going to spend the time in recipe development.”
“Yeah, sure. And I almost forgot.” Damon dug in his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. Handed a plastic card to Xander. When he took it, it was still warm from his body. Xander curled his fingers around it, the edges biting into his palm. “That’s a debit card to the bank account I’ve set up for the restaurant. Feel free to charge any purchases to the account. There’s plenty of money in it.”
Xander remembered Bastian Aquino demanding a receipt for some strawberries he’d been asked to pick up at the farm stand. He remembered his honesty over the dollar amount being questioned without one. And here Damon was, just handing him the key to a whole bank account.
This must be what being trusted felt like.
* * *
The next day, Damon felt stupid that he hadn’t invited Xander to see what a day in the garden was like. He didn’t need his help, but he’d discovered that even though it had taken months to get used to the silence, it only took a few evenings and a day together to remember how much it sucked.
It took him the entire morning to go through the garden, checking plants, pulling encroaching weeds, spraying everything with his homemade bug repellent that he’d invented after too many evenings scouring the internet for something non-chemical and organic.
Then Damon looked over at the big pile of wood and garbage that he and Xander had spent the last day dragging out of the barrel house. Really, he needed another day to sort through it, and get the bonfire ready. He didn’t want to wait another day, but there was no point of having the fire if he couldn’t do it properly. Also, the forecast called for some rain tonight, and if he tarped the pile, the surrounding ground would be damp enough that the burning restriction for the county would probably lift.
He worked the rest of the afternoon, sweating through his shirt and sorting out the garbage he’d have to take to the dump. By five, he was halfway through, and felt good about confirming the bonfire tomorrow night. Maybe he should even get marshmallows and graham crackers at the store, make it a s’mores party.
Grabbing his phone from his counter, he shed his filthy clothes right into the washing machine and texted Xander on the way to a much-needed shower.
He typed in: Bonfire + s’mores tomorrow night? and hit the send button.
It was a difficult decision between a cold shower and a hot one, but the boiling temps, barely counteracted by the old air conditioner in this house, made the decision for him.
He’d soothe his aching muscles by swallowing a few painkillers with dinner. There was a time when he’d have wanted to drink a beer or two or six to drown out the pain. And that had always been the problem with him and alcohol. There was no safe middle ground of a handful of beers. There was only no beer or a whole six-pack and then whatever other booze he could scrounge up in the house.
Cold water sluiced over his overheated skin and he leaned back against the tile wall and tried to think of nothing, because the alternative was thinking of Xander, and Damon knew he’d already crossed too many lines thinking of Xander.
He didn’t need to cross this one. But he couldn’t seem to stop his own hand, as it drifted down his chest, his stomach and settled low at his groin, wrapping around his half-hard cock. The water was cool and refreshing and his dick hadn’t seemed to get the memo that he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about this.
He’d tried thinking of Rachel. He’d tried thinking of other women. The hot checker at the grocery store who always gave him appreciative looks whenever he bought food. But none of them did it for him anymore. His body knew what he wanted, and it wasn’t so much a shock that it was a man, as it was a surprise that it was Xander.
Since realizing and acknowledging he was bisexual in junior high, he’d never gotten a chance to try anything with a guy. Rachel had asked him once how he could even know, if he’d never even kissed a guy. He’d asked her how she knew she liked guys before she’d kissed him, when they were fourteen and snuck into one of the big winery parties his family threw.
She’d responded that she’d just known, and before he could even point out the double standard, she’d laughed, a little self-consciously and pointed it out herself.
That was the first and only conversation they’d ever had about it, but when she’d left him, she’d told him that someday he’d meet someone who wouldn’t mind wrestling with his demons.
The someone had reminded him that now that he and Rachel were over, and when he finally got clean, there was always the chance that when he found himself attracted to someone again, that person wouldn’t necessarily be a woman.
And now it had happened, and it was definitely not a woman.
Damon gave his cock a half-hearted tug. His body was definitely all-in, interest piqued like it hadn’t in years, but his mind was still freaking out. Not over the fact that Xander was a man, though that was a little intimidating considering how little experience he had, but over the chance that he could fuck it all up again.
Rachel had been bad enough, and she’d gotten away before he’d truly been able to ruin her life. But what if he ruined Xander’s? He wanted Xander to be part of his personal life, but he was already part of his professional one. What if he couldn’t keep it together? What if the Barrel House pushed him back into old and destructive habits? Damon still wasn’t certain he trusted himself.
He definitely didn’t trust himself enough to drag someone else into his hot mess.
The problem was his body was hearing, but not really listening, to the arguments his brain kept setting out. It knew exactly what it wanted—a firm mouth, stubble scraping against his cheek as they kissed; a muscular shoulder he could brace his hands against. But mostly he wanted those scarred, talented hands, so delicate but so tough, wrapped around his cock right now.
Damon had a lot of self-control these days. He’d spent years developing and cultivating it. Which was the only reason he’d managed to keep his thoughts of Xander PG-rated until now. But after spending some quality time with the man, his control washed away like a dirt road in a flash flood.
He tipped his face back, felt the water wash over him in a cool rush, and stroked himself with certainty this time. An embarrassingly short time later, he was watching the result wash down the drain.
“Damn,” Damon said to himself.
A quick wash later, he got out of the shower, wrapped a towel around his waist, and because he apparently couldn’t help himself at all, checked his phone.
There was already a text from Xander. Three texts from Xander, in fact.