His exhale was deep, but it didn’t shake.
“I’m sorry, Rhodes. Want me to call a plumber?”
“No, I know one. I’ll give him a call. Sounds like it might be a burst pipe. I was just in the garage this morning and didn’t notice anything, so I don’t think it’s a leak.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I promise I didn’t flood it or do anything weird.” I paused. “I’ll leave everything off for now.”
“Put your groceries in our fridge. I’ll tell Am to sleep on the sofa and you can take his room. It shouldn’t get below freezing tonight, so the pipes should be fine today, but it’ll be too cold for you to stay over there.”
I blinked. Stay in Amos’s room? In their house?
Did I want to go stay in a hotel? I could, of course, I could.
But stay in the same house as Rhodes? Mr. Flirty McFlirterson now?
Some part of my body perked up, and I wasn’t going to think twice about which part it was.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “About me staying with you two?”
His voice suddenly went low. “You think I’d invite you to stay if I didn’t want you to?”
Yeah, my body parts were awake. And out of control. “No.”
“Okay.”
“But I can sleep on the couch. Or, seriously, I can stay at a hotel or ask Clara—”
“You don’t need to go stay at a hotel, and they don’t have much room at their house.”
“Then I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“We’ll argue over it later,” he said. “I’ve got a few more spots I want to check out, and then I’ll be heading home. Take your stuff over and everything in your fridge so it doesn’t go bad. You got anything heavy, leave it and I’ll grab it when I get home.”
I swallowed. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah, angel, I’m sure. I’ll be home soon.”
I hung up the phone, feeling… jittery? Staying in the house was no big deal, okay. But it kind of felt like it at the same time.
I liked Rhodes way too much. In small, subtle ways that got under my skin. I liked how good of a father he was, how much he loved his son. And even though I’d loved someone once who had adored a family member more than he would ever care about me, in this case, that love was for very different reasons and in very different ways. He loved him enough to be tough but at the same time let him be his own person.
Rhodes was no Mrs. Jones.
I’d liked him even when he gave me the stink eye. And I had no idea what his plans were. Plans with me. I knew what I wouldn’t mind them looking like but….
I happened to look over and found Amos leaning against the counter, looking way too introspective.
“What?” I asked him, popping the tab on my own soda and taking a sip.
The boy shook his head.
“You can tell me anything, Little Sting, and I can tell you want to.”
That seemed to be enough for him. “Are you flirting with my dad?” he straight-up asked.
I almost spit the soda out. “No…?”
He blinked. “No?”
“Maybe?”
Amos raised an eyebrow.
It was my turn to blink. “Yes, okay. Yes. But I flirt with everyone. Men and women. Children. You should see me around pets. I used to have a fish, and I sweet-talked her too. Her name was Gretchen Wiener. I miss her.” She had passed away a few years ago, but I still thought about her from time to time. She’d been a good travel companion. Not fussy at all.
That had the teenager’s cheeks going puffy for a second.
He fucking liked me. I knew it.
“Does it bother you if I flirt with your dad?” I paused. “Would it bother you if I liked him?” That wasn’t the best word to describe it, but it was the simplest.
That got him to scoff. “No! I’m sixteen not five.”
“But you’re still his wittle baby, Am. And my feelings won’t be hurt”—that was a lie, they would be—“if you weren’t okay with it. You’re my friend too. Just like your dad. I don’t want to make things weird.”
The kid gave me a disgusted expression that made me laugh. “I don’t care. We already talked about it anyway.”
“You did?”
He nodded but didn’t clear up what they’d talked about. Instead, he got a funny look on his face, and I’d bet a finger it was his version of a protective expression. “He’s been alone a long time. Like, a long time. My whole life, he’s had some girlfriends, and none of them lasted that long. With my dad Billy not here and my uncles moving away, he doesn’t have that many friends, not like when he was in the Navy; he knew everybody then.”
I wasn’t sure where he was going with this so I stayed quiet, sensing there was more on his mind.
“My mom told me to tell you that it takes him a while to trust people.”
“Your mom said that?”
“Yeah, she asked me.”
“About your dad… and me?”
Amos nodded and took another sip. “Don’t tell him I told you, but you make him smile a lot.”
There went my heart again.
“You look… you know, like that, and… whatever. I don’t care if you like him, and I don’t care if he likes you. I want him… you know… to be happy. I don’t want him to regret being here,” he said in a way that told me he meant it, but still felt kind of loaded. Like he was giving me his blessing to follow what my heart was asking for. Not that I even really knew what that was.
“In that case, thank you, Am. I’m positive your dad doesn’t regret anything when it comes to you.” The urge to talk to him about how confusing his father was, was right there, but I wouldn’t do it. Refused to, more like it. “Changing the topic, I guess, I’m staying over tonight and sleeping on the couch since everything is shut off over there. Will you help me bring some of my groceries over, please? I can make dinner, and maybe we can watch a movie or you can let me listen to that song you’ve been working on—”
“Nope.”
I laughed. “It was worth a shot.”
Amos did that tiny smile as he rolled his eyes, and it just made me laugh more.
* * *
It was the gentle squeeze on my ankle that had me prying an eyelid open.
The room was dark, but the high ceilings reminded me of where I was, where I’d fallen asleep. On Rhodes’s couch.
The last thing I remembered was watching a movie with Amos.
Opening my other eye, I yawned and spotted a big, familiar figure hunched over the other end of the couch. Amos was slowly sitting up, his dad’s hand on his shoulder as he muttered, “Go to bed.”
The kid yawned huge, barely opening his eyes as he nodded, more than half asleep, and stood up. I’d bet he had no idea where he was or even that he was on the couch with me. Sitting up too, I stretched my arms up over my head and croaked, “‘Night, Am.”
My friend let out a grunt as he stumbled away, and I smiled at Rhodes who was back to standing. He was in his uniform, his belt off, and he had the gentlest expression on his face.
“Hi,” I grumbled, dropping my arms. “What time is it?”
Rhodes looked tired but okay, I thought, yawning again. “Three in the morning. Fell asleep watching TV?”
I nodded, muttering, “Mm-hmm,” and closing one eye as I did it. Oh man, all I needed was a blanket and I’d pass right back out. “Everything okay?”
“Some hunters got lost. I didn’t get service out to call and warn you two,” he explained quietly. “Come on then. You’re not sleeping down here.”
Oh. I nodded again, too sleepy to be hurt he’d changed his mind. “Will you watch me walk back to the garage apartment then? Make sure the coyotes don’t get me?”
Rhodes suddenly frowned. “No.”
“But you said—”
He was fast, coming over, his hands going to my elbows and guiding me up to standing. Then his hand slipped into mine, like he’d done it before a million times, his palm cool and rough and big, and he started
pulling me to follow him.
Where were we going?
“Rhodes?”
He glanced at me over his shoulder; his facial hair was thick over his jaw and cheeks. I wondered, not for the first time, if it was soft or kind of bristly. I’d bet it tickled.
And just like that, I realized he was leading me toward the stairs. The stairs up. To his room. Someone had hinted once where it was at.
“I can sleep down here,” I whispered, not alarmed but… something.
“You want to sleep down here with the bat?”
I stopped walking.
His laugh was so soft I didn’t know whether that surprised me more than the fact he was getting me to go upstairs… with him? “Didn’t think so. My bed’s big enough for both of us.” He let out a soft breath. “Or I can take the floor.”
My feet moved, but the rest of me didn’t.
Did he just say his bed was big enough for both of us?
And there was a bat in here?
Or that he could take the floor in his room?
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, pal,” I whispered. “I don’t even know your middle name.”
His hand tensed in mine, and he glanced over his shoulder. “John.”
He wasn’t trying to… get me to go up there to have sex with him, was he? I didn’t think so—as in really didn’t think so but…. “Not that I wouldn’t mind having sex with you eventually—”
Rhodes made this terrible choking sound in his throat.
“—but I barely learned your middle name, and I don’t know what you wanted to be when you were growing up, and this is going really fast if you want to do more than just sleep in the same bed together,” I rambled out in a rush, so I had no clue what the hell I was even saying.
Apparently, he barely understood it too because he made another choking sound—not as aggressive—and just looked at me for a long second. “Sometimes I think I know exactly what you’re going to say… and then the exact opposite comes out of your mouth,” he whispered back.
Was he laughing?
“No sex, Buddy, just sleep. I’m too tired, and I do know your middle name, but I’m not real big on rushing things, Valeria,” he finally got out. Definitely laughing and trying not to. “But I wanted to be a biologist. It took me a long time, but I got my degree in it. I’m using it better now than I’d dreamed of back then.” He took a deep breath. “What did you want to be?”
“A doctor, but I couldn’t even get through dissecting a frog in high school without throwing up.”
His chuckle sounded rusty.
And I liked it.
“Okay,” I agreed, “just sleep.”
He shook his head and, after a minute, started the journey again. My feet hit the stairs one after another, and even though I was mostly thinking about what it would be like to have sex with him, I still glanced up at the ceiling to make sure there was no bat there. There wasn’t.
Not yet at least.
Were we really going to sleep in the same bed? Or was I going to tell him I could sleep on the floor? Or was he going to sleep on the floor?
I was way too exhausted to think this over so closely. It didn’t help that I had no idea what went on in the dating game anymore. My friends weren’t good examples of real-life dating because their lives were so complicated.
But my thoughts just circled back around to one thing: sex with Rhodes.
I mean, I was all for it eventually. It scared me, made me nervous too.
I’d seen him without a shirt on. He was all brawny and big, and I’d bet he wasn’t lazy at all. I bet he liked being on top.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, I needed not to think about that.
“Rhodes,” I whispered.
“Hmm?”
“In the same bed?”
“I’d rather not sleep on the floor, angel, but I will if you’re not good with it.”
I blinked, and my heart thumped in response.
“Don’t think you want to either. There might be mice running around still. They are nocturnal.”
I was still taking turns looking up at the ceiling and down at the floor when he led us into his bedroom. He didn’t flip on the light, but the moon through his window was huge and bright, illuminating everything with just the right amount to not wake me up too much more than talking about mice and bats had.
Fuck. I was relieved when he closed the door behind him and moved toward the bed, still holding my hand. He pulled the bedspread aside and murmured, “Take this side.”
I did, plopping down on the edge and watching him as he unbuttoned his shirt. When he was almost done, he jerked it out from where it had been stuffed into his pants, finished with the buttons, and shrugged it off. Right in front of me.
I sat there. My mouth went a little dry at the way his undershirt clung to the thick muscles of his upper body. “Are you showering?” I asked without even meaning to.
“Too tired,” he replied softly, folding the shirt and setting it into a hamper I hadn’t spotted in the corner of his room. I wanted to look around… but he was stripping.
Rhodes went for his pants then, undoing the tab, then the zipper, and pulling it down…
That’s when I glanced up to meet his eyes. He was looking right at me. Busted. I smiled just as he started tugging his pants down his long legs.
“Did you find the hunters?” I asked, hoping my throat sounded husky from sleep and not for another reason.
I was weak and I flicked my gaze down.
He was a boxers guy.
Part of me had expected him to be a tighty-whities type of man, but he wasn’t.
His boxers were dark and short. His thighs were everything I had expected them to be. Someone didn’t skip leg day and hadn’t. Ever.
I swallowed to make sure my mouth was shut.
“Yes. They wandered too far from their campsite, but we found them,” he answered.
He bent down and pulled off his socks, and I swore there was something about his bare feet just visible that seemed more intimate than if he’d been standing there buck naked.
Drawing my legs up, I snuck them under the sheet and the heavy comforter, drawing it up as he pulled his other sock off, still watching me. I was doing this. Sleeping in his bed. Still not sure what any of this meant or where it was going but… going along with it.
He had been so nice to me lately for a reason, I understood now. Maybe he’d been distant because of his mom, maybe he’d finally just decided I was decent. I had no clue what drove him to this point now, of leading me to his room.
Yet it didn’t matter.
My mom used to say that most of the time, when you’re on a trail, you get to a point where another one branches off from it, and you have to choose which way you want to go. What you want to see. And I knew in that moment, that I had to make another decision.
For a tiny, brief moment, I wondered if this was fast. I’d been with someone for fourteen years, and it had been almost a year and a half since we’d split up. Should I give myself more time?
But in another tiny, brief moment, I came to my decision.
When you lose enough, you learn to take happiness where you can find it. You don’t wait for it to be handed to you. You don’t expect it in big firework-like displays.
You take it in small moments, and sometimes those come shaped in a two-hundred-and-fortyish pound man going above and beyond. I wanted to understand what was happening. I needed to.
So before I could think twice about what I was doing, what I was setting myself up for, I asked him, “Rhodes?”
“Yes?”
“Why didn’t you call or text me while you were gone?”
I was pretty sure I could hear my heart beating it was so loud in the silence that came right after my question. Just this thud, thud, thud that rang between my ears as he stood there, looking in my direction. Part of me didn’t expect him to answer until he finally repeated in surprise, “Why?”
Maybe I should’ve saved the question for when it
wasn’t three in the morning, but we were here, and I might as well get it out. “Yeah. Why? I thought… I thought there was something going on with us, but then I didn’t hear from you.” I pressed my lips together. “Now I’m in your bed and I’m confused with what’s going on. If it means anything.”
He didn’t say a word.
I cleared my throat though, figuring I might as well keep going. “I thought maybe you liked me. As in liked me-liked me. It’s okay if you don’t, if you changed your mind. If you’re just being this nice to me because you’re a good man, but I’d like to know if that’s the case. I’d still like to be your friend anyway.” I swallowed. “It just… kind of felt sometimes like we were dating, you know? Minus the physical stuff…. I’m fucking this up, aren’t I?”
I heard him suck in a breath before saying, seriously, “We’re not dating.”
I wanted the floor to eat me up. I wanted to get up and walk out, or at least sleep in the living room and take my chances with the bat—
“I’m too old to be anybody’s boyfriend,” Rhodes said in that hoarse, solemn voice that carried so much weight on it. “But I do like you more than I should. More than you might feel comfortable with.”
He didn’t move, and neither did I. My heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest at his implications. Even my skin prickled.
“I wanted to call you, but I was trying to give you room.”
“Why?” I asked like he’d just said he liked eating mayonnaise straight from the jar.
His answer was a sigh followed by, “Because… I’ve been watching you grow for months. I don’t want to be something you grow around. You were with someone who gave you too much shade before, right? I’d rather us take our time than me stunt where you’re going, who you’re becoming.”
I could hear my heartbeat again.
“I know how I want you to feel, but I’m not rushing you. I know how I feel. I haven’t changed my mind about anything, especially not you. I only want you to be sure of what you want.”
I was breathing through my mouth loudly.
All Rhodes Lead Here Page 38