Chapter 7 Galen
Galen
I take the quickest shower known to man.
Then I slip through my back gate and into the alley between Cinnamon Row and Cosmic Avenue, tasting the sweet scent of the nearby bakery in the air.
At this time of night in this part of town, the alley isn’t the safest place to be, but with less than a minute to spare between my house and Sab’s, I take my chances.
His front door has a wreath hanging from it that wasn’t there when I drove past yesterday on my way to work. It’s made of holly and ivy, with random glittery pipe cleaners woven through it, and what I’m pretty sure is a half-eaten biscuit stuffed in the ivy leaves.
Cute as hell, it jingles as I tap a light rhythm on the door. At least it does until the tiny bell comes loose and skitters to the ground.
I stoop to find it, and that’s how Sab finds me. On my knees on his front porch, something gold and sparkly in my hands.
He blinks.
I offer him the bell. “Came off when I knocked.”
“Oh.” Comprehension dawns on his gorgeous face. “Je ne comprenais pas ce que tu faisais à genoux par terre, mais…ca m’a plu.”
Lord. If he’s already lapsing into French, I’m in trouble. And I don’t need to understand a word he says to get a rush in my chest as wry shyness sweeps his features.
I don’t make him repeat himself in English.
Instead, I drop the bell into his open palm and accept his other hand to haul myself to my feet.
His warm hand, like his arm at the car a few hours ago, despite his skin being exposed to the elements.
The calloused fingers that send such charged sparks through mine, it’s hard to imagine I’ll survive it if I ever do get him naked.
Sab lets go of me to reattach the bell to the wreath. Then he steps back, waving me into his home. “Sorry about the mess.”
“What mess?” I glance around as I precede him into the house.
“Boy, all I see is life.” In the tiny shoes by the front door.
The handprint artwork on the walls. The unfinished decorating that’s barely a fraction of the carnage I live in.
“I have no worktops or tiles in my kitchen, if it’s any consolation. ”
“Why not?”
“Getting fit for the job took over my life for a bit. Now I can’t be arsed. Seems pointless when I’m the only eejit kicking around.”
“You don’t need to eat?”
I give him a droll look. “They have apps for that too, ya know.”
Sab frowns, his gaze alive with the same disapproval I get from Logan sometimes. “Bien s?r, si tu veux te faire empoisonner à petit feu par de la bouffe dégueu—fuck. Sorry. Just come in, yeah?”
I’m already in, but I take that as my cue to toe my shoes off before I remember his gym stuff is on his back porch. “Are we going outside again?”
Sab shakes his head. “I brought what we need inside. I, uh, didn’t want you to be cold if you’re already sore.”
“It’s not that bad, honestly. You don’t have to have me in your house.”
“You’re standing like someone nicked your last walnut.”
“Walnuts, eh?”
“They’re good for you.” He inclines his head to a sideboard I haven’t noticed. A chipped ceramic dish is filled with the nuts in question, and despite the time of year bearing down on us, it’s the last thing I expect to see.
Sab must see it on my face. “Noix du Périgord,” he says in the rich accent that makes me feel like someone else. “My parents send tons of them from the Dordogne every winter.”
“That’s where they live?”
“These days, yeah.”
“You ever visit?”
“Not since Esme.” His expression shutters again, concealing the openness that brightens his whole face, old wounds hiding the real him away again.
I resent it. And I fecking loathe whoever’s hurt him. But I get hives when people push me too hard, and I’m not here to be his therapist.
If anything, I’m here for him to be mine. And so I follow Sab as he moves through his house to the living room that’s clinically tidy, save an itty-bitty pink dressing gown draped over the arm of the sofa. “No mess in here, either, eh?”
Sab crouches by some weights piled out of sight. “Ironically, I hate tidy things.”
I pause by the sofa, studying the back of his head.
Sensing my gaze, he turns a little. “I get restless when I’m alone. And if I don’t go to my brother’s, that’s every fucking night.”
“Single dad?”
“Yeah.” Sab stands with a few dumbbells in his strong arms. “You want to try some of these?”
I want to know more about him. Even the horrible shit that’s making him talk about himself as if he’s not worth anything. Even the best shit, which is clearly his brother and his kid, and the reason he brought home a mega-box of outdoor fairy lights this afternoon.
But Sab’s done talking. About himself, at least. He gestures to the open space in his living room and together, we move on to something far more painful for me.
Sab puts me back on my knees, kneeling behind me so I can’t see his face as he coaches me through a set of external rotations.
Movement that hurts, but the dull ache has nothing on the slow-burn sensation of his searing hand cupping my elbow on my weaker side, keeping it tucked in, while the other hovers close to my forearm, guiding the movement.
It’s the oddest fecking thing that I feel his body heat most where he’s not touching me. That I’m hyper-aware of every minute movement he makes while the exercise he’s teaching me sends angry flares through my entire damn body.
“All right?”
His voice is a low murmur. A vibrating rumble that would get me hard if my shoulder didn’t bother me so much.
The pain is saving you from your over-horny self.
Lord help me.
We move on to front raises, light weights, slow and controlled, Sab holding my wrist for the first couple of reps, like my physio used to, except really fecking hot.
“Easy,” he murmurs. “There you go, keep it smooth.”
I try, and honestly, there’s nothing new in these warm-up exercises.
I do them all the time. But I’ve never moved my body in the gym with someone like Sab behind me.
With a low, rumbling voice tickling my ear while it takes every ounce of restraint I possess not to toss the weights and pounce on him.
We finish up on an isometric press, an exercise I usually use a wall for. But Sab has a better idea. He braces a palm to my fist, his body a solid wall of muscle, and says wicked things with a gaze so serious I want to kiss him and do what I’m told.
“Push into me,” he says. “Steady, until you really feel it.”
Been feeling it for the best part of an hour, boy. And the sweat I have on has nothing to do with the exertion of my grumpy shoulder, or the spinning top in my brain as I try and figure out if this was the best idea in the world or the worst.
“Let’s stretch you out.” Sab takes the dumbbells to the back door and puts them outside. So little lady doesn’t drop them on her feet, maybe. Then he comes back and steps in close. “Before you get stiff.”
Christ.
Sab cups my elbow with his warm hand. The other skates to my wrist. “Across your chest.”
I obey the murmured command, testing my shoulder until it hums with a sweet stretch, one I’ve needed all night but haven’t been able to find on my own. Not as deep as this, anyway, as Sab applies pressure to my arm, his thumb rubbing absent circles into my bicep. “You’re good at this.”
His gaze is already fixed on mine, alert for signs of pain, and something flickers in his deep brown eyes as he absorbs my observation. “My brother needed a lot of rehab after his accident, and he wasn’t great at letting strangers help him, even the professionals.”
“So you stepped up?”
“Mon frère, c’est ma vie—my brother is my life. And anyway, I owed him for not disowning me when I was a raging cokehead, back in the day.”
Sab’s gaze lowers as he makes his confession, one that doesn’t surprise me all that much. I knew this lad had layers.
I miss his bottomless stare, though, so I steal it back, gripping his jaw instead of swapping arms. “There’s no shame in addiction, boy. My family is rife with it, and I love them all just the same, even if I don’t hang out with them that often.”
Sab scrunches his face up. “I was a fucking nightmare for a hell of a long time.”
“How long are you clean?”
“Five years.”
I let my hand fall. “That’s a hell of a long time too.”
“You sound like Bhodi.”
“Who’s that?”
“Brother-in-law.” Sab shifts my arm into another stretch. One that has me gritting my teeth until he finds the sweet spot again, manipulating my battered body with deft ease. “He’s too nice to me.”
“Maybe you deserve it.”
Sab looks at me again and I realise how little space there is between us. How close his face is to mine, his mouth, his lips, as the air between us seems to shift.
He sees it too and his breathing shallows.
Or maybe that’s mine.
All I know is I’m torn between claiming his mouth like a caveman and nuzzling his throat, and what the feck is up with that?
I get the claiming part. He’s hot as hell and I want to fuck him.
But this intimate shit I can’t stop thinking about—I can’t stop wanting.
It’s shifting something in me, and I’m not trying all that hard to stop it.
The moment stretches out too long. Sab slides his hands from me. He starts to move away, and I don’t have a name for the feeling that sears my chest.
I reach for him before I really know I’m doing it. Snap a hand around his wrist.
Tug him back.
I kiss him.
And this time, I’m not that gentle.