Chapter 9 Galen
Galen
I leave Sab’s house with his embrace branded on my soul. I’ve always been a hugger, but round here, with Logan gone, there haven’t been many contenders for much more than a bro-themed back slap, and I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed me some good old bald affection.
Not that Sab’s bald.
Or that it would matter if he was.
Stop the lights, I’m a mess.
I make it back to my own house and let myself in, tread heavy on the unfinished floors. I’m in my own kitchen by the time I realise my hands are trembling, standing at the window as if I’ve forgotten the point of moving. Like I might cry or something ridiculous.
And for what?
I had a great time. My shoulder still hurts, but I know it won’t in the morning. And my lips…they tingle as if they’re plugged into the same power source as the strewn fairy lights in Sab’s garden—the ones I forgot to tell him looked cracking and safe—and I like that feeling. I like it a lot.
So why do I feel like I’ve been floating outside myself for a thousand years and Sab hauled me back without even trying? As if he’s refitted my skin over my body?
It was a fecking hug.
Except…it wasn’t. And now I’m on my own again, loose and unravelled, I don’t know what to do with it. Whether to knot myself back up or cut the damn thread, when the truth is, I don’t want either of those things.
Go to bed.
You’re tired.
But for unmeasured time, I don’t move. I stare into my garden, to the gap in the trees, and watch the lights go out in Sab’s house. Watch his shadow in his bedroom before I get a hold of myself and stop being a creep.
My phone’s stuffed in my pocket. I fish it out as I back away from the window and zero in on the FlingIt notification like Father Christmas with a plate of mince pies.
It won’t be him. You literally just left.
Truth. And I’m not in the mood to deal with anyone else. But the slim possibility it might be Sab has me flustered. Has me making myself wait until I’ve showered the sweat from my skin. Until I’m in bed on my mattress on the floor, stink-eyeing the unwashed clothes I need to deal with tomorrow.
I swipe the app. Click on the message icon with that weird tremble in my hands.
The one that’s nothing like the disquiet I had to deal with the first time I faced a raging flashover after the one that nearly killed me.
The one that makes it hard to think about anything that isn’t the man behind the ambiguous profile pic on my screen, or the bashful words that grow with their impact until he has me three messages deep and choked and horny all over again.
LeLionDuBois96: Hope your shoulder feels better
LeLionDuBois96: Come by any time you need…for stretches or whatever
LeLionDuBois96: Also, you smell good xxx
Stone me. That last line’s such a soft blow it knocks me sideways. Has me grinning through the alien burn in my eyes.
And the two before it?
It should be the whatever that makes my pulse kick, the inference playing into every day I lived before I met him. But the truth is, every word from Sab lands like something rare. A gift I haven’t unwrapped, and maybe never will.
And yet, every little moment with him, every scrap of him I get…it’s worth it—he’s worth it.
Every damn time.
You’d think, with that much enthusiasm for all things Sab, I’d be on those messages like butter on my ma’s mashed potatoes. But though I have a few days to kill before I go back to work, aside from thanks xxx, I don’t respond.
And I don’t know why.
I want to see Sab again. I’ve met him four times and he’s under my skin so deep he’s all I think about when I’m not hoofing up and down ladders, or zooming the rig at high speed through heavy traffic.
But maybe that’s the problem. I’ve never thought about anyone like this, and no one, not even my ma, has ever held me like he did the other night.
Doesn’t mean anything.
Course it doesn’t. Sab came to FlingIt for a reason, and it wasn’t to cuddle sulky firefighters nursing a fecking ouchie. He came because I told him to and it’s hard not to wonder where we’d be right now if I’d just given him my number.
Nowhere. He was already looking for no-strings sex.
And the realist in me knows that’s all Sab has time for right now, a reality I should be fine with cos it’s all I’ve ever wanted from anybody.
But anytime I think about Sab cruising FlingIt and someone half decent reeling him in, I want to burn the world down, and that’s so against my beliefs it’s not even funny.
My friend Nash thinks it’s funny. He’s come up from Devon under the guise of helping me repipe my bathroom, but I know Logan sent him. The dad club sticks together.
“That’s really not it.” Nash takes the spanner I hold out, my sole contribution to Project Bathroom so far. “I was coming up to grab the last of Remy’s tools from the workshop and catch up with a retired brother. It made sense for me to do this at the same time.”
Remy. Logan’s soulmate. Love him. But all the same… “Why can’t Remy fetch his own tools?”
“Van’s broke.”
“You’re a mechanic. Fix it for him.”
Nash snorts with his back to me. Framed by broad shoulders with a mop of curly blond hair, since I met him through Logan’s brother he’s always caught my eye in ways he probably shouldn’t.
But somehow since I last saw him, I’ve moved past drooling over his boyish grin and biker aesthetic.
Now he’s just a mate seeing too much of me for comfort, even when he’s not fecking looking.
“Pass me that Stillson.”
“The what now?”
Nash jerks his head at the pipe wrench. “That one.”
I hand it over. Watch him do something I should’ve done myself six months ago. “That’ll fix the pressure?”
“Yeah, should be less like showering under a rat’s cock now.”
“Nice.”
Nash shifts around, giving me his face for the first time in a few hours. “It will be. You just need to lay your tiles and seal it all back up.”
“Story of my fecking life.”
“That why you’ve got a finished bedroom and no bed, and derelict living room with a pure mint couch?”
“That couch isn’t mint. It’s twenty years old.”
“Looks all right to me.”
“Cos you’re all about the leather.”
Nash chuckles, finishes up the pipes, and gets his shit together.
He’s a busy man. Dad of more fecking twins, and VP of the Rebel Kings MC.
He needs to hit the road on the menacing motorbike he rocked up on.
The one that gives me hives. I’ve seen way too many bike crashes to like ‘em. Hell, I’ve seen Nash nearly die in an RTC and it makes me think of Sab’s brother.
Of Sab, and whatever that does to my face, Nash pauses on his way out of my house.
“You okay?”
“Hmm?”
“You’ve got a look about you.”
I exhale, more sound than breath. “What look’s that then?”
“The sort that makes me think you have someone on your mind.”
“Someone, eh?”
Nash grins. “I’ve been around too many pining brothers to mistake it for anything else. What’s up? Dodgy hookup do you wrong? Or did you fall in love and get burned?”
Neither of those things. But Nash is close enough to the truth that I can’t help the grouchy wince creasing my face. And of course, Nash sees it. There’s a reason he’s Logan’s favourite brother-in-law.
Feck.
I laugh, rubbing the back of my neck. “I kinda met someone.”
“Oh yeah? Where?”
“In the street. Then on…anyway. We met up a couple of times and now I’m lowkey obsessed with him. Merry Christmas, lad. Ride that beast carefully.”
Nash props a shoulder in the doorway, settling back in. “What’s wrong with being obsessed with this dude? Is he obsessed with you too?”
“Dunno if he has the time. He’s a single dad, and…he hasn’t said, but I think he got done over by his ex.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I meet a lot of people with broken hearts, and his self-esteem is in the fecking bin.”
“That why you haven’t hooked up?”
“No.”
“Do you want to hook up?”
“Piss off.”
Nash grins, but I see the cogs turning in his brain as he tries to figure me out. We’re not best mates, and we don’t see each other that often. But we once spent an hour beneath a crashed HGV together and that crazy, awful night has left its mark. “Logan said you don’t do relationships.”
Fecking Logan. “So?”
“So…maybe that’s what’s freaking you out. That you want to try it out with this fella.”
“I barely know him. I told you, we’re not even hooking up.”
“But you do want to?”
“Course I do.” I claw a smirk from the pit of my stomach. “I’m just not sure I’m the right person for him to do that with. He’s kinda…new to it.”
“To men?”
“Yeah.”
Nash absorbs that, mulling it over with an absent stare before he focuses on me again. “Well now. That’s interesting.”
I groan. “Don’t go there.”
I expect Nash to laugh.
He doesn’t. He tugs a vape from his pocket and takes a drag, his gaze more serious and more like Logan than I’m prepared for. “Sounds like you have a lot to teach each other.”
“Right. I’ll teach him how to suck dick. What’s he supposed to teach me?”
“How to stick around. How to have a mate you’re also banging and not leg it before the sun comes up.”
“I don’t do that.”
“Yeah, you do. Logan’s told me all about you—”
“Logan can shut the hell up.”
Nash does grin this time, but it’s still laced with thought, and it fades a little as he reclaims his bike keys from the box stack he dropped them on to have this conversation.
“Look, brother. Even if you don’t wind up getting serious with this fella, take it from me—when you’re new to the game, having someone nice to hold your hand is worth so much more than a handie from a bloke you never see again. ”
“Talking from experience, eh?”
“Yeah. Big time. I didn’t step into my sexuality until a few years ago. Couldn’t until I found that person for myself. And you’re worthy of being that person for someone, Gale. You want to be, you just don’t know it yet.”
“All right. Off you fuck.”