Chapter 13
Galen
I do see Sab again.
Three times.
Three nights of hot hands and snatched breaths before I realise what a fecking mess I am over it. Three nights—no, four. And we haven’t even fucked. Or blown each other. And yet I still spend every night and day in between reconsidering everything I thought I knew about sex.
His hands…Christ, his hands. No one’s ever touched me like that. Ever played me like that—teasing, teasing, teasing, until I pop off like the New Year fireworks in Dingle Bay.
And now, four nights in…I can’t stop thinking about it—about him.
He’s on my mind every second I’m awake, and when I’m not.
Because I dream about him. Wake up with a granite dick and a warm feeling in my chest, and what the hell is up with that?
It’s like my DNA has been rewritten, my instincts rewired.
I’m not the same person anymore. Swear to the Lord, I could quit sex forever and still feel as if I’d had everything I needed, and it was four fecking nights.
I don’t know how I’m going to survive another, but I know I can’t live without holding Sab’s body against mine again.
Without hearing his startled moans and snatched gasps.
Without feeling him shiver and shake as new fires burn inside him.
I just have to convince the scheduling gods to let it happen, alongside pretending I don’t recall what happened the first night.
When I invited him to sleepover in my fecking bed.
No, sir.
Not thinking about that. I don’t need to. Dick-drunk, remember?
Heh.
We fall into a cooling-off period.
Another week goes by. My rest days pass, I run out of the croissants he leaves on my doorstep a few times, and I go back to work.
Get caught in an all-night incident the only evening Sab’s free.
Then I’m free and he’s not. And so the cycle continues, and I’m not used to pining for someone.
The ache in my chest has me regretting making fun of Logan all those night shifts I thought he might kill someone he was missing his man that much.
Except, that’s not what this is.
Sab’s not mine.
I’m not his.
We’re…friends, maybe? With benefits for as long as he wants them?
Christ, I don’t know, and if my Christmas spirit wasn’t already in the bin, a training-heavy day shift has my shoulder pinging again, reminding me there are other parts of me that’ll never be the same.
I remember the exercises Sab showed me. Still have the list from my physio.
It wouldn’t be hard to sort myfeckingself out.
But for the first time in a while, fate is kind to me.
I pull my car into the petrol station at the same time Sab rolls through in his van, and he spots the pain I’m in a mile off.
Or, you know, across a diesel-scented forecourt.
“Follow me home.” He jerks his head in the direction of Cosmic Avenue. “We’ll figure it out.”
He means my shoulder.
My brain knows that.
But my heart, it’s being weird again, and I don’t know what to do with myself when he waves me into his house ten minutes later.
He has Esme.
She has a pile of wrapping paper and a roll of sticky tape, and she’s not afraid to use it.
Sab has me sit on a coffee table I swear wasn’t here last time I came over.
It’s made of reclaimed wood and smells like him.
He tells Esme to look after my hands as he eases a heat pack under my T-shirt and holds it there while his adorable toddler tapes my fingers together and sticks bows on my fingernails.
It’s beautiful chaos, my favourite kind, and I almost doze off to it. Then he says something about food and I’m wide awake again.
That chicken and veg thing, it wasn’t a fluke. He brings me a bowl of potatoes, cheese, and bacon, and it’s so fecking good, I swear he’s Irish, even though he tells me the French name.
Tartiflette.
I’m not gonna remember that. My brain is mush. Least, I think it is until Sab massages the kinks and knots from my upper back, and then I’m basically dead.
The evening draws in. As ever, I should go home.
But Esme falls asleep on me and it’s too easy not to wake her.
To watch Sab move around his house instead, relaxed in sweats and an old tee that hugs his muscular frame, and pretend what we did the last time we were together isn’t strung between us like a lit flame.
“You have more decorations than last time,” I tell him when he sits down. “It’s like a grotto in here now.”
Sab focuses on Esme, doing the parent thing my cousins do.
I smile, can’t help it. “She’s breathing, boy. I’d notice if she wasn’t.”
“I know you would.” Sab takes my hand and unfurls my fingers. He drops a couple of ibuprofen into my palm to go with the water he’s already brought me. “C’est ca qui me fout la trouille, putain.”
I frown.
He waves away my questioning stare and gestures to the lights and tinsel that now decorate his slightly unfinished living space. “My brother said the place was depressing. I think he meant me, but I got in my head about it.”
“The table’s new too, right?”
“Yeah, I made it the other night. I need to keep busy sometimes.”
I take another glance around Sab’s house, as if I’m seeing all the woodwork dotted around for the first time. “You made all this too?”
He shrugs, like it’s nothing. “It’s good practice while I’m fitting kitchens for whoever’s paying their subbies the most. Keeps my skills up.”
“You’re…a carpenter?” I can’t believe I don’t know already. That I’ve never asked him what he does for work.
“Bit of joinery as well,” Sab confirms. “I did an apprenticeship straight out of rehab.”
“You like it?”
“I think so.”
I tilt my head, careful not to jostle Esme while she has her thumb in her mouth and her arm cinched tight around me. “Why’s that then?”
Sab has restless limbs. I see the effort he puts into stilling them while he percolates his answer.
“I didn’t choose it. A support worker at St. Mark’s offered it to me and I took it without thinking beyond getting through the first day.
It’s not the same as when Tam fell into calligraphy.
” He’s lost me a little, and he’s astute enough to know it.
To explain while I drink up every drop of himself he wants to share with me.
“Tam was all kinds of fucked up after the crash. Art therapy saved him and it was almost instant, you know? Like it had been waiting for him his whole life, like Bhodi had. I don’t feel that way about sanding wood. ”
“How do you feel when you’re doing it, though? Or when something’s finished—something as gorgeous as that?” I nudge the coffee table with my foot. “Because that’s what it is, in case no one’s told you already.”
Sab looks away, the same shyness creeping over him as when we talk about fucking men. But sex is the last thing on my mind right now. I love these quiet moments with him, and I know I’m as privileged to be here as I was to have him naked on my couch the other night.
“I feel calm,” he says eventually. “Like Silverbell Lake when the ice melts and the sun comes out. The work doesn’t define who I am, but some part of me knows it’s good for me.”
I didn’t think he could be more attractive, but apparently he can. As if I didn’t already know he’s a thinker. “Sounds like it’s enough for you. And sometimes that’s all we need.”
Sab takes that in with a slow nod. “Did you always want to be a firefighter?”
“I don’t really know.” I give him the same honesty I’ve had from him. “I just never thought of doing anything else. Then, when I got hurt for real, I tried to quit, and do other things. But the fight in me to get back to it consumed me for a while.”
“What other things did you try?”
I give him a dry look. “Property development, if you can believe it. Turns out I’m not motivated enough for flipping houses, even with my mates rolling up on their hogs to do half of it for me.”
Hogs.
Motorcycles.
Sab looks a little harder at me. “You have biker friends?”
“A few. My best mate’s brother is a Rebel King, and I own some property in Devon with his fella.”
“Tam was a Rebel King.”
“In Everwyld?”
Sab laughs. “No. Birmingham. But the council from the Devon chapter rode up and took care of business when Tam got hurt. They’re good people.”
Can’t argue with that. And it makes me wonder if Sab knows Nash and even more loose threads tie us together than we already know about.
But Esme stirs before I can ask him. He takes her to bed, and when he comes back, the moment has passed.
Last time I was in this house watching festive lights dance in his dark gaze, I didn’t know how it feels to hold him naked in my arms. How his neck arches when he comes. How skilled his hands are when he’s sure of their path.
I know now, though, and the knowledge hangs between us as we stare at each other in the soft glow of his living room.
Go home.
I’m going to. But as he returns to the couch and steps between my legs, I find myself frozen in place.
Sab holds out his hands.
I let him haul me to my feet, bringing us eye-level, his mouth so fecking close I can taste the memory of his kiss in the shallow breath I take.
“How’s your shoulder?”
What shoulder? “Better.”
“Still hurt?”
“Not so much.”
Understatement. Nothing hurts. With Sab’s hands wrapped around mine, every nerve and synapse in my body fecking sings with pent-up desire. The only ache is in my cock, and that’s why I need to leave.
I kiss him, lightly, letting my tongue barely sweep his before I draw back, my hands on his chest. “Thanks for tonight. I needed it.”
Sab doesn’t say anything. Just stares at my mouth for the longest second before he widens the space between us, letting me pass.
He doesn’t follow me to the hallway either. He watches me get my shit together to leave, and maybe if he was anyone else, I’d wonder if he’s annoyed.
But I know he’s staying put to make it easier for both of us, and I hate how much I appreciate that. How much harder it would be to walk out of his house if he was close enough to pull me back.
“Are you working tomorrow?”
For a split second, I don’t know, my brain is that soft from the few hours I’ve spent in his company. Then I remember something that has me cringing. “I’m not on duty tomorrow, but I have to man the trucks at the Christmas parade. Green watch did it last year.”
“The parade in town?”
“That’s the one. All fecking day. Might set something on fire just so I can leave.”
It’s probably the worst joke I’ve made in a while. And testament to how poleaxed this thing between us has me.
I don’t joke about fire. It’s not funny, and I’m grateful Sab doesn’t laugh as he ventures into the hallway and zips up my coat for me—and how does he make putting my clothes on so scorching hot?
As I live and breathe I have no idea.
No words either, and it’s him who breaks the spell. “Tam has a stall at the craft fair on Bell Street.”
“You helping him again?”
“If he’s not too busy to have Esme while I do the heavy lifting. Otherwise, I’ll come back after and break it all down for him.”
“You’re a good brother. Last time one of mine came to a station open day, the fecker slipped a fart bomb into my boots.”
Sab snorts. “I wouldn’t survive that. Tam would murder me. As for being a good brother, I have a lot to make up for.”
“Bet he doesn’t think so. You should bring Esme to the trucks when we’ve parked up. We hide sweets everywhere for the kids.”
“You want us to come see you?”
He seems surprised, and whatever else is a mess of lust and reticence between us, that shit won’t do.
I brave loosely grasping his chin, drowning in sensation as my fingers skate through the brushed velvet of his unshaven jaw. “I would love it if you came to see me. No pressure, though. Do your thing. We’ll find each other if the stars align.”
As I kiss his cheek and finally make myself leave, I have to wonder if they already have.