Chapter 26 Galen
Galen
One Year Later…
“What’s so good about these croissants? It’s just pastry, right?”
Sonny asks the question from somewhere behind me, where he’s taking up space in the line snaking out of the bakery on Cosmic Avenue in full firefighter gear. Eejit even has his helmet on.
“They’re an experience,” I tell him with all the seriousness I can muster when I’m this fecking happy. “I’m telling you, lad. You take these on your date tonight, you’re definitely staying over.”
“That how you charmed Sab?”
I snort. “What do you think?”
“Think you’re punching, mate.”
Can’t argue with that. Or with the logic of buying twenty croissants when I know Sab did the same this morning, but we are what we are. I eat a lot of croissants these days. A lot of chicken, walnuts, and buttery-lemon biscuits.
Zero complaints about that.
No notes.
I buy the croissants.
Stuff one in Sonny’s fat mouth and eat two myself before we get outside. Good job, too, because it’s snowing again. Of course. It’s December in Everwyld. It always fecking snows.
It’s also tradition that I almost die before I get to sit down for my Christmas dinner, but I’m breaking the curse this year. Another hour and I’m off shift till January 2nd.
Or you know, right now.
My watch commander sidles over and gives me a nudge. “Live over there, don’t ya?”
He jabs a thumb in the general direction of Cinnamon Row, but winds up pointing more at Sab’s house than mine, and I don’t hate it. “Pretty much.”
“Got gear on the pump?”
As it happens, I have. A shout came in at the beginning of my shift when I was still in civvies.
The commander grins. “Get changed and naff off. See you next year.”
I don’t need telling twice. I chuck a couple more croissants at Sonny, then I leg it to the engine and change my clothes, hightailing it out of there before a call comes in and pisses on my Christmas chips.
And I don’t go to Cinnamon Row.
I stay on Cosmic Avenue and let myself into the cosy house I’ve come to call home, though I still own the renovated two-bed over the back fence.
The one I’m selling to Sab’s mechanic friend if his da’s probate ever comes through.
The one that now has a finished kitchen and bespoke wardrobes in both bedrooms, thanks to Sab and his mad carpentry skills.
He has mad skills in other areas too. But though his bed is still rumpled from this morning, when we tumbled back into it and almost made ourselves late for fecking work, I don’t have time to dwell on the near-permanent heat flare in my stomach.
Not if I want to make it to something that’s more important to me than just about anything.
I blur through the shower and leave the house again, wearing Sab’s shirt because the collar smells like him.
Fecking bliss. I dash up the road to the building that barely survived the eighties and slip through the entrance in the nick of time.
I make it with a smile on my face instead of watching from a distance with sirens in my ears and smoke in my lungs.
The nursery smells of biscuits and PVA glue. Coats spill from pegs, glitter ground into the carpet, glinting in the light from the low winter sun. I’m content to skulk at the back, but she sees me—she always has.
“GALEN!”
Esme’s screech has every eye in the room turning to me.
Parents. Teachers.
Sab.
Sawdust in his beard, he’s wedged onto a narrow bench, Tam at his side, but I don’t look at him, not straight away.
I gaze at her instead—Esme—with her crooked halo and the too-big white robe, and the fierce unfiltered grin that never fails to make me feel ten feet tall.
Love this kid so fecking much.
I toss her a wink and slide into the space Tam has made for me, catching the warm grin that seems out of place with the scruffy hair and face tattoos, if you don’t know the man.
I’m thankful I do. That he calls me brother when he’s drunk, and brings me lunch when I’m sleeping off a night shift and Sab’s at work. I mean, he also grasses me up to Bhodi when he thinks I need a talking-to about the grumpy bastard that lives in my shoulder, but I’ll take it.
The singing starts and it’s fecking terrible. Off-key under the bright lights, a donkey missing its tail, and Christ knows what the Three Wise Men are on about.
I love it.
All of it.
I love it so much I don’t remember when I stopped hating Christmas music, and good memories replaced the bad. Just that it happened, and here we are. Here I am, sandwiched between the Dubois lads with every inch of my leg pressed to Sab’s, floating on a cloud of domestic perfection.
Best days of my life.
It’s true. Logan thinks I’ve had a lobotomy, and he doesn’t seem too upset about it.
The nativity plays out, and the crush of adults in the small space begins to thin.
Tam stays, though, catching Esme as she comes barrelling out of the backstage area, wonky halo sliding sideways, eyes bright with excitement.
Because it’s Wednesday and she’s going home with Uncle Tam to spend the night with Rudy in her bed.
Doesn’t stop her climbing Sab and planting a smacker on his cheek. As if she knows his answering smile is my favourite thing in the world.
He murmurs to her in French. No idea what he’s saying. Beyond I love you, I haven’t learned a word. My brain doesn’t bend that way, and I don’t mind. I love everything about this miraculous life, even the parts that aren’t for me.
Tam and Esme go home to Stardust Lane.
Sab and I walk back to his house, fresh show falling around us, shoulders brushing with every step.
He’s quiet, but I’ve come to learn he is sometimes. As if the frenetic energy he carries most days needs a fecking breather.
Quiet doesn’t equal sad.
I nudge him.
He smiles. “She was so happy you made it.”
Esme.
The nativity.
“Makes two of us.” I smile too. “Christmas miracle, eh?”
“Another one?”
“Can’t have too many, though I don’t think I knew what happy meant until you two stole my heart. You finish that job on Bell Street?”
Sab stares at me a little harder. A little deeper. Then he shrugs, zero signs of stress in his face. “No, but it’ll keep.”
Course it will. Most things do.
We reach the house and go inside, warmth cocooning us, the scent of toasted walnuts and spice mixing with the pinewood and vanilla.
The hallway is a little chaotic, so is the living room, and it’s a world away from the clinically tidy home I shuffled into a year ago. Sab’s messy, I’ve come to realise. Because that excess energy?
It’s all mine.
Outside, it’s getting dark already. Sab flicks on the cracked old lantern I brought from my house, and the tree lights.
In the house, at least. With Esme at Tam’s, there’s no need to drain the national grid with the comet-bright display in the garden.
No need to shatter the cosy glow that welcomes us home.
He kisses my cheek and slips upstairs to wash the workday from his skin. Days that have become less about fitting kitchens and more about the bespoke crafting he’s so good at. Blows my mind that I’ve only just found out he built the pergolas at Hollymist Hall.
Blows my mind that I don’t follow him upstairs too, but I’m distracted by an email on my phone. Legal stuff for the house sale. I’m chin-deep in brain-melting documents when Sab comes downstairs again.
I wave the phone. “Contracts exchange on Friday. It’s not too late to change your mind, you know.”
About me living here.
With him.
With Esme.
He flicks my ear. Kisses my cheek. Bites me there, and I swear to feck I go weak at the knees. “I’m not changing my mind,” he breathes against my already heated skin. “Je ne t’abandonnerai pas. Jamais.”
My phone slips from my fingers, and I don’t even try to save it. I let it fall to the thick rug on the floor, knowing it has as soft a place to land as I do.
He’s not wearing much. Just the same pyjama trousers he wore last Christmas, hanging low on his hips, his chest more defined now we work out together most nights we’re both home.
Somehow, though, I still end up naked first. Because I love how he strips me. How he lays me down on the rug and pins me down with his weight. How he loves doing it.
It’s everything I never knew I wanted. That I needed.
And yet…though I know he needed it too, tonight feels different. There’s a pause behind every kiss, every touch. A rumination I’m not privy to yet as Sab slips a hand between us, his rough palms gripping us both.
He’s so good at this it’s hard to remember that before me, he’d never touched any cock but his own. That he’d been scared of something that comes so naturally to him now. It’s hard to remember anything but sweet pressure, and the slow slide of his hot skin against mine.
But…
Again, he slows down, as if this is the first time we’ve ever done this, not the fifth time this week alone.
I force my eyes open. Drink in the sight of him in the low light coming off the Christmas tree. “Something on your mind?”
Sab bites his lip, a sure sign he’s thinking way too hard when he deserves to enjoy this as much as I am.
I give him a moment. Then I move, tipping him over before he can react, reversing our position to one we’ve rarely found ourselves in for the last year.
Sab swallows, and it’s then that I see it. That nervous want in his eyes—the same want he carried when I met him. The same want we nurtured together before my chickenshit heart bolted.
Before I bolted.
A glitch. I know that. A regular fuckup by a regular human.
But this time of year has a way of pulling ghosts from the grave, and it’s too easy to dwell on the wasted days, weeks, and months we could’ve been doing this: staring at each other under the dancing glow of a thousand fairy lights, while I dissect the slow waves of something coming off him.
Something he needs from me.
I lean in and steal a kiss, my hand sliding along his jaw, testing, without words, if the instinct unfurling in my gut is on point.
Sab’s breath hitches against my mouth. He arches from the floor so subtly I almost miss it, lost in the flicker of his gaze before it fixes on mine again, and I see it. That want. Burning like a wildfire under his skin.
And Christ, I want it too.
But I have to be sure. “Sab, do you want me to fuck you?”