Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Noah
Mika and I spent Friday together. We had a laid-back fun day, but I was used to spending my days with Jackson, and I was ready for him to come home.
He was finishing up out at the camp with the crew from East Texas, so I didn’t expect to hear from him, which was why I was surprised when I got a text from him mid-afternoon while I was helping Mika make a batch of lemon bars.
Jackson: I have a surprise for you tonight. Be ready to go out when I get there.
Me: Where are we going?
Jackson: If I told you that it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?
I’d asked Mika if he had any idea what was going on, but he just shrugged and asked me to hand him his lemon zester. Something about the way he looked made me think he knew more than he was saying, but if Jackson wanted it to be a surprise, I didn’t want to ruin it for him, so I didn’t push.
A few hours later, when Jackson knocked on my door in a dark henley with his sleeves pushed up and simply said, “Come on,” I didn’t argue, I just let him lead me out the door.
But I hadn’t expected him to bypass the elevator and go towards a door at the end of the hall.
He pulled a card out of his pocket and flashed it on the security pad.
“Had to get an access card for this,” he said with a grin, and then pushed the door open to reveal a staircase that only went up, and then I understood with a sudden warm rush, I knew exactly where we were going. I’d gone up this staircase once with Mika when I was here the first time.
Jackson was watching me for a reaction, but I kept my face entirely neutral and gave him nothing. I was very proud of myself. I didn’t want to ruin his surprise.
“Where are we going?” I asked innocently.
“Up,” he said.
“Up where?”
“You’ll see.”
I followed him up the stairs.
I’d been up on the roof with Mika earlier today, but that time we’d accessed it from a doorway in his laundry room.
He’d invited me to go up with him to water his plants, and I’d spent a pleasant hour watching him fuss over his tomato plants and the herbs he’d tucked into every available pot, the whole rooftop smelling like basil and rosemary in the morning sun, so I knew this space, but it hadn’t looked like this.
Something magical had happened between when Mika and I were up there this morning and when Jackson and I stepped out.
A canopy sat in the center, lights strung around the top and down the sides, and under it a table set for two with a white cloth and two candles burning low in glass holders waited for us.
Mika’s container garden had been worked into the setup rather than around it.
The rosemary and the lavender flanked the canopy on either side, and the tomato plants were staked and tidy along the far wall.
The whole rooftop felt like a garden. The city spread out below us in every direction, all lit up, as a sunset was coloring the sky vibrant yellows, oranges, and purples to the west.
I might have figured out where we were going, but I didn’t have to feign surprise any longer, because I never could’ve dreamed he would do all this. It was absolutely beautiful.
Jackson was watching me.
“Well?” he said.
I turned to look at him. I let myself take a moment with it—the canopy, the lights, the garden, the city—and then I looked at him and said, “Jackson. This is incredible.”
Something in his expression settled. “Good,” he said. “Come sit down.”
He pulled out my chair, and once I was seated, he sat across from me and reached for the bottle of wine that was already open and breathing on the table.
“Did you do all this yourself?” I asked.
He filled my glass. Then his. Then he set the bottle down and looked at me. “No,” he said. “Hawk and Gator helped. I wanted it to be right.” He picked up his wine. “And I knew they’d done it before and knew what they were doing.”
I picked up my own wine and looked at him across the candlelight. The city hummed below us. Somewhere in the container garden, a small wind moved through the basil. “It’s right,” I said. “It’s very right.”
He held my gaze for a moment with that steady, unhurried attention of his. Then he nodded once, satisfied, and reached for the covered dishes.
He’d cooked for me. I didn’t know why that mattered so much, but it did.
Pan-seared chicken, roasted vegetables, something with herbs that smelled like the cabin kitchen the night he grilled steaks.
He’d brought it all up here and kept it warm somehow, which I chose not to ask about because it felt like the kind of logistical question that would interrupt something special.
“You cooked for me,” I said.
“I did.”
“Up here?” I looked around for some sign he’d been up here cooking.
“No, I cooked in at my place while the group from East Texas got packed up.”
“In a cast-iron skillet?”
“Naturally.”
We talked through dinner. He told me about the training camp, first about the group that was here this week, but then about the ridge where the light came in over the treeline in the early mornings and how much he loved it when he was the only one awake.
“It reminds me of the cabin,” he said. “But that silent moment is my favorite part of my day.”
“I can see why it would be.”
I told him more about my mother and her garden, the language of flowers she’d taught me when I was young enough that I didn’t even realize I was learning. All those memories came out easily up here under the lights with the city spread out below us and his attention entirely on me.
“She would have liked you,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“She liked people who meant what they said.” I looked at him. “You always mean what you say.”
“I try to,” he said.
The candle nearest me moved in a small current of air off the rooftop. Below us, far down, someone’s car turned a corner and was gone.
He set his wine down and looked at me in that way he had when something was coming that he’d thought about carefully. “I need to say something.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I was going to wait, but Wyatt said something to me out at the camp about how there’s always going to be a reason to wait.
” He stopped and blew out a breath and then started again.
“What this is—” He paused, choosing his words carefully.
“I don’t do things halfway, baby boy. I didn’t set all this up and ask Hawk and Gator to spend their afternoon stringing lights because I’m passing the time.
This is me telling you that I want this.
I want you. Now, and whatever comes after all of it. ”
The city went on below us, a hundred thousand people entirely indifferent to the two of us on this rooftop.
“I know the timing is—”
“Jackson,” I said.
He stopped.
“I know,” I said. “I know it isn’t the perfect circumstances.
” I turned my hand over on the table between us and he covered it with his, the way he’d been doing across whatever surface was between us since the cabin, and I laced my fingers through his.
“Whatever comes next with Anton Corvane and all of it… I want to see where this goes.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay,” I said back.
He looked at me for a long moment across the candlelight. Then he stood, and came around the table, and tipped my face up with both hands and kissed me.
It wasn’t our first kiss. But it felt like the first one that was just us.
No fear pressing in from outside, no situation to manage, no careful accounting of my fragility.
Just him and the lights and the smell of Mika’s basil and the city below, and his hands on my jaw like I was something worth being careful with.
I brought my hands up to his wrists and held on.
He pulled back just enough to look at me. The string lights caught the angles of his face. “How about if we go downstairs to bed,” he said.
“I think that’s a really good idea.”
Crowe
Truth was, I’d known since the cabin, since the morning I’d woken up with him wrapped around me and hadn’t moved for twenty minutes because I hadn’t wanted to, but it had been good to say it out loud.
I wasn’t saying what we had was for forever; it was too soon for that, but I could say I wanted it to be.
I kissed him in the stairwell, then again in the common area, and by the time we reached the bedroom door, I had my hands in his hair, and he had fistfuls of my henley and neither of us was in any particular hurry, which was new.
Tonight we had nothing but time and the low light from the lamp I’d left on, and I intended to use both.
I walked him back through the doorway, my mouth still on his, and felt him reach behind himself to find the edge of the bed.
He sat, and I stood in front of him and looked down at him for a moment.
He already looked wrecked. His lips were swollen, his hair already a mess from my hands, and his eyes were dark and hungry with need.
“You’re staring,” he said.
“I know.”
“Any particular reason?”
“I’m deciding where to start.”
“Take your time,” he said, and the slight curve of his mouth told me he knew exactly what he was doing.
I reached down and took the hem of his shirt in my hands.
He lifted his arms without being asked, and I pulled it over his head and dropped it.
Then I stood there and looked at him the way I hadn’t let myself look before.
At the line of his shoulders, the lean muscle of his chest and stomach, the way he held himself now versus the way he’d held himself in that basement.
He’d rebuilt himself, and I was in awe of his strength.
“Daddy,” he said softly.
“Mm.”
“Your shirt.”
I reached back and pulled it over my head in one movement and watched his eyes move over me the way mine had just moved over him. His expression went through several things in a short amount of time and ended somewhere that made heat pool low in my stomach.
He reached out and pressed his palm flat against my chest, right over my heart, and held it there. I covered his hand with mine.