Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
CHARLES
The hot water felt incredible against my skin, washing away the pleasant ache in my muscles and the lingering scent of our lovemaking.
The first was welcome, the second left me somewhat bereft.
Still, I couldn’t stop smiling as I shampooed my hair, replaying every moment of the night before and this morning’s wake-up call that had left me breathless and grinning like a teenager.
The sex had been amazing. Spectacular. The best I’d ever had. And moreover, it had been the same for him. I might not always be able to read Eamon very well, but no man could act that well during sex. He’d loved it as much as I had.
The snow had stopped falling sometime during the night, and brilliant morning sunlight streamed through the cabin’s small windows, making everything look clean and new.
Through the bathroom’s frosted glass, I could see the world outside had transformed into a winter wonderland—pristine white drifts covering everything in sight, icicles hanging like crystals from the eaves.
From the kitchen came the sound of Eamon humming, his rich voice carrying one of those haunting Irish melodies.
The memory of his voice, raw with emotion as he shared that piece of his soul, made my chest tight with affection.
I could hear him moving around with surprising efficiency, the sizzle of something in a pan, the clink of dishes being arranged.
This was what happiness felt like, I realized. This warm, golden contentment that seemed to fill every cell in my body. I’d had good relationships before—or thought I had—but nothing had ever felt like this. Nothing had ever felt so right, so perfectly natural.
I loved him.
It made no sense at all. It had been less than a week since we’d met, and half of what I knew about Eamon didn’t add up.
After Justin, I should be far more cautious, far more reluctant to give my heart away.
But standing there in the steamy bathroom, listening to him hum while he made breakfast for us, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
I took my time in the shower, luxuriating in the hot water and the knowledge that there was someone in the next room who cared enough to cook for me. Someone who’d held me all night like I was something precious. Someone who looked at me like I was worth protecting, worth cherishing.
I had to laugh when I stood in front of the bathroom mirror. My lips were still somewhat swollen, I had whisker burn on my neck and chest, and I was pretty sure the mark on my shoulder was a hickey. God, I looked thoroughly debauched.
I also looked happier than I had in a long, long time.
When I finally emerged, dressed in jogging pants and a hoodie, the scents from the kitchen had intensified into something that actually smelled professional. I found Eamon at the stove, flipping perfectly browned, flat pancakes.
“Pancakes?” I asked, sliding my arms around his waist from behind and pressing a kiss to his shoulder blade.
He leaned back against me, and I could feel his smile even though I couldn’t see it. “Mmm. Dutch pancakes. They don’t need baking powder, so I could make them with what we had. A simple mix of flour, milk, eggs, and some salt. Plus butter to grease the pan.”
I looked over his shoulder at the golden pancakes and inhaled appreciatively. “They look and smell amazing.”
“They are. They’re not sweet like American ones, so the Dutch often eat them with savory toppings. Bacon, cheese, you name it. They’re considered a full meal.”
“Bacon…” My mouth watered. “You’ll have to make those for me sometime.”
His answer came only after a long pause—long enough that I worried for a moment I’d somehow said something wrong. “I’d love that.”
Something in his tone made me pull back to look at his profile, but his expression was carefully neutral as he focused on the pancakes. Another one of those moments where it felt like he was holding something back, like there were words he wanted to say but couldn’t.
We ate breakfast at the small table by the window, the morning light making Eamon’s dark hair gleam and highlighting the sharp angles of his face.
Since we didn’t have syrup, we ate the pancakes with simple sugar, which was actually delicious.
They were thin and much lighter than American ones, closer to French crêpes.
“Seriously, where did you learn to make these?” I asked around a bite of a perfect pancake.
“I dated a Dutch guy for a while, and he taught me. Jan—which is a classic Dutch name, by the way—could suck cock like it was nobody’s business, and he made the most amazing food.”
I couldn’t resist. “So he and I had a lot in common, is what you’re saying.”
“Ha!” Eamon laughed. “Come to think of it, you do. He had blue eyes too, though not as pretty as yours.”
That pleased me far more than it should have. “Thank you. What else does your cooking repertoire consist of?”
Eamon shrugged. “The basics. Stews, soups, a hundred ways to make potatoes, obviously. But nothing like my ma. She could make anything taste good, even when we barely had two ingredients to work with.” His accent was slipping again, the way it did when he talked about his family.
“Had to be creative when money was tight.”
“She sounds amazing.”
“She was.” The past tense carried a weight of grief that made my chest ache for him. “She would’ve loved you, I think. Always said the mark of a good person was whether they could make people smile by walking into a room.”
The casual way he said it—like his mother loving me was a given, like he’d already imagined introducing us—made my heart do a little flip. “I would’ve loved to meet her.”
Eamon’s smile was soft but tinged with sadness. “She had this way of making everyone feel welcome. Could take one look at someone and know exactly what they needed—a hot meal, a kind word, someone to listen. Bit like you, actually.”
I felt heat rise in my cheeks. “I’m not that special.”
“You are though.” His green eyes were serious, intense. “You have no idea how special you are, Charles.”
The way he looked at me, like he was trying to memorize my face, made something flutter anxiously in my stomach. There was an undercurrent to his words that I didn’t understand, almost like he was saying goodbye. It made me ache inside in an almost unbearable way, and I couldn’t stand it.
“Let’s go outside,” I said, desperate to change the mood. “Look at all that snow. When’s the last time you built a snowman?”
Eamon blinked at the sudden topic change, then glanced toward the window where pristine white drifts sparkled in the morning sunlight. “A snowman?”
“Come on,” I said, standing and tugging his hand. I couldn’t resist singing, “Do you wanna build a snowman?”
Something shifted in his expression—that careful mask slipping to reveal something almost boyish underneath. “I haven’t built one since I was a child.”
“Then you’re overdue.” I was already moving toward our jackets hanging by the door. “The snow’s perfect for it—wet enough to pack but not too heavy.”
“Charles, it’s freezing out there—”
“That’s what winter coats are for.” I tossed him his jacket and pulled on my own boots. “Besides, when’s the next time we’ll have snow this perfect and nowhere we need to be?”
That last part seemed to convince him. Within minutes, we were bundling up and heading outside into the crystal-clear morning air. The cold hit my lungs like a shock, sharp and clean and invigorating.
“Christ, it’s cold,” Eamon muttered, pulling his wool cap down over his ears.
“It’s perfect,” I corrected, scooping up a handful of snow and packing it into a ball. “Look how well it sticks together.”
I demonstrated by rolling the snowball across the ground, watching it grow larger as it picked up more snow. Eamon watched me with an expression of fond amusement, like he was observing some fascinating ritual he’d forgotten existed.
“You’re really serious about this,” he said.
“Dead serious. This is going to be the best snowman the Adirondacks have ever seen.” I looked up at him from where I was crouched beside my growing snowball. “Are you going to help, or are you just going to stand there looking pretty?”
That earned me a laugh—the real one that made his whole face light up. “Fine. But I draw the line at singing songs from Frozen.”
“Deal.”
What followed was probably the most ridiculous hour I’d spent in years.
We rolled three progressively smaller snowballs, arguing good-naturedly about proportions and placement.
Eamon turned out to have surprisingly strong opinions about snowman architecture, insisting the middle section needed to be perfectly round, while I was more concerned with overall stability.
“It’s leaning to the left,” he observed as we heaved the head into place.
“It’s got character. Not everything has to be perfect.”
“Says the man who spent twenty minutes making sure the buttons were perfectly aligned.”
“Those are important! You can’t have a crooked-buttoned snowman.”
We’d used pieces of burnt wood from the cabin’s fireplace for the buttons and eyes, and a short, fat stick I’d found for the nose. Eamon had contributed his wool scarf, wrapping it around the snowman’s neck with surprising care.
“There,” I said, stepping back to admire our creation. “Perfect.”
The snowman was definitely not perfect. It listed slightly to one side, the head was a bit too small for the body, and one of the stick arms was longer than the other.
But standing there in the brilliant sunshine with Eamon beside me, both of us flushed with cold and exertion, it looked exactly right.
“He needs a name,” I declared.
“A name?”
“All good snowmen have names. It’s a rule.”
Eamon studied our creation with mock seriousness. “He looks like a Seamus to me.”
“Seamus?”
“Good Irish name. And look at him—definitely has the bearing of a Seamus.”
I burst out laughing. “Seamus it is.”
That’s when Eamon bent down, scooped up a handful of snow, and launched it directly at my chest with unerring accuracy.
“Hey!” I yelped, stumbling backward. “That’s cheating!”
“All’s fair in snowball fights,” he replied, already gathering ammunition for a second attack.
What followed was chaos. We chased each other around the small clearing in front of the cabin, pelting each other with snowballs and laughing like children.
Eamon had better aim, but I was quicker at dodging.
When he finally tackled me into a snowdrift, we both went down in a tangle of limbs and winter coats.
“Surrender,” he demanded, straddling my waist with snow dripping from his hair.
“Never,” I gasped, struggling to catch my breath through my laughter.
“Then you leave me no choice.” He grabbed a handful of snow and threatened to dump it down the front of my jacket.
“Okay, okay! I surrender!”
He grinned triumphantly, tossing the snow aside before leaning down to kiss me. His lips were cold but warm underneath, and he tasted like winter air and joy.
“Snow angel,” I said when we broke apart.
“What?”
“We have to make snow angels. It’s mandatory when you’re already lying in the snow.”
“You’re insane,” he said fondly, but he rolled off me and spread his arms wide.
We lay side by side, moving our arms and legs to create the classic angel shapes in the snow.
The cold seeped through my jacket, but I didn’t care.
Above us, the sky was the deepest blue I’d ever seen, and the silence was broken only by our breathing and the distant call of a bird somewhere in the trees.
“This is perfect,” I said quietly.
“It’s fecking cold,” Eamon corrected, but his voice was warm with contentment.
“Perfect,” I insisted.
When we finally struggled to our feet, careful not to disturb our snow angels, we were both soaked and shivering. But I felt more alive than I had in months, energized by the cold, the exercise, and the simple joy of playing in the snow with someone I cared about.
“Come on,” I said, tugging Eamon toward the cabin. “Hot chocolate time.”
“With marshmallows?” he asked hopefully.
“Didn’t you see what I got at the store? Of course with marshmallows.”
Inside, we stripped out of our wet outer clothes and hung them by the fire to dry. I busied myself in the kitchen, heating milk and cocoa powder while Eamon built up the fire. The domestic routine felt natural, comfortable, like we’d been doing this for years instead of days.
“Extra marshmallows,” I announced, carrying two steaming mugs into the living room where Eamon had settled on the couch.
“Perfect.” He accepted his mug gratefully, wrapping his hands around it for warmth. “Though I think I lost feeling in my toes about twenty minutes ago.”
“That’s what you get for living in the big city for too long,” I teased, curling up beside him. “You’ve gone soft.”
“Soft?” He raised an eyebrow. “I’ll show you soft.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a promise.” But his tone was playful rather than menacing, and when he pulled me closer, I went willingly.
We sat by the fire, drinking our hot chocolate and watching the flames dance in the grate. Through the window, I could see our snowman—Seamus—standing guard over our snow angels, both already starting to blur as new snow began to fall.