Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
OLIVER
When Nils has something to say, he squares his shoulders and scowls.
Not a hard scowl like someone would use to dissuade people from talking to them, but a thinking scowl.
His brows pull together in a straight line, and his jaw moves very slightly like he’s silently practicing the words before trying to speak them out loud.
He’s doing it now, as we sit facing one another on the couch, the room pleasantly warm from the fire and the windows covered to keep out the night.
When I first met Nils and Shiloh, I’d thought maybe the pair of them were just shy.
Big, gruff lobstermen who wanted to go out on the boat and get the job done, not waste time chatting.
I was partly right, as Shiloh is certainly prone to silence and not just because he’s a hard worker.
He is shy. Nils, though, isn’t. Nils is silent, not because he wants to be but because he feels like he has to be.
His brown eyes follow the threads of conversation like he’s tracking a tennis ball during a match—lashes flickering, jaw clenching, and cheek compressing.
All are minor tells that he’s both listening and has something to say.
But he never did back when I first met him, and rarely does now.
I sometimes worry if the reason he’s so quiet around me is because of the way I reacted the first time I heard him speak.
My facial expressions often say things my words don’t, and I know I probably looked shocked that day.
Except it wasn’t the stutter that surprised me, but the sound of his voice.
I’d been working on the Drifter for weeks, and he’d not said a single word.
He’d shown me how to do things and patiently helped me, all in unbroken silence. I hadn’t thought he could talk.
Now, I reach out and cup each conversation in my hands, tenderly cultivating a little garden of words from Nils.
I’ve got an entire encyclopedia of things he says without saying anything at all.
I’m a body language expert in one person, and that person is currently warming himself up to say something.
Buying him some time, I tell him random and mostly useless facts I’ve learned about wood in my various internet deep dives while on my floor journey.
He listens intently, brown eyes nearly black in the low light of the room, lashes framed dramatically around his almond eyes.
A few shorter strands of hair have fallen from where the bulk is tied at the back of his head, framing his face.
He’s got a striking face with a lovely mix of features that probably catch the eye of more men than just me. He’s beautiful.
Clearing my throat, I reach for my mug of tea. I’ve run out of wood-related things to talk about, which means it’s time to introduce another of my recent hyperfixations—entomology. Throat wetted, I think about where to begin, only for Nils to put a stop to it with a hand on my leg.
I’m not a stranger to being touched. A largely loveless childhood resulted in a mad rush to feel things as an adult.
I didn’t leave a stone unturned or a dark corner unexplored when I arrived in NYC, looking for company without a thought for standards.
But as someone older and wiser than me could probably have predicted, I got what I deserved from those interactions.
I got human touch in exchange for ridicule and shame and—on several occasions—robbery.
I did not get this—candlelight and a thumb rubbing back and forth on my thigh, meaningful conversations with someone who chooses not to talk, and subtle, affectionate caretaking.
I would have been happy being Nils’ friend and coworker for the rest of my life, but I don’t think I could handle going back to only that.
Not when dating has been soft and soothing and safe.
“So, yeah, those are the choices,” I finish awkwardly, forgetting as soon as I stop what I’d even been saying. My eyes are on his face, but ninety percent of my attention is focused on the hand resting atop my leg.
“Are you still nervous?” he asks.
Ah. I should have known this was the topic he’d want to use his words on.
And honestly, I can’t blame him. I waved lingerie in his face, admitted I had a thing for him, told him a sob story about my family, and then spent the past couple of weeks dating him the way two middle schoolers would—slowly.
It’s a fair question to ask, and an emotionally intelligent one, at that.
I can’t control what worries me, any more than I can control the weather.
Do I feel like Nils is someone I need to be wary of?
No. Am I brave enough to show him my collection of thongs?
Also no. He told me he’s never dated before, so I feel pretty confident in knowing he’s also never seen a man wearing a jock.
At least not a man standing in the same room with him.
So, yeah, nervous doesn’t really begin to cover it. But it doesn’t mean I’m unwilling to try.
“Well, yeah, a little bit,” I admit, scratching a nail against the soft suede of the couch cushion. “But not because I think you’ll do anything bad, more just because I don’t want to overwhelm you.”
Nils cocks his head a degree to the left, eyes on mine, the fire reflecting just slightly in the right. It’s wild to me that a man like this has been walking around Siren’s Point for years and nobody snapped him up for a date. I worry for the collective intelligence of this town.
Nils shrugs as though to say please, I don’t get overwhelmed. Which is probably true. But there’s a difference between staying calm when we’re out on the water and a storm rolls in, and staying calm when the guy you’re with sleeps in a hot-pink nightie. Nils’ hand squeezes my thigh.
“I’m really not that nervous,” I tell him, even though I’m having a hard time properly meeting his eyes.
I give myself a few seconds of watching the fire flicker before looking back at him.
“Sometimes I find myself thinking like my father, is all. And as loud and obnoxious as I am, he somehow manages to be worse. So every time I meet someone new, it’s hard to think around the voices in my head telling me I’m disgusting and wrong. ”
Nils’ hand increases the pressure on my leg, and he makes an aggrieved noise in the back of his throat.
“I’m not nervous about you, though,” I repeat, somehow managing to sound pretty nervous as I say it.
He looks at me for a moment, firelight cradling half his face, upper body relaxed against the back of the couch.
After a moment, his fingers lose their tension, and his thumb resumes its slow movements.
“Where do you-you get the pretty things?”
I open my mouth to reply and pause. That wasn’t the question I’d been expecting.
In fact, that’s a question I’ve never once been asked before.
The only time someone came close was when a man I’d been dating—sleeping with, really—had joked that he could probably buy me and my mother the same Christmas present if he picked up gift cards from La Perla.
It wasn’t a relationship that lasted long.
“You…oh. Well, online, mostly. I’m too shy to go to a store in person.
” I chuckle, Nils not joining in but sharing a small smile.
His hand is still on my leg. I rest mine on top, hooking my pinky around one of his fingers.
“But I can show you, if you want. Try not to look at the price tag on some of this. If you think home repairs are bad, you’ve never experienced an addiction to lace. ”
Sitting up to grab my phone from the coffee table, I hum and pull up my most recent order from a few months ago.
It doesn’t make much sense for a single man to be buying fancy lingerie without someone to show it off to, but it’s been a long time since there was anyone but me to appreciate it, and it makes me happy.
Nils waits patiently, hand sliding up my leg a little bit as though looking for new area to explore.
If I weren’t wearing jeans, I could model what I bought in person.
“All right, there you go.” I clear my throat, handing Nils my phone and feeling disappointed when that means he stops touching me.
It doesn’t last long, though, because he scoots a little closer, elbow resting on the back of the couch near my head. He’s leaning toward me a bit, bracketing me in against the armrest. Something a little bit like excitement and a lot like desire burns low in my stomach.
Nils scrolls through my previous orders slowly, stopping and giving each photograph the kind of attention that makes my skin itch with discomfort.
As though he can sense it, his fingers find the back of my neck and rest there, thumb pressing gently behind my ear.
When he comes to the lime-green lace briefs, he raises his eyes to mine and smiles in recognition.
Scrolling on, he circles his thumb idly on my skin as I hum and try not to watch the screen of my phone too closely.
When he reaches the end, he doesn’t hand the phone back.
Instead, he stops on one of the jocks, turquoise blue and seafoam green.
He thumbs through the photographs slowly enough to make me blush, like they’re pictures of me and not a model.
Tapping a thumb on the side of the phone, he angles it my direction as though to make sure I can see it.
Dark eyes meet mine, and I can feel the blush burn the tips of my ears.
“Like that one?” I ask lightly.
“Yes,” he replies.
I wish I had a pillow to pull over my lap. I like that he likes that one. I like the thought of him liking it on me. Puffing out my cheeks with a breath of air, I close my eyes and lean my head back, dislodging his hand slightly.