Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
LUKAS
I don’t know if I’d stopped smiling since I walked into Sawyer’s place, and my cheeks were starting to feel it.
When I met Sawyer, I’d known there was something different about him, something that made me feel seen.
The last thing I expected when I’d come over was a birthday party, complete with cake and Nerf guns.
I fed him another bite of cake. The Funfetti was a little too sweet, but I’d eat the whole thing if it made him happy. I was an absolute fool for this man.
Sawyer reached for me, and his thumb swiped at the corner of my mouth.
“Frosting,” he explained, looking a little breathless. Suddenly, his eyes went wide, and he jerked like he’d been slapped. “Presents. I almost forgot.”
“Wait, what? Sawyer, no. That’s… you didn’t.” I put the fork down and watched as he disappeared down the hallway, then reappeared a moment later with a couple more brightly wrapped gifts.
“The birthday boy needs presents.” Sawyer motioned for me to sit, and I did, only because I was having a hard time processing exactly what he had done for me.
It wasn’t my real birthday, but that didn’t matter. When I was a kid, there hadn’t been anyone to celebrate me. There had been no parties, no cake, or presents. No Nerf gun wars. There had been a little kid who made himself smaller every year.
I took the gifts from Sawyer. They were wrapped in fancy birthday paper and they even had bows on top.
Tucked under a ribbon was an envelope with a birthday card.
I grabbed it first, carefully removing the card.
I told myself that I could read it later when I was alone, but I decided to make a show of it now.
When I opened the card, though, it spoke to me in Sawyer's voice.
“I know it’s not your real birthday, Lukas, but I’m hoping you’ll overlook that and have a good time anyway. Happy Birthday, Lukas.”
I closed the card and let out a shaky breath. “Sawyer, I—”
Not knowing what else to say, I lifted my gaze to meet his. The tenderness I saw in his eyes took my breath away. Sawyer cared about me. Not only did he listen to me, but he made me feel heard. “Thank you.”
I carefully tucked the card away as I gathered my emotions and settled them. The presents were wrapped almost too nicely to ruin, but I tore into the smallest one with no regard for saving the paper revealing a box with a bright red yoyo.
“I’ve never had a yoyo,” I said stupidly.
“Neither have I, but I figured that it was a classic gift. Something that everyone should at least have had the chance to try before it inevitably ends up a tangled mess in the corner of their room.”
“Never.” I took the yoyo out of the box and ran my fingers over the smooth wood.
“I’m going to have to watch a million tutorials on how to use this thing, but I’m going to learn.
” I set it aside, almost unwilling to part with it, and I ripped into the next package, revealing another pair of Nerf guns.
“You need a set for your place.”
“The guys are going to be menaces when they see these.” I’d already made a mess of Sawyer’s dining room with my half-eaten cake and the wrapping paper, so I set the toys aside still in their packaging and went to open the third, and hopefully last, gift.
Never in my life had I ever thought someone would buy me a Lego set.
When I was a kid, it was out of the question.
Mom was broke and didn’t care even when she wasn’t.
I used to think that she tried her best, but looking back made me wonder if she tried at all or if she’d given up long before she had me.
“Lego.” I exhaled, grateful to be sitting or I might have fallen over.
And not just the kind of Lego that you’d get a grown up, that was like a giant Star Wars model or something that you built just to display.
It was a scrapyard that even came with cars and little Lego people. Something meant to be played with.
Sawyer took the box from me and carefully opened it. “You should be okay to build it yourself too.” From the box, he pulled out the instruction book, and my heart stopped for a second. Then he opened the book and showed me the first step. Everything was in pictures.
Taking the book from him, I flipped through and with every page that I turned past, my heart got lighter. “This… are they all like this?”
“That’s how they come, yes.”
“Oh, this could get very dangerous to my wallet.” I closed the book and slid it carefully back into the box. “Sawyer, I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. This is as much for me as it is for you. I never got to go to a normal birthday party. Everything was always so overdone. Like the parents cared more about looking better than the other parents than they did about their kids actually having a good time.”
“There’s just one problem, though.” I set the Lego aside and stood, pulling Sawyer against me. “You’ve set the second date bar really fucking high. It’s going to be impossible to top this.”
“And I’m not done yet.” He grinned at me then stole a kiss.
Before I could process what he said, he stepped away, pausing only to grab a chair from the dining room table.
“Can you bring another one?” He asked as he took the chair into the living room.
I watched him set it in front of the couch.
“Put it at the other end.” Sawyer told me.
Him tearing the cushions off the couch and tossing them onto the floor got my attention.
“What are you doing?” I put the chair where he asked me to and watched as he unfurled a large blanket and draped it over the couch and the chairs.
“Building a blanket fort.” He looked at me, joy in his expression so bright it made my head swim. “Don’t ask why. Just get in and get comfortable. Oh, wait one second. I almost forgot.”
Sawyer darted away and returned seconds later with an armful of pillows. He chucked them into the fort and arranged them, then motioned for me to climb inside.
It was going to be a tight fit for two grown men, but maybe that was the point. It certainly wasn’t a drawback.
I got in the fort and arranged the pillows for maximum comfort. Sawyer appeared again, backing into the fort. He handed me a bowl of chips, and then I saw him pull a laptop into view.
“We’re going to watch a movie. Any requests?”
“This isn’t something they do at birthday parties, is it?”
“No, but I always wanted to do this at a sleepover. But my parents were ‘furniture is for status, not comfort’ kind of people. Mom would’ve shit kittens if I built a fort on the living room.”
“Am I sleeping over, Sawyer?”
He cast a sheepish look over his shoulder. “It wasn’t my plan because I’m not sure what qualifies as taking things slow, and I know you have Lara to think about, so you probably can’t or maybe don’t want to, but the offer is open.”
By the time he was done talking, his cheeks were red. He snapped his gaze away from me and fiddled with his laptop.
Shifting my weight so I could get to my pocket, I took my phone out and sent River a message using text-to-speech.
“River, if you’re still at the house, would you mind sticking around tonight and looking after Lara for me? Something’s come up.” I knew River would agree so I put my phone away without waiting for an answer.
“Lara loves him, and River owes me a favor,” I told Sawyer. “He’s one of my camera guys, and he’s a wizard with the editing software I use. He stayed behind today to do some work, so he’s already at my place. If you really wanted me to stay, that is.”
Sawyer glanced back at me. “I’d like that.”
He started the movie, opting for Jurassic Park. “I figure we can have a dinosaur movie marathon.” He snuggled in next to me.
I spent the movie with my arm around him, and Sawyer nestled into my side like he belonged there. The fort he’d built us felt like it was part of a different universe. One where it was just the two of us and we had infinite time together.
When the credits rolled, he stretched. By this time, my ass had gone numb.
“As fun as that was, I hope you didn’t want us to sleep in here because I can’t feel my ass.”
Sawyer laughed. “I have a feeling that some things just aren’t as fun when you’re an adult, and that sleeping on the floor in the living room is definitely one of them. If I had one of those fancy four poster beds, I could turn it into a fort for us.”
“I’m sure that’s not necessary.” Reaching for him, numb ass be damned, I pulled him close.
He shifted around to face me, and the smile on his face turned to something softer.
Something full of want. Something that I was sure I felt too.
A need deep inside of me to touch him. To be touched by him.
To show him how much I cared about him in a language that I was used to speaking.
“Lukas.” A million questions flashed in Sawyer’s eyes, but he only spoke one of them. “Are you sure? You said—”
“I know what I said, and I also know that if I don’t kiss you right now, I’m going to die.”
He melted against me, and I could feel the heat from his body through his shirt. “We can’t have that.”
“It would put a damper on my day, for sure. It is my birthday, after all, and I think the birthday boy should get a kiss.”
“Just a kiss?” Sawyer asked as one of my hands skimmed down his back, then lower, cupping the cheek of his ass.
“We’ll play it by ear.”
I wasn’t sure who moved that fraction of an inch and closed the distance between us, but suddenly his mouth was on mine, his lips parted, letting my tongue poke inside, and he was kissing me back.
He propped himself up with one hand and put his other hand on my chest. His touch was like gasoline on flame.
Heat erupted in my core as I cradled his face in my hands, deepening the kiss.
I’d kissed more men than I could name. Had more lovers, professional and otherwise, than I could think of, but none of them had made me feel the way Sawyer did.
It went beyond the butterflies in my stomach or the pulsing need between my legs.
Sawyer made my heart feel safe. It was the simple things that got me, like birthday cake and a card I didn’t have to read to myself.
It was the way he saw the person first, and the profession, the history, second.
The way he looked at me like he was the luckiest guy on the planet, when really the reverse was true.
And when he shimmied on top of me, straddling me, he broke the kiss, soft breaths puffed out over my skin. “Tell me this is okay,” he whispered. “Tell me this is okay, Lukas.”
“Kiss me,” I said, barely getting the words out before his mouth was on mine again, warm and soft and perfect.