Chapter 14
Lewis
Then life with its usual shitty sense of timing kept me away from Noah for nearly a week.
Perla and I had to get serious on planning the beer brewing workshop and talk hotel bookings for our participants with Ollie and food with SweetPea and Clara.
On top of that Fitz asked me to go over my plans for the next year and map out the goals I had for the brewery.
Ollie took Noah to the shops again midway through the week so I knew he wasn’t starving. But I still missed him and hated myself for being too wiped in the evenings to head over to see him.
“I can’t believe he went and got himself a cat,” Ollie complained to me when I ran into him on Friday. “What’s going to happen to that animal when he’s back in Bali? But of course he doesn’t—” Ollie took a deep breath. “If he thinks I’m taking that stray in he’s fooling himself.”
“I think Noah will make sure the cat has a new home,” I shut his lamenting down in a voice so harsh Ollie gave me a surprised look.
“What’s up with you? You know how he is, Lew. He—”
“He’s an adult,” I repeated what I kept telling myself when I thought about how wrong it was that I wanted to fuck him. “He grew up and he’s going to take care of the cat. It does him good.”
My best friend contemplated me for a long moment. “Anyway, can you check on him? I’ll be out of town for a few days.”
Gods, no. I saw it in his eyes that “out of town for a few days” meant a visit to his former colleague. The guy was an asshole and had only used Ollie, but somehow he couldn’t stay away from him.
He deserves better.
“Of course. Have fun,” I said through my teeth.
He huffed, gave me a half-hearted wave, and disappeared inside the hotel.
When I left the brewery that afternoon a thin carpet of snow lay like a blanket over the estate. I stopped in the middle of the yard and the tiny snowflakes swirled around me.
Without overthinking, I walked straight to my car and phoned ahead to my favourite small restaurant in Kincardie.
An hour later I parked my car in front of Noah’s shack, which looked almost scenic in all that snow.
He opened after a few moments. His face lightened when he saw me.
“Hey. I didn’t expect you today.”
I hated the tone in which he said it, like he’d resigned himself to crumbs. I wanted him to have the entire cake, to expect it, and to know he was worth it all.
“Sorry, I had a super busy week and I thought ….” I was on the verge of telling him that Ollie had asked me to check in, but that wasn’t why I was here. “I wanted to see you.” I chose to tell him the truth instead.
Noah beamed and stepped aside to let me in.
I moved in to hug him, but stopped when my breath plumed in front of my face.
The shack was ice cold. Then my eyes took in Noah’s outfit.
He wore what looked like all his clothes, and he had set up a nest of blankets on the couch from which Mr Pickles purred happily at me.
Seeing his cat reminded me that I wanted to arrange for someone to feed him while we were gone. All the work and admin stuff had driven it clean out of my head.
“What’s going on?” I asked as I filed finding Mr Pickles a sitter away as a task for tomorrow.
“Oh, uh, the heating stopped working two hours ago. I tried to call Ollie but couldn’t reach him.”
Yeah, he couldn’t. Ollie had left LFD after noon and would stay away over the weekend. Why hadn’t he told Noah?
I cursed. “Next time something like this happens you call me, okay?”
“I didn’t want to—”
I interrupted him with a hand on his shoulder and pressed my thumb under his chin to shut him up.
“You can always call me, Noah. Okay?”
“Okay,” he breathed and nodded, his pupils blown wide. “I just didn’t want to ruin your evening.”
“You couldn’t. Ever. Call me when you need me.”
He pressed his lips together and looked at me out of those doe eyes. I fucking melted.
Yes, for that, too.
“Let’s see if we can fix your heating, yeh?” I wasn’t a mechanic but wasn’t useless around the house. The heating was about a million years old and, at first glance, looked beyond help.
“Sorry, Puppy,“ I said, “I think there’s nothing I can do about this.”
When I turned around at him I found him staring at me out of huge round eyes, hands wrapped tightly around himself, and his fingernails digging into the fabric of his thin jumper.
Fuck, I just called him Puppy again, didn’t I?
I sniffed and took off my hoodie.
“You look frozen. Put this on.”
Noah didn’t hesitate when I thrust it into his hands. He pulled it on and visibly relaxed as he snuggled into the huge piece of clothing. I loved how my things dwarfed him.
It’s ridiculous and so perfect.
He inspected the small logo that sat at my collarbone but on him was placed right above his left nipple.
“That’s from Roy’s brand again, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. They cater especially to the needs of—”
“Big boys,“ he supplied before I finished my sentence, a cheeky little grin on his face.
I snorted and turned back around at his heater. “I won’t be able to fix this thing, I’m sorry. We’ll need to light a fire in the fireplace to get the house warm. Or you can l come back to Lone Fox with me.”
“I tried a couple of times but never got it to burn properly.” His face heated and he retreated a little deeper in my hoodie to hide his embarrassment. “And I don’t want to leave Mr Pickles alone.”
How fucking good would he look with nothing under it after we fucked? I needed to find out, and desperately.
“I’ll show you how it works. Where’s the firewood?”
He walked to the door, opened it, and pointed around to the back of the cottage. “There’s a stack behind the house.”
The steel grey clouds were heavy with snow.
Let’s hurry and get him warmed up.
The cold barely affected me when I left the shack. My thick winter coat meant that I hardly ever felt cold in my life. On the contrary, I usually only wore shirts and hoodies, even in the height of winter, because I ran so hot.
I’d have a word with Ollie, for real this time. He and his parents couldn’t just let Noah fend for himself and possibly freeze in that fucking dilapidated shack they claimed was a cottage.
I wanted to care for him when none of his family did, and I wouldn’t stop until he was warm, well-fed, and well-fucked.
I’d stopped trying to kid myself that this was some kind of older brotherly feeling I nursed for Noah or that he or I had changed too much. We had, but for the better.
If anything, I liked Noah even more now than before.
The thing that bugged me the most was that if he were a woman, the treatment he received from his parents surely would have been different. The Brights had never held back their feelings on how much they resented having only sons.
The frozen grass crunched under my feet as I hurried around the shack. Once I’d located the firewood, I took as much as I could. Back inside the shack I dropped it in a small pile by the fireplace and did three more trips.
From the cupboard off the living room he unearthed matches and little firelighters and even kindling.
Jackpot.
In no time I had piled the fireplace with logs and started a fire. It would take some time until the house would be warmed up, and the flames had to be stoked and fed all through the night. I could do that for him.
“I’ll teach you how to tend to fire later, but for now I want you to sit your arse back down on the couch.” I pointed at a fluffy fleece plaid. “I’ll heat up our food when you’ve warmed up a bit.”
Noah didn’t even argue. Like an obedient little puppy with zero fight in him he plopped down on the sofa and wrapped in the blanket I’d got for him at N?kken.
Hold your tongue, Lewis. Yeah, he’s hot, but he’s still Ollie’s little brother. And your fake boyfriend. “I put too little wood in the fireplace, that’s why it never caught,” he said in a small voice, more to the fire and himself than to me.
His tiny smile lit up the fucking room. It warmed me so thoroughly it was as if I’d torched this whole dingy shack and wasn’t just burning a couple of logs.
I took a seat next to him and slipped my arm around his shoulders.
Fuck this.
I knew I’d care more that Noah was technically out of bounds if Ollie gave a fuck about his brother.
Noah needed to warm up, and I had a higher body temperature. It was a no brainer. With all the fur we tiger hybrids were pretty much walking, talking furnaces.
Noah relaxed against my side and huddled closer.
“Oh no,” he said after a couple of minutes of silence between us and pointed to the window opposite us. Noah and I stared out into the swirling mass of snow. It was coming down hard and almost horizontal.
How the hell did this happen so quickly?
“There’s no way you’ll be able to drive in this weather. Not even with your car,” he mumbled and slid his arm across my stomach. He didn’t sound sorry at all.
“Oh no,” I said in feigned concern but the smile on my face betrayed my true feelings. “Looks like I’ll have to stay here and make sure you don’t freeze.”