Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Having Ty around again was a blessing. So much so, in fact, that Morgan wasn’t entirely sure that half his pain hadn’t been psychosomatic, because in the space of a single week, he went from being almost debilitatingly in pain to feeling as good as he had before he left.
The nerve pain seemed to vanish almost overnight, which was the best part—Morgan had dealt with chronic nerve pain in his neck when he was prone to pulling overnighters to get projects done, and it had taken him months to recover back then.
It helped that he wasn’t required to hunch over a computer screen so much now, but still, he’d been worried about it.
Then he’d gotten his first massage from Ty and promptly collapsed into a puddle of satisfaction on the bed.
Ty hadn’t touched him very much when they’d lived together before.
Which was completely understandable and fine, just fine, Morgan didn’t have any right to expect to be touched beyond what was strictly necessary for Ty to feel good about helping him, but damn.
If he’d known Ty was this good with his hands, he’d have been begging for his touch back at Ty’s cabin.
He knew just how much pressure to apply, seemed to be able to find the sore spots without even asking, and kneaded them to the point of pain before suddenly releasing, and the most intense heat and relief would bloom across where he’d just been.
It lasted, too, and with the help of the muscle relaxants, Morgan was able to sleep well every night and get his aches rubbed away every morning.
He’d have felt selfish about it if it weren’t for the fact that Ty was so clearly relieved that Morgan was feeling better.
Ty checked in on him a lot, either by asking how he was or just by staring at him, eyes running up and down Morgan’s body like he could hunt down aches and pains before they manifested.
If sometimes his eyes lingered in places, or his skin got noticeably pinker, or he jolted out of gazing at Morgan like he was coming out of a daze, well … that wasn’t really Morgan’s business.
And if Morgan’s reaction to Ty’s staring was to get hard for what felt like the first time in forever, that wasn’t Ty’s business either.
He was already pretty sure nothing was going to happen between them.
There might be a certain simmering level of attraction between them—there definitely was on Morgan’s part, he couldn’t lie—but it wasn’t worth damaging their friendship to act on it.
Being there as a friend, helping him as a friend, was clearly important to Ty.
The fact that it hadn’t gone beyond that yet even though Ty was literally rubbing him down every day, was …
Your own fault, dude. Communication, remember?
There was communication, and then there was cutting your own heart out of your chest and offering it to someone with no assurance they’d even accept it.
Morgan knew himself too well; he knew if he let himself consider a relationship with Ty too closely, he’d want it, and he’d want to keep it.
That was how he’d always been, one of the reasons he and Bentley had lasted for more than a decade even when they were falling apart—once he got something, he wanted it forever.
It was hard for Morgan to let go, whether it was a lover or a company or even a memory, like what Parrish Island had been to him.
Greedy. Possessive. Taker.
It was hard to feel like a taker when Ty seemed to want to give so much, though.
“Come on,” he said one day as Morgan was finishing his coffee. “There’s something I want to show you.”
That was vague but intriguing. “Where?”
“The beach.”
Ah, the beach. Morgan had a hard time remembering there was a beach on Parrish Island—but he’d seen it, at least part of it, the day he fell into the water and fucked himself up.
It wasn’t a big beach, more of a pebbly stretch on the west side of the island, but it was there …
and as Morgan remembered, there had been a few sea lions stretched out on the rocks there as well. “Are we going to look at sea lions?”
“Mmm.”
Okay, that was a nice enough day trip. There was a glint in Ty’s eyes that made Morgan wonder if something else was going on—maybe he’d seen something while he was out on his fishing expedition that morning?
Morgan decided to play along, though. He tested his shoulder, stretching his arm out carefully the way his PT had shown him.
His range of motion still wasn’t great, but it was definitely improved, and he was finally getting some of his strength back as well. Maybe he could get away with—
“Use the sling.”
“I think I could go without it for a little while,” Morgan said, but Ty shook his head.
“The boat rocks too much, you’ll be uncomfortable.”
Ugh. He wasn’t necessarily wrong, but it kind of sucked to be managed so thoroughly. “I’m feeling a lot better,” Morgan insisted.
Ty nodded. “Good. Let’s keep it that way.”
“I think I’d be all right.”
“Mmm.” They stared at each other for a moment, and Morgan blinked first. He always blinked first for some reason. It didn’t matter how hard he tried not to, or how long he lasted, Ty always lasted just a few seconds longer.
“Fine, I’ll get the sling.”
The sling was only the first line of preparation for a trip out—there was a jacket to wrangle as well, now that the weather was cold enough that he couldn’t go out in just a sweater over a T-shirt.
Then a hat, and gloves, and finally a life jacket because he didn’t want to fall out of the boat and put the responsibility for saving him on Ty again.
Not that Ty wore a life jacket, and that honestly seemed like a bad idea to Morgan, but he didn’t want to bug the guy about it.
Finally, they were on the water. The ocean was choppy, and the skies overhead were completely gray, clouds coming in close like they were considering just being a fogbank instead.
Ty handled the boat with perfect ease, though, sending them around the rocky edge of Parrish Island and toward the cove where Morgan had so briefly caught sight of sea lions before.
It would be fun to see the ones that had been lounging there before, and—
“Holy shit!”
That wasn’t a few random sea lions. There had to be at least fifty of them packed into that little stretch of gravel, some of them lying on top of each other, many of them barking and splashing around, making such a ruckus he was surprised he hadn’t heard it from the lighthouse.
“What are they all doing here?” Morgan shouted over the noise.
“California sea lion males migrate north after the breeding season,” Ty replied, a little smile on his face as he stared at them. “They come up to find richer feeding grounds. We didn’t use to get them this far north, but their migration patterns are evolving, thanks to climate change.”
“Wow.” They were big—some of those animals had to be over seven feet long. “What do they eat?”
The smile faded from Ty’s face. “They prefer cephalopods.”
“What, like squid and octopuses?”
“Yes.” Ty seemed to clam up, and Morgan decided not to push him. They sat in silence together and admired the enormous animals for a while—until one of them, big even for one of these sea lions, pushed off the shore and began a leisurely swim straight toward their boat.
Morgan turned to look at Ty, who was so pale now he almost appeared blue. “Can it tip the boat over?” he asked.
“No,” Ty said almost soundlessly, then cleared his throat. “Mmm, no, but we shouldn’t stay and disrupt them much longer.”
“Let’s go back, then.”
Ty turned the boat back the way they’d come, but to Morgan’s surprise, the sea lion didn’t turn around.
It kept pace with them instead, ducking fully under the water and coming up again to stare at them with dark, liquid eyes that glinted hungrily in the gray afternoon light.
It didn’t turn around until the lighthouse was in sight, and even then it seemed reluctant to leave them alone, turning back several times to stare at them as Ty carefully guided the boat up against the dock.
Ty tied the boat up in silence, his face blank in a way that Morgan was learning to associate with strong emotions.
But what emotions this time? Not … not fear.
Or could it be? Maybe he’d had a close call once with a sea lion—if that many of them came and lived basically right outside his cabin for several months of the year, Morgan could see how they might go from being noisy neighbors to a potential threat, especially if Ty was fishing where they wanted to be eating.
They arrived back to the lighthouse in silence, and as Ty helped Morgan take off his jacket, he considered how best to break the tension that had developed between them.
He was surprised when Ty took the initiative.
“In the spring, gray whales migrate down the coast,” he said. “They’re more fun to watch.”
“That was plenty fun,” Morgan promised him. “Do scientists come to study the sea lions as well as the birds?”
Ty shook his head briskly. “They’ve asked, but so far I’ve been able to persuade them to find other colonies to monitor.
I’m not … comfortable with getting too involved in yet another wildlife research endeavor.
” He looked at Morgan. “They might approach you, actually. The beach is approximately equidistant between our homes, and if you gave them permission to use your land as a base of operations, they wouldn’t need to bother with my involvement. ”
Morgan thought for a second about how to respond. “Do you think they could learn something useful from it?” he asked at last.
Ty seemed to deflate a little. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Perhaps.”
Morgan decided to shelve the question until he was actually asked about it. It might be out of your control soon enough anyway. If he gave up his residency rights here, they would revert to the state. Then researchers wouldn’t have to take Ty’s preferences into consideration.