Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Audi was in Leo’s parking spot when he got back from practice, and for a second, he forgot about the rental idling beneath him.
The hood was seamless. The bumper was new, the headlight assembly clean and unmarked.
Leo pulled the rental in beside it, got out, and ran his hand along the front quarter panel.
Waxed. Not a trace of the deer, the ditch, the county road at midnight.
Five weeks in a rental that smelled like cleaning chemicals, and now his car was sitting here as if none of it had happened.
Dawson was on the stairs to Leo’s building, leaning against the railing with a coffee. No truck. No ride home. He’d arranged his morning around delivering Leo’s car and being stranded here when Leo got back.
“You could’ve called,” Leo said. “I would’ve come and picked it up.”
“I was already out.” Leo knew that was bullshit. The garage was on the opposite side of town and Dawson had been moaning the night before about how busy they were. He had dozens of tasks he could be doing, but he’d shown up here anyway.
Leo opened the driver’s door and the interior stopped him.
Seats conditioned, dash wiped, floor mats replaced.
It smelled like leather cleaner, not the greasy smell his car usually had when he got it back from being worked on.
He sat behind the wheel and put his hands on it, and his shoulders dropped. The car felt like his again.
He got out. “You detailed it.”
“Part of the service.”
“Dawson. I’ve owned this car for three years. No one has ever detailed it unless I paid them.”
Dawson drank his coffee and studied the parking lot like it held answers. Leo leaned against the open door, arms crossed, and waited.
“Invoice is in the glovebox,” Dawson said. “Insurance signed off last week.”
“Thank you. The car’s perfect.”
Dawson nodded. Another sip of coffee. He was standing in Leo’s parking lot with no ride home, and neither of them had acknowledged it yet.
“So,” Leo said. “I still need to drop the rental.”
“Yep.”
“I’m going to need a ride back.” Leo kept his voice even. “I know you’re busy right now, but I was thinking you could follow me down there so I’m not stranded.”
Dawson took a sip of his coffee. “I could probably arrange to have the day off.”
“How generous of you.” Leo pressed a hand to his chest. “Clearing your whole schedule on such short notice.”
“Huge sacrifice.” Dawson’s mouth twitched. “Get in the car, Leo.”
Leo took the rental. Dawson drove the Audi. An hour south on the highway with Dawson three car lengths back in his rearview, and Leo spent most of it watching the mirror instead of the road.
He dropped the rental, signed the paperwork, and came out to find Dawson leaning against the Audi with his hands in his jacket pockets, squinting against the midday sun.
“So, what do you want to do?”
Dawson looked at him. Looked past him, at the street, the buildings, the sprawl of a city where nobody knew either of them. His shoulders dropped a fraction, his jaw unclenched, and his weight settled on his feet like a tension that was always there had quietly released.
“I could eat,” Dawson said.
Leo drove south toward Bay View, and Dawson rode with one arm braced on the door, taking in the city without commentary.
“Where do you go when you come here?” Leo asked.
“Parts stores. Supply runs.” Dawson glanced at him. “I don’t come down for fun.”
“That’s depressing.”
“It’s practical.” Dawson stretched his arm along the door panel, settled deeper into the seat.
“Same thing.”
Dawson’s mouth did the thing where he almost smiled before catching himself. Leo parked on a side street, and they walked two blocks to a sandwich shop with a counter, twelve seats, and a line that moved fast.
They ordered and found a table by the window.
Dawson sat with his back to the wall, which Leo had noticed he did everywhere.
Bars, restaurants, the diner in Port Haven.
Always the seat that faced the door. In Port Haven, it read as caution, the constant scan for someone who might see, might know, might connect the dots.
Here, he was able to let his guard down.
Dawson looked at the menu board, at Leo, at the street outside.
His eyes stayed where he pointed them instead of sweeping the room.
Unhurried. Present. Leo sat across from him and felt a knot between his own shoulder blades ease that he hadn’t noticed he was carrying.
“This is good,” Dawson said, halfway through a Cuban that was bigger than his head.
“You sound surprised.”
“I’m from a town where the best restaurant is a bar whose claims to fame are fried pickles and cheese curds.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin and balled it up, and Leo watched his hands because he always watched his hands.
“The Penalty Box curds are incredible, and you know it.”
The words were out before he’d thought about them. He was defending the food at a dive bar in a town he couldn’t wait to escape before he’d even arrived. He let that sit without looking at it too hard.
Dawson conceded this with a tilt of his sandwich.
They ate. Leo talked about the road trip to Duluth, the bus, the hotel that smelled like carpet cleaner, and Jonesy’s pregame playlist that nobody could get him to change. Dawson laughed, head back, chest open, and Leo lost his train of thought mid-sentence and had to start over.
After lunch, they walked. No plan, no destination, just picking a direction and going.
The sidewalks were wide enough for two, and the neighborhood was quiet enough that nobody was paying attention to them.
Leo walked with his hands in his jacket pockets because the wind off the lake was sharp and he didn’t have gloves with him.
Dawson walked close. Not touching, but closer than usual.
Their arms brushed when the sidewalk narrowed, and Dawson didn’t drift away.
A couple passed them holding hands, and Dawson’s eyes tracked them for a second, then came back to Leo, and there was an expression on his face that Leo couldn’t quite place.
Not longing. Quieter. Like he was seeing something he’d told himself he couldn’t have and wasn’t sure that was true anymore.
They stopped on a bridge to lean against the railing and look at the water. Leo was about to say something when Dawson reached over and took his hand.
Not a brush. Not an accident. Dawson laced their fingers together on the railing, and the air went out of Leo’s lungs.
His heart was hammering. His whole body had zeroed in on the point of contact—Dawson’s rough palm, the calluses on his fingers, the grip firm and deliberate.
In Port Haven, Dawson only touched him in the dark, in the truck, or behind closed doors.
Every touch back home had an exit built into it.
This was a public sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon with people passing in both directions, and Dawson was holding his hand like he’d been doing it for years.
Leo stared at the water. If he opened his mouth, he would say something that would ruin this, and he would rather stand silent for the rest of the afternoon than risk Dawson letting go.
Dawson’s thumb moved against his knuckles. Once. Slow.
When they started walking again, Dawson kept his hand.
Three blocks. Four. Past a bookstore, a coffee shop, and a woman walking a dog that strained toward them.
Dawson stepped around the dog without letting go.
This is what it could be like. Every day.
Ordinary. The version of them that existed where Dawson’s truck wasn’t recognizable from a quarter mile away.
He squeezed Dawson’s hand once and kept walking, letting the moment stay quiet between them rather than pushing it into words.
They made it back to the car as the sun set.
Dawson’s hand landed on Leo’s thigh before they’d left the city, and it stayed there the whole drive north.
Neither of them talked. The highway signs counted down the miles, and at some point, Dawson’s hand tightened on Leo’s leg, just once, like he knew what was coming too.
Leo pulled into his lot and killed the engine.
“Do you want to come up?”
Dawson opened his door and got out without hesitation, and Leo tracked that too. No pause, no scan of the lot, no checking the windows of the apartments above. Just Dawson following him up the stairs.
The apartment was warm. The lamp by the bookshelf had kicked on while they were gone, and the living room glowed in a way that made the place look like somewhere a person actually lived.
“You hung something,” Dawson said, looking at the print above the bookshelf.
“Figured I might as well make the place mine if I’m going to be here a while.” The words came out easy, like he’d already decided. He hadn’t. Or maybe he had, and this was the first time he’d said it aloud.
Dawson kicked his boots off at the door and hung his jacket on the hook. He leaned against the counter, arms crossed, shirt stretched across his chest, sleeves pushed to the elbows, and Leo was done pretending he wasn’t looking.
Leo crossed the kitchen and kissed him. Dawson’s hand came up to the back of Leo’s neck and pulled him in, and he kissed Leo back unhurried, thorough, like they had all night and intended to use it.
Leo pulled back enough to see Dawson’s face. “Today was nice.”
“Yeah.”
“I almost didn’t want to come back here.
” Leo wondered if Dawson understood what Leo wasn’t saying.
He’d promised he wouldn’t push Dawson to come out or anything, but it was getting hard to pretend he wasn’t head-over-heels when they saw one another around town.
Acting like a real couple for a change was a heady experience Leo hadn’t wanted to end.
Dawson’s grip tightened on his neck. “Neither did I.”