Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dawson could still feel Leo’s hands on him.
Two days later, standing at a Silverado’s front hub with brake dust on his knuckles and Ethan’s radio bleeding through the shop wall.
The heel of Leo’s palm pressing into his hip bone.
Leo’s mouth on the side of his neck, unhurried, like he had nowhere else to be.
The sound Leo made when Dawson pulled him closer, low and caught, not for anyone’s benefit but his own.
He worked the bracket bolt loose and stared at the rotor. Brake calipers. He was supposed to be thinking about brake calipers.
The pins were seized. He hit them with penetrating oil and let them soak.
Work was good, requiring the kind of focus that blanked his head and gave his hands something to do.
It lasted about forty seconds before their afternoon together crept back in.
Leo’s hand bumping his, then staying. Dawson’s fingers closing around it without checking the street first, without scanning for someone who might know his truck or recognize his face.
An entire afternoon in a city where he didn’t have to worry about his actions getting back to his family, and the relief of it had been so sharp it almost hurt.
He couldn’t do that in Port Haven. He knew that. But the memory kept surfacing at bad times: behind the counter when a customer was talking, elbow-deep in an engine while Ethan handed him tools, alone in his bedroom at night while Ethan watched TV down the hall.
His phone was in his back pocket. He hadn’t texted Leo since this morning, a nothing exchange, Leo complaining about a bag-skate, Dawson telling him to drink water like he was somebody’s mother.
Easy. The sort of thing that used to make his stomach drop and now just made him reach for his phone between jobs.
He pulled the caliper pins. They came free with effort, grooved and pitted. He cleaned them with emery cloth and inspected the bores, and he was still thinking about Leo’s mouth on his neck when Ethan’s boots appeared at the edge of the bay.
“Dawson. You’ve been staring at that caliper for two minutes.”
“Pins are shot. Need to order replacements.”
“Okay. You need a minute to think about that, or are you going to call NAPA?”
Dawson set the caliper on the bench and wiped his hands.
“I’ll call,” Dawson said.
“You’ve been weird this week.”
“I haven’t been weird.”
“You torqued the Hendersons’ lug nuts to spec, then pulled them and torqued them again.”
Dawson opened his mouth and closed it. He had no defense for that.
“Not judging, but if something’s going on you need to tell us before you fuck up someone’s car,” Ethan said. He bit into his sandwich and walked back toward the front counter, and the last thing Dawson heard before the door swung shut was a low, tuneless whistle that sounded a lot like amusement.
The Penalty Box was loud for a Thursday.
A cluster of guys from the paper mill had taken over the pool table, and the TV above the bar was running Packers highlights that half the town had already dissected over lunch.
Dawson claimed his usual stool and Wes set a beer in front of him without being asked.
Gunnar was at the far end, his eyes on the mill guys like he was counting how many rounds until he’d have to cut them off.
Dawson pulled his book from his jacket pocket. He’d been carrying the same paperback for two weeks and hadn’t turned more than thirty pages. Every time he opened it, his brain wandered, and the detective in chapter nine had been standing in the same doorway since last Tuesday.
The front door swung open and Jonesy came in first, loud, one hand already raised to claim the big booth.
Riggs followed, then Russ, then Novo, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.
Carter and Tate filtered in behind them, and behind Carter, laughing at something Jonesy had said on the sidewalk, was Leo.
Dawson’s hand stopped on the page.
Leo had color in his face from the cold, his hair was pushed back, and he wore a dark jacket open over a white T-shirt that Dawson’s eyes caught on before he could redirect them.
He slid into the booth, and his gaze swept the room and found Dawson, staying for exactly long enough.
The corner of his mouth moved. Not a grin.
Smaller than that. Then he turned back to Jonesy, and it was gone.
Dawson looked down at his book. The detective was still in the doorway. He read the same paragraph three times and absorbed none of it.
Leo was telling a story at the booth, both hands flailing, and Russ was cracking up.
Even Novo broke into a grin. Carter shook his head and said something Dawson couldn’t hear.
Leo fired back, and the whole table erupted.
Dawson watched it from the corner of his eye, his beer getting warm in his hand.
Then Leo laughed. Not the loud one. The one that caught him off guard, his head tipping back, his hand coming up to cover his mouth like he hadn’t meant to let it out.
Dawson set his beer down because his grip had gone white on the glass.
Leo caught his eye again twenty minutes later, when the booth had thinned out and Riggs had gone to the bar for another round. This time, Leo held the look. Then he pulled out his phone.
Dawson’s pocket buzzed.
Leo
Meet me outside.
He waited a minute or two after Leo disappeared before sliding off his stool so it wouldn’t look suspicious. He left a ten on the bar and tipped his chin at Wes, who raised a hand. Then he stepped through the front door.
Leo was leaning against the side of the building, hands in his jacket pockets, breath visible in the air. The streetlight caught the line of his jaw and the white of his T-shirt underneath. Dawson stopped a few feet away because if he got closer, he’d do something anyone walking past could see.
“Hey,” Leo said.
“Hey yourself. What’s up?”
“You were distracting me.”
“I wasn’t doing anything other than reading my book.”
“You haven’t turned a page in forty-five minutes. I was watching.”
Dawson crossed his arms and let his weight settle against the opposite side of the alley. Narrow and dark enough that nobody on Main Street would see them unless they were looking. He let his shoulders drop.
“I keep thinking about Milwaukee,” Dawson said. He was looking at the pavement. “Walking around together, not giving a shit who saw.”
The teasing went out of Leo’s face. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Dawson uncrossed his arms because he didn’t know what to do with his hands and crossing them felt like holding himself back from something. “And your apartment after. I keep thinking about that too.”
Leo was quiet for a second. Then he shifted his weight off the wall and took a step closer, not all the way, just enough to cut the distance in half.
“You’re thinking about my apartment,” Leo said.
His voice had dropped, and Dawson felt it in places that had no business responding to a sentence about real estate.
“What exactly keeps running through your mind? My impeccable decorating sense? I mean, you were pretty captivated by that print over the couch.”
“Don’t fish.”
“I’m not fishing. I’m clarifying.” Another half-step. Close enough now that Dawson could see the streetlight in his eyes, the way his breath came out in a thin cloud between them. “Because if you’re thinking about the couch specifically, I’ve been thinking about that too. A lot.”
Dawson’s jaw tightened. His hands were at his sides now, and he could feel the pull to close the gap like a physical weight. Leo was right there. Three feet away in a dark alley, mouth soft, looking at him like he knew exactly what Dawson was fighting.
“We’re out in public,” Dawson pointed out. He tried to school his expression into irritation, but the arousal was winning. He wanted to be reckless, even if his words said otherwise.
“I know where we are.”
“Then stop moving closer.”
Leo stopped. But he didn’t step back. “What if I don’t want to?”
“Leo.”
“I’m not touching you.” Leo’s voice was low, unhurried, and it did something to the base of Dawson’s spine. “I’m just standing here. You’re the one who can’t stop looking at my mouth. You know what I think about?”
Leo reached down, making a show of adjusting the erection behind his jeans. “The way you pulled me onto your lap. Your hand around my cock. The sound you made when you came. God, do you have any idea how fucking sexy you are when you quit overthinking everything?”
“Don’t.”
“I’m just talking.”
“You’re not just talking, and you know it.”
Leo’s mouth curved. Not a grin. Something slower, more dangerous, and aimed right at him. “Come over after this. I want your hands on me again.”
Dawson exhaled hard through his nose. Every nerve in his body was pulling toward Leo, and the six feet of cold air between them felt like the thinnest barrier he’d ever tried to hold.
He wanted to shove Leo against the wall and kiss him until neither of them could think straight, and the fact that he couldn’t, not here, not with the bar right there and half the team inside, made him want it more.
“I can’t tonight,” Dawson said. His voice came out rougher than he had intended.
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Ethan’s expecting me back.”
Leo held his gaze for a beat too long. Then he leaned back against the wall, and something in the set of his shoulders shifted from pushing to patient. Dawson knew him well enough by now that he could see the hurt in Leo’s eyes.
How many times would he put off the inevitable before Leo quit pursuing him? When Dawson wasn’t being a cowardly ass, things between them were good. It was the closest thing to a relationship Dawson had ever had, and he didn’t want to screw it up.
But he would if he wasn’t careful.
“We’ve got a home game Saturday,” Leo said, quickly changing the subject. “At The Forum.”
“I know.”
“Come.”
The word sat between them. No pressure in Leo’s voice, no edge. An invitation, not a test.
“To the game?”
“No, to bingo night at the senior center,” Leo deadpanned. “Yes, to the game. Sit in the stands. Watch me play.”
Dawson’s gaze drifted past Leo’s shoulder. A hockey game. Public. His face in a crowd of people who knew him, watching a man they didn’t know he was sleeping with. Every instinct he’d ever built said no.
If you keep saying no, he’ll quit asking. Dawson knew the voice in his head was about more than the invitation.
“Yeah,” Dawson said. “Okay.”
Leo blinked. He’d been braced for yet another rejection.
Dawson could see it in the set of his shoulders, the careful way he’d asked, leaving room for Dawson to back out.
The tension dissolved. What replaced it was quiet and warm.
Leo’s eyes were on his face like Dawson had just handed him something he hadn’t been sure he’d get.
“Yeah?” Leo said.
“Don’t make a thing of it.”
Leo didn’t say anything. He held his gaze, and his hand came up slow and deliberate before pressing flat against Dawson’s chest. Dawson didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
“Saturday,” Leo said and took his hand back.
“Saturday.”
Leo stepped back. The grin that broke across his face was the one from the booth, the version with no polish on it, and it hit harder up close. Dawson’s breath caught, and he let it because he was done pretending he didn’t want to do more to put that smile on Leo’s face.
“I’ll be the good-looking one on the ice,” Leo said.
“I’ll try to narrow it down.”
Leo laughed and went back inside. Dawson stayed where he was, letting the cold settle into his skin, his hands unsteady against his arms. He’d said yes without first giving a litany of reasons it was a bad idea. That felt like progress.