Niko
Chapter sixteen
Iwas halfway through a rip cut when my phone started going off and didn’t stop. I finished the cut, because you don’t leave a saw in the middle of a board, and then I picked up the phone.
Max: it’s out. the arrangement. all of it
Max: I’m okay. handling it. don’t call, I’m with my people
Max: I’ll call you tonight
I read the three messages twice. The news didn’t worry me, but Max’s way of sharing it did.
He never shared information so directly.
He always created a story. When our grandfather died, Max called me from the hospital parking lot and talked for forty minutes, sharing all the details, including the design of the gift shop. All I got now was “handling it.”
Niko: I’m here for you.
Next, I did what I thought everyone in the city was doing. I looked for more. The story was everywhere, and it was short. They painted Max as the victim, an innocent influencer caught in a hockey team’s publicity machine.
They portrayed Rafe as the opposite. They said it was all engineering, every ounce a fake.
That was wrong—100% wrong.
Ma called an hour later.
“Have you talked to him?”
“He texted. He says he’s handling it.”
“Handling it.” I heard the sounds of kneading dough, slapping against the counter, and it gave her something to punch.
“Voula sent me the article. I read two lines. They’re saying he was tricked, Niko.
Nobody tricked him. He sat in the living room and explained the whole contract to your father as if it were a car lease. ”
“I know, Ma.”
“And the boy.” The sounds stopped. “What are they saying about the boy?”
“Nothing true,” I said.
She was quiet for a moment. “Don’t forget to eat,” she said, and then she hung up.
I didn’t text Rafe. I looked at the screen with his name on it and couldn’t find the words.
There was nothing to say. I wanted him, not answers.
If pushed, I’d say I spent the afternoon working on the blanket chest. In reality, I cut one set of pins in two hours and checked my phone every five minutes.
Max didn’t call, and Rafe didn’t text.
At six the shop phone rang, and it was a woman on Wolcott who wanted to know whether her bookcase could go two inches taller and whether two inches would cost her.
I told her it could and it wouldn’t. She talked for a while about her ceilings and about the crown molding her contractor wanted to take down. I listened to all of it.
She didn’t know anything had happened in my world that day. I wasn’t ready for the conversation to be over when it ended.
At seven I went upstairs and ate standing at the counter. Max didn’t call. At eight, I checked the ringer was on. At nine I checked it again.
Somewhere in there I read the message thread with Rafe, but I still didn’t know what to say.
A little after ten, I tidied up the shop and turned out the lights. The streetlights shone around the edges of the blinds. They weren’t visible when all the lights were on inside.
I was halfway to the stairs when I saw the shadow. There was a man at my door.
It was Rafe. I knew the shape, but he hadn’t knocked. I waited a moment longer, but he didn’t move.
I didn’t turn the lights on. There was enough light from the street to navigate the shop. I opened the door.
Cold rushed in around him. He didn’t smile. He was a tired man in an open coat.
He stepped inside, and I shut the cold out behind him.
“I keep starting to—“ he said, and stopped. Then he tried again. “I talked to Hal and Mark and my parents. I answered all of them. I did everything right, Niko, and then I got in the truck and I—” He cut himself off. “I don’t know what I’m—”
He didn’t wait for me to speak. He stepped forward, and his mouth landed on mine with his hands on my chest. I stumbled backward, and the bench caught us.
My marking pencil rolled off the end of it and hit the floor. He kissed me hard at the wrong angle. I turned my head and fixed the angle.
Our first kiss had been brief, and it was over before I understood what was happening. This wasn’t that.
Rafe poured his whole day into it, hungry and raw. I slid my hands under his open coat and felt his heart pounding hard against my palms.
I pushed his coat up and off his shoulders, and it fell to the floor. He stopped.
“Sorry,” he said, breathing hard. “I should’ve—I don’t really know what—“
“Rafe.” He looked at me. I saw nothing but desire in his eyes. “Upstairs,” I said.
My hands were unsteady as I opened the door to my apartment. Then I took his hand. I’d never done that.
His fingers closed around mine and held on tight. I walked him down the hall.
My bedroom gets its light from the streetlamp through the front window, a low amber that makes my walnut bedframe glow. Rafe stood at the foot of my bed and began unbuttoning his shirt.
I stepped forward and took over, taking my time undressing him. He took my face in both hands and kissed me again.
“Let me know if you want me to stop,” I said.
“Niko, I’ve never done this.” His voice was low and even. “Is that—“
“It’s fine.” I put his hand on my chest so he could feel my heartbeat. “Everybody starts somewhere.”
I pushed the shirt off his shoulders. It was one thing to have watched him in a suit at the Palmer House and another to have his chest bare in my bedroom.
I’d never seen a serious athlete up close like that. His shoulders were built broad and powerful, and bruises of various degrees of intensity told the hockey story.
I leaned forward to kiss his collarbone, and he hissed. I kneaded his firm chest, and when my thumb crossed a nipple, he made a short, surprised sound.
He pulled my shirt off with less patience than I’d shown his, and one of my buttons skittered across the floor. Then his hands were on me, both palms flat, moving over my chest and shoulders and down my back.
We got the rest of our clothes off in a graceless tangle. His belt. My jeans. His socks, hopping on one foot. Then he was naked in the amber light. His cock was hard, and he stared at me.
I wrapped my fingers around the length of it and gave one slow stroke just to see what happened. He swayed and grabbed my shoulder.
“Fuck, Niko.”
I wondered whether swearing was new to Rafe, too.
We tumbled onto my bed together, with his knee hitting my thigh hard enough to bruise. He rolled over onto me, all two hundred pounds of him pinning my one sixty-five frame to the mattress. His cock pressed into my hip.
He reached between us, taking both of our cocks in his big hand and rocked his hips forward. It was a little clumsy, but that didn’t matter. I was falling, and I wanted every single awkward ounce of him.
He didn’t roll me over, but he continued to rock his body against me, and he stroked our cocks, his hand pinned between us. Then he cracked his head on the headboard.
It wasn’t a tap. It was a full, ringing knock, wood on skull. He dropped onto his forearms with a grunt.
“That’s walnut,” I said.
Rafe rolled slightly to the side, pressed his face against my shoulder, and laughed. It came up from his belly, loud, with no guardrails.
I couldn’t stop myself. I laughed too. We lay there tangled up and laughing in the streetlight, his heart hammering against mine.
“You built that,” he said.
“Every joint’s hand-cut.”
He lifted his head, and I looked at him. Rafe was back, and when he kissed me this time it was slow, learning about our connection.
“Can I?” he asked as he slid his tongue down my neck.
I shuddered. “Yes.”
He placed kisses down across my collarbone and onto my chest. I reached for his cock and began to stroke it.
He watched my hand move, and then he watched my face, back and forth, seeing everything. He touched me in return with a calloused palm and no technique at all. It undid me more than skill would have. It was Rafe, and he was mine.
I stroked him, slow and deliberate. He lost his grip on me and rolled his head back into the pillow. His hips rose to follow the rhythm of my strokes.
His breathing turned ragged. He was close already. “Slower,” he said. “I don’t want it over fast.”
My hand slowed. “Okay,” I said. “Slower.”
I gave him exactly what he wanted, long and unhurried. I eased off every time he got close, until he was trembling and laughing, reaching up and gripping the slats of the headboard.
When I finally pushed him over the edge, he reached up and grabbed a fistful of my hair while he shot and his body shook. The sounds were primal: gasps and low rumbles from deep in his chest.
After, he lay stunned while his breathing came back. Then he reached for me. His grip was a little clumsy, but he was determined. It didn’t take long. I came, whispering “Rafe” with a ridiculous grin on my face. He held me through all of it.
His breathing turned long and even, and I thought he’d fallen asleep. Then he spoke.
“They weren’t mad about the lie.” The words were slow and deliberate. “That part I could’ve—everybody understood the lie, kind of. It was more like they were mad about—“ He reached out and touched my chest. “They thought they knew me yesterday. Today, they thought I was a different guy.”
A few seconds later, he fell asleep. His arm lay heavy across my body.
I didn’t sleep at first. I lay there and looked across the room at the bookshelf I built at twenty-three. It stood against the far wall.
The most desirable man I’d ever kissed was asleep on my shoulder. He was a professional athlete, more talented than most in his league, and he was so handsome it stopped my breath.
He slept like he’d finally been allowed to rest after working nonstop for twenty years. The story about him that everyone else thought they knew wasn’t there. It couldn’t find its way in between us.