Chapter 23Cody
23
Cody
After a shower at the houseboat, during which I absolutely did not touch my dick to thoughts of kissing Liem—it was to thoughts of kissing and touching him that had me slapping the shower wall and groaning his name this time—I was no less aroused and even more exhausted.
I avoided even brushing by the bed on the way out of the boat’s bedroom, fearing that just one touch of the soft knit blanket on top or a whiff of that soothing charcoal-and-sea smell would work as a siren’s song, and I’d become lost to it. There was some time to kill before dinner, so I took my laptop to the little booth by the kitchen to double-check my courses that would start in May.
Once I confirmed that I was still satisfied with my selections—excited, even—I held my breath as I did something I’d only done once before.
I checked the bank account where I kept Mom’s money.
She mailed me a check four times per year at the beginning of each financial quarter. They used to go to Dad as child support, but one thing that never changed was how she sent them—inside expensive greeting cards with long, flowery printed messages inside and her full name signed at the bottom—always addressed directly to me instead of Dad.
For a long time, I assumed he used the payments as intended—for buying school supplies, clothes, and the like—but instead, he’d quietly deposited them into an account in my name, which he’d eventually transferred over to me on my eighteenth birthday. The single-line email that accompanied the account information somehow stayed in my memory even years later:
Son, this is yours.
Love,
Dad
He might not have been the parent I needed for the nearly five years I was under his care, but it was clearer than ever that he’d always loved me. He just showed it in more subtle ways than my younger heart secretly craved.
After typing in the password for the account, I froze in shock.
It was not a small amount.
But it still made me feel small. That six-word email from my dad held more regard than this five-figure balance from someone who’d erased all evidence of her child.
Dad proudly displayed photos of me and of the two of us on the wall of his home and in scrapbooks on the living room coffee table. In my mother’s professionally decorated apartment, there were works of art, framed degrees, engraved plaques with award after award, and professional photos of herself receiving those awards.
There wasn’t a single photo of her son. No evidence I existed.
Walking through the apartment of Dr. Alexandra Cormier on Saturday had unearthed a deep and unexpected hurt. One that I wasn’t sure what to do with—bar my immediate reaction, which was doing something fucking reckless like climbing into a burnt house—and this money made it even more complicated.
There was some sway beneath my feet as I closed the laptop and slid out of the booth, but subtle as it was, I still stumbled and had to grip the tabletop for support. Vinh was giving me an amazing deal to stay here on the houseboat, and even though Bree had assured me that he didn’t buy it for me specifically , I had to wonder if it might be better to touch this tainted money for the first time. To swallow my pride and use these funds to find someplace that was entirely my own.
But would it ever truly be mine if I used her money?
A fist pounding on the door jolted me, and I hurried to open the door, thankful for a distraction, and found it in the form of Bree’s boo bear standing on the dock with his arms crossed over his chest.
“I need to get you a security doorbell,” he said by way of greeting.
I crossed my arms to mirror his and leaned against the doorjamb. “I’ll order one.”
We stared at each other for a moment, his dark eyes versus my hazel ones.
“Fine,” he relented, uncrossing his arms and putting his hands in his jean pockets. “But you’ll use it when someone knocks.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
He arched his brow. “Before you open the door.”
“Okay,” I repeated, resting my tongue between my teeth as I imagined tacking on the capital D word. I’d been dying to say it to his face, but dammit, it wouldn’t be worth it without Cher here to witness it. Instead, I gestured to the security lights and cameras at the top of the wooden dock posts. “I thought you said this place had good security?”
He dipped his chin. “Good is relative, and you’re family.”
I opened my mouth to respond—how, exactly, I wasn’t sure—but the flat “fight me” look he gave me stopped me from finding out. Then, bless him, he continued talking as if he hadn’t just said the nicest damn thing. “Bree and Liem are still getting ready, so I decided to come pick you up for dinner.”
I nodded and, excited, stepped out onto the dock beside him, but with a gentle hand on my shoulder, he pushed me right back onto the boat. “Shoes and shirt, Cody.”
Glancing down at my bare chest and feet, I frowned as mild embarrassment threatened, but Vinh brushed by me and saved me again by interrupting it as he asked, “Do you mind if I check on the detectors and the kitchen sink? I need to see if my patch job is holding up.”
“Sure,” I agreed, leaving him to it as I went back to the bedroom to put on a shirt and kick on my slides, loath to put my feet in jail again after so many hours of food service in slightly damp shoes.
I brushed my teeth, then pulled out my stolen bottle of coconut lotion from my tattered toiletry bag and rubbed it into my hands, elbows, and knees.
Lifeguarding had been one of my favorite jobs over the years of working at Fortuna, and I’d come to crave the smell of coconut sunscreen, even missing it on cloudy days. In another emotion-avoiding stunt, I’d lifted this little bottle of lotion from a cleaning cart in the resort hallway while burying my Austin tokens. Its coconut-vanilla scent was close enough to the smell of sunscreen that I pre-mourned reaching the end of the bottle even as I plotted ways to get my hands on more.
I really had done more than my fair share of thieving and thievery-adjacent activities this year, and it was only March.
Stepping back out into the main space, I found Vinh washing his hands at the kitchen sink.
“All good?” I asked.
“It’s fine for now,” he assured me as he turned off the tap and dried his hands. “Ready to go?”
I pulled at my shirt as I replied, “More so than I was.”
He stood guard as I locked up the boat, and we walked side by side to his car just as the sun started to set on the day. I climbed into the passenger seat and ran my thumb over my key chain, soothed by its texture and Vinh’s quiet presence beside me.
There really was something about the Lott brothers.
He parked in the cottage’s driveway a few minutes later, just as Bree and Liem walked out the front door. I unbuckled my belt, intending to get out and give up shotgun to one of them, but then I looked at him.
Hair dark and shiny in the last golden light of day, feet in those damned boots, and utter mischief in his aura—and he was headed right for me.
I clicked the seat belt back into place. I was only so strong, and it was best to have a bit of space between me and Liem right now.
Space my filthy fantasies had absolutely not given him earlier during my shower.
If I wanted to be part of these family adventures for the long haul, I really needed to not fuck it all up. The Lotts were Bree’s family, and even though Vinh had just said I was part of that, too, it didn’t mean I could be careless. I couldn’t go about life as I had before I’d had Liem Lott against me and my tongue in his mouth.
I wasn’t the same. Would never be the same, and I needed to act accordingly.
It was still true that I was twenty-three and unemployed with a catalog full of burned bridges, but I was resolved to tread carefully on the one I had left. The one I wanted to safeguard more with each passing day.
Vinh’s elbow nudged me slightly as he shifted into Reverse, and I blinked back into the world. All the zoning out my dumb brain was doing lately had to be its attempt to make up for twenty years without retrospection.
“Did you get chopsticks?” Vinh asked, glancing up at the rearview mirror.
Liem’s beautiful, tattooed hand appeared like an apparition beside me as he clapped Vinh on the shoulder, and my mouth watered.
Like Pavlov’s horniest dog.
“Of course,” the angel said, his voice like a rung bell. “I only regret we didn’t have extras for Princess and Cody.”
I was barely able to suppress a shudder. The casual use of my name had never been worth noticing before, but the way it sounded on Liem’s lips had me internally panting.
“It’s okay,” Bree assured from the backseat. “Cody and I are good with the disposable ones. We’re not as cool as you two.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out with a loud exhale, thankful for the distraction.
Until I wasn’t.
Cher
You, my friend, are in such trouble.
Me
*best
I stealthily returned my phone to my pocket and glanced back, finding Bree in conversation with Liem as if she hadn’t just done some of her signature trickery. Her gray eyes flicked to me briefly before returning to Liem, and mine—the traitors—went along.
Lord have mercy on my touch-starved soul.
His dark hair still gleamed, the strands cascading over his shoulder. There was the tiniest little braid woven into it and a small bobby pin keeping his hair pulled back from his face. I forced my leaf key chain through my thumb and forefinger, dying to experience the feel of that little braid.
Then I imagined the ways I could ruin it.
“Dezi?” Liem asked as if it wasn’t for the first time.
“Hmm?” I asked, meeting his gaze.
“We were wondering if you had a nap? You seem a little out of it,” Bree supplied, her raspy voice sounding amused.
“Why does that sound like something you’d ask one of Jeanne’s kids and not a grown-ass man?” I hadn’t quite snapped, but there was an edge that surprised even me.
My horniness and existential moping were getting the better of me.
Silence fell over the car, and it felt like shit. It was also the perfect example of how I could botch this.
But then Vinh cleared his throat softly and mumbled, “Ass man.”
Three beats of stunned silence followed before he lifted his gaze to the rearview mirror and smirked, cueing a fit of giggles from the backseat.
The tension dissipated as quickly as it’d arrived, and I resolved to get Vinh a gift, though I wasn’t sure exactly what he liked.
Maybe some batteries—the good name-brand ones.
I should probably start a Vinh box, too, especially since he was essentially going to be my brother-in-law one day, based on the way his relationship with Bree was progressing. The closer we got, the more I was going to see things that reminded me of him, and I’d need somewhere to put them.
“Sorry, guys,” I said to the car at large, then startled as a hand squeezed my right shoulder, but when I glanced down and saw the freckles, I relaxed.
Until a tattooed one squeezed my other.
Going against my instincts, I let their physical reassurances wash over me. Glancing at Vinh, whose smirk had transformed to a full-blown smug smile, I let out a breath and smiled along with him.
For the rest of the ride, I kept the key chain gripped in my hand and my gaze on the passing scenery, content to listen to Bree and Liem debate what they were going to order at the restaurant and how many spring rolls we should get until we pulled off the highway and into a small parking lot.
Bree and Liem led the charge inside the hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese restaurant, while Vinh and I followed behind and exchanged an amused look at their eagerness.
Vinh saved me once again when we reached the burgundy booth by immediately sliding into the spot beside his brother, leaving me to sit beside Bree.
As I situated myself in the booth, my thoughts shifted to that night I’d spent sitting alone in Waffle House a little more than a year ago.
It felt like an entirely different lifetime from this one.
Lifting my gaze from the worn table, I found Liem studying me with a slight furrow in his brow and a tilt to his head, and I was confronted with the urge to reassure him but settled for giving him a small smile instead when the waiter appeared.
We all ordered waters, and then Liem ordered eight spring rolls for the table, which was apparently the number he and Bree had decided on in the car.
The dregs of that memory remained, something about it nagging my brain until it came to me.
“Hey, LL?” I asked, gazing at him across the table.
He smiled at me. “Yes, Dezi?”
“Why were you in that art history class last year? The one you were wildly overqualified to take?”
I’d never thought to question it before—why someone of his talents and experience would have been in a class with someone like me. At the time, I’d just been grateful for someone to talk to and to help me through it. I felt Bree’s and Vinh’s gazes on me but kept my attention on Liem as he answered.
“Ah, yes,” Liem said, tossing his hair over his shoulder. “Kilns are expensive, you see.”
I nodded even though I really didn’t.
“I took a liking to pottery and wanted to try my hand at it. In Eufaula, there was a small art studio where you can use the kiln for free if you’re enrolled in an art class with any local universities, online or no.”
My nod was more honest this time. That explanation made sense, as did the way my gaze ping-ponged between his lips as he spoke and his hands as he gracefully gesticulated, unable to stay on one for long for fear of missing out on what was happening with the other.
The waiter brought our waters then, and conversation paused as they were placed on the small square napkins in front of each of us before he asked if we were ready to order. I hadn’t even opened the menu, but when everyone else nodded, I decided to just order my usual. One of the smaller casinos on the Coast had a food court with an amazing Vietnamese fusion stall that was open late on the weekends. Bree and I had patronized them hundreds of times over the years, only going whenever we’d both finished a late shift and could take the ten-minute walk together.
But then one day a couple of years ago, without warning, a new place had taken over the stall.
Unexpected, nostalgic mourning crept up on me as I glanced at Bree beside me, wondering if she was thinking of it, too, but ever the girl scout, she was busy gathering our menus to give back to the waiter. I dropped my gaze back to my lap, not keen to stare at her until she got the weird as fuck silent memo to be sad with me.
A moment later, she poked my leg. “This place reminds me of Stix.”
“Same,” I agreed around a relieved laugh. “But they probably won’t give us free extra sauces here.”
She sighed. “Probably not.”
We bumped shoulders in solidarity, and I took a deep breath as I mentally pep talked myself to get it together.
I’d almost started listening to myself by the time the waiter returned with a bowl of hot spring rolls, the steam wafting up in the middle of the table. Liem lifted a tiny wallet into the air and, like a magician, produced two sets of travel chopsticks from it, handing one to his brother.
I was utterly fascinated as Liem deftly connected the ends of his chopsticks, the pronounced veins on the tops of his hands flexing as he worked. Once the show was over, he set them on the napkin beside him and reached for his glass of water. Then, as the constellation tattoos on his left forearm winked at me as he brought it to his lips, it dawned on me that the show was, in fact, not over.
The assembling of chopsticks had only been the prelude.
Liem lifted a spring roll from the basket in front of us, dipped it into the peanut sauce, and took a hearty bite.
His eyes fluttered closed in ecstasy as he licked a droplet of sauce from his lips.
My sauce.
A boot grazed up the length of my shin, and I jolted in my seat, my gaze snapping from Liem’s lips to his eyes as he asked, “How many more miles do you have until you reach Mordor?”
His eyes sparkled knowingly, mischievous and a bit wild, as he finished off the spring roll and looked at me expectantly, licking the tip of his finger.
His boot skimmed back down my shin.
Goose bumps erupted, and I clenched the seat to try to ward off an obvious shiver.
While I may have meticulously practiced and perfected the art of flirting while working at the casino over the years, Liem seemed born to it.
I was beginning to suspect I’d met my match.
Bree cleared her throat and elbowed me in the least subtle way possible. “Answer the question instead of just drooling, ya weirdo.”
I leveled her with a look even as I unsubtly closed my gaping mouth, but she just stuffed a spring roll into her own mouth and raised her eyebrows at me.
“Lots,” I answered as I moved my gaze back to Liem across the table and, like an absolute asshat, chuckled at the not-quite-a-joke I’d made. “We, uhh.” I looked around, desperately searching for my cool. “We probably won’t make it there until June.”
“We?” Bree asked, brushing crumbs off her shirt as she hid a shitty little grin.
I debated making a run for it. I really did. Instead, I smiled, realizing I hadn’t told her this. “Dad and I started running in the mornings. He signed us up for a virtual race to Mordor.”
Bree’s answering smile was huge, the sight making mine grow even bigger as she said, “I love that you two are getting along. How far is it from Bay Springs to Mordor?”
“About three hundred miles.”
Liem whistled, drawing my attention back to him as he said, “That’s quite a journey.”
I sat straighter, with no idea how talking about virtual Lord of the Rings marathons had boosted my confidence, but it was what it was. My cool had abandoned me entirely.
I stealthily moved my foot to search the space beneath the booth but met only the table leg and air surrounding it. “It is,” I agreed as I slipped my foot out of my slide. “But the prize will be so worth it.” I found my target then and pressed my foot onto Liem’s shin, internally reveling in the slight twitch in his upper body and the way his fingers briefly clenched his water tighter.
“What’s the pri?—"
Bree’s question was cut off by the waiter returning with a platter filled with piping hot bowls of pho, and as soon as everyone’s attention was diverted to it, I slid my foot all the way up Liem’s shin to the inside of his knee.
And then, just to see what he would do, I pushed my foot against him.
I should’ve known better.
His eyes darkened, and there was the smallest smirk playing around his lips as he picked up his chopsticks and speared them into his bowl. He never broke my gaze, not for a moment, even as the billowing steam hazed his features when he raised his noodles to his lips.
And let his legs widen. Let me widen them.
Hot broth splashed across my hand as I dropped my soup spoon into my bowl. When had I even picked that up?
Bree dropped a cloth napkin onto my leg without a word, and I grabbed it, keeping my gaze averted as I quickly wiped off the broth, barely registering the heat. I dropped the napkin back onto my lap and peeked up through my lashes, my neck heating as Liem delicately tucked his hair behind his ear and dunked his chopsticks into the bowl again.
My foot retreated back into my slide, sufficiently chastised.
I needed to regroup and strategize.
Thankfully, Vinh surprised me for the third time today—the first being when he called me family and the second when he made his expertly timed ass joke—by launching into enthusiastic conversation.
By his standards, that was.
He went into detail about his plans for some updates to the cottage and building plans he had with his Uncle Gil, drawing all of us into the conversation often and easily.
Liem piped in with ideas about design, and at each turn of conversation, I realized there was an ocean of things I didn’t know about him.
I hated that.
It should have been obvious, as our relationship was born online and had barely bloomed in person, but still. I’d selfishly shared so many deep, dark truths with him last year, yet I didn’t even know how he started tattooing or why he stopped. I knew the feel of him pressed against me and the shape of his lips, but nothing of his dreams.
It needed rectifying.
As dinner went on, I learned even more new things about Vinh and Liem as I continued to endure the multi-act show that was Liem Lott turning the ordinary into the painfully erotic.
By the time the curtain on our Mardi Gras meal closed and we were all stuffed to bursting, I’d barely tasted the last few bites of my food because I was too busy strategizing the best way to exit this booth with my dignity intact.