Chapter 24Liem
24
Liem
“Are you sure you’re up for this tonight?” Bree asked as she collapsed onto the bench seat Vinh had produced from their bedroom. “It’s Friday night. If you wanted to go check out the chaos at one of the casinos, I would understand.”
I smiled as I opened the sketch pad that sheltered her design. “Don’t worry,” I assured her. “My wandering days aren’t behind me. I’ve just found somewhere new to go looking.”
“ Where ?”
The Earth just about shook beneath us at the combined deep tones of Cody and my brother as they asked the question in stereo.
Cody’s here.
I hadn’t seen him in two days. Two painfully long days.
Bree moved her attention to the awning between the kitchen and living room and smiled, but I had to allot myself a few timed breaths before I could do the same.
When I finally looked up, they abandoned me anyway. Cody was leaning against the wall, his bare feet crossed at the ankles. Vinh stood beside him, hands stuffed in his pockets and his sassy eyebrow demanding answers, but I’d all but forgotten the question.
Cody and Vinh made a formidable duo, and I was pleased to see evidence of the friendship that was forming between them, both in the way they stood near each other and in the easy familiarity of the quick look of solidarity they exchanged.
“Jinx,” Bree said around an amused smile.
“Do I owe you a sweet tea or a coffee, Cher?” Cody asked, mindlessly rubbing his foot up his shin.
Or perhaps, not so mindlessly, as I was instantly transported back to the Vietnamese restaurant. To the footsies that had been the highlight of my year.
I listened intently to their bantering as I finished lining up my tattoo supplies in a tidy row on the kitchen table. It was fully dark outside, and the overhead lights were on, but I also had a travel light on a boom stand ready to go beside me. I had to move said light out of the way before I swiveled to face them in the ergonomic office chair I’d brought out from my bedroom. I’d hoped to be a more active spectator for the rest of their conversation but was sad to realize it was already over and peace had settled between them that hinted at some sort of agreement.
Cody’s gaze swept down my body and slowly made its way back to my face before he repeated, solo this time, “Where, LL? Where have you been going these past two days?” His gaze stayed on me as his left hand slowly turned the bracelets on his right.
The same bracelets that had left tiny indents on my wrist after he’d held my hand in the rain.
I blinked hard as Bree’s rasp cut through the fog. “Stop grilling him,” she said, looking at Cody and Vinh in turn. “And as you can see”—she gestured to the supplies—“I have an appointment. If you want to stay here and chitchat, you’ll have to book your own tattoo.”
Cody scowled at her playfully, but then he shifted his gaze to the table and took in the setup—the sanitation supplies, the ink, and my gun.
“I’ll have to do that,” he murmured, and my skin sang at the idea.
When his gaze reached my sketch pad, he pushed off the threshold and strode forward, which had Bree jumping off the bench to snatch up the book.
“No, sir!” she yelled, bringing it to her chest and then retreating backward to her seat—presumably so he couldn’t see the outline of the tattoo on the back of her thigh—and plopping back down. “No looky-loos. I’ve told you that.”
Cody huffed and ran his hand through his hair. “That’s not fucking fair, Cher.”
She clutched the notebook tighter. “You only have to wait a few more hours.”
They engaged in a soundless standoff for several seconds while Vinh locked eyes with me. I pressed my lips together in silent communication that broadcasted, “ These two ,” while he lifted one shoulder in a way that seemed to say, “ Best not get involved. ”
“Cody and I are going out,” Vinh announced the next moment, walking past Cody and interrupting the stare down he had going with Bree. “Work for you?” Vinh added to Cody belatedly, but Cody agreed with a nod. My brother strode forward and leaned down to place a kiss on Bree’s hair before murmuring, “We’ll bring back treats.”
I got up to wash my hands in preparation and to keep myself from digging them into Cody’s hair and asking him to also give me a treat, so I didn’t hear her reply. After I dried my hands thoroughly, I pulled a disposable glove over my right hand. The elastic band snapped against my wrist just as a wave of cherry-and-coconut-scented air wafted over me.
“Ti Bet,” Cody murmured quietly.
I turned to find his chest mere inches from me.
“What kind of treat do you want?” His hazel eyes searched mine intently, and a slight frown formed on his mouth. “I don’t know what you like.”
Yes, you do.
I slid the second glove onto my other hand and swallowed against the sudden dryness in my mouth. “I have a taste for most things, Dezi.”
His tongue peeked out between his lips, and my fingers twitched, releasing the glove to snap on my hand. Cody’s gaze followed the sound, taking in the black disposable gloves, and then he nodded, almost as if to himself, before he turned without a word and strode out of the kitchen.
It was only instinct that kept my gloved hands away from my body as I watched him go, the possibility that I’d overdone it chilling my blood. I made myself walk back to my chair so I could track his retreat fully and search for clues, and I may have found one when he stopped outside my open bedroom door and stared inside for a long moment. Then he snapped himself out of the reverie I was dying to know the contents of, took the last steps to the front door, slipped on his slides, and walked through it with my brother.
Waiting for Cody Desmond was turning out to be quite the delicious thrill, and my body wholeheartedly agreed even as my heart ached at the knowledge that he felt he needed to be anything other than who he was.
He was perfect.
I whirled to face Bree and beamed. “Ready?”
She was already watching me, and her contemplative look turned to excitement. “Ready,” she agreed as she sprawled onto her stomach across the bench seat and rested her head on her crossed arms.
I breezed through the procedures and double-checked my ink, and within minutes, my mind zeroed in on the task at hand, the stakes feeling just as high as when I’d given Vinh his forearm piece.
Bree remained still as stone, having gotten used to the feel of the needle when I did the outline, and relaxed even more quickly this time. Her badassery shouldn’t have been surprising, and it wasn’t. Not really. This was the same girl who grew up in a casino and as an adult threw roulette balls and spun wheels for huge crowds.
The same girl who cracked the fortress that was Vinh Lott without even realizing she was doing it.
Time ticked on, and according to the clock above the oven, it was almost two hours later that a text notification had Bree’s phone buzzing. I’d just gotten to shading, so it was a good time for her to be distracted.
Her head popped up from the cocoon of her arms, a slight grimace on her face and her red hair askew as she squinted at the screen. “They’re almost back here. I wonder what they’ve been doing.”
Cody and Vinh came through the door a few minutes later, speaking in hushed tones. Vinh had a fogged plastic container under his arm, and Cody was carrying a disposable carrier containing four frozen drinks of varying colors.
Bree and I exchanged excited looks of anticipation before she strained her neck further to try to peek at her thigh. “How’s it coming?” she whispered, as if talking about it too loudly would reveal its secrets.
“Beautifully,” I whispered back as I wiped a paper towel down her leg. “Just finishing up details now, so maybe only thirty more minutes.”
She gasped, eyes wide with surprise. “I am so damn excited.” Then she angled her head toward the doorway and called, “Only thirty more minutes, guys!”
“Thank the fucking stars, Cher,” Cody hollered back.
I threw a clean towel over Bree’s leg, holding back a laugh at the way both Cody and Vinh seemed hesitant to come near us.
Bree didn’t hold back as she yelled through a laugh, “Y’all can come in now!”
They appeared almost immediately, carefully setting down their wares. Then Vinh disappeared down the hall, leaving Cody to disperse them.
“Decaf frap with caramel,” Cody announced, handing Bree her drink with a quick, warm smile.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely, returning his smile.
Cody picked up the green drink next but then hesitated, frowning at my hands. “How inconvenient would it be to do the whole song and dance of washing your hands and putting gloves back on?”
I shrugged. “Not so bad. Especially if that’s matcha.”
His lips twitched upward. “A matcha frap.”
My heart raced faster, remembering his golf cart confession about his frappe order gone wrong. “I don’t think I’ve ever had one in frozen form,” I said, making sure to not leave a pause that could be misinterpreted.
He seemed pleased by that, humming to himself as he slid the paper off the top of the straw and bent it forward with a crinkle. “No one is too old for bendy straws,” he mused and then brought the drink to my lips with a question—or perhaps even a dare—in his gaze.
He would find no opposition here. I parted my lips instantly and let him guide the straw to my mouth. We stared at each other as I closed my lips around it and took a small, experimental sip. I shivered as the freezing drink slid down my throat, and Cody’s eyes flicked briefly to where goose bumps pebbled my arm and shoulder.
“Good?” he asked, his voice low as he held out the drink again, offering me another sip.
“More than good,” I agreed, leaning forward and accepting.
It was either a small mercy or great cruelty that my brother reentered the room then, casting a shadow over us as he picked his way to Bree with a chair from the kitchen in one hand and his laptop in the other. Cody and I looked away from each other, and he turned to put the drink on the table as Vinh situated the chair in front of Bree, then put his laptop on the seat’s cushion.
“What would you like to watch?” he asked her as he sat against the wall by the chair.
Bree’s eyes lit up as she swept her gaze around the room. “Are you saying I get to pick a show to force all my favorite people to watch with me?” She smiled hugely at my brother. “This is a dream come true.”
His smile for her was soft, as it always was, but his chest seemed to expand in a way that broadcasted pride at making her this happy.
“You’re staying, right?” Bree tossed the question over her shoulder at Cody, who had retreated some and was now leaning against the kitchen island.
He took the three of us in, his eyes staying on me a beat longer than the others. Exhaustion was clear in the slight slump of his shoulders, and there was such a weight in his eyes that I was almost tempted to ask him if he wanted to go lie down instead. Or demand he tell me why he wasn’t sleeping well. But then he grabbed another drink from the carrier and walked around the kitchen table to hand it over to Vinh.
“I’m staying, Cher.”
He punctuated his statement by grabbing the other two drinks—mine and his—in one hand, defying physics, and then scooping up the plastic container in his other. Then, laughing in the face of physics again, he—without the use of his hands—went from standing to sitting on the floor.
What a marvelous man.
Bree took a huge sip of her drink. “Let’s watch Sabrina ,” she decided and smiled at the man on the floor in front of me. “Cody has a thing for Harvey.”
They shared one of their pointed looks, the tether between them so layered and substantial that I almost thought I could reach out and touch it. But then Cody put his items on the floor in front of him and gestured to the screen. “Who doesn’t?” he drawled as he scooched backward and leaned his weight against my leg. “He’s hot.”
It wasn’t butterflies in my stomach, exactly, but more like a flock of birds taking sudden, desperate flight from my belly button to my chest, and I had to remind myself to breathe so that I didn’t miss a second or feeling of this moment.
I focused on the backs of Cody’s small black stud earrings until Vinh started an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and I dragged my gaze to the laptop.
Bree looked over her shoulder at us with a huge smile, and I smiled back, soaking in the feel of Cody’s reassuring warmth against my leg.
“Best day ever,” Bree sighed as she set down her frappe and rested her chin on top of her crossed arms, immediately getting lost in the show.
Cody leaned his head back on my thigh and looked at me upside down, somehow impossibly beautiful even from such an angle. “Let me know when you want some of your drink.”
“I will,” I replied, just as softly.
We stayed like that for several moments, and I reached out to touch him but then remembered my gloves and retreated, smiling at him sadly. “It would’ve been worth it, Dezi.”
His expression heated and then softened as his gaze moved from my eyes to my hand and finally to my mouth. “Here,” he said as he opened the container beside him without looking and produced a cookie from within it. “A treat.” He twisted toward me and lifted it to my mouth in offering.
The scent of brown sugar, vanilla, and a bit of coconut—not from the cookie—hit me as I bit into it without hesitation, my eyes fluttering shut at the familiar flavor. It was one of Vinh’s recipes and my favorite. They must have gone to the houseboat to make them, which was just… sublime. For so many reasons.
Cody watched me unabashedly as I finished the bite and took another he offered, his throat moving in a thick swallow as I licked some crumbs from my lips. He ate the rest of the cookie then, his gaze flicking to my mouth once more before he turned back around and took a shuddering breath as he focused on the show.
To my relief, he leaned back against me a moment later, and as my gaze catalogued every inch of the room, of this space and time, I couldn’t help but agree with Bree.
This was one of the best days, even after having spent most of it keeping myself busy with commissions and Ari’s, wondering what would happen next with the man beside me.
I couldn’t help my smile as I removed the towel covering Bree’s thigh and readjusted my light over her leg. Then I picked up my tattoo gun, but before I went back to work, there was the faintest touch at my ankle, and I glanced down to see Cody run his thumb over the side of my foot before encircling my ankle completely with his hand. I stared at it for a long moment before glancing curiously at his back, but he kept his focus on the laptop.
But then, as if he felt my gaze, he squeezed, and the absolute contentment of the moment settled inside me, and I found myself hoping that this night could last forever.
And if finishing the details of Bree’s tattoo took more than my estimated thirty minutes, and one TV episode became two and then five, with Cody dozing against my leg halfway through the third, then that was just my good fortune.
And if his hand never left my ankle, anchoring me to him in such a way that I internally begged for him to never let go….
Well.
There were no good words to describe that, but hope was close.
Ecstasy was closer.