Chapter 7 The Plank #2
I get a puff of smoke and a shoulder bump as he walks past me into the house, not quite stable on his injured leg.
When I go back inside, he and Tristan are headed out the front door. Connor doesn’t look back at me, but Tristan does. He gives me a thumbs up and a bright smile like this all went great. He mouths the words “Thank you.”
I don’t know what there is to smile about, but he looks so beautiful when he does it. He’s utterly magnetic. Even after all that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours, I can’t look away.
That guy…
I’ve never wanted to know anyone as much as I want to know him, but I also know I’m walking a plank. And each step I dare to take toward him, the closer I’ll come to falling. What I need to do is get off the plank and back onto the boat.
But I’m beginning to realize something.
The problem with staying on the boat.
All I can think about is the plank.
I’m painting my bedroom walls light gray.
I’ve always been a messy painter—with oils, with acrylic, with flat wall paint, so I wear the same clothes every time.
An old white t-shirt and a pair of baggy jeans I’ve had since high school.
Every color is represented somewhere on my body and my jeans, but mostly my hands.
I would use turpentine to clean them, but I learned a long time ago that being an artist with paint-smeared hands gets me a decent amount of attention when I’m looking for it.
Carrie liked it, and Jayne was intrigued as well.
And then there was Tristan who touched my hand that time in Connor’s hospital room and made my heart nearly stop. So, I stick with soap and water.
While I wait for the first coat to dry, old Pearl Jam blaring from my bluetooth speaker, I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling.
It’s past midnight. I slept all afternoon to give the guys space while Tristan helped Connor settle in, so now I’m wide-awake, asking myself if I should paint the ceiling, too.
Noises come from the kitchen, loud enough that I hear them over the music.
Drawers open, items shuffle, cabinets close. I shut my eyes and wonder what he’s looking for. A minute later, he’s still banging around. I get up, positive I can locate whatever it is sooner than he can.
I brace myself for whatever mood my brother’s in.
Except it isn’t my brother in the kitchen.
Of course it isn’t.
If it were my brother, that would be simple.
But it’s Tristan, and that is the most complicated thing in the history of complicated things.
Tristan is in my kitchen. In the middle of the night.
I am a paint-smeared mess, and he’s in a white tank and white boxer briefs. In my kitchen. In the middle of the night.
Choose your adventure.
In my own defense, ninety percent of my brain is rooting for returning to my room until the dangerous conditions in the kitchen clear up.
As a matter of fact, I’m about to head back down the hall, but the timing doesn’t quite pan out the way I plan.
Tristan finds whatever he’s looking for and turns around as I take a step backward from the doorway.
He gasps when he sees me. My heart pounds in my chest—so hard it hurts.
“Fuck, you scared me,” he says, his hand on his own heart—the hand that isn’t holding the shiniest, sharpest pair of scissors I’ve ever seen. Are those mine?
His hair is everywhere. It’s a floating mass of gold so wild it looks like it could consume his face.
He is stunningly beautiful.
Stunning.
And beautiful.
I can’t move. I no longer want to.
Shit.
This is a test. Some kind of test of my internal fortitude—the strength of my will. A moral dilemma. Am I still able to determine right from wrong? My first instinct is to shut the whole thing down.
But Calvins and a tank? Come on. Overkill.
“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realize anyone was awake. Or that you were here—”
“I’m spending the night.” He pulls at the hem of his shorts like they have any chance of covering more of him.
“I see that.”
“I told Connor he should ask you first to see if it was all right, but…” The sentence goes unfinished because he’s biting his lip, glancing around the kitchen to avoid looking at me. He’s smart that way.
I, however…
Shit.
“It’s fine.” It isn’t. Nothing about this is at all fine. “What are the scissors for?”
He looks at me now, eyes rolling as he tilts his head to the side, picking up a lock of hair to show me. “Your brother chews gum before bed. He falls asleep with it in his mouth, and it winds up in my hair. Not the first time.”
I can see it from where I stand—the clump of gum trapped in the ends of Tristan’s golden hair. I laugh. “Do you need any help?” I swear I don’t mean anything by it.
“Are you a hairdresser?”
“I’m a painter.”
“Obviously.”
I follow his gaze down to my paint-covered pants which is the last place I want his eyes to go.
He looks way too much like a sex fantasy for my body to behave reliably.
“Here.” I reach for the scissors. This involves taking a step toward him, into the kitchen—onto the plank.
But it does avert his eyes from the growing problem, so in that respect—worth it.
He stretches across the diminishing distance between us to hand me the scissors. “Have you done this before?”
“Sure. Yeah. All the time.”
He grins at me, and I’m wrecked by it. If he were anyone else, I would be thinking about how to get him onto the counter.
If I were lucky enough to be invited between his legs, it would take only a moment and a murmured consent from him to start kissing him so hard and for so long that he wouldn’t be able to breathe without me.
Physically, I want him that much. So much.
But if it were just a physical attraction, I really think I could walk away.
What’s keeping me in the kitchen isn’t physical, though.
What was missing when I saw Jayne—it’s right here in front of me.
His energy—his light—there’s nothing in the world like it.
“Just cut the gum out, you don’t need to do anything fancy. I can get a haircut tomorrow from a professional.” He turns around so his back is facing me. “Do you see it?”
The gum… He’s talking about the gum.
I lift my gaze from his perfectly round ass. “Yeah.” The gum is clumped into a tangle requiring about two inches of his hair to be cut off.
This a defining moment, really. Another one.
This is where I decide to be who he needs me to be and not the guy who takes advantage of a situation like this.
Focused now, I take the part of his hair with the gum in it and sweep the rest away.
My fingers graze his skin. I watch as little bumps appear on his arm, blooming like morning glories at the sun’s first light.
I take a deep breath, but that’s a mistake. The scent of his hair invades me. Spring. Rain. A sea I’d be happy to drown in. I rub my nose, hoping the lingering paint on my hands will overpower the smell of his hair. It doesn’t.
“Is it bad?” he asks.
I mean—the question is interesting, but I think we’re still talking about the gum.
“I can fix it. We’re well within my capabilities.”
He sighs. “All right, Archer. I’m trusting you.”
I smile. I start by cutting the gum out. I pass the severed clump over his shoulder. “Jesus,” he says when he sees it.
I take the next lock of his hair into my hand, which is surprisingly steady.
“Not to make this any more awkward, but I don’t think I’ve ever been this embarrassed,” he says.
“Awkward I can give you, but I don’t see why it’s embarrassing.”
“No? So, if our situations were reversed, you wouldn’t be embarrassed? Not even a little?”
“None of the people I sleep with chew gum in bed.”
He turns and glares over his shoulder at me. “Maybe that was a bad analogy.”
I smile to let him know I’m joking. “Quit moving. Your hair’s going everywhere.”
“If you can’t handle my hair, I’ll pull it back until I find someone who can.”
“I can handle it,” I say, but I’m no longer sure that’s true.
“No more excuses then,” he says, and then he shivers.
“Are you cold?” I ask.
“A little.”
“Maybe you should wear pants the next time you start going through a man’s kitchen drawers.”
“I imagine you can control yourself,” he says, and for the first time, it sounds like he’s deliberately flirting. I like it too much.
I’m fully hard, and he’s half naked. I can no longer pretend this is innocent. I take a step back and put the scissors on the counter. They land with a loud clatter. Metal on tile.
He turns to face me with confused eyes. “What? I swear I meant nothing by that.” But the blush splotching his cheeks says he might have meant something more like what I was thinking.
There’s not really any denying the fact that there’s some tension between us.
Even if his isn’t equal to mine—he has to feel it, too.
I look down the hall at the open door of my room where The Cure is playing, and the light is on. That’s where I need to be. “Maybe a professional is a better—"
“Okay, wait. Wait here, okay?” His hand presses into my forearm for the shortest second.
I look at him, and with as much meaning as I can infuse into two words, I say, “I shouldn’t.”
“I’ll be right back. Just—wait for me. Please?”
“Tristan—”
“It’s just for a second,” he says, exasperated.
He hurries down the hall before I can protest again.
He disappears into Connor’s room, and I cover my face with both hands.
I breathe into them. A few times. I rub at my eyes and run my fingers through my hair, pulling it too hard.
Still not hard enough. I try to reconcile the part of me that wants him to come back with the part of me that knows better.
He returns in less than a minute wearing jeans and a regular t-shirt.
He still looks sexy in about a hundred different ways, but it’s an improvement. I give him a watered down version of a smile as he approaches at a measured pace.
I breathe. “Thank you.”