Chapter 25
. . .
“There you are!”
Isabella beamed at them from the table she was sharing with Olivia and Nate, who toasted their arrival with a raising of their wineglasses.
“The hero of the day!” Nate announced, rising and shaking Evan’s hand.
“Everything okay? We were worried when you disappeared.” Olivia asked, her eyes pinning Heath to the cobblestones. A prickle of heat crawled across the back of his neck.
“Was a pretty intense afternoon. Took all day to work it out,” Evan answered, and Heath choked on his own spit.
“We’re doing more intimate tables tonight. I hope you two don’t mind.”
A look passed between Olivia and Isabella that made Heath’s eyes roll.
Every other meal had been family style, but tonight of all nights they’d broken the clifftop patio overlooking the sea into small groups of two to four, and there was only one table left.
A table for two, set back away from the bulk of the diners.
“All the way over there?” Evan got a gleam in his eye that made Heath’s knees weak. “We’ll try to behave ourselves.”
Isabella looked him right in the eye. “Don’t let us spoil your evening, but please eat something to regain your strength, hmm?”
What in heaven’s name could she mean by…? Oh hell, he’d thought he’d heard the door.
“Cozy,” Evan said as they approached the candlelit table.
“Very.” Heath glanced behind him, catching the conspirators watching them. Both ladies’ heads snapped back around, and they made exaggerated hand motions as though they’d been deep in conversation the entire time.
Sneaky bitches. What were they up to?
The server brought an appetizer of fresh scallops in a sinful wine reduction, and Evan ordered a Manhattan, which looked appropriately debonair in his hand as he leaned back in his chair, the collar of his shirt unbuttoned to reveal a peek of skin and fuzz.
Heath focused on his plate, but his mouth wasn’t watering for the food. Not when he’d rather lick the butter from Evan’s fingers every time he popped a piece of bread into his mouth.
Evan’s focus was on the view. The reflection of the candle flame flickered in his eyes, sparkles of jade amidst the golden brown. Heath let himself stare, even when Evan caught him doing it. Benefits of marriage, after all.
Evan’s mouth softened into a small smile, and he gestured between them. “I don’t know how to do this, either.”
“Do what?”
“Be normal.”
Heath put down his fork and laced his fingers together on the tabletop. When he’d hoped they’d touch upon his feelings, he hadn’t expected to start at the marrow. “I’m not following.”
Evan sighed and swirled the liquid in his glass. “I had a… we’ll call it an unusual upbringing. My life is anything but normal, and it fucks with my perception of the world.”
“Whomst among us?”
Tension ticked in the line of Evan’s jaw, but his eyes were somber. Tired.
“You seem pretty well-adjusted.”
Heath laughed. “Oh God. I forget how little we really know each other.”
“There’s been a lot of speculation on both sides, I guess.”
The embarrassment of how quickly he’d judged Evan lingered. He’d thought himself above such hair-trigger assessments. Sure, he indulged in moments of catty gossip with friends, but that was about surface things, unfortunate haircuts or terrible sweaters. Not the fabric of a person’s soul.
How many times had he told his students not to judge a book by its cover? Not to assume what someone else’s life was like, because you couldn’t know what a person was going through. He owed them an apology for failing to heed his own advice.
“I guess you might say my life has been pretty average,” he admitted with a shrug.
“Grew up west of Boston. Mother was a librarian. Dad taught history. I was singing show tunes directly from the womb. There were growing pains, of course. Coming out officially as a teenager wasn’t something many people did back then, but I’m a godawful liar, so there was no getting around it.
Otherwise, it was your standard life in the suburbs. ”
“Sticking with my previous assessment. Well-adjusted.”
Evan’s smile needed to be tagged with a warning label: Direct exposure may liquefy innards.
The server interrupted, clearing the small plates and taking Evan’s empty glass. He ordered another, his eyebrows rising at the small noise Heath failed to contain.
“Last one. I swear.”
Heath glanced about the patio, avoiding that tempting lopsided smile. “I said nothing.”
“You don’t need to. Your face is very loud.”
“As I said, a terrible liar.”
The half-smile went full, and Heath quietly swooned.
“You’d make a terrible witness.”
“I live my life in a manner that ensures I won’t need to be one.”
Evan held his gaze, lips curling into the sort of smile that made Heath wonder if he had something on his face. Contemplative, but gentle and warm. Almost unsettling in its softness. What was he thinking about? He didn’t dare ask because, good or bad, his foolish heart couldn’t take it.
Dinner was a gorgeous selection of sushi on a bed of fresh greens. They placed it on the table, and the sound Evan made brought Heath back to earlier in the day, which was a dangerous place to be when they’d promised to behave.
“Fuck, this is gorgeous.”
So are you, he started to say, but swallowed it back.
There was no sense in getting mushy romantic over a situation that had no clarity.
He’d promised to live in the moment, and that meant watching Evan wrap his lips around a roll and swallow it down with a moan of unbridled ecstasy.
He would now add sushi to the list of things he never expected to be jealous of.
“So, what made your upbringing unusual? Was it the caviar baby food or tea with the queen at polo matches?” Joking about Evan’s obvious financial stability had become a comfortable pastime, but this time it landed on the table like a bag of rocks.
Evan sighed, his gaze panning out over the railing to the horizon slowly igniting into brilliant gold and magenta. “I know you think my life’s been this joyride. It’s okay. I let everyone think that. There’s no one in my life now who knew me in the years before, so I let the assumption carry.”
“But it isn’t correct?”
He shook his head, eyes returning to capture Heath in their glimmering snare. “The actual story is both mundane and hard to swallow.”
“I think we’ve established that I’m capable of swallowing quite a bit.”
Evan choked on his drink, and Heath again found himself without a way to capture the glowing flush across his cheeks. Such a travesty.
His elegant fingers brushed the back of Heath’s hand, thumb curling around his wrist to trace light circles against the thrumming pulse. “Is that a challenge?”
Lord, yes. “If you want to share your story, I’d like to hear it.”
An understatement. He wanted to devour every aspect of Evan, absorb his fine details and carefully catalogue them in his database of fascinating things. He wanted the cover-to-cover experience.
“I don’t. No, I do, it’s just…” He rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. “Y’know, it’s weird. I haven’t given a shit about anyone’s opinion of me in years, but from the moment we met, yours has mattered. I don’t know why.”
Heath shifted in his seat. “I do that to people. It’s a teacher thing.”
It was no such thing. Even his students tempered their respect for him with teasing. Whatever compelled Evan to open up was alien, and further proof he was up to his eyebrows in trouble.
Another contemplative stare filled him with the antsy sensation of being scrutinized. It made his leg bounce beneath the table. Was Evan on the run? In witness protection? Oh God, was he in trouble with the mob? Was he in the mob?
“What would you say if I told you I was born poor as shit in Southie and lived there until my mom died? And not today’s Southie, with the stupidly expensive gentrification, but Southie Southie. Irish pubs and Whitey Bulger.”
While that hadn’t ruled out the mob portion of his hysteria, Heath overlooked it in favor of embracing his giddiness that the man across from him in head-to-toe Tom Ford casual wear had just dropped his Rs like they were ticking and on fire.
“Are you aware of how Boston you just got when you said that?”
Evan grinned, and Heath could see it. A little ginger boy with cheeks covered in freckles running through the streets in dirty ripped jeans and a superhero t-shirt.
“It feels like stolen valor, because I didn’t live there long enough, but I can hear my mom and grandparents in my head. It’s second nature to mimic them.”
“Tell me more.”
“So you believe me?”
“Of course I do. I have zero desire to walk back to the villa in the dark.”
Evan’s laugh boomed across the patio, and all heads turned in their direction.
Heath worried his face might crack from the size of his smile, and he hoped everyone was still watching when Evan lifted his fingers to his lips and kissed them softly. Romantic and suggestive, as newlyweds were.
Eat it, Lucy.
“Most of my memories are fuzzy, flashes of scenes here and there. Sounds and smells. Most of what I know is from other people’s stories.”
“Well, start with the basics. Where did you live?”
“Apartment not too far from M Street Beach.”
Heath leaned closer. “An apartment building or…?”
Evan bit his lip, fighting a smile. “I know what you’re doing.”
“Just say it.”
He sighed and laughed, and Heath knew without looking that Olivia and Isabella were watching the show, because all he’d heard from their table in the last ten minutes were sighs and a fond awww.
“It was a triple deckah. Happy?”
Dangerously so. Thanks for asking. “I’m not sorry. It’s too good.”
It was all too good. It felt entirely too correct and comfortable to be holding hands at dinner with this man.
“I have this photo album. It’s a little worse for wear, faded and torn up and all that. Years ago, I tracked down a few old neighbors who had home movies from the yard parties we all went to in the summer, and they let me make copies.”