Chapter 9
Jace
“Favorite color?”
“Black,” I responded between bites.
“Nuh-uh, no one’s favorite color is black.”
“Not how this works,” I reminded Caleb. “Favorite movie?”
He sent me a dirty look, then said, “ Lord of the Rings . Favorite celebrity?”
“Martha Stewart.”
“No way!” Caleb practically yelled.
“Favorite holiday?” I asked.
“Nope, we’re going back to the Martha Stewart thing.” I nearly chuckled at his look of outrage. “Martha Stewart is not your favorite celebrity.”
“She is,” I said. “Scout’s honor.”
“Were you even a scout?”
“You answer my question first.”
“Halloween,” Caleb said. “Were you really a scout?”
“I was… most of my merit badges were the pity ones, but—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Caleb said as he put his hands up in the universal time-out sign. “Time out. Martha Stewart? Martha Stewart ? What… how… what ?”
I felt my insides warm as I watched Caleb. He was so animated and… free. It was the first time in the six days since we’d been on the boat that he’d finally let his guard completely down and was just himself.
“Why Halloween?” I asked. Predictably, Caleb sent me an annoyed look.
“Because…”
When I arched my eyebrows at him, he sighed and said, “Because I got to go as my favorite character from Harry Potter .”
I nodded. “Harry,” I said knowingly.
Caleb dropped his eyes and picked at his food.
“Ron?” I queried.
Color stained Caleb’s cheeks and I chuckled. “You did not go as Hermione Granger,” I said.
“Shut up, Martha-Stewart-lover.”
“Hermione?” I asked. “Really?”
“What? She was the smartest of the three of them!” Caleb declared. I smiled as he began spouting off all of Hermione’s many attributes.
I waited until he was finished to say, “Not buying it.”
Caleb frowned, then deflated. “Fine,” he bit out. “My brother used to go as Ron Weasley and his friend, Pete, went as Harry.”
I smiled and said, “Someone was crushing hard on Pete, huh?” I sent Caleb a wink and he immediately threw one of the leftover dinner rolls at me.
“Shut up. I was eight!” He paused and then smiled.
“Fine. Pete was the one who suggested it because he thought Hermione was awesome and we’d look cool as the trio.
But I do think Hermione was the smartest,” he added with a waggle of his finger.
“My mother loved Martha Stewart. We used to watch her show all the time and we constantly tried out her recipes and crafty shit. My sister wasn’t into that stuff.
But even though I sucked at most of it, I really liked spending time with my mom.
She idolized Martha and modeled the lodge after Martha’s designs.
After my parents died, I still found myself watching the show and reading the magazine. I have a subscription. ”
Caleb stared at me for the longest time. “You couldn’t have just said you have a freakishly weird obsession with her?” he groused. “You had to go and say something sweet like that while I’m admitting to dressing up as a girl for five years straight because I was perving on my brother’s friend.”
I smiled and grabbed the roll he’d tossed at me. I started picking at it, but stopped when I replayed his words. “Wait, five years straight? Weren’t your brother and his friend older than you? Wouldn’t they have stopped trick-or-treating a couple of years before you?”
“Shut up,” was all Caleb said.
I laughed, but refrained from poking the bear by pointing out that Caleb had been free to dress as something besides Hermione Granger for a couple of years.
“Favorite hobby?” I said as I searched out the butter.
Caleb was silent for a long time. His gaze drifted to the small window on the opposite side of the small kitchen. “That’s a hard one,” he murmured.
“Why?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Because I’m not sure if you want the before answer or the after one.”
“I know it’s hard to see it right now, Caleb. But you’re still one person. What happened to you is only a piece of you, but there are so many other pieces. I think you just need time to put some of those pieces together.”
“Can I get back to you on the hobby thing?” he asked.
I didn’t like how quiet he’d gone. Something had changed between us after that first day on the boat.
We’d found this comfortable rhythm with one another and had started engaging in conversations much like the one we’d just had.
It’d been Caleb who’d decided to keep our mutual question thing going.
I knew it was his way of sharing things about himself that were easy.
As badly as I’d wanted to push him to talk to me about the Jennings encounter, I’d made too much progress with him to blow it by pressuring him.
I still had two weeks before I had to get him back to Seattle for the pre-trial hearing.
I needed to make use of every minute I had with him.
I wanted him to tell me the truth about Jennings, but I wanted him to start to feel like himself even more.
I’d somehow managed to limit how much physical contact I was having with him, despite my growing attraction to him.
It wasn’t easy, though, because my mind was no longer seeing him as that scared, vulnerable teenager and that seemed to have given my body permission to react accordingly.
I was almost always half-hard around him and it didn’t take much to have my dick standing at full attention.
What was worse, though, was there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
With the close quarters we were sharing, I couldn’t even jack off in the small bathroom.
Add in the fact that we were sleeping in the same bed each night and Caleb usually ended up sprawled half on top of me come morning time, and I was barely keeping it together.
He was still very much off-limits, since nothing had changed.
Even if I could get past his age, I couldn’t overlook the fact that what he needed in a lover was something I couldn’t offer him.
“Sure,” I said.
“What about you?” Caleb asked. “What’s your favorite hobby?”
“You mean besides reading Martha Stewart’s Living cover to cover the moment it arrives in my mailbox?”
Caleb chuckled. “Yeah.”
“The basics, I guess. Watching TV, reading. But if I had to pick just one thing, it’d be woodworking.”
That got Caleb’s attention. He had his mouth full, so he covered it with his hand as he said, “Really?”
I nodded. “I’m not great at it or anything, but I’ve managed to not lose a limb yet, so I think in my case that makes me a semi-professional.”
“Wow. So what do you build?”
“Furniture, mostly.” I nodded at the kitchen. “I did those cabinets. And that shelf in the bedroom. The headboard too.”
Caleb’s eyes shifted to the cabinets. “You made those?”
I nodded. “I learned from my grandfather when I was a kid. I inherited all his tools and equipment when he died. Martha Stewart is how I stayed connected with my mom, and woodworking kept me close to my grandfather.”
“What about your father and grandmother?” Caleb asked.
“My father always wanted me to join the military, since he, his father, and his grandfather had all been enlisted. As for my grandmother, I have this habit of collecting take-out menus. Doesn’t matter if I’m just in the area for a job or something, I’ll keep any take-out menus I order from. I have drawers full of them at home.”
Caleb smiled. “And your sister?” He blanched almost instantly and dropped his fork. “Oh God, Jace, I’m so sorry… that was… that was…”
He made a move to get up, so I quickly grabbed his hand. “It’s all right, Caleb. I do have something of hers that I keep with me.”
He settled, though he still looked flustered and embarrassed.
“Maggie has always been an amazing artist. She never wanted to actually sell her art, which is why she’s planning to go to Georgetown for their art and museum studies program.
She’s hoping to get a job working at the National Gallery of Art in D.C.
when she graduates. When she was about seventeen or so, instead of buying me a birthday present that year, she drew this butterfly for me – butterflies were kind of her thing.
I kept that drawing with me no matter where I was.
But after she disappeared, it wasn’t enough…
I felt like to get her back, I had to keep her even closer to my heart. ”
I let Caleb’s hand go and then stood up. I peeled my T-shirt off and watched as Caleb’s eyes went wide.
“Oh my God,” he whispered, then he was climbing to his feet.
I wasn’t surprised when he reached for the tattoo on my chest. “It looks alive,” he murmured as he drew his finger along the edge of one of the wings of the butterfly that was tattooed to the left of my heart.
The design spread out across most of my pectoral muscle.
“It’s a 3-D tattoo,” I explained. I smiled as he shook his head in disbelief.
I’d had the same reaction the first time I’d seen the completed tattoo in the mirror.
It was made to look like the delicate creature had merely landed on my chest and could fly off at any moment.
The tattoo artist had done an amazing job of capturing Maggie’s design .
“It’s beautiful. Your sister is so talented.”
I tried to focus on Caleb’s words, but admittedly, it got more difficult as he continued to trail his fingers all over the butterfly.
He clearly had no clue what he was doing to me, because he stepped even closer to me and dropped his face so close to my skin that I could feel his warm breath.
“So beautiful,” he repeated. He was so lost in studying the tattoo, that his fingers slid unnoticed to my nipple.
I wasn’t able to successfully hold back a rush of air when the pad of his finger slid over my sensitive flesh.
The sound caught Caleb’s attention, but instead of jerking back, he held there for a moment, then slowly looked at his own fingers.
And then, God, he started playing with me.