Chapter Nineteen
Xavi
Xavi had no clue where the spanking had come from. It had just slipped out, as the anger of Lulu referring to himself as a hookup tore through him. Shit, how fucking inappropriate was that? Threatening a victim of domestic abuse with a spanking. That was just wrong on so many levels.
“What am I thinking?” he finally asked when Lulu made no move to continue.
“You’re cursing yourself for threatening me with a spanking when, from a societal and structural point-of-view, it’s wrong because I’m an abused kid.”
Huh. What the hell?
“But it’s not. It’s not wrong if it’s consensual. And I’m not a kid.” Lulu paused, then sighed. “I’m not a victim, Xavi.” The last part came out with an edge of defiance as Lulu tipped his chin at the road ahead.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a victim.”
“I know. But I’m not. I don’t want your fucking pity, mano.”
Pity. The last thing Xavi felt for Lulu was pity. Compassion, yes. Admiration for how he’d made it through a childhood that would’ve broken most. Anger. All-consuming anger at a person who was no longer alive. But never pity.
“My pity? Fuck pity. You’re one of the strongest people I know.
Being a victim doesn’t mean that you’re weak, that you’re not strong.
It just means things happened to you that no kid should ever experience.
” Shit, Xavi got angry just talking about it because that automatically led to thinking about all the times Lulu had stood before him in the past with another bruise or cut on his beautiful face.
“Yeah, well, done is done. I ain’t no victim, Xavi.”
“Okay.” He wasn’t sure if he did understand, because in his eyes, Lulu was a victim.
Or at least he had been, suffering abuse for years and years at the hands of his junkie father.
If that wasn’t a victim, Xavi didn’t know what was.
Then again, Xavi didn’t like it when people called him a victim either.
A victim of circumstance, but a victim nonetheless.
“Then don’t treat me like one. Treat me like you treat other lovers.”
Before he could stop it, a snort slipped from Xavi’s lips.
“What?” Lulu frowned at him, his bottom lip pushed out into a cute pout.
“Other lovers,” Xavi repeated. “There are no other lovers.”
“Well, maybe not now, but in the past.”
Xavi shrugged. They didn’t matter. None of them had ever mattered.
The truth was that rubbing up against Lulu on that bridge under the stars, making him come as he clung to Xavi, then blowing Lulu in the bathroom of a bed-and-breakfast in Orange County were the two most erotic experiences of Xavi’s life.
All within twenty-four hours, where everything he’d always known to be true had been flipped upside down.
“If this is gonna work, which I really fucking want it to, you can’t treat me like this anymore.” There was no accusation in Lulu’s voice, just plain earnestness.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m frail or… or that you need to be careful with me.
” Lulu squeezed his fingers around the steering wheel like he wanted to strangle it to death, his knuckles white against his olive skin.
“I can take anything you’re willing to give me, mano, and if there’s something I don’t like or want, I’ll fucking tell you, okay? ”
“Okay.” The tension between them was palpable in the small, confined space in the car, and Xavi wished they were outside and that he could hold Lulu through the next part. “I’m sorry, okay? This is… this is all new to me. I’ll try, okay?”
“It’s okay. This is all fucking new to me, too, you know? I’ve never had sex with anyone I’ve loved before. It’s fucking… It’s unreal, okay?”
Loved. Lulu loved him. Images of Lulu on his stomach, spread across his lap, moved through Xavi.
Lulu’s jeans pulled down his thighs, the outline of his hardness digging into Xavi’s thighs.
His rough, marred hand brushing along Lulu’s soft, perfect skin, unblemished aside from the scarlet imprint of Xavi’s hand spreading across his ass cheeks like wildflowers in full bloom.
Xavi’s cock thickened in his jeans, the image so heady, so vivid.
“So… you’d be into something like that?” Xavi finally managed to ask.
“If it’s with you, yes.” Lulu smiled wistfully. “I trust you, Xavi. I know you’d never hurt me.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“I know you wouldn’t.” Lulu released his one hand from the steering wheel and slid it across the console, reaching for Xavi’s hand while still focusing on the road.
Xavi clasped it in his, then tangled their fingers together.
Xavi held his breath. He usually didn’t like it when people touched his hand.
It was so ugly, the skin where his ring and little finger used to be, so marred and uneven.
They still hurt sometimes, although his fingers were long gone, thrown into some container with other hospital waste.
Phantom pain, the doctors called it. Sometimes it went away, but sometimes it was permanent, the human body so inclined to mourn something it had lost years ago.
Xavi didn’t blame his body. He, too, still mourned something—someone—he’d lost two decades earlier.
Perhaps it was his body’s way of showing solidarity.
“I want this,” Lulu whispered as his thumb continued to sweep gently along Xavi’s knuckles, back and forth in soothing movements, his eyes locked onto the road ahead.
“I want this, this feeling right now, the way you make me feel, for the rest of my life. That’s all I want.
” Xavi nodded as he swallowed around the large ball of emotion stuck in his throat.
“I don’t care about the why or the how. I just know that the way you make me feel, the way I see myself and think of myself when I’m with you, oso, is the only thing that makes sense in my life. That has always made sense.”
“Cisne,” Xavi whispered as tears pressed behind his eyes. He didn’t know what to say. He felt it too, of course he did. He always had. He just hoped Lulu knew that.
“I love when you call me that.” Lulu’s gaze briefly flickered to his, a tender smile playing along his lips. “It makes me feel beautiful.”
“You are beautiful, cisne. The most beautiful boy—man I ever saw.”
“More beautiful than Federico?”
“Sí, claro que sí,” Xavi hummed, and Lulu’s smile grew impossibly wide as it exploded across his face.
Xavi leaned his head back against the headrest as his eyes drifted shut.
He hadn’t slept much last night, his brain working overtime, with what had passed on the bridge replaying in his mind.
A yawn moved through him, and he relaxed against the seat, the monotone sweeping sound of the window wipers blending with the soothing movement of Lulu’s thumb against his skin.
He woke with a start, and it took his brain a few seconds to notice that they’d stopped driving.
Blinking his eyes open, he saw the world had changed around him, everything covered in thick pillows of white.
He had no idea how long he’d been out, but it was still light outside, although heavy, ominous-looking clouds occupied the sky.
Groaning, he stretched in his seat, only just now noticing that the seat next to him was empty.
They were parked in front of a gas station, so Lulu was probably inside.
A snowplow blasted by on the road, snow whirling everywhere, more white blending with white.
Fuck, the weather had turned into a regular blizzard by now.
Nebraska was known for its brutal winters, but Xavi had assumed that as long as they stayed on the I-80, they’d be okay. And where the hell were they anyway?
Freezing cold air hit him when Lulu opened the car door and got in; a shivering mess of snow, flaming red cheeks, and bright eyes.
“Fuck, mano, it’s freezing!” Lulu’s voice came out clipped, his teeth rattling, as he placed two cups of steaming hot coffee in the cup holders between them, then rubbed his hands together. “Dude, you were out like a light,” he chuckled, blowing at his fingers.
Xavi nodded, looking at the white chaos unfolding outside, then back at Lulu.
“Where the hell are we, mano? That’s not the I-80.” He nodded at the road where cars were trailing by at a snail’s pace, their roofs and fronts covered in snow.
Lulu shifted in his seat, then reached for the coffee and held it to his lips, blowing at it carefully.
“You’re stalling.”
“I’m cold,” Lulu protested, taking a careful sip of the coffee, sighing audibly, the sound going straight to Xavi’s cock.
“Where are we?”
“Okay, you want the good news or the not-so-good news first?” Lulu blinked at him, the tip of his nose pink from the cold.
Fuck, he was so gorgeous that Xavi almost forgot himself, his fingers itching to just pull Lulu against him and kiss him senseless, then bury his face against Lulu’s soft-smelling neck. Okay, he needed to get a grip.
“Lulu…” He raised a brow in warning.
“Okay, okay, calm your tamales, osito. So that,”—Lulu pointed out toward the road—“is not the I-80.” Lulu dug his front teeth into his bottom lip as he seemed to wait for Xavi’s reaction.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Xavi sighed, rubbing at his forehead. “What is it then?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. With the way the weather was acting and the way his head was still heavy from sleep, Lulu could’ve driven them to fucking Alaska for all he knew.
“It’s.the.385,” Lulu rushed out, holding the coffee to his lips.
“Mano, I don’t even know what that is.”
“It’s a highway. We’re halfway between Whitney and nowhere, it seems.”
“Whitney? What the hell is Whitney?” Xavi knew of the band Whitney because Noah loved them and had dragged them to a concert once.
It wasn’t Xavi’s kind of music, but he could kind of see the appeal.
The lead singer had a nice voice, and they were decent musicians, and why the hell was he thinking about this now?
“It’s a small town in rural Nebraska, and if I’d known the next stop was the end of the fucking world, I’d have stopped in Whitney, that’s for sure.” Lulu looked at him regretfully, and Xavi had to give him that. “But I was trying to get back on the I-80 before you woke up.”
“How the fuck did we end up on a highway instead of the I-80 in the first place?”
“I had to pee,” Lulu whispered, his eyelashes fluttering, and again, Xavi’s cock fattened in his jeans.
Shit, was this how it was going to be from now on, this constant latent need buzzing underneath his skin, this ever-present arousal coursing through him just by being near Lulu? Somehow, he had a feeling it was.
“You had to pee?” Xavi groaned, rubbing at the line forming between his eyebrows, and Lulu sucked in a breath, his eyes turning dark, too dark. “What?”
“Nothing. It’s just… when you gotta go, you gotta go. And I think I got to the wrong intersection somehow… I don’t know. It was really snowing a lot, and it was hard to read the signs, and a road is a road, you know?” Lulu had gone into full-on blabbering mode now.
Xavi couldn’t stop the small laugh from leaving his lips.
A road is a road. Only, it wasn’t, was it?
This was so typically Lulu, and it made zero sense to resort to anger or accusations.
That would get them nowhere fast, and it would just cause a rift between them now after they’d finally found each other.
“Okay, so let’s backtrack to Whitney and find a room for the night.”
“Yeah, that’s a really great idea, but we can’t.” Lulu sighed as he took another sip from the Styrofoam cup.
“Why the hell not?”
“The road’s blocked now. Glenn just told me.”
“Who the hell is Glenn?”
“The gas station owner.” Lulu shrugged, and it was just so fucking Lulu to already be on a first-name basis with some random gas station owner.
“Apparently, there was some major accident, and they’re waiting for assistance from some place called Chadron.
Probably won’t get it cleared until tomorrow.
Several collisions all over these parts of Nebraska, according to Glenn. ”
“Well, that’s just fucking great!” Xavi groaned, wiping his hands along his face. “Fucking great. But I’m thrilled you made a new friend. Truly.”
“Hey, there’s no need to get jealous.”
“I’m not fucking jealous,” Xavi mumbled. Images of a rough-looking mechanic with a day-old scruff, forearms the size of thighs, and oil-stained nails flashed through Xavi’s head. Glenn. What kind of bullshit name was that anyway? Glenn.
“’Cause there’s no need,” Lulu continued, oblivious to the storm raging inside Xavi. “He’s happily married to Sue-Ellen and six times a grandaddy.” Lulu pondered something, then started counting on his fingers. “Bobbie-Ann, Jamie-Lou, Glenn Junior, Wal—”
“Will you cut it out? Fuck, this is just great, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, not really. But if you ask me nicely, I’ll tell you the good news.” The good news. Right. Xavi had forgotten about that. Maybe there was a café down the road that served America’s largest donut or some shit like that. You never knew.
“What’s the good news?” Xavi sighed, bracing himself.
“Okay!” Lulu nearly jumped in his seat, coffee spilling down his fingers. “So, there’s a small town about ten miles from here. And they apparently have this amazing diner, and if we’re lucky, they should have a room in the back of the diner that they rent out.”
Xavi wished he could share Lulu’s enthusiasm, he really did, but there were too many unknown factors for his liking.
If they were lucky. Xavi had never felt that lucky, although people kept reminding him he’d been lucky to survive the fire.
But maybe his luck was turning? He’d never imagined that he’d get to kiss, touch, or taste Lulu either, but now he had.
More than once. Maybe this small town in the middle of Nowhere, Nebraska could turn out to be their lucky break in the middle of a blasting blizzard.
Pulling out his phone, he opened his GPS and searched for their current location.
Then, shrugging at Lulu, he asked, “What’s the name of the town with the most amazing diner ever and a maybe room for the night? ”
“Hayley’s Peak,” Lulu beamed at him. “The town’s called Hayley’s Peak and the diner’s called Tilly’s.”