Chapter 21 Cam
Chapter 21
Cam
I grabbed another blanket and snuggled deeper into the couch in my living room. The house was quiet. Riley was at Gus’s for New Year’s Eve. They invited me, of course, but honestly, a nice, quiet evening at home felt like the perfect way to ring in the new year—especially after the year I’d had.
I’d gotten a lot done today—cleaned the house, organized the library, and even finished a few case briefings that I sent to the junior partner at my firm. Now, I was waiting for my dinner—a one-pan chicken and veggies recipe that I made at least once a week—to finish up in the oven.
The only downside was that the house was fucking cold (and that I still didn’t have a bed frame, but I preferred to ignore that). I’d checked the thermostat, and it said sixty-eight degrees, but it felt a hell of a lot colder than that. I was layered up—leggings, sweatpants, long-sleeved shirt, fleece pullover, and my new favorite big warm wool socks. I was under three blankets, and I was still freezing. My nose felt cold to the touch.
I stared at the big black hole that was the wood-burning fireplace. I’d been making aggressive eye contact with it since the house’s temperature started to drop this afternoon. It would definitely help. At the very least, it would warm the living room up.
But the fireplace came with strings attached—well, one string attached. A very handsome and kind and flirty string.
Being with Dusty on Christmas was…nice. He was so kind, and I liked getting to know the man who still had parts of the boy I used to love—maybe the most important parts.
He still made me laugh and knew how to make me feel so comfortable—whether it was after my not-wedding, building Riley’s bed, or around a holiday dinner table. He made me feel at ease, and he didn’t even have to try.
But I was also reminded that there were years between us—years where he didn’t stay put for longer than a season, where he went off to Buenos Aires and learned new skills and god knows what else, and he was happy doing that. I didn’t know how someone who seemingly loved to hop around as much as Dusty did could be happy in one place for very long. And that made me feel unsteady.
But then there was the gift he made for me. Incredible. That handmade, genuine, quality leather set would’ve cost thousands in a store. But he made it just for me. I’d been using the pieces every day since. I’d probably use them for the rest of my life. And the day after Christmas, I found a bottle of leather conditioner and a cloth on my front porch with a note.
I forgot to give this to you yesterday. Use this once a month or whenever your leather is starting to look a little worse for wear. I hope they last forever.
Dusty
But there was a big difference between acknowledging a thoughtful gift and showing up on his doorstep on New Year’s Eve and asking him to light my fire—my actual fire, not a metaphorical one. I flopped down on the couch and covered my head with my blankets.
Maybe I could just ask him to teach me, and then I could do it myself? Anne didn’t have to know that, right?
Who was I kidding? I loved rules. Even the thought of not following the ones that Anne had laid out for me gave me hives. What an annoying fucking quality to have.
I closed my eyes under the blanket. Dusty probably wasn’t even home. It was New Year’s Eve, after all. He was probably out doing…actually, I didn’t want to know what he was doing. What if he was with a woman? Would I care? No.
Yes.
But I didn’t have a right to care. An image of Dusty at the Devil’s Boot with some faceless woman, grabbing her and kissing her at midnight, made my stomach turn. God, this was ridiculous. I was ridiculous. It wasn’t like he and I were anything more than…friends. Right? I think it’s safe to say we had regained some semblance of friendship. But sometimes, it still felt like there was something…else…bubbling beneath the surface.
I couldn’t believe I could still feel so drawn to him. Dusty wasn’t the only man I’d ever loved, but I had to admit that he was the one that I compared every other love to.
And none of them ever measured up.
I used to say it was just because he was my first—that there was no way it could’ve been as good as I remembered. It was all nostalgia and youth. And that was probably at least partly true. But even now, Dusty still felt like…more. More than I was able to understand logically. And more wasn’t really an option for me at the moment—at least, I didn’t want it to be. I was happy to have him back in my life, but I just wanted to be able to maintain something stable and easy between the two of us.
Okay, I would look out the kitchen window, and if his light was on, I would ask him to start the fireplace. If it was off, I would leave a note for Gus to find with my last will and testament because I would freeze to death before morning.
Perfect.
I took a deep breath before whipping the blankets off myself and heading to the kitchen before I could second-guess it.
As I peered out the window, I saw a soft orange glow coming from Dusty’s little house.
Well, fuck.
Here I go, I guess.
I slipped on a pair of snow boots that I kept by the back door, turned off the oven so I didn’t burn the house down, since, you know, that’s exactly what I was trying to avoid by enlisting Dusty’s help.
It wasn’t until I was halfway across the snowy yard that I remembered that I was wearing nothing, well, cute. Too late now.
I’d obviously seen the small house before, but I’d never been this close to it. It was small, brown, and brick, and couldn’t be bigger than a few hundred square feet. There was a pathway through a thicket of trees from my house to his. Dusty had shoveled it.
When I got to his door, I hesitated—even though it was freezing, or below freezing, rather. It was just a fire. This would be fine.
I took a deep breath before raising my arm and tapping on his door three times. The sound made me think about when Dusty knocked on the bathroom door of the Devil’s Boot on my wedding day. Was that really just a month ago? I wondered what that day would’ve looked like if Dusty hadn’t rescued me. Because that’s exactly what he did: rescue me. Now, when I thought of that day, I didn’t think about Graham or the fact that he didn’t show up. I thought about Dusty and the fact that he did.
He always showed up.
The door opened a few seconds later, and I could feel the warmth coming out of his house. I guess he didn’t have any heating problems.
“Ash, hey,” he said. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I’m sorry to bother you, but…”
“Your heater is on the fritz.” He shook his head and stepped aside. “Come in. Get warm for a minute.” I hesitated for half a second, but my chattering teeth and numb nose made it impossible for me to say no or back out.
I let the warmth of his house envelop me as Dusty shut his front door. My eyes wandered as I took everything in. Right inside the door, there was a small kitchen to the right with a half sink and the smallest oven and stovetop that I’d ever seen. His bed was pressed against the back wall. There was a patchwork quilt covering it. At the foot of his bed was a two-seat leather couch and a coffee table. There was a bookshelf in the other corner, as well as a small desk with a reading lamp.
The place was pretty bare. Still it felt homey. Maybe it was because of the size—or the temperature. I noticed that he had a wood-burning fireplace, too. It was a third the size of mine, on the wall to the right of his bed, and it was doing its job quite effectively.
“How long has the heater been out?” he asked.
“Oh, um, I don’t really know,” I said. “It was pretty cold when I woke up this morning, but started to get unbearable like an hour ago.”
“You’ve been in the cold all day?” I shrugged, and Dusty shook his head. “Why didn’t you come get me earlier?”
“It’s New Year’s Eve. I didn’t want to bother you.”
Dusty sighed. “Sit by the fire for a bit.”
“Can I take my boots off? I don’t want to track snow all over your house.”
“Yeah, of course. I’ll make you some tea.”
I slipped off my boots, and when I looked down at my feet, I hoped he wouldn’t notice I was wearing his socks. Again. They were just so warm.
Dusty stepped into his kitchen as I walked toward the couch. When I sat down, I watched him pull out an electric kettle and fill it with water. I noticed that his hair was damp—like he’d just gotten out of the shower.
“Earl Grey okay?” he called over his shoulder.
“Yeah,” I said. “Thank you.”
Dusty pulled a mug out of one of his cabinets. “I’m sorry about the heater,” he said. “Sometimes, when it gets too cold, it starts to overwork itself and blows its own fuse.”
“When did you add HVAC to your extensive résumé?” I asked.
“Somewhere between Montana and Australia,” Dusty said. “You learn to fix a lot of random things when you’re not quite sure what your living situation is going to look like.”
I scanned the house again. This time, my eyes landed on the coffee table in front of me. There was a small wooden box on top of it, maybe the size of a shoe box. It was covered in stickers. I spotted a couple of bands, cities, and a “love your mother” sticker featuring planet Earth.
“Are these stickers from all the places you’ve been?” I asked as I reached forward and picked up the box. A few things rattled around inside softly.
“Yeah,” Dusty said without looking at me. “I didn’t take a lot from place to place, but I always had that box, so it kind of became my scrapbook.”
“Did your mom make it?” I asked.
“I made that one, actually. The workmanship is shoddy, but it did its job.” Dusty was walking toward me now, with one steaming mug in his hand. He set it on the coffee table in front of me.
“What’s in here?” I asked.
Dusty sat on the other side of the couch. “Nothing,” he said.
I gave the box a light shake. “Doesn’t sound like nothing.”
Dusty swallowed. He looked…nervous? Only for a second, though; I watched him brush it off before saying, “Stop snooping, weirdo,” and he reached to take the box from me.
I pulled the box away, but one of Dusty’s hands grazed the top, and it slid back a few inches. It was full enough that a few folded papers fell out. They fell right between Dusty and me. It felt like slow motion. One of them landed on the couch, and I saw “Ash” written on the outside fold.
My heart stopped. I lowered the box slowly back into my lap and pushed the sliding lid off all the way. It was full of folded notes. Everything was folded in a triangle—the same way Dusty used to fold notes when he passed them to me in class. Some looked older than others—more worn, but every one that I could see had something in common—my name scrawled across the front.
“What are these?” I asked.
It was so quiet in his house, I felt like I could hear his heartbeat. “Notes,” he said after a few seconds.
“Why is my name on them?”
“Why do you think?” Dusty asked.
Coming over here had been a mistake—thinking I could be here without feeling anything was a mistake.
“I should go,” I said, putting the box on the coffee table and standing up.
“Wait,” Dusty said and grabbed my hand softly. “Don’t go. Please.” I don’t know what made me sit back down—maybe the pain in his voice or maybe because I was still freezing.
But Dusty’s pain wasn’t something I ever wanted to see or hear or contribute to again.
My hand was still in his, and one of my knees was pressed against his on the couch. “What are they?” I whispered.
Dusty let out a long, deep breath. “Ash, even after everything went sideways, I didn’t stop wanting to be with you. I didn’t stop missing you. Adjusting to a world without you in it sucked,” he said quietly. The fireplace crackled and snapped.
“Even months and years later, when something happened to me or I had something that I wanted to talk about, you were the person I wanted to tell. So I did. I wrote notes like I used to. I told you about my jobs and my life and, sometimes, I told you how much I missed you and how fucking annoying it was that you hadn’t faded from my mind or my heart—even a little bit. I knew I’d never send them, but I don’t know, something about it was just…comforting, I guess.”
“Why do you keep them?”
Dusty leaned forward until our foreheads were touching. I didn’t pull away. “Because they’re all I had left of you.” I felt his breath against my face. “Do you want me to be all the way honest, or do you want me to stop there?”
I swallowed. I knew this could quickly turn into too much too fast, but I couldn’t help but want more from him. I wanted to hear everything about what he’d felt over the past fifteen years. I wanted to know if he thought of me as much as I thought of him. I guess I just wanted to know that I wasn’t alone in the aftermath of us.
“All the way honest,” I whispered.
Dusty closed his eyes tight. “They reminded me that it was all real—no matter how much time people spent telling me that we were too young or that it would never work out.” I hated that those people were right. “The notes made you feel real. I needed it all to be real for the pain to be worth it.”
“Was it?” I asked. My eyes fluttered closed, and I brought my hands up to each side of his face. He held my wrists. “Worth it.”
Dusty laughed a little, but it sounded pained. “I’ll let you know if it ever stops.”
I could hear my heartbeat in my ears—almost like it was trying to tell me what to do and drown out the noise from my head at the same time. My head wanted to run—to hightail it across my yard, slam my door, and hide from Dusty Tucker while I still had a chance. My heart? It wanted this moment to last as long as possible. It was overwhelming—how right it felt to be this close to him. “Does this make it better or worse?” I asked, rubbing my thumbs back and forth on his cheeks.
“Worse,” he said. His voice was strangled and rough.
“And if…I kissed you right now?” I whispered, knowing that if I said it louder, I’d lose this moment of courage.
“Worse,” Dusty said again on a shaky breath, but then said, “but do it anyway.”
I inhaled deeply—breathing him in. He smelled clean and dewy. He used to smell like Axe, which I loved then, but I liked this version better.
I was so close to pressing my mouth against his for the first time in fifteen years. Would it feel familiar or new?
But when Dusty leaned toward me and his eyelids fluttered closed, the heartbeat in my ears turned into alarm bells. A flashing caution sign. Danger zone. Don’t cross. You won’t come back from it this time. I pulled away. I dropped my hands to my lap. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t…I want to, but I…” I didn’t really know what to say.
It was like me pulling back allowed the oxygen to reach me again. I blinked slowly—trying to process what had just happened, how close I’d come to upsetting the precarious balance that Dusty and I had found for something as fleeting as a kiss.
“I can’t…” I started, but I couldn’t finish, so I stood up quickly. “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re right. I don’t know what that was.”
Dusty rubbed a hand at the back of his neck. “Old habits die hard?” he said. He was trying to smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. I recognized it—the pain. Would I ever stop hurting him? “Let’s go look at your heater.”