Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Jacob
A POUNDING HEADACHE wakes me. I jolt upright when I recognize my bedroom around me, and instantly regret the sudden movement. I groan, leaning on the headboard. The wood is cool against my bare skin. Wait. Bare skin. My bedroom. How the hell did any of this happen? The last thing I remember is getting in the car and drinking the whiskey I found in the mini fridge. After that, it’s all a blur.
I rub my eyes, taking several deep breaths before opening them again — and finding Seth sleeping in a chair in the corner of my room.
My eyes fly wide, my headache forgotten. He’s fully dressed from what I can tell, a blanket wrapped around him as he slouches in the chair. His shoes and glasses sit on the floor beside him. As I gape, he takes a deeper breath, seeming to sense my movement, and straightens up. He clears his throat as he rubs the sleep from his eyes and stands. In moments, he’s folded up the blanket, retrieved his glasses and shoes, and smoothed down his rumpled clothing, looking every bit like he’s on the job.
Still, I’m dumb enough to open my big mouth and say, “Did we…”
One eyebrow quirks up, but Seth doesn’t otherwise react. “You needed help getting to bed. I gave you water and ibuprofen. I apologize for undressing you, but you needed to sleep. Then I stayed to make sure you didn’t get sick overnight.”
“Oh,” I say. “I… Thank you. You didn’t have to.”
“I did.”
He speaks with such rigid finality, yet his eyes flicker to my bare chest. The look is brief, a flash I hardly believe was real, and Seth moves on immediately.
“You should have more medicine,” he says.
Then he sweeps out of the room, and I’m left sitting in my bed blinking with confusion. The headache creeps back in, a slow, crawling thing like vines choking a riverbank. By the time Seth returns with water and ibuprofen, the pain pounds like a drumbeat inside my skull, and I accept his help downing the pills.
“You should eat,” he says.
His hand is on my back, helping me sit up. I lean into it unconsciously, searching for the comfort of human connection as my body rebels against what I did to it last night. Maybe that’s what makes me bold enough to say, “You should eat too.”
Seth’s hand retreats, like the invitation made his supportive touch too intimate to bear. “I’m fine.”
I shake my head, another movement I come to regret. “You stayed here all night. I was such a mess. Please at least let me feed you. I’ll feel terrible if I don’t.”
“It’s my job.”
Those words should throw up a wall between us, but I’m too raw and aching and miserable to abide that sort of thing this morning.
“It’s not your job to sleep in a chair all night watching over me, Seth, and you know it. Let me give you some food. Otherwise I’ll have to find a different way to repay you.”
He goes very still, like the surface of the ocean before a storm churns it into chaos. The water is too opaque for me to see through. Whatever is going on in those depths, it remains a mystery, but eventually Seth nods.
“Great,” I say with all the enthusiasm I can muster in my current state. “Let me take a quick shower first. I feel completely disgusting.”
I hop out of bed, and only then notice that I’m not wearing any pants. Seth puts his back to me even though I’m wearing boxer briefs. Does this mean he took my pants off last night? God, I wish I could remember that. I finally had my knight in shining armor undressing me in my bed and I was too drunk to realize it. I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive myself for that.
I relieve Seth by hurrying to the bathroom and throwing myself in the shower. The bathroom is enormous, including the shower. Seth could wash at the same time and we’d barely bump into each other, but unfortunately he leaves me to complete the task alone. I let the hot water hit me in the face and hopefully slap some sense into me. It helps with the lingering skein of grossness coating my skin and even with the headache, but not with my wandering thoughts. I claw through my hazy memories of the previous night, searching for the moments when Seth must have carried me to bed and undressed me, those big, careful hands peeling each layer of clothing off. I’ll never know if his touch lingered a beat too long, if his gaze flickered over my body, if he whispered something candid in the dark.
Most likely he didn’t, of course. The man hasn’t said anything about his sexuality, leaving me to reach the most obvious conclusion: my pining goes one way, and always will.
I sigh at myself as I shut off the water and towel myself dry. I feel a little more human when I throw on clean clothes and heap the dirty ones in a laundry basket, but as I pad out of my room, I stop short.
Seth is standing at the stove in an apron.
He has his back to me as he uses a spatula to fiddle with something on the stove. The food hisses and crackles, the scent of rich, greasy fat sliding down my throat. My stomach grumbles, but it’s not the body part I’m most concerned about. I didn’t intend for Seth to cook for me when I invited him to have food with me this morning, and the sight of him in my kitchen twists something inside me. This place is enormous, the kitchen flowing seamlessly into a living room backed by a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the city. It isn’t an apartment so much as a palace, complete with cold white furnishings and stainless steel.
Seth makes it feel a little smaller, a little warmer, a little less empty.
I creep closer, settling on a stool at the huge, granite-topped island in the center of the kitchen. From closer, the smell slaps me in the face, digging into my stomach like claws, yet I sit back and watch the broad set of Seth’s shoulders, the slight shifts of the muscle under his customary black T-shirt as he pushes something around in a pan. The ties of the apron around his waist accentuate the way his body tapers smoothly from broad shoulders to slim hips.
He sets the spatula down and swings toward me with a cup of coffee. He sets it before me, adding creamer.
“Found the creamer in the fridge,” he says. “I’m not sure exactly how you take your coffee so this is my best guess. Drink it. You’ll feel better.”
I don’t disagree, especially not with my heart fluttering up into my throat. Has God himself ever designed a more perfect man that this? I sip, hoping to calm myself, but in a few minutes Seth turns to the island once again, this time holding two plates heaped with scrambled eggs and bacon.
He sets one in front of me, and sits across from me at the island with the other. He takes off the apron, leaving it on the stool beside him.
“Wasn’t sure how you take your eggs either,” he says. “There’s salt and pepper on them.”
“That’s perfect,” I say.
My stomach can’t wait another moment. I dig in, relinquishing a moan when I bite into perfectly chewy bacon. The grease slides down my chin. The fat fills my aching stomach after one bite. I don’t realize I’ve closed my eyes in bliss until I open them and find Seth watching me.
“Sorry,” I mutter, wiping the grease off with a napkin.
He says nothing, putting his head down and tucking into his own meal. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was staring in a very un-heterosexual way, but he’s probably just grossed out. Not only was I a sloppy drunk last night, but now I’m moaning over bacon.
“You know,” I say around a mouthful of egg, “when I invited you to eat, I didn’t mean that I expected you to cook for me. Pretty sure that falls outside your job description.”
He shrugs his big shoulders, still not looking at me. “It’s okay. You probably need the fat right now. It’ll make you feel better, and I didn’t mind.”
“Yeah, but I could have ordered us something.”
Seth shakes his head, finally meeting my eyes. “It’s alright. It’s my job to take care of you. So I did.”
Our forks freeze in place. Seth holds my gaze as my stomach tumbles around, my whole body light and fluttery. Is it just a job? I’ve never heard of a bodyguard who tucks you in at night and cooks you breakfast in the morning. Combined with the multiple times he’s physically carried me away from danger, I’d have to be made of stone not to fall for this man. It doesn’t hurt that even after sleeping in a chair all night, he’s ruggedly gorgeous with his tight beard and keen eyes, those big hands that can move so delicately and decisively all at once.
Seth clears his throat, and I realize I’ve been staring. We both put our heads down and eat, but I yearn to speak again, to find something, anything, to say. My head is too muddled for cleverness this morning. Frankly, I’m lucky to make it through the meal without moaning about the bacon again.
Seth clears away the plates and puts everything in the sink the moment we finish eating.
“Please don’t do my dishes,” I say. “I will never live it down. I can at least handle that much on my own.”
The tiniest hint of a smile tugs at a corner of his mouth. “Fine. How are you feeling?”
“So much better,” I say. “Very nearly like a whole adult human. Though I have to confess, I don’t remember much after we got in the car last night. I hope I didn’t do anything too stupid.”
Something flickers over Seth’s face, there and gone so fast I doubt I ever saw it. “No, you didn’t.”
I want to pry, to figure out what that look meant, but he starts moving toward the door, and I leap up to follow. I catch him at the door itself, taking him by the arm to stop him before he can flee. Seth tenses under my grip, peering down at me.
“I wanted to apologize,” I say. “For what you had to deal with last night. I must have been a handful.”
“It’s my job.”
I shake my head. “You went well beyond a job. You took care of me like … like a good friend would.” I wanted to say something other than “friend,” but luckily managed to hold it back.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Maybe I crossed a line last night. I shouldn’t have stayed.”
“You should have. I’m glad you did, but next time sleep in the bed, okay? Your back must be killing you.”
His throat bobs as he swallows.
“I-I mean, you should because it’s such a big bed,” I say. “I know you’re not…”
“I’m not?”
“Well, I mean, most of the band is queer and all, but that doesn’t mean you’re… You work for us. I didn’t mean to imply…”
I’m rambling, lost, stumbling through what was meant to be a simple “thank you,” but Seth isn’t pulling away. He isn’t yanking himself free of my hold.
And he isn’t disagreeing.
“I am,” he says quietly.
I blink up at him, my mouth hanging open as I find myself speechless for once. Caring, kind, protective, a good cook and queer. My heart is a jackhammer trying to punch through my chest as I take in the news. My hand grows sweaty on Seth’s bicep. I gaze up at him, mouth dry, mind whirling through a list of impossibilities that just became a lot more possible.
Before I can stop myself or think or question, I raise myself up on my tip toes. Seth doesn’t back away, simply stands there frozen as I strain to reach him. I close my eyes the instant before I meet his mouth, tasting Seth’s tiny, sharp inhale. Our lips are greasy and slippery, our mouths unsure, unsteady, floundering in this moment that was never supposed to happen. Even as it does, part of my brain screams at me, asking me what the hell I’m doing, what the hell I’m thinking as I kiss my bodyguard, the one man I’m not supposed to have.
The shrieking quiets when Seth’s hand lands on my waist, pulling me ever so gently toward him. That’s all the encouragement I need to sink against his mouth, letting myself fall into him, letting myself have a kiss I assumed was impossible before this moment. I brace by clinging to his arm, and that hand on my waist flinches tighter, like Seth means to pull me against his body—
Then he pushes me away.
In a blink, I’m a step away from him, light-headed and wavering. Seth is wiping at his mouth like he’s trying to scrub that kiss off his lips.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
He’s out the door before I have time to stop him.