Chapter 6
EVAN
I heard the words he murmured but knew they couldn’t possibly be true.
While I didn’t like it, everyone in town knew Stevie was a voracious flirt.
He hit on everyone, and I mean everyone.
It drove me up the fucking wall. Even before I thought of him that way, seeing him flirt with random people made me stupidly protective. No one was good enough for him. No one.
As I lay curled around his smaller body, holding him snugly against my front, I forced myself not to succumb to the desire to drift off and join him in slumber.
He’d said he had to work at the hospital that night, and I’d be damned if I was going to be the cause of him losing a job he clearly needed.
Once I was sure his breathing indicated the steady rhythm of sleep, I carefully eased out of the bed and made my way back out to the main room to find my phone.
Sassy’s number was saved in my contacts list from the time her fire alarm kept misfiring in the old Victorian home where she lived above her brother’s medical practice.
I texted her. What time does Stevie need to be at the hospital?
A few moments later, her response popped up. Not until eight. Why? Isn’t he still there? You can ask him.
I responded. He fell asleep.
A minute later she replied with a shocked-face emoji. Wake him up in time to shower and change. His clothes are in the green dragon.
After thanking her, I set an alarm on my phone as I wandered out to the chest of drawers in the yard.
It was quite a sight to behold. In addition to being pea green, it had ivy vines stenciled on the drawers in light pink puffy paint.
Someone had done a number on what was most likely quite a high-end piece of woodwork under all that paint garbage.
Instead of trying to manhandle it all the way to my workshop, I went to the garage to grab the hand truck I used to haul lumber and materials. Once the dresser was safely stashed in the workshop, I found Stevie’s backpack in one of the drawers and made my way back to the house.
I stripped down to boxer briefs and slid back into bed next to his warm body, pulling him into my chest and wrapping arms and legs around him to get as much of his skin touching mine as possible.
He mumbled something that sounded a lot like “dildo drawer” before nuzzling my armpit and settling back down.
Stevie fit against me like he and I had been formed in a mold together.
Yes, there was an age difference between us of over twenty years, but there was something about the young man in my arms that felt fated.
Purposeful. Meant to be. He was mine. Deep down, I simply knew that to be a fact the same way I knew I’d always been meant to fight fires. It just was.
I kissed the top of his head and murmured to him about how lucky I was to have him there and how I never wanted to let him go. I fell asleep wondering what he needed the money for and what kind of new job he’d been alluding to in order to get it.
When my phone alarm went off, I was surprised to wake up with a warm body against mine.
It had been over a year since I’d had the pleasure of waking up next to someone, and I took a moment to simply enjoy it.
His cinnamon-sugar-and-floral smell now coated my sheets and pillowcases, making me wonder how long I could go without washing them before it became a health hazard.
“Sweetheart, you need to get ready for work,” I said softly before brushing the hair back from his face and resting my lips on his warm forehead. “I put your bag in the bathroom so you can take a shower and get ready here.”
“Mpfh.” The response was a warm puff of air against my bare chest.
“I’ll drop you off and pick you up after. You just need to tell me what time you get off.”
Suddenly his brain engaged, and he realized he was in bed with someone he wasn’t expecting. He gasped in shock, rearing up and scrambling off the bed backward until he fell on the floor with a painful thump.
“Fuck.”
I crawled over to the far edge and peered over. “What happened? Are you okay?”
His stunning crystalline eyes were wide in shock. “God bless America. It really wasn’t a dream?”
I’d never seen a more enticing sight than little Stevie Devore naked as a jaybird and sleep rumpled on my bedroom floor.
“I will give you three seconds to get your sweet ass behind that locked bathroom door before I can no longer guarantee allowing you out of this house tonight,” I warned in a growl.
The consolation prize for his compliance was the sight of his beautiful bare butt racing across the room.