12. Seth
Chapter Twelve
SETH
He pulled a sleek black car in front of the dormitory building, chains on the wheels leaving a pattern in the one inch of fresh snow that covered the street.
Damon hopped out wearing an elegant black coat and a brown silk scarf, walking around the car to open the door to the back for my duffel and the front door for me.
“And they say chivalry is dead,” I said, sitting into a warmed-up passenger seat and buckling my seat belt.
Damon walked around casually and hopped inside, strapping in before leaning close to me and kissing me on the lips. That was what husbands did, right? They greeted each other with kisses without even noticing they were doing it.
Fuck my life. We were as married as we could be without Nick committing a crime.
He had gone home sulkily after I’d spilled a story about a ton of work I had to do at the lab.
I tossed out some terminology that Nick couldn’t care less about, some science lingo that bored him, and he rolled his eyes, surrendering.
“I get it,” he’d said. “But tell that to Mom and Dad when they leave an empty seat at the Christmas table.”
It would be a lie to say those words hadn’t hurt. What the hell was I doing, driving away with my hookup instead of joining my family for the holidays? Yet as Damon drove away, “Far from Any Road” playing from the speakers, I couldn’t get myself to feel any remorse.
“I love this song,” I said, dialing up the volume a little.
Damon shot me a glance full of warmth, like melting chocolate, before leaving the campus and driving down the street. “It’s a long drive,” he said. “And the snow’s falling just a little more than I was hoping.”
“You were hoping for a clear, sunny day,” I pointed out.
Damon nodded. “Yeah. So, tiny difference, eh?” His right hand fell into my lap, searching for my hand. I gave it to him without thinking. “I’m a good driver, though,” he assured me.
“I don’t doubt you.”
“That makes one of us,” he said. When he laughed, a little bit of that residual anxiety lifted.
The car was hot, and so was the coffee in Damon’s thermos. I was tasked with pouring cups of coffee for us and managing the snack flow as we drove north toward Clear Lake State Park. Not far from it was a private ranch with log cabins and a mix of rustic vibes and contemporary comforts.
Damon drove slowly, chatting about the trip to Chicago last week when the Titans played against the Steel Saints. “And you better believe they didn’t forget about last,” he said, bragging about the two years of victories.
“Wasn’t it the other way around for a few years before that?” I asked.
Damon shot me a killing glance. “We don’t speak about that.”
“Oh?” I bit my smile back.
“But Griffin and Andrei are now friends with the Saints’ captain and his boyfriend, apparently, so they betrayed us and built a bridge there. Traitors.”
“How dare they?” I cried.
“You get it,” Damon said proudly, then laughed.
Jeremy Messersmith’s “Love You to Pieces came on, and I sank a little lower in my seat. The particular brand of hopefulness and overwhelming melancholy of the song strangled me. We were creating an unforgettable memory with this trip. They would stay with me long after this thing flickered out of existence, as it eventually had to. I wouldn’t fool myself into thinking we’d keep doing this into our eighties and nineties, though it had crossed my mind.
I imagined a porch with a little flower and herb garden, and two chairs, and a pitcher of iced tea, and Damon’s wrinkled hand covering mine on the table between us.
And then I’d rushed into the bathroom to wash my face because the tears had unexpectedly flooded me.
No, that was never going to happen. But Clear Lake would happen in an hour or so, and I would have it for the rest of my life. I would have the scent of coffee and the sound of music and the warmth of the car and Damon’s wicked, rumbling laughter all to myself for the rest of time.
There weren’t many travelers on the road we took. Snow came and went in flurries, fields covered in an undisturbed blanket of whiteness, smoke rising from distant chimneys.
I looked at Damon, his profile sharp, his cheekbones high, and his lips defined like he was a marble statue come to life.
His eyebrows were flat above his eyes, gaze focused on the road, face flushed with the heat inside the car.
He was so devastatingly pretty that it physically hurt.
I wondered if a good doctor could diagnose this pain.
“He was beautiful, Doctor, and I looked at him for too long.”
My heart gave a quiet, aching throb, and I forced my gaze back to the road. We came around a bend, and Damon soon got off the highway. “Almost there,” he said. “I hope you brought your cards.”
“I sure did,” I said, warmth filling my chest maddeningly fast.
Music switched to Tom Odell’s “Another Love,” which felt a bit too on the nose, and I had to look out the window to blink away the sting in my eyes. “You have the same taste in music as my fifteen-year-old cousin. She also likes boys.”
Damon laughed out loud and dialed up the volume, singing along. “You can pretend you don’t like it,” he said after singing a verse. “But I saw you mouthing the lyrics three times already.”
“Yeah, well, if you can’t beat them, sleep with them,” I said.
“You’re most welcome to do just that,” Damon said. “We have four nights and no other entertainment.”
It was a detox trip of sorts. We had our phones with us and an alright connection, but the idea was to be available for emergencies only, and to surrender to the wilderness of the area and the warmth of the fire.
It was another thirty minutes before we checked in to our cabin, and Damon left the car in a garage on the edge of the ranch.
There were yards and yards of space, trees, bushes, and mounds of snow between each cabin.
Ours was built out of dark logs, making me think of some Nordic winter fantasy.
It only had one floor, and amber warmth poured out of its windows as we neared it on foot, snowflakes falling and melting on our faces.
Damon had picked up the keys at the long log house where the reception was. There, we had noticed a large dining area and were told about the breakfast times.
Now, as Damon unlocked our cabin, happiness flooded me so swiftly and fully that I wanted to cry. I was being deeply irrational today, and I had to remind myself of that. It was just a trip, and its purpose was to have good sex and nice company away from sneaking around. No more and no less.
The door opened, and warmth embraced me, pulling me inside until I felt like I was standing in heaven.
Every detail was cozy, from the large, soft sofa with a chaise lounge to the built-in fireplace, where fire already crackled, with a stack of firewood nearly beneath it.
There was a small kitchen on the side, and a dining table with two chairs was positioned near the large windows overlooking the winter scene.
A bathroom was at the back, and a hallway led to a small deck behind the cabin with a hot tub. Up in the loft, there was the bed.
“You like it?” Damon asked, pushing the door behind us.
As it clicked shut, silence settled around us, and I turned to him, stepping close enough to put my arms around his body. “I love it. I absolutely love it.”
Damon lifted one corner of his mouth, smiling devilishly, and looked into my eyes. “I knew you would.”
“When did we stop casting curses on one another and start being sweet?” I asked.
“You never know. I might lock you outside when we get out of the tub,” he said. “Gonna make myself a Seth popsicle.”
“That…sounds dirty,” I said, narrowing my eyes suspiciously.
“And that is why it’s you here with me and not anyone else,” he said, laughing to himself as he carried our things to a corner and plopped down into the sofa. “God, I love a nice fireplace. Why don’t we always live like this?”
“I could live like this,” I said, coming over and sitting next to him. I casually scooted closer and into the fold of his arm where it rested along the back of the sofa. “It’s always ‘you up?’ and never ‘let’s build a log cabin and make preserves and collect firewood all year long.’”
“Romance is truly dead,” Damon agreed.
My gaze traveled from his warm eyes to the fire in the fireplace.
String lights stretched along the walls, lamps hid in various corners, candles burned in brass holders in many places, and the entire cabin smelled like orange peel and cinnamon.
The daylight was already draining from the sky as I leaned against Damon, head resting on his shoulder.
A faint reflection of us played in the window. We looked…
We looked like boyfriends.
We looked like we were home, together, only missing a playful cat running around, raising hell. And my heart beat a little faster as the image burned itself into my mind.
Damon leaned in and kissed the top of my head. He did that a lot. At first, I’d thought it was a way to tease me about my height, but then he kept doing it when we were in bed or sitting near each other, and I got used to it.
My hand rested on his chest, moving lower bit by bit until it was on his stomach, and tears burned in my eyes.
He wasn’t breathing either. Poor guy. He had no idea what to do with an irrational hookup, and neither did I.
So I got up, mumbled something about washing my hands, and shut myself in the bathroom.
My eyes were red-rimmed already, and my breath was shallow as I held back a sob. What the hell was happening to me?
I exhaled slowly, water running in the sink, and splashed my face a few times before I trusted myself to hold on to my senses.
I stepped out of the bathroom and found Damon standing by the window, sniffing like he’d caught a cold.
For one moment only, I thought it would be so romantic if he had.
We wouldn’t get to do all the fun things we’d planned, but I would take care of him for a few days, make him soup and tea and cut fruit for him and spoon him if he had a fever.
He turned around with a big smile on his face, barely containing the relief that I wasn’t crying or something. We bluffed our way through unpacking our things and putting together a very light cocktail with a splash of white rum and crushed herbs.
Damon turned on the lights on the back porch, although they were low and warm, strung wide above the hot tub, and raised an eyebrow at me invitingly. “I’m dying to know what it’s like,” he said.
“We can’t have you die,” I said. “I can’t drive.”
“Right, it’s so on-brand to want me to stay alive so you can hitch a ride back, Kane,” he said. “So, you better take off your pants because we’re going out for a dip.”
For no other reason than to maintain some artificial mystery, I went into the bathroom to change into a pair of shorts, feeling like I’d gone mad now that I was stepping out of a warm cabin and into the snow while wearing a little more than nothing.
Snowflakes kissed my bare flesh where they landed and melted as I tiptoed after equally underdressed Damon toward the hot tub.
He laughed as he almost slipped on the melting snow and paused to wait for me.
He stood outside in the cold by the steps leading into the tub, his arm stretched out and hand open for me to hold as I climbed in.
I wouldn’t applaud him for being a gentleman.
It would only feed his ego. Besides, he was getting rewarded plenty a little later.
I dipped one foot inside the bubbling hot water, the contrast making me feel like I was about to be boiled. A moment later, as I stepped inside a little deeper, the cold lifted off me, and a sort of relaxation I’d never felt before settled around me.
Damon followed me inside the tub, groaning the way he always did when pleasure caught him off guard. We lowered ourselves to the seats, and the water swallowed me to my shoulders.
Damon needed to slide a little further to cover his broad shoulders, his face flushed and hair damp from snowflakes and rising steam. He was so beautiful with his parted lips and a deep breath leaving him. “This, I tell you, is life we’re meant to live,” he said.
“You won’t hear me complaining. For once.” We laughed at that, and Damon got up to close the distance between us. When he was near me, he threw his arm up and rested it along the back of my seat.
I settled under it, one hand holding my cocktail above the surface, the other moving playfully along Damon’s leg.
“You know what’s funny?” I said, tracing lazy circles on Damon’s thigh underwater. “Six months ago, if someone told me I’d be sitting half-naked in a hot tub with you, willingly, I would’ve reported them for psychological terrorism.”
Damon’s laugh rumbled through his chest. “And now look at you. Living your best life with your worst enemy.”
“Former worst enemy,” I corrected, taking a sip of my cocktail. The herbs mingled with the rum in a way that tasted expensive and slightly pretentious. “Current…what? Situationship? Catastrophe in progress?”
“I prefer ‘disaster with benefits.’” His fingers found my shoulder, drawing patterns that made my skin prickle despite the heat. “Has a nice ring to it.”
“Very romantic. You should write greeting cards.”
“Roses are red, violets are blue, I can’t stand you, but I’d really like to…”
“Finish that sentence and I’m drowning you,” I warned, but I was already grinning like an idiot.
Damon shifted closer, and suddenly, his face was inches from mine, steam rising between us. “You wouldn’t. You already admitted you can’t drive home.”
“I’d figure it out. Necessity breeds innovation.”
“Is that what we’re calling this?” His voice dropped lower, and I felt it somewhere behind my ribs. “Innovation?”
The snowflakes kept falling, odd ones surviving the rising steam and catching in his eyelashes, and I wanted to kiss each one away. Instead, I said, “We’re calling this a temporary lapse in judgment that we’re both too stubborn to end prematurely.”
“God, you’re exhausting.” But his hand slid down my arm to find my wrist, thumb pressing against my flesh like he was checking if I was real.
“You love it.”
The words hung there, dangerous and loaded. Love. Wrong word. Terrible word. I tried to backtrack. “Love that I’m exhausting. I mean, obviously…”
Damon kissed me, cutting off my spiral into panic. His other hand cupped my jaw, and the cocktail glass nearly slipped from my fingers. When he pulled back, his eyes were dark and serious in a way that made my stomach flip.
“Shut up, Kane,” he murmured against my lips.
So I did. I set my drink on the edge of the tub and wrapped my arms around his neck, letting myself sink into him. His heart beat against my chest, too fast for someone who was supposed to be relaxed. Mine wasn’t doing much better.
“This is so stupid,” I whispered.
“The stupidest,” he agreed, kissing my neck.
“We’re going to regret this.”
“Absolutely.” His teeth grazed my collarbone. “Worth it, though.”
And damn him, he was right.