Chapter 8 #2
We toasted, and the conversation shifted to other things.
Updates about the tree farm's upcoming rush—Finn expected to sell out by the fifteenth.
Micah's plans for a holiday reading series at the bookstore, featuring local authors and mulled cider.
Garrett's new seasonal drink experiments, including something involving eggnog and espresso that he was either going to serve or use to strip paint.
Normal things. Comfortable things. The rhythms of my life here, the life I'd built from nothing two years ago.
But underneath it all ran a current of anticipation. Brent had promised we'd figure it out. That he'd come to Colorado or I'd go to New York or we'd meet somewhere in between.
We just hadn't decided when. Soon, though. It had to be soon.
***
I left The Perch an hour later, after Finn had to head back to the farm. Garrett walked me out, standing on the sidewalk in just his henley despite the cold.
"You're really okay?" he asked, his breath fogging between us.
"Yeah." I zipped my jacket against the cold. "Scared, but okay."
"Good scared or bad scared?"
"Both?" I laughed. "Good scared that it might work. Bad scared that it might not."
He pulled me into another hug. "For what it's worth, I've never seen you look like this. All lit up from the inside. So whoever this Brent guy is, he's already done something right."
"Thanks, G."
"Bring him by The Perch when he visits. I want to meet the man who finally cracked open the fortress of Jason Foster."
"It wasn't a fortress."
"It was absolutely a fortress. A very polite, well-organized fortress. But a fortress." He squeezed my shoulder. "Go home. Rest. And text me if you need to talk, okay?"
"I will."
I drove the few blocks to my cottage on Oak Street.
The little house looked exactly as I'd left it—white clapboard with green shutters, a small porch with exactly two chairs.
My next door neighbor had more than made up for my lack of decorating, her cottage blazing with multicolored lights and no fewer than three inflatable snowmen.
My own front door was bare except for the wreath I'd hung in November and kept forgetting to replace as it dried out.
Inside, everything was exactly as I'd left it.
Small living room with the couch I'd found at a garage sale.
Kitchen barely big enough for one person.
The bedroom with its queen bed and the reading chair by the window.
My office—really just a converted second bedroom—with my desk and overflowing bookshelves and the bulletin board covered in revision notes.
It should have felt comforting. Safe. Mine.
Instead, it felt too quiet after a week of sharing space. Of always having someone to talk to. Of falling asleep to the sound of another person breathing, waking up to warmth beside me.
I dropped my bag by the door and stood in the middle of my living room, suddenly exhausted. The drive, the emotion, the coming out to my friends—it all crashed down at once.
I unpacked slowly, moving through the familiar motions. Dirty clothes in the hamper. Toiletries back in the bathroom. Notebooks on my desk, full of a week's worth of work and scribbled late-night thoughts and one particular scene I'd written about what it felt like to be touched like you mattered.
When I opened my laptop to back up everything I'd written, I found a new document I hadn't created.
The filename: For Jason, when you're home and missing me.
My heart stumbled. I clicked it open.
Jason—
I'm writing this while you're in the shower.
. In a few hours, we'll say goodbye and drive in opposite directions, and I'm already dreading it.
Already missing you even though you're still here, humming something off-key while water runs, and I can hear you being alive and real on the other side of this door.
But I wanted you to have something to come home to. A reminder that this week was real. That what we found together wasn't just a vacation romance or a temporary escape from our regular lives.
You asked me once what I was working on at this retreat. The truth is, I came here trying to write something meaningful, something that mattered. But I couldn't find it until I found you.
You remind me that writing isn't just about craft and structure and commercial success. It's about truth. About vulnerability. About being brave enough to put your real self on the page, consequences be damned.
You do that naturally. Your manuscript is beautiful because you're willing to be honest, to dig deep, to show the messy complicated parts of being human.
The parts most of us spend our lives hiding.
And watching you work, talking with you about story and character and what actually matters—it's made me want to be that brave too.
So I'm going to try. I'm going to write something real, something true, something that scares the hell out of me.
And when I do, I want you to read it first. Before my agent, before my editor, before anyone else gets to have an opinion about it.
Just you, because you'll understand what I'm trying to say.
I'm counting down every day, every hour, until I see you again.
Until I can wake up in your space, meet your people, see your life.
Until I can figure out if I can build something there.
With you. Until I can prove that this wasn't just a week—it's the beginning of something neither of us expected but both of us need.
Miss you already,
Brent
I read it three times, my vision blurring on the last pass. My chest ached—not hollow anymore, but full to bursting. Too full. The kind of full that made it hard to breathe.
He'd written this while I was in the shower. While I was washing away our last morning together, our last touches, preparing to say goodbye. He'd been sitting at that desk planning how to stay connected, how to make sure I knew this mattered.
I pulled out my phone with shaking hands and texted him: Found your note. You're trying to kill me.
His response came immediately—he must have just landed: Good. Wanted you to know this is real.
It is. For me too. I just told my friends. They want to meet you to make you’ll treat me right.
I will. Treat you right, I mean. I'm going to try so hard, Jason.
My throat went tight. I know. Me too.
Get some sleep. Long drive. I'll call you tomorrow?
Please.
Goodnight, Jason. Dream of me.
I smiled through the pressure in my chest. Already am.
***
I got ready for bed in my too-quiet cottage, brushing my teeth at the sink where I didn't have to negotiate space with anyone, changing into sleep pants without worrying about an audience.
The sheets on my bed were cold when I slid under them—the flannel ones I'd bought last winter, soft from washing but empty of body heat, smelling only of my own detergent.
Sleep felt impossible. I lay there staring at the ceiling, the streetlight outside casting familiar shadows, and my mind wouldn't stop replaying the week.
Waking up beside him in the morning, the warmth of his body against mine.
The sound of his breathing evening out after we'd exhausted each other.
The way he'd touched me like I was something precious and claimed at the same time.
The way his mouth had felt on me. The sounds he'd made when I'd taken him apart. How right it had felt to be wanted like that—not despite my awkwardness or overthinking, but including all of it.
My body was already responding to the memories, heat pooling low in my belly. I shifted under the sheets, trying to ignore it. This was pathetic, wasn't it? Getting worked up alone in my bed less than twelve hours after leaving him?
But my phone buzzed on the nightstand. Brent: Can't sleep. Keep thinking about you.
My breath caught. I grabbed the phone. Me too. Miss you.
What are you thinking about?
Heat flooded through me, my pulse picking up. Was he asking what I thought he was asking?
The retreat. Waking up with you. Your hands on me.
Three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again. Then: Jason. Just my name, but I could hear the rough edge in it even through text, could picture exactly how his voice would sound. Are you in bed?
Yeah.
Me too. Been lying here trying not to think about how good you felt. How you taste. Failing miserably.
My hand moved beneath the sheets almost without permission, palming myself through my sleep pants. Already half-hard just from his words. I'm thinking about it too. About your mouth on me. The sounds you made when I touched you.
Fuck. Then: Tell me you're touching yourself.
Yeah. My face burned even alone in the dark, even though we'd done so much more than this. Can't help it. Keep remembering.
Good. Want you thinking about me. Want you remembering exactly how I made you feel.
I pushed my pants down, wrapping my hand around myself properly. Already slick at the tip, sensitized from the memories flooding through me. Brent—
Wish I was there. Wish I could taste you again. Make you fall apart the way you did that last night.
God. I stroked slowly, remembering. The way he'd pinned my hips to the bed. The heat of his mouth, the suction, the obscene wet sounds. The way he'd looked up at me, eyes dark and pupils blown, like watching me come undone was better than anything else he could imagine.
Keep talking, I typed with my free hand, barely able to coordinate the movement.
Would start slow. Kiss you until you were begging for it. Then work my way down. Take my time even though you'd be trying to rush me.
The images flooded my mind in vivid detail. His mouth on my throat, my chest, my hip bones. The scrape of stubble against sensitive skin. His hands holding me down when I tried to move.
Miss being inside your mouth, I switched to voice texting. The way you moaned around me. Like you wanted it as much as I did.
More. Wanted it more. You taste so fucking good, Jason. The sounds you make when I'm working you. The way your thighs shake.
That did it. I came hard, biting my lip to stay quiet even though there was no one to hear, Brent's words echoing in my head and pleasure rolling through me in waves. My hand kept moving, working myself through it until I was oversensitive and shaking, the sheets damp beneath me.
For a long moment I just lay there, catching my breath, my body satisfied but somehow lonelier than before. The bedroom felt cavernous around me, the silence pressing in.
My phone buzzed: Better?
I laughed shakily, my free hand trembling as I typed. Much. You?
Yeah. Though now I'm just lying here in this hotel room counting down the hours until I can actually touch you again instead of just imagining it. Get some sleep, Jason. Dream of me.
Always.
I cleaned up and settled back into bed, my body relaxed now but my heart aching in a different way. The time until I'd see him again suddenly felt like an impossible distance.
However many days it would be of sleeping alone, waking alone, going through the motions of my regular life while half of me was a thousand miles away on the other side of the country, probably reading or staring out the window or thinking about me the way I couldn't stop thinking about him.
I fell asleep with my phone on the pillow beside me, Brent's note still open on my laptop screen across the room, and my body still humming with the memory of his touch and the promise of more to come.
However long it took, I could survive it. I had to.