Chapter Thirty-Four #2
“It’s been good for me to be part of this, actually,” Diesel said. “My last mission was a bad one, and I came home in a very
bad place. It was Cora who helped me through.”
Cora, who would be going to this Orion place with all the other empaths. Reece swallowed. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Even through the speakerphone, Diesel’s voice seemed full of emotion. “Without Cora, I might not have made it, you
know what I’m saying? And maybe I won’t be able to help her in return, but I can try. I’m going to Orion with Aisha.”
“You two can’t go without saying goodbye,” Jamey said. “Where are you going from the hospital? Your place? Aisha’s? We can
meet you there.”
“You’ll probably think we’re nuts,” Diesel said ruefully, “but we need food and a sanity check. And the best place I know
to work through your shit is McFeely’s.”
Jamey barked out a laugh. “You know what?” she said. “That sounds perfect.” She hung up the phone and wrapped her arm around
Reece’s shoulders. “You too,” she said. “I missed your stupid lectures. Come tell me and everyone else not to drink our way
through McFeely’s bar.”
Reece furrowed his brow. “I can leave?”
“We just got you back. We’re not giving you up,” Jamey said firmly. “If anyone wants to stop you, they’ll have to go through
me and Liam.”
Reece swallowed, throat thick again. “What about Evan?”
“I’ll tell him to meet us there,” Jamey said. “It’s close enough to walk.”
Walk. Wait. “Where’s my car?” Reece said.
“Um.” Jamey cleared her throat. “Port Angeles.”
Reece frowned. “What about Evan’s truck?”
“Towed off the Bremerton ferry,” said Liam.
“But how—”
“Stop asking questions.” Jamey prodded him in the back. “Move your feet, Reece.”
It was still on the early side of night when they arrived at McFeely’s, but the club was already crowded and rowdy, people
dancing and laughing with giddy relief.
Ben took one look at Reece’s face and dragged him to a small, two-person booth at the back. “I don’t know what you just went
through, but one Shirley Temple, coming up. On me. Unless you wanted to make it yourself?” he added with a grin.
Reece furrowed his brow. “But I’m not a bartender.”
“Oh, right! Diesel said you’d had something like a concussion, and your memory might be spotty.” Ben held up a hand. “Don’t
you worry about a thing. I’ll get your drink.”
Reece’s lips curled up at the corner, a helpless sort of smile born of confusion but more so of gratitude. “Okay,” he said.
“Thanks.”
A few minutes later, he sat alone at his booth, sipping the Shirley Temple and letting the sweetness of the cherries bloom
over his tongue as his gaze roamed the club. Jamey and Liam were slow-dancing to a fast song, arms locked around each other.
Diesel had arrived with Aisha, a kind-faced woman Reece instantly liked. They were now at a table, Aisha’s right leg in a
cast and propped up on a chair, as short fake empaths fussed over her and hugged the much taller Diesel around his ribs.
A tall presence suddenly loomed over the table. “This seat taken?”
Reece broke into a giant smile at the voice. He looked up, meeting Grayson’s eyes. “Sorry, yes,” he said, deadpan. “My hot, scary boyfriend is sitting there.”
He paused.
A tiny smile curled up the corner of Grayson’s lips, shy and rusty. “That wasn’t a lie?”
Reece’s gaze was entirely fixed on Grayson’s mouth. A smile. He smiled now. He was happy. “Not a lie,” Reece said, “but I
was thinking of you as I said it.”
The small, rusty smile got just a little bigger. As Grayson sat down, Reece leaned forward. “How are you holding up?”
Grayson considered the question for a long moment. “It’s a lot to take in,” he finally admitted. “A lot of . . .” He gestured
helplessly at himself. “Feelings. And I’ve kind of . . . forgotten, you know? How to feel things. What things I’m feeling.
And I’m not sure—I don’t—well.”
Grayson stuck his arm out, resting his hand on the table, palm up.
Reece furrowed his brow, gaze going from the hand to Grayson’s eyes. He was looking at Reece, and now those hazel eyes weren’t
a vault at all. Instead, they were a novel, so many words filling the pages that Reece could have read for days.
Grayson shrugged in a helpless kind of way. “There’s no way I’m gonna find words. Maybe we could speak your language instead?”
Reece melted. He took Grayson’s hand, eyes fluttering closed at the warmth of his skin, but even more at all the emotions
flitting under the surface.
Reece’s own feelings were still a mess, too many at once and too extreme, too raw.
But Grayson had always understood him better than anyone else.
And now here were Grayson’s feelings, precious and nearly lost, and Reece let them rush into him, filling him like crystal-clear melted snow clearing away the dust on a riverbed.
They weren’t going to recover in an evening. But maybe they could at least be together.
“The studio’s not much more than a mile away.” Reece intertwined their fingers, unwilling to let go. “We could go home. I
could help you with these . . . feelings.”
Grayson squeezed his hand, and Reece felt the jolt of their combined desire rush through him.
“In fact,” he said, tightening his own hand in return, “we could go right now.”
With the truck sent to the shop and the Smart car in recovery from Port Angeles, they opted to walk, traversing the Seattle
winter streets together back to the studio. Grayson found himself brushing his fingers against Reece’s every other block,
the way someone tipsy might catch an arm to steady them. Reece understood what he was asking without Grayson having to put
it into words, guiding him through both the streets and the return of his heart.
“That’s doubt—this intersection’s weird but it’s okay, I know downtown, we’re going the right way—”
“That’s overwhelm—and yeah, if I think the sirens are loud, your ears are probably miserable—”
“That’s skepticism—which, really? I told you this is the right way, I know where I’m going—”
They walked on. High above downtown, Grayson could make out faint stars that made warmth blossom in his chest like the return
of old friends. The rain had stopped, but the street was still dotted with puddles that shimmered where they caught the streetlights,
and every time they crossed an intersection, a glimpse of the moon was visible, bright and full out over the sound.
“Evan?”
Grayson startled. He looked over at Reece, who was watching him patiently. “You stopped walking,” Reece said.
“Oh.” Grayson looked back at the sky, the way the moon’s glow lit the wispy clouds stretched over the stars, the silvery sheen
of its reflection on the water.
Reece’s smile was soft. “If I had to guess this one, I’d say you forgot what it feels like to look at the moon.”
Had Reece’s voice always been this warm, this full of gentle understanding? Grayson hadn’t even realized he’d missed the way
a voice could resonate in your heart the same way the moon’s glow could fill the night sky.
“We can walk down to the water, stargaze, whatever you want,” Reece said. “There’s no rush.”
Grayson reached out and grabbed his hand. “Well,” he said wryly as Reece’s eyes widened, because there was no way an empath
was going to miss the cocktail of emotions buzzing through Grayson. “There’s some rush.”
Reece’s smile grew. “Come on,” he said, tugging on Grayson’s hand. “Let’s go.”
Finally, they made it to the building and up to the fourth floor of the high-rise. Grayson tried to weather the forgotten
sensations of rising anticipation and urgency as he waited for Reece to fumble in his pocket for the key. “I got this, I swear,”
Reece said, the key unsteady in his hand as he tried to open the door.
“I just watched you twitch because you heard yourself lie, sugar.” Grayson took the key right out of Reece’s hand, his body
lighting up with the brush against warm skin. “Move over.”
“Hey.” Reece turned around. “I am the holder of the keys in this relationship—”
“You’re gonna learn to share.” Grayson bent, and before Reece could get another word in, he levered him up and over his shoulder in one easy, graceful lift.
Reece let out a surprised laugh. “Evan.”
“You were blocking the door.”
“But—”
“And you’re not gonna give me any empath sass about hurting myself.” Grayson wrapped an arm around the back of Reece’s thighs
to pin him in place as he fit the key into the lock. “You know full well I regularly lift things that weigh more than you.”
“Ugh, fine.” Reece huffed. “But you can’t win all our fights by picking me up—son of a bitch.”
“That was another lie, wasn’t it?”
“Shut up.”
Down the hall, a door opened, and a neighbor popped her head out. She saw them, rolled her eyes good-naturedly, and ducked
back into her apartment.
Reece half groaned, half laughed. “You’re a menace to this building. And that was not a lie.”
Grayson swung the door open. “You haven’t told me to put you down.”
“Put me down on the bed and I’ll forgive all of this.”
Grayson stepped inside, kicking the door closed behind them with his foot. He didn’t bother with the lights, crossing the
space in two strides to tip Reece onto the studio’s bed on his back. He crawled over him and bent down so their faces were
nearly touching.
For a moment, they were quiet, nothing but the sound of their twin breaths over the distant rumble of cars four stories below.
The studio was dark, but downtown itself was lit against the night, and the surrounding high-rises illumined the large uncovered
windows with a soft glow.
“I am feeling so many feelings,” Grayson confessed. “I don’t know where one ends and the next begins.”
The city lights danced across Reece’s face as he reached for Grayson, fingers twining in the hair at the back of Grayson’s
head. “I got you,” he said, and pulled him down into an achingly gentle kiss.
Grayson let his eyes flutter closed, let himself be kissed, let the skill of Reece’s lips stoke the feelings running through
him. Physical desire, which he’d never lost, but so many more feelings with it now, bright and sweet and urgent all at once.