Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
NILS
The sound of an unfamiliar engine distracts me from where I’d been sketching out measurements for a chicken coop extension on the grass.
Frowning, I walk around the side of the house to look, just as a sleek little Porsche parks in front of my house.
The windows—tinted black—obscure the occupants of the vehicle.
It doesn’t matter, anyway. There’s only one person in Siren’s Point who drives a vehicle so ridiculous.
I take a step toward the driver’s side, meaning to find out why Dryden Roy—whom I’ve never once spoken to, unless nods of greeting count—is at my house.
Until right now, I wouldn’t have even thought he knew where I lived.
Before I can get there, though, the passenger door opens, and a familiar silver-blond head pops out.
Oliver smiles at me, but the expression isn’t quite right, and discomfort tightens my stomach.
“Oli,” I greet him, rounding the hood and looking him up and down. What the hell is he doing with Dryden Roy, and where the hell is his own car?
“Hey, Nils, sorry,” he apologizes immediately, which only makes the worry grow. He sways toward me like he wants a hello kiss, but flushes and retreats with a furtive look toward the Porsche. The trunk pops audibly. Leaning down, he ducks his head back inside the cab. “Thanks for the ride.”
I follow him toward the rear of the car, taking the bag from him once he pulls it from the trunk.
His face reddens further. The moment the trunk is shut and we’re walking toward the front steps, the engine growls as Dryden reverses in an arc and leaves.
I watch him go until the taillights burn red and he turns off my drive.
Next to me, Oliver is humming, fingers restless against his side as he fidgets with the fabric on his pant leg.
“Wha-what-what-what ha-ha-happened?” I ask, still a little worried, even though he appears fine.
There’s not a hair out of place. In fact, he looks beautiful—cheeks pink with cold and embarrassment, blue-green eyes bright in the sun, and jaw shadowed with gold scruff. Holding up a hand, I beckon him inside.
“Nothing. Well, I had a flat tire. Shredded it, honestly. Luckily, they’re still within the warranty, though, so it shouldn’t be too big of a deal to get it replaced.
I don’t even have a spare, which I’d forgotten about until this morning when I needed one.
” He shakes his head, rolling his eyes at himself as he trails me to the kitchen.
“Dryden drove up while I was waiting for the tow. I called Wayne, but he said there was some sort of accident, so it took a little while for him to get there. Also, hi.”
He leans in and kisses me the way he’d wanted to do outside. Before he can pull away, I place a hand on his neck and keep him close enough to kiss him again. I missed him.
“I wasn’t sure if you were into the whole kissing-in-front-of-other-people thing, otherwise I would have greeted you outside,” Oliver explains.
I nod, having figured that was probably where his head was at. I don’t particularly want an audience when we’re together, but nor do I want him to hold back from small things like that. Besides, it was Dryden in the car, and that man doesn’t care about anything at all, certainly not us.
“You can,” I tell him now, watching his face closely when he nods.
There’s something wrong, and I’m not altogether convinced it only has to do with popping a tire.
Which, as a person who has been stranded on the side of the road before can attest, I know can be a massive frustration.
Oliver so rarely allows things to bother him, though.
He bends, not breaks, when pressure is applied to him.
Before he can move back away from me, I add, “What’s wrong? ”
He grimaces, letting me know I’m right in thinking it’s something beyond the excitement of the morning. I wait, rubbing a thumb against his neck, wondering if the real reason for the look in his eye is the anniversary party he went to last night.
“Pity party, as Dryden would say,” he tells me, grinning and rolling his eyes again.
“I just always feel…lacking when I’m around my parents, I guess.
Like I’m trying so hard, but the goal is unreachable.
And then this morning, with the stupid tire.
I didn’t even have a spare, which is idiotic, and I don’t know how to change it if I did!
What kind of person doesn’t know how to change a tire? ”
I frown at him. The kind of person who doesn’t know how to change a tire is someone who hasn’t been taught, who hasn’t learned. I slide my thumb up his neck and back down again. He leans into the touch, eyes on mine. After a second, he continues.
“I hate feeling like there are more things I suck at than things I’m good at.”
Raising my eyebrows at that, I shake my head.
Leaning forward, I kiss his cheekbone and press a hand to his chest, asking him to wait here.
He does, fingers tapping the counter as he watches me slip around the island and grab a notepad from the drawer.
Curiosity replaces some of the sadness in his eyes as he watches me write his name across the top.
When I add “skills” underneath, he chuckles and plucks the pen from my fingers.
I wait, giving him a second to write. Once he finishes, I frown when I see what he added.
Under skills, he wrote cooking. He also added a column titled “failure” under which he wrote: changing tires, talks too much, fixing the heat, laying floors (probably), hanging art so it’s level, choosing paint colors, tiling (probably), and changing the oil on the car.
I glance at him, exasperated. This is not the way this exercise was meant to go.
I cross off “talks too much” with a pointed look in his direction and then adjust the title of the failure column to “learning.” For good measure, I circle it a few times.
Then, I get to work. I write down every single thing Oliver is skilled at and quite a few things that aren’t skills, as such, but more things I appreciate about him.
Like how he mixes up song lyrics and sways his hips when he hums and how he’ll jabber away, never stopping until he literally can’t continue without taking a breath.
I write that he’s a good listener, a good lover, and a good friend.
His fingers stop tapping the counter as I go, flipping over the paper and continuing on the back when I run out of room.
I haven’t written this much since high school.
“Okay,” Oliver murmurs once I’m close to filling up the back side of the paper as well and getting ready to start a fresh one. “Okay, I get what you’re doing.”
Straightening, I set the pen down and use a finger to turn his chin until he’s looking at me. Do you, though? I think, stroking my thumb along his jaw. He sighs hard enough for me to feel it on my lips.
“You’re right. You’re right,” he repeats.
“I’m being ridiculous. There’s just something about spending time with my parents that shoves me back in time to when I was a kid.
I don’t know, it’s weird. Like a headspace I can’t escape, no matter how many miles I put between us.
I just always feel like I need to do better. That I’m not good enough.”
I nod, still brushing my thumb idly over his skin in what I hope is a soothing manner.
I know exactly what he’s talking about, since I often find myself sinking back into the sad, lonely little kid I was growing up, getting lost in the memories of how people used to treat me and forgetting that it’s not necessarily how they treat me now.
It’s a little worse in Oliver’s case, since most people I grew up with around here don’t openly mock me to my face the way his father apparently does.
“But you’re right,” he repeats, looking down at the piece of paper on the counter and smiling.
I relax to see it, recognizing the looser, more genuine version of the one he’d given me earlier.
Tugging him back in by his neck, I kiss him again.
Lord, but I missed him while he was gone.
Twenty-four hours have never felt so long as they did yesterday, rattling around this house—a space I love—and finding myself lonely with the silence I used to crave.
He smiles, wrapping an arm around my waist and leaning into the affection.
Another line to add to the list of things to love about Oliver—how easy he is to please.
A big part of the reason I never tried dating was the worry that I’d struggle to meet a standard, whether that be in bed or otherwise.
Oliver seems pleased with everything I give him, the only standard he claimed to have being someone who listens to him.
Which, luckily, is the one and only thing I can say I’m better at than everyone else.
“What should we have for lunch?” he asks, mouth tickling my ear and chin poking into my shoulder where he’s propped it. I smile, kissing his cheek again, happy that my songbird flew home in one piece.
Oliver slides closer, nose pressed against the back of my neck, breath tickling as he sighs. Usually, we sleep back-to-back, but tonight, he seems intent upon wrapping himself around me like an octopus. When his hand crawls up my chest, I smile and slide my fingers through his.
“Mm.” He hums, another noise that makes a grin spread across my face. Even in sleep, he’s trying to break out in song.
He settles after that, and I’m almost back asleep when he rolls his hips. Eyes opening once more, I squeeze his hand as his hard cock brushes against my lower back.
“Mm,” he repeats, the sound far different than it had been earlier when he was still dozing. Now, it sounds less like a noise produced while sleeping and more like a noise produced when horny.