Chapter 13Cody
13
Cody
Liem’s palms were scraped to hell, and I’d never seen anything worse in my life.
Which, unfortunately, wasn’t true. But it damn well felt like it.
I opened the alcohol swab and gently washed away the blood from the top of his hand. Then I opened another and ran it over the scrapes until they were relatively clean.
The longer I stared at them, the louder one particular thought circling my mind became until I had to voice it. “You’re an artist.”
The world needed what he created with them. I needed them.
Careful not to touch the angry slashes, I slid my hands under his and pulled his open palms closer, angling them toward the floodlight that streamed above the door to Bay Hall to check my work. The scrapes weren’t so bad up close, but they covered almost the entire palm of his left hand and a good bit of his right too. He must have tried to catch himself with his dominant hand, giving it the brunt of the fall.
Without thinking, I blew a soft, steady stream of air onto his left hand. His fingers twitched as he shifted uncomfortably.
“Sorry,” I murmured, frowning at the cuts. It had to sting. “You said you were fixed up, but these weren’t cleaned. Why?”
Liem cleared his throat before answering, “I didn’t show him.”
I grunted. “Might’ve been for the best. That dude was a bit twitchy. He also tried to shake my hand with a glove on.”
Liem’s light laughter sliced away the surface level of tension in my body, and I finally regained some small degree of clarity. Enough for the important questions, but not enough to let his hands go, apparently. “What happened?”
His eyes gleamed even in the dim light. “I flew.”
Leveling him with an unimpressed look, I tapped my finger on his wrist and then lightly strummed the hair tie that was still there. He watched the motion for a moment before speaking again. “I’m really not sure. I was headed to the BTB booth, and the next thing I knew, I was in the air. And then I wasn’t.”
I paused my strumming. “And the guy? Who was he?”
Liem furrowed his brow and immediately winced, causing my heart to nearly beat out of my chest.
I hated to see him in pain.
I slid one of my hands out from under his, letting his open palm fall to my thigh as I grasped his face. I brushed a thumb over his cheekbone and leaned closer to study the cut.
His breath fanned my face as he leaned into my touch as he explained, misinterpreting my question. “It was just some random townsperson who created my one-man pileup. I’m certain it was an accident. I don’t think the guy even noticed he’d sent me airborne.”
“Asshole,” I murmured, wishing I knew who the careless person who hurt Liem was. But it was probably better that I—and therefore Vinh—never found out. I pulled back just enough to meet his gaze, our noses nearly touching. “But that’s not who I meant. I meant the EMT, assuming he’s actually a professional.”
“Oh. Jeremiah.”
My chest grew impossibly tight just hearing Liem say the name with any ounce of familiarity.
I’d truly lost my mind.
“Yeah. Jeremiah ,” I repeated, feeling only a touch of mortification at the petty way I’d said it.
If I thought Liem’s eyes had been twinkling before, they were practically live fireworks now. “Do you have something to say, Cody?”
I grunted again. “He’s not a very good EMT. Was he volunteering or something?”
Amused, Liem shrugged. “I couldn’t say.”
Good.
His expression veered toward concern as he asked, “Did you want to tell me what happened before you made it to the gazebo? You didn’t seem yourself.”
We’d been talking in hushed tones up until this point, the atmosphere of the partially lit alley stairwell naturally demanding it. That, paired with our positions, me idly stroking Liem’s face and his hand cradled in mine, had the moment feeling unbearably intimate.
But I didn’t want it to end.
I was basically holding Liem, given how close we were. Or he was holding me. I really wasn’t sure; I just knew that this was something… else. Something more.
He was smaller than me, but so much more vital, his spirit and energy brighter than anything I’d ever known.
Forcing a deep breath into my lungs, I groaned as I realized my mistake. Wood pencils, charcoal, salty sea air. Had he always smelled like that? It was like the embodiment of deliverance and nostalgia edged with just enough reality to make it painful.
“Cody,” he said, his voice as breathless as I’d ever heard it, but I couldn’t look.
I shouldn’t.
My body was fully on board, attuned and engaged to everything that Liem was.
But that same body had abandoned me in the worst ways recently, and my mind had done nothing to prevent it.
Like a fucking coward, I shut my eyes and rested my head against his shoulder, finding his skin soft and warm.
It grounded me enough to lay myself bare.
“I had a panic attack ordering a frappe, Liem.”
He circled his arms around my neck, then traced a finger lightly down my back. I let myself have that for just a moment, then shuddered as I pulled back. “Don’t hurt your hands. Please, just….”
I felt bereft, something almost like grief overtaking me as I cradled his hands again and rested them on top of my thighs. When I raised my gaze to his, I had to swallow thickly at the absolute compassion I found there before I could speak again.
He was so good at that. At being.
“And just now,” I continued, my gaze tracing the three bandages that didn’t seem like enough and then over the contours of his face, “I couldn’t even walk through the crowd without losing my mind. Losing myself . I’m just…,” I trailed off and had to force a swallow past the lump in my throat again before finishing my thought. Before giving him the truth. Bravery abandoned me as I looked down at our hands instead of at his face when I finally confessed what had been rattling around my mind for a long, long time. What had taken root. “I’m no good.”
Liem’s sharp intake of breath had my eyes shooting up, worried he was in pain. When I saw his distress, I was consumed with the ironic need to assure him that it was okay. It was okay that I was messed up. That I, at my core, was nothing.
That I’d accomplished nothing. That for so long, possibly forever, I’d pretended that I was or I could or would be something .
His eyes held no more sparkle or fireworks, both replaced with a watery sheen. I’d done that to him. I reached out and traced the line of his cheekbone again with my fingertips so slowly that minutes or hours could have passed without my understanding or acknowledgement of them.
But facts were facts.
I went to Bay Hall to look for a job but had shown up in a ratty tank running on fumes after days of little to no sleep.
I’d been primed for some sort of episode, and I’d had one.
Then I’d decided to go back to school, thinking such a mature decision would get me on track. But when I reviewed the classes I’d already completed, it’d painted a mortifying picture. Based on the credits I’d already earned, it truly seemed like I’d posted the college’s course listings on a wall and thrown darts at them to choose which ones to take.
The consequences of that meant that it would take longer to finish a degree than it should.
And then there were the past six months of my life. And Austin.
Stable, reliable Austin, who had big dreams and a plan. The guy who had a set day for laundry and for calling his mother, who, on paper, should have been my perfect counterpoint.
There was nothing really wrong with him. I was the issue.
And these feelings? The possessiveness and longing to be near Liem? I wasn’t responsible enough to care for such a gift.
I didn’t deserve it.
Liem cupped his hand over mine where it was tracing his jaw and took a deep, heavy breath as he whispered, “I don’t know what to do or say to make you see that all this—” He paused as he ran his fingertips down the back of my head and tapped the base of my skull. “—all that is happening right now inside here? It’s all a lie .”
His dark-brown eyes were so earnest, so intense in their sincerity that it took everything in me to ask what I wanted to know instead of doing something reckless.
“All of it? Is all of it a lie?” I asked, my voice wavering.
Liem’s hand stilled on the back of my neck, and he rubbed circles there with his thumb as he drew in a deep breath. “No. I hope it isn’t.”
My thoughts were scattered to the wind already when his hand on the back of my neck stopped moving before he withdrew completely, pulling away and leaving only cold behind.
I’d never felt anything worse in my life.
Which, as before, I knew wasn’t true. I gazed up at Liem again. The warm glow of the building’s security lights shone on his disheveled, midnight-black hair, the point of his chin, and his brown eyes that were so dark but usually so alight with mischief.
Nothing had ever been so beautiful.
No one was like this. No one was like Liem.
And deep in my soul lay the truth that nothing so precious should ever risk becoming tarnished.
I slid my hands up his thighs all the way to his hips, and my voice was rough and stilted as I asked, “Can I show you some truth?”
Liem’s eyes darkened, and his mouth opened, but no response came from it. My chest ceased expanding until, with a stuttering breath, he nodded.
On the next heartbeat, I had him in my lap.
And then I breathed.
I breathed everything that was him.
I imagined.
I hoped.
And when he shifted in my lap just so, pulling a gasp from me, I desired .
I desired even more fiercely than I had in any moment in time before this one, if time even existed before I held Liem Lott in my arms.
A racking shiver overtook his body, and I ran my hands up his torso, every one of my nerves lit like sparklers when my palms grazed over his nipple piercings.
“ Cody ,” he rasped as he arched his back and ground against me with such perfect friction that I was set on fire.
I feared nothing of me would remain after this.