Chapter 14 — Under The Blanket
Under The Blanket
The Madden house was four doors down in the summer circle, close enough that I could hear laughter through the open windows before I reached the porch.
That should have made it feel normal.
It had been normal for years. The Maddens were part of the old lake rhythm: porch lights, screen doors, damp towels over railings, Melanie feeding half the circle because she cooked like hunger was a personal insult, Patrick waving me in without asking why I was there, Gavin making some smartass comment from whatever couch he had claimed, Reese somewhere in the middle of it all with that bright, open warmth that made people forget she had plans.
Tonight, I wasn't forgetting a damn thing.
I had a bottle of wine in one hand and the weight of the last few days under my skin.
Kiki. Shay. Tatum. Penny. Four lines crossed.
Four women I loved in ways that had stopped being theoretical.
Reese and Eden had rooms at my house now, not because of sex, not because they had to earn anything, but because the house had become less mine every day and somehow more honest for it.
Reese had asked me to come over for Photo and Video Night.
That sounded harmless.
So did a campfire, a county fair, a party, and breakfast.
I was learning to respect harmless.
Patrick opened the door before I knocked twice. He wore a faded Colts shirt, bare feet, and the easy grin of a man who had known me long enough to treat my arrival as logistics instead of an event.
"Luke. Thank God." He took the wine from me and clapped me on the shoulder. "Melanie found the old projector. I made the mistake of saying, 'How hard can it be?' and now the house is judging me."
"The house has standards."
"The house has a lot of cords and no mercy." He stepped back, waving me in. "Come on. Reese said if I touched anything else, I'd be removed from the process."
"Smart woman."
"Terrifying woman. But yes."
The Madden house smelled like popcorn, lake air, old photo boxes, and something cinnamon-heavy that Melanie had probably pulled from the oven because she considered nostalgia incomplete without snacks.
The family room had been turned into a small museum of summer evidence.
Plastic bins sat open on the floor. Photo albums were stacked on the coffee table.
A projector faced the blank wall where the TV usually lived.
A tangle of cords ran across the carpet in a pattern that suggested Patrick had already lost a war.
Melanie looked up from the coffee table with a remote in one hand and reading glasses on top of her head.
"Whitaker," she said, as if I were late to a shift. "Perfect. Tell my husband the yellow cord doesn't go into the red port."
"I told you I was providing moral support," Patrick said.
"You were providing danger."
Gavin Madden was sprawled in the armchair with one ankle on his knee and the lazy grin of a man prepared to enjoy his father's technical defeat. "I offered to help."
"You said we should stream it from somebody's phone," Melanie said.
"Because I live in this century."
Nora drifted through from the kitchen with a soda, earbuds around her neck, and the bored-but-listening expression of a younger sister who would pretend not to care until the first embarrassing clip. "If there are baby bath videos, I'm leaving."
"There aren't baby bath videos," Reese called from the hallway.
Then she appeared, and my ability to follow the cord conversation took a clean step off a cliff.
Reese Madden looked like summer had decided to become a woman and cause problems. Glossy brown hair loose around her shoulders.
Honey-brown eyes bright enough to make the room feel warmer.
She wore soft shorts and a fitted tank the color of a peach sunrise, casual enough for family night and fitted enough to make my mouth go dry when she crossed the room.
She hugged me like she had hugged me a hundred times.
That was the camouflage.
Her body pressed full against mine. Her arms locked around my neck. Her face tucked against my throat for one extra breath, long enough that I felt her smile against my skin.
"You came," she said.
"You invited me."
"I did." She pulled back, but her hands stayed on my shoulders. "Very intentionally."
There it was.
Warm. Sunny. Dangerous.
Patrick said something about the projector. Melanie told him not to touch the remote. Gavin laughed. Nora threatened to document the failure. Reese kept looking at me like everyone else in the room was part of the set dressing.
I fixed the projector because apparently that was my role in this family.
Patrick praised me like I had split an atom.
Melanie handed me a plate with popcorn, cookies, and one of Reese's s'mores bars still soft in the middle.
Gavin found the first tape. Nora claimed she was staying for exactly ten minutes.
Nobody asked why Reese sat beside me on the sectional when there were six other places to sit.
Nobody asked why her bare thigh pressed against mine.
Nobody asked why her hand found my forearm every time she laughed.
That was the problem with being trusted.
The first video came up crooked, then steadied into old lake footage.
Sun-flare off the water. Kids running across docks.
Patrick younger and thinner, holding a fishing pole while Gavin, maybe eight years old, tried to convince everyone he had caught something enormous and invisible.
Melanie behind the camera, laughing. Nora a toddler in a sunhat, chasing bubbles on the lawn.
Then Reese.
Younger Reese in a yellow swimsuit, hair wet, face turned toward the camera for half a second before she looked past it.
At me.
I was in the background, younger, leaner, shirtless on the dock with a towel over my shoulder and absolutely no idea that a girl on the lawn had gone still because I had walked into frame.
"Oh, look at that," Melanie said softly. "I forgot how much you used to trail after Luke."
"I didn't trail," Reese said.
Gavin snorted. "You trailed. You orbited. It was a whole gravitational situation."
Reese threw a pillow at him. He caught it one-handed and looked pleased with himself.
On screen, younger Reese followed me down the dock with a bottle of sunscreen in one hand and a face so open it hurt to look at now.
She said something the old camera didn't catch.
I turned. Smiled. Bent so she could smear sunscreen on the back of my shoulder with the solemn concentration of a child given sacred responsibility.
The room laughed.
I didn't.
Reese's hand slid over my forearm, light as a thought.
"You're doing the math," she murmured.
I looked at her.
She kept her eyes on the screen, mouth curved like innocence had always been her favorite disguise.
"Yeah," I said quietly.
"Good."
The tape kept rolling. Reese at twelve, handing me a towel.
Reese at fourteen, sitting beside me on the dock while everyone else swam.
Reese at sixteen, laughing too hard at something I had said while a storm rolled across the lake behind us.
Frame after frame of her near me. Looking at me. Finding me. Trusting me.
Wanting me, though I had not let myself call it that.
Not then.
Now, her thigh pressed against mine, warm and bare under the edge of her shorts, and the years rearranged themselves in my head.
Patrick pointed at the screen. "That storm knocked power out for two hours. Reese wouldn't go upstairs until Luke checked the hallway."
"It was dark," Reese said.
"It was twilight," Gavin said.
"I was emotionally sensitive."
"You were making Luke walk you around like a security detail."
Reese leaned into my side. "He was very good at it."
Everyone laughed.
I looked down at her.
She looked up at me through her lashes, honey-brown eyes warm, bright, and not remotely joking.
The past had not been innocent.
I had just been looking at it from the wrong side.
***
The room got darker one lamp at a time.
Nora lasted longer than her threatened ten minutes, mostly because Melanie found a clip of Gavin wiping out on a kneeboard and Nora decided history deserved her attention.
Gavin defended himself badly. Patrick opened the wine.
Melanie tucked her feet under her on the loveseat, smiling at the wall like every flickering frame was a small private miracle.
Reese reached behind us for a blanket.
It was an old quilt, soft from a hundred washes, patterned in faded blues and yellows. She shook it out over both our laps with the casual skill of a woman doing something completely normal.
Nothing about the look she gave me was normal.
"Cold?" she asked.
"Not even close."
Her smile widened. "Shame."
She tucked the edge of the blanket between the couch cushion and my hip. Her fingers brushed my thigh and lingered there, hidden from the room.
On screen, the Bell Fourth of July picnic played out in grainy sunshine. People carried coolers. Kids chased each other with water balloons. Somebody off camera shouted about the floating dock.
Patrick laughed. "That was the year the dock sank."
"Because somebody overloaded it," Melanie said.
"It was a community effort."
Reese's hand moved under the blanket.
Slow at first. Up my thigh. Back down. A lazy, almost absent stroke that would have looked like nothing if anyone could see it. Nobody could. The quilt covered us from waist to knee, and the projector light kept every face turned toward the wall.
I kept my eyes on the screen.
My body didn't.
My cock started to harden against my zipper, and Reese noticed because of course she noticed. Her hand paused, then slid higher with a confidence that made my breath catch.
"Luke," Patrick said.
I nearly died.
Reese's fingers stopped an inch from disaster.
"Yeah?" My voice came out almost normal. I deserved an award.
"Didn't you pull the Bishop girls back in when the dock went under?"
"Mostly the cooler," I said. "The girls could swim. The cooler was helpless."
Melanie laughed softly. "That cooler had half my desserts in it."
"Then I was a hero."