Sleigh Ride (Minnesota Christmas Book 2) (17 page)

“You live in the country, and you seem to have ample land. Couldn’t you get one?”

Arthur laughed. “The expression
eat like a horse
doesn’t come from nowhere. They take more feed in the winter too, and we have more winter in Logan than most, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Between that and vet bills—hell. Even without a horse I’m a little concerned about how things are going to roll after the first of the year.”

The mill—Arthur’s job. Gabriel felt foolish for forgetting. “It’s a temporary shutdown, as I understand.”

“Yes, but if demand stays down, they’ll lay people off. If I’d have switched to an indoor job like Paul, I’d be better set up, but I didn’t, and now I’m stuck. I’ve only been there five years, and there’s plenty of guys ahead of me.”

The news sent Gabriel reeling. That Arthur might lose his job was sobering, but there was so much more to consider. “The mill is the largest employer in town. If it reduces staff or worse, closes, what would happen to Logan?”

Arthur touched Gabriel’s leg and sought out his hand to lace their fingers together. “None of that. The mill isn’t closed, only shut. There’s the mines too.”

“But we’re not on any deposits. People would have to drive so far.” A terrible thought occurred to Gabriel, and he turned to Arthur in alarm. “
You
wouldn’t work in the mines, would you?”

“Are you kidding? Those are union jobs, with an apprenticeship and everything needed to get in. Plus, like you say, it’s not next door. Which is just as well as far as I’m concerned. I prefer my land not all ripped up, thanks.”

That was a relief. Gabriel didn’t want Arthur in a mine. “I keep hearing talk about vacation developers, but it never seems to happen. Which is too bad, because if it
did
, the mill wouldn’t be in trouble. All that construction for cottages and businesses.”

“The mill won’t be in trouble forever. People still need lumber. It’s doing well overall, the industry—an ebb and flow at our local operation.” He turned the truck down a lane. “Here we are. The Peterson Place. And look—there’s Shakey, come to greet us.”

Indeed, a large black horse with a thick, wavy mane sauntered toward the fence that lined the road and led up to an open red barn. A gray stood in the far end of the pasture, uninterested in their approach. Arthur parked by the house, waving at an older gentleman with a stooped back and shuffling gait as he came toward the truck.

“Hey there, Gary.” Arthur indicated Gabriel, then the farmer. “Gary, this is Gabriel Higgins, Logan’s library director. Gabriel, this is Gary Peterson, my high school shop teacher turned tree farmer.”

Gabriel extended his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Peterson.”

“Aye-yep,” Gary said with a curt nod and a kind, wrinkled smile.

“Gabriel’s coming with me today to take Shakey on his run.” Arthur spoke loudly, but even so Gabriel could tell Mr. Peterson strained to hear. “You gonna be around, or you heading into town?”

“Oh, I’ll be around.”

Arthur patted him on the shoulder in a manly gesture, yet managed to keep it gentle enough not to knock the frail man over. “You keep your coffeepot on for us then, and we’ll sit with you a bit after, eh?”

“Aye-yep,” Gary agreed, smiling at them in a vague, weary way as they made their way to the barn.

“He’s getting on in years,” Arthur said to Gabriel as they walked. “Can’t hear for shit, can’t really see, though he still drives a car—which he shouldn’t. My dad comes and gets him when he’s feeling good enough to do so, but since I got laid off I’ve been taking care of getting him groceries and so on. He should go to the home, but he doesn’t want to leave his animals, and he’s too proud anyway. So we do what we can.”

Gabriel smiled over his shoulder at the farmhouse. “That’s my favorite thing about small towns. It doesn’t always work that way—God knows I lived in the part where they close ranks around anyone too different—but sometimes they do this. Give people dignity and understanding at a time when they need it.”

“I hated Duluth, but I miss it sometimes too. I wish Logan weren’t so far removed, or that we had a little bit more here. I wish the vacation construction would happen so we’d get the frou-frou coffee shops and antique stores and knickknack places full of moose and pine stuff and jokes about
da range
. Wish there were more jobs, good ones, so people didn’t have to struggle so hard. But if wishes were horses, etcetera.” He sighed and put his hand on the barn door, then turned his head to waggle red eyebrows at Gabriel. “All right. You ready to see your sleigh, Mr. Elf?”

“Yes, Santa,” Gabriel replied.

Arthur pushed open the doors.

The sleigh sat in the middle of the shed, gleaming red with gold accent swirls to match the gold-painted rails. They weren’t gold, Gabriel realized upon closer inspection, but a goldish-yellow. A matching gold cushion graced the seat, with a red with white fur-lined throw rug pooled in a corner.

“We’re going to hang some evergreen around the edges, maybe some red bows, come the fundraiser. I have to train with the bells pretty soon too, get the horses used to it. Me too. I think it turned out good though, the restoration.”

“It’s
beautiful
.” Gabriel ran a hand down the front. “How much of this did you do?”

“A lot more than I ever planned. It was pretty much wrecked when I got to it.” He gestured to the side nearest them with a grimace. “Had to redo this whole panel—took me four tries, because I had to bend the wood, see, and I snapped three before I realized I had to soak it first. Thomas and I about lost our minds getting that figured out. And by figured out, I mean I watched a YouTube video.”

“It’s exquisite, Arthur. It truly is.” Gabriel couldn’t seem to stop touching it. He loved the idea of Arthur working with Thomas on the project. “You’re wasted in logging. You should be a carpenter.”

Arthur snorted. “I better marry a sugar daddy first, because I ain’t ever gonna make a living being a hobby carpenter in Logan, Minnesota. And unless I want to build houses—which there’s not much of that going on—I’d better hope to keep on at the mill.” He swatted Gabriel lightly on the butt. “You want to wait here or come with me while I get Shakey?”

Gabriel elected to go along, and he enjoyed collecting the animal from the pasture, watching the horse interact with Arthur, because they were obviously good friends. Gabriel was sad Arthur didn’t have horses of his own, as sad as he was Arthur couldn’t be a carpenter who fixed things on the side.

You could be his sugar daddy. You could earn enough money for the two of you in Logan if you kept finding grants. Even if you didn’t, you and your pile of savings could do a lot. You have enough to keep horses and let Arthur spend the day in the shed building things until he made a business take off.

The thought echoed in his head as they hitched Shakey to the sleigh and brought it out into the yard. As he climbed into the seat with Arthur beside him, Gabriel imagined Arthur’s cabin and the field behind, of riding the sleigh there on a day after they both came home from work. Maybe learning to ride himself and taking a trail. He tried telling himself he was foolish, that they’d barely been dating a day, and technically this was their first real date since calling each other boyfriend—thoughts of cohabitation and who would be the breadwinner were clearly out of line.

And yet as Arthur called out to Shakey, cussing as he screwed up his driving, pulling Gabriel closer when he was on a long stretch, all Gabriel could think of was how right this felt, how happy he was with Arthur, how he never wanted it to end. He wanted to ride the sleigh to Corrina’s place and have dinner and play with Thomas and listen to Big Tom tell stories. He wanted Arthur, and Arthur’s family.

As he realized how deeply he felt, how invested he’d become, he tensed—and Arthur noticed.

“Everything okay?”

Gabriel decided to lay it all on the line. “It is. Too much so. I…like this. Being with you. And all I ever do is mess up relationships.”

“I haven’t done them at all, outside of you. I wouldn’t know if you messed anything up. I’d just think it was normal.”

The ride was so peaceful—snow-dusted trees dropped wisps of powder on them as Shakey jogged slowly along the tree line. “I came here because I believe in small-town libraries and wanted to do outreach in a community like the one I grew up in, but I also figured I’d never meet anyone here, and I wanted it that way. I was done dating, done feeling awkward and getting my hopes up only to have them dashed.”

“So you hadn’t been with anybody for eighteen months? No wonder you were so wound up.”

Gabriel swatted him on the arm, but without any heat. “Not eighteen months. More like six. I hooked up sometimes in the Cities when I went to see Alex.”

“Who’s Alex?”

“She was my best patron at the Bloomington Library, a friend from college too. She has three kids and stays at home, but she has a PhD in English literature, and we talk books a lot. We chat on the phone and Skype, and she’s always after me to come down. She wants to come up for the fundraiser, if the weather holds.”

“That’d be all right. I want to meet your friends.” He flicked the reins lightly. “Speaking of. Frankie and Marcus want to have us over for dinner tomorrow night. Sound good to you?”

“So long as we’re still picking out a Christmas tree sometime this weekend too.” He slouched down to rest his head on Arthur’s shoulder. “Can we get two? I don’t have much in the way of decorations, but I’d like to have a tree at my place.”

Arthur kissed his hair. “We’ll get you a tree.”

They did that after they were done visiting with Gary. He came out when they were rubbing Shakey down, and they all sat around the kitchen table for a good hour, chatting about town, about the mill, about the library fundraiser. Arthur tried to get Gary to go into Logan for dinner with them, but he declined, and eventually it was the two of them in the truck, heading for a patch of forest on Arthur’s land, where they cut down a pair of trees. They left Gabriel’s in a pot of water in the garage with plans to decorate it Sunday afternoon before they went to dinner with Frankie and Marcus, then went to Arthur’s house.

Arthur had a mishmash of decorations, some of them made by Frankie and Paul last year, he explained. Arthur told Gabriel the full story of Frankie getting stranded, how they found him in the house like Goldilocks, how he and Marcus bristled around each other until they gave up and started fucking.

“Same as us, you mean?” Gabriel hung a yarn ornament on a bough and bumped Arthur on his hip.

Arthur bumped him back. “Not like us exactly. Frankie’s pretty damn vanilla. Marcus got him riled up during the storm, but let me tell you. I love Frankie, but I would get so bored fucking him. I’d always be holding back.”

Gabriel glanced at him. “Do you do that with me?” He hesitated, and Gabriel put down the ornament he was holding and turned to face Arthur. “You do. How? What aren’t you doing that you wish you were?”

Arthur held up his hands, embarrassed. “It’s not like that. But I guess I should confess I do prefer sex pretty kinky. I would try about anything. I don’t
have
to try everything, but—with Frankie I can see where the fences are, and they’re too close for me.”

“What do my fences look like?”

“That’s just it. I can’t find them. I know they’re there, but…well, I’m not bored.” Arthur picked up the ornament Gabriel had set down and hung it on a low branch. “The consensual non-con isn’t something I’ve ever done before, and I really dig it.”

Gabriel paused, half-blushing, half simply confused. “Consensual non-con?”

“Yeah. You consent to play a scene where you don’t just surrender control, you want me to
take you
. Rape fantasy, basically. Didn’t know I had that kink. Somebody showing me I have a new kink is pretty damn sexy.”

There was nothing half about Gabriel’s blush now. “I’ve never acted on it before. I always thought that was shameful, to want that.”

“Why? It makes all kinds of sense given your background, though I like to think you’d get off on it even if you’d had happy, perfect parents who supported you all day long. Non-con is about having the choice taken away from you, which when it’s actual rape it’s no good, but when you’re watching porn or playing, it’s about freedom from shame. For me it’s permission to
be
bad. I’m the one plowing through your
no
. Really trippy. Also sobering, you trusting me to be that person for you.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.” Gabriel rubbed his arms, standing back to admire their work. “Also, this is a strange conversation to have while trimming a tree.”

Arthur laughed. “Yeah, initially I had this plan to deck out in leather and find more kinky layers in you, but I gotta admit, I’m kinda feeling like a cuddle in front of the fire tonight.”

Gabriel ducked his head as he smiled. “I’d enjoy that too.”

They made dinner together, pork chops, instant mashed potatoes and a salad, and they drank beer from bottles and watched TV with a fire going, until they fell asleep on each other. Eventually Arthur put out the fire and led Gabriel upstairs, where they did have sex—but it was languid and easy, ironically the very vanilla Arthur had criticized earlier.

And yet it felt more intimate, more intense than their explosive rounds on Gabriel’s couch and bed, even more so than what they’d done the night before.

C
hapter Eighteen

A
s he lay in bed with Gabriel Sunday morning, Arthur got a text from Frankie saying he had to cancel dinner. Marcus’s mother had taken a fall, and while she was all right, Marcus’s spirits were down, and he wasn’t in the mood for company.

“I wish I could have known her when she was well.” Gabriel rested his head on Arthur’s naked shoulder as Arthur tapped out a reply. “There were two librarians between myself and her, but that library is mostly hers, at its core, and it shows. She and I wouldn’t have always seen eye to eye on content, and it’s been a challenge to bring a library out of the 1970s and into the 2010s, but she had a good heart, and she served her community well.”

Arthur stroked Gabriel’s hand. “It was her whole life. She wanted the library to be the heart of the town, and it usually was. Which was why it drove me nuts I couldn’t fit in there.”

“Libraries are about information,
all
the information. Schools don’t have libraries anymore. They have media centers. I wish I could figure out a way to get tablets for the library, ones patrons could check out.”

Arthur snorted. “They’d all be stolen in a week.”

“There would have to be some kind of system in place to accommodate that. Schools use them now in some places. There are workarounds: locator chips, full registrations, signed consent forms making it clear to the borrower they’re responsible for the tablet, and should it fail to be returned, the authorities would be involved. Even so, there will be damage and loss, but there are ways to mitigate it. The payoff is so huge, it’s worth it. Can you imagine Thomas experiencing an iPad?”

“Hell,
I
haven’t experienced an iPad.”

“Adults count too. It’s not the same as having your own, but there’s huge cultural capital to having them around. I hate how small-town kids feel like bumpkins when they go to a big city or to college. I can’t erase all of that, but at least they won’t get sniggered at because they don’t know how a tablet works because the idea is a luxury beyond their imagining. They’ll have read ebooks because they can check out Kindles and read them on the tablet apps. They know how to stream movies because they’ve done it. They can be excited about being in a richer culture because they want to finally experience what they knew virtually, not fear it because it’s so alien to them they don’t know how to cope.”

Arthur sat swimming in the images Gabriel painted, remembering his own bumpkin experiences, imagining Thomas getting to leapfrog over them. All because of how lucky Thomas was to have this librarian. His chest hurt, but in a good way, as if his heart swelled so greatly it threatened the walls of his body. “Oh my God, Gabriel. I love you.”

They both went still, and the cabin itself seemed to hold its breath.

The pain in Arthur’s chest shifted as he scrambled to undo his clumsiness. “I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have—I mean—” Words tumbled over themselves in his head, the need to retract battling with the truth that this was, actually,
exactly what he felt
. He glanced at Gabriel, saw the vulnerability there, the wariness…and the hope.

For Arthur Adam Anderson, it was all over.

He turned to the man who wanted to keep the people of Logan from being bumpkins and stroked his face, his naked shoulder. “I love you, Gabriel Higgins. I hope that’s okay.”

Gabriel didn’t move, but his wary expression melted in a rapid thaw, until only the hope and vulnerability remained.

Arthur bussed Gabriel’s cheek. “I love you,” he said again.

Gabriel’s gray eyes pooled with tears, and he touched Arthur’s face. “I—I lo—” The tears spilled over, and he bit his lip.

Arthur broke, kissed the tears, those trembling lips. “Shh. I know, baby. I know.”

Gabriel buried his face in Arthur’s neck. He seemed so frail, and his whole body trembled. “I keep trying not to, because it’s too soon, and I worry it’s just because I’m so lonely.”

The broken pieces of Arthur cracked in half again. “Oh, baby, no.” He kissed his face, his neck, nuzzled those wonderful fuzzy ringlets. “I mean—don’t be lonely. Don’t be scared. It’s only me.”

Now Gabriel wept openly, little sobs catching his words as they tumbled out in his despair. “I always mess things up. But I want this so much.
So much.
”

Arthur wished he owned the world, so he could lay it down at Gabriel’s feet. Nothing else could possibly convey how much he wanted this man. He settled for stroking his face, kissing more of the tears. “I want it too. I always thought I didn’t want something like this, but I think it was the same as the iPads. I wasn’t good enough to have them. I wasn’t good enough to have somebody in my life. Somebody like you.”

Gabriel’s sobs became great big ugly barks—Arthur captured his lips and swallowed them, gentling him with his kiss, his body.

They made love in a way Arthur hadn’t with anyone before. For one, he’d never have called it that before Gabriel, but that was what this was. Their kisses and touches were both more frenzied and more controlled than anything he knew how to describe. Everything was so intense, and yet some invisible barrier softened the world into a beautiful pastel haze. All Arthur’s censors were off. He rubbed on Gabriel’s nipples like a hungry bear, not just nipping but biting, gripping Gabriel’s hip hard enough to leave a bruise, and yet even when they were rough, their movements blended like a symphony. Had he been high, Arthur would have imagined they had fused their spirits somehow—hell, he half imagined it sober. They came together in frenzied waves, crashing and merging into something beyond themselves.

Something Arthur never wanted to let go of.

When they were spent, they drifted to sleep, though Arthur woke first and started breakfast. He wanted to make pancakes, but he was out of mix and didn’t know how to make them from scratch, probably didn’t have all the ingredients he needed. Which was dumb. It wasn’t as if cooking was hard, just annoying. Except now he was
more
annoyed he couldn’t make a nice brunch for Gabriel.

Gabriel was still dead to the world, so Arthur nipped into town, got his supplies and returned before Gabriel woke up. He sang along with Travis Tritt as he scrambled eggs, flipped pancakes, fried bacon. Beside him on the counter, French vanilla coffee drizzled into the carafe.

When Gabriel finally emerged on the stairs, wrapped in a blanket with his hair standing on end and hickeys down his neck, smiling shyly as his gaze met Arthur’s, Arthur smiled back.

He could get used to this.

He had the thought a lot over the next few days. Sunday afternoon they went to Gabriel’s house to put up the tree, after a stop at the hardware store to pick up some lights. When they saw how dismal the selection was, Arthur put in a call to his mother, who hustled over to Gabriel’s place with a plastic tub full of glass balls and tinsel and homemade ornaments Arthur hadn’t seen since 1987. He embarrassed himself more than once getting sentimental over painted macaroni art, and Gabriel laughed until he cried over the heavy clay ornament Arthur had made in preschool. It had to weigh a full pound, and while it was supposed to be a face, Arthur had gotten mad at the paint and done the whole thing brown, which resulted in it looking like a smiling lump of poop. Arthur had tried to stick it in the bottom of the tub, but Gabriel had pulled it right out, insisting it was going on the tree, that it would come out
every year
.

Gabriel didn’t seem to realize he’d just assumed he and Arthur would be putting a tree together next year at Christmas.

They were together every day the next week, staying with each other almost every night, rotating turns between houses. Corrina got into the habit of covering the last few hours of Gabriel’s shift at the library so he could go out with Arthur to exercise the horses before it got dark. When Gabriel ran out of food, Arthur went shopping for him, and when his laundry pile got big, he started a load—and fixed the loose bolt making the washer squeal on the final spin. He started fussing around the appliances at Gabriel’s place, fixing little things as he found them. When he discovered the huge stack of paperbacks in Gabriel’s closet, though, he took a trip into Eveleth, bought some nice hardwood, and got to work in his dad’s workshop, smiling to himself when he thought about how pleased Gabriel would be when he saw the finished bookshelf.

Gabriel kept showing him comics too, and when all his odd jobs were done, Arthur got into a habit of curling up with a volume on Gabriel’s couch, exploring new worlds. He liked
Watchmen
a lot, but
Swamp Thing
was great too. When he told this to Gabriel, he smiled and showed him a Wikipedia page of all of Alan Moore’s work, who it turned out was the guy who wrote all the volumes Arthur liked best. It also happened Gabriel owned all the Moore volumes from every series. For the first time in his life, Arthur couldn’t get enough of a library: Gabriel’s library.

Everything was so great Arthur wanted to pinch himself half the time. For as fiery as they had been together at the beginning of November, as December wore on, they were a graceful ocean. When Gabriel realized how much money Arthur had been spending on not only food but parts for his rental house’s appliances, he didn’t start a fight. But when Arthur lamented one afternoon how he didn’t know what to get anyone for Christmas, Gabriel shopped with him online and footed the bill, saying they could give the gifts together, and Arthur could pay him back by continuing to feed him.

Everything worked out: their daily schedules, whose house they stayed at when, what kind of sex they had at night, a quickie or a wicked game of Capture the Librarian. Arthur hadn’t trotted out all his toys yet, or even most, but he wasn’t worried about the introduction anymore. In fact, he was already planning ahead. They’d talked about trying out ropes too, enough that Arthur thought it might be time to go get himself some supplies.

He was at the hardware store buying some rope for the bedroom when he ran into Paul.

There wasn’t any question of Paul knowing what Arthur was doing, since they’d discovered the perfect weight and texture together, except it was equally obvious who Arthur was using rope on now—or hoped to. He started to let it go, like he could hide, then gave up and simply put it in his basket along with the carabiners and S hooks as he gave his friend an awkward smile. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself.” Paul stuffed his hands in his pockets and glanced around, though never into the basket. He let out a sigh. “So. I hear you and Gabriel are doing well.”

Arthur shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah. We’re…”
Amazing. In love. Having a Hallmark Christmas
. “We’re good.” He cleared his throat. “H-how about you?”

Paul’s sad smile tugged at Arthur’s heart. “I’m all right.”

He wasn’t. The same rumor mill which had undoubtedly kept Paul informed about Arthur and Gabriel’s relationship had kept Arthur abreast of Paul’s utter failure in that department. Arthur felt bad for his friend, but it wasn’t until this moment he realized how much it had to hurt Paul to have left Arthur because he wouldn’t commit to a relationship…and have Arthur fall into exactly the kind of relationship Paul had wanted, while he himself remained alone.

Arthur set the basket down and closed the distance between them, putting his hand on Paul’s arm. “I’m sorry.” When Paul turned away, Arthur touched his chin, stroking Paul’s beard with his thumb. “I am. I get it now. I was an ass. I was a shitty friend. An awful…God, I can’t even say boyfriend. Fuck buddy? You deserved better, Paul. I’m sorry I couldn’t be that for you.”

Paul averted his gaze. “It’s…rough. Watching you two.”

It hurt so much more to hear Paul say it out loud. “I’m so sorry. I wish…” What the hell did he say? That he’d break up and be miserable so they could be miserable together again? He wanted to help his friend, but he realized his existence right now only made things worse. He realized something else too, that the ache inside him wasn’t exclusively guilt. “Paul—we were shitty lovers, but we were good friends. I miss you. I miss you so much.”

Paul nodded brusquely. “I miss you too, you big idiot.”

Fuck this. Arthur pulled him in close in a big bear hug. “Come with us tomorrow night to Frankie and Marcus’s place. Have dinner. Be with us. We
all
miss you.”

“You don’t need some damn fifth wheel.”

“You’re
not
a fifth wheel. You’re one of our three. You’re our best friend. We’re going hunting this weekend, buddy—you, me and Marcus. And we’re gonna hunt you a man sometime too. The best damn one there is to find.”

Paul hugged him back, but still a little hesitantly. “You can’t go hunting with me. You’re practically living with Gabriel.”

“I can take a morning to go hunting with my best friend.” Though he did worry Gabriel wouldn’t see it that way.

Except it turned out to be a worry for nothing, because Gabriel wasn’t jealous at all. When they were exercising Shakey that afternoon and Arthur told Gabriel about the meeting with Paul and his invitations, Gabriel was relieved.

“I’m so glad you two are patching things up.” He snuggled in closer to Arthur in the sleigh. “All I ever hear about from people is how tight the three of you were, and I feel like I came between you. I’m glad he’s coming tomorrow night, and absolutely, you should go hunting on Saturday. If for no other reason than you’re all out of fresh venison.”

Gabriel brought over clothes for the whole weekend, but he also brought a toothbrush, razor and stick of deodorant he asked if he could leave in the bathroom, because it was easier. Arthur answered by giving him a drawer for his clothes and telling him they’d pick up any remaining laundry while they were in town, because his washer even fixed kind of sucked, and they might as well wash together.

We might as well live together
hung in the air, which no one would say because it was too soon.

What if we did?
hung in the air too. And it wasn’t heavy at all.

Gabriel was glad for Friday night to arrive, not only because of the dinner party at Marcus and Frankie’s place, but because he was ready to not go to the library until Monday morning, and it was all because of what the library board had christened
the doll business
.