The House on Hancock Hill (29 page)

“That’s not fair,” I managed. “You’re the one who wanted a clean break.”

“Of course I did,” Henry said, sounding hoarse. “As I walked down those steps of your place, I realized how successful your bakery was and how the people there loved you, and I thought: there is no room for me in his life. You had Tom and Daniel and Denny. You didn’t need me, not for what counts. I knew then I’d never be able to keep it casual. So I thought I’d make it easier on both of us.”

“Don’t you think you should’ve talked to me about that? Fuck, Mac, I was a wreck when you left.” I hadn’t noticed the slip until I saw his eyes dance with something close to a smile. It fell away quickly, though.

“Maybe.” He shrugged, but there was nothing easy about it; the anger was slowly returning. “I came back when I heard about your dad and the affair, because I was genuinely afraid it would destroy you. Only to find out you were taking your old boyfriend down to see your mom.” I opened my mouth to set him straight, but Henry barreled on, hardened again. “It doesn’t matter now. You were here for weeks, and I had to find out from Susie, whose aunt is in your baking class, that you were back.”

“You never answered my calls, and you never told me about Johnny beating you up and that was why Dad never brought me back here,” I nearly yelled, starting to lose it. Henry blinked at me, and I instantly knew this was news to him too.

“What?” he asked me softly. “I didn’t tell you about Johnny because I didn’t want it to mar our weekend together. The aftermath of that fight was the worst time of my life, and the last thing I wanted to do was think about that while I had you here with me. As for your father, Jay… I thought your Dad knew I… that I loved you.” He said the words like they hurt. “I thought he didn’t approve, and that’s why he kept you away. I never—I never told you because I knew what he meant to you. I didn’t want to tarnish that in any way. Fuck, I didn’t even know you were
gay
back then.” I couldn’t fault him for that, since I hadn’t known myself. “And I certainly had no idea he’d heard about what happened with Johnny.”

“What about Robby?” I burst out, because I was starting to shake and it felt like soon I’d fall apart. “Where do you get off telling me this when you’re
dating
someone?”

Bewilderment turned into full-blown confusion. “Who?”

Who? Seriously? “Robby O’Brien, site overseer, your
boyfriend
?”

“My….” Henry ran a hand over his hair, turned to the frozen river and then back to me. “Jesus, Jay. We went on three dates and that was
months
ago.”

I couldn’t process what he was saying, so I stood there gaping at him, the urge to laugh hysterically bubbling up my throat. My God, we’d both fucked this up, hadn’t we? When I remained silent, Henry went on. He sounded so tired.

“I just… want my life to go back to normal. I want things to return to the way they were before you came to Hancock at all.”

I staggered back like he’d punched me after all. If I’d been thinking rationally, I’d have known these were the kinds of things people say when they’re hurt and angry and scared, but I was so stung I nodded, turned, and left. I didn’t even utter the “fuck you” I wanted to. I’d been blaming myself for a lot of things over the past year, and I’d only recently begun to realize not everything was my fault. Not everything I’d been trying to shoulder since the age of nineteen was my responsibility, and I wasn’t going to be drawn back into that black hole.

B
Y
THE
time I reached my truck, lifting the long-cold chai off my roof, I realized I’d wanted Henry to call me back, but he hadn’t, so I drove away. As I turned left out of the parking lot, my headlights came on. The pull to go back became stronger. I gripped the wheel and put my foot down. I passed a gas station. I kept going for another two minutes and then, swearing, did a U-turn. By the time I filled up a gas can and headed back, it was dusk, and I nearly missed Henry trudging down the road about a mile from the bridge. I pulled up onto the shoulder, skidding a little in the snow, and reversed.

“Get in,” I said after lowering my window. “It’s getting dark and hypothermia sucks, trust me. I got gas for your snowmobile.”

Henry hesitated, but only briefly. I thought he snorted a laugh as he jogged easily toward my Silverado and climbed in.

The drive back seemed twice as long because of the tense silence, and I tried very hard to ignore the scent of cardamom filling the car as it mingled with the warm air blowing from the vents.

I had to bite my tongue so I wouldn’t start apologizing for having hurt him, because I knew, even if the conviction was as fragile as a newly hatched bird, I wasn’t the only one in the wrong here.

I parked a bit closer to the snowmobile and followed Henry out. He filled it up as I waited—for what, I didn’t know. There was no need for me to be here; he had headlights, and I knew he could make it home.

“Are you still with him?” Henry asked when I was becoming too cold for comfort and thinking about leaving.

The cold must’ve been slowing my brain down too, because all I said was, “Huh?”

Henry turned around. There was the smallest hint of a smile on his face. “Tom, your boyfriend. Are you still seeing him?”

“Oh,” I said. I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “That was all a misunderstanding. I told you back then we weren’t together like that.”

“But you did fuck him while he was there.”

I flinched at how the word sounded from his gentle mouth. “Yes, I did. And I did tell you I wasn’t a monk.” I bit my lip so I wouldn’t start explaining actions that were long in the past.

“You told me about Daniel, yes. You didn’t warn me I’d have to contend with a peacock strutting around like he owned you.”

I couldn’t help it, I laughed. It was such an accurate description of Tom. “He never went with me, Henry. He went back to Boston, and I went to Florida, and I haven’t seen him since.”

“Fucking
hell
.” Henry had been putting his gloves back on, but he threw them into the snow. Every piece of armor he had gathered around him fell away. Something raw and hurt crossed his features before he’d managed to hide it by putting his back to me.

“Henry,” I breathed, so quietly hardly anything more than the sheer longing in my voice could possibly reach him. Slowly, I moved around him, reaching for his shoulder with shaking fingers. A heart-wrenching second of indecision passed in which he squeezed his eyes shut, hands balling into fists, and then there he was, folding his huge arms around me. I melted into the embrace as if the cold really had frozen me while I’d been standing there, watching him. He murmured things into my hair, held me so close, then brought his hands up to cradle my face. His mouth found my eyelids and my temples, and all I could do was stand there and wait for him to find my lips.

I pushed him away, not getting farther than a few inches as he gazed down at me. The lights from the bridge behind us came on one by one like little ideas popping up.

“If we do this…,” I croaked. Where I found that shred of self-preservation, I didn’t know. The need to kiss him was so overwhelming, I could barely stand. “If we do this, that’s it. You tell me what you want from this, from
me
, and I’ll stop being an idiot, because I can’t….” I swallowed, and he held me tighter. On a whisper, I finished, “I can’t go through this past year again.”

Henry worked his fingers into my hair, sending sparkling shivers down my spine. “Me neither,” he mumbled against my temple, sounding as destroyed as I felt. His stubble grazed my skin. “God, Jay. I love you so fucking much.”

Afraid I’d start crying, I buried my face in his shoulder. He smelled so good. So lovely and familiar I wanted to close my eyes and stay there sheltered in his warmth forever. I clutched his back and I squeezed him tight as I whispered love in his ear.

Henry made a broken sound. “I’ll pick up the snowmobile tomorrow,” he said. “Take me home.”

H
OME
IS
where I took him: mine, not his. It wasn’t much, and it was temporary, my lease coming to an end in summer. Still, it was where I wanted to go. My little rented house with the patch of fenced yard had felt more like home to me than any place I’d lived in the last decade.

We didn’t make it to bed. Henry clutched me hard as soon as we were inside, and I bit at his mouth, both of us working through residual anger and the desperate relief of
finally
. We stumbled into the kitchen, and I turned in his arms, clutched the edge of the island, and moved my ass against his hips.

“You should… you should do it to me,” Henry said hoarsely against my neck, but I shook my head.

“I don’t have the patience to make it good for you. Fuck, Henry, just—”

“It doesn’t matter if it hurts me,” he said, but I clung to a last bit of sanity.

“I won’t do that, Mac, please—”

Quickly, he divested me of my clothes and then his own, barely taking the time to work me open with two fingers and vegetable oil. I heard him fumble with his wallet, heard the ripping of foil, and then he pushed into me without warning, without hesitation, sending me flat against the cold granite of the island until I felt the front of his thighs press against the back of mine. I cried out something between pain and ecstasy, and immediately Henry stilled, the exact opposite of what I wanted.

“Oh, my God, Jay, I’m sorry,” he told me brokenly, but I writhed sinuously against him.

“Don’t be. I like it. I want it.
Move
.”

With great care, he took my wrists and made me curl my fingers around the opposite edge of the island, and then he put his hands on my hips, pulled nearly all the way out and pushed back in again, his balls rubbing against mine.

“Jesus Christ,” he hissed. “You feel so good, my love. Brace yourself.”

He began to drive into me at a steady pace. First pain, and then pleasure, curled around my spine like a symphony, guiding me higher and higher until I knew I was going to come untouched, and I wasn’t ready.

Fighting it, my mouth dry as dust, I croaked, “No, no, not yet.”

“Oh God, Jason, please tell me I’m not hurting you,” Henry cried, faltering, and despite his words, I knew he was about to go still, so I pressed back.

“You’re not. Don’t you dare stop, just don’t let me come yet. Not yet.”

Like a vise, he curled his hand around the base of my cock, and I nearly tumbled over the edge, but he didn’t let me.

“Say when,” Henry groaned wetly against my shoulder. The new angle made him pound into that precious bundle of nerves with every thrust, and for a second, I opened my mouth, thinking I wouldn’t be able to speak, hear, or breathe ever again.

“With you,” I managed.

“Soon, love. You feel too perfect.” His tone belied the roughness of the fuck, and I realized that it
was
perfect. I needed the physical violence of it, while his words soothed the turmoil in my mind. All of a sudden, I couldn’t hold on any longer, and I knew even his grip wouldn’t be able to stop me now.

“Henry!” I yelled. His grasp eased. He pumped my cock, then drove forward hard and deep and stayed there, the pressure exactly what I needed, and together we launched into oblivion.

M
Y
BEDROOM
was small but cozy, the bay window catching even the weakest of sun rays that glittered off the Portage Canal at any time of year. Now, with the sharp white layer of snow, the last of it eased through my yellow curtains, casting the room in a honey hue. We managed a perfunctory shared shower before stumbling into bed, almost immediately falling asleep in a still-damp tangle, emotionally and physically drained as we were.

Near dawn, I awoke, teeth chattering a familiar tune.

“Power’s out,” Henry mumbled sleepily beside me, and the sound of his voice made me feel infinitely warmer. “I just tried the bedside lamp.” He leaned over, sliding a warm hand into my chilly one, and kissed me sweetly. “Does your fireplace work?” I nodded, overwhelmed. When I’d first opened my eyes, I had thought myself alone as always, and Henry’s presence was such a relief, it made me incapable of saying anything. He kissed me again, his eyes twinkling like he knew what I was thinking. Or maybe he was feeling the same things I was.

As Henry lit the fire, the blooming glow of it fell over his hair. The auburn of his curls changed color with every flicker of light, altering from gold to red and back again. The kindling caught easily, and when Henry rose to his feet, he caught me staring.

“Closet romantic, are you?” he asked, his grin a little bashful and exactly as I remembered it. I didn’t answer, just reached for him, my heart filling with joy when he came to me. Easy as breathing, we kissed until he pulled away a little.

“Gorgeous,” he murmured, tracing my face with his fingertips. “No bruises. I didn’t take the time to look before. God, Jay. I’m so sorry, about everything. I can’t believe—”

“Sh.” I pulled him into my arms and held him tight. “It wasn’t your fault. It was… I think I had to find some peace before I could deserve to be with you.”

“Jay—”

“It’s true,” I interrupted him. “And it’s okay. We made it.” I’d slipped into a T-shirt and boxers after the shower, and he caressed the clothes back off my skin. He kissed my shoulder, my collarbone, my neck, tender in stark contrast to what had happened downstairs. The clothes whispered to the ground, while at the same time, Henry made a request of me. It caused the blood to sear my veins.

“Mac,” I groaned. “We don’t have to—”

“You said I should tell you what I want.” He trailed his fingertips over my cheekbone and regarded me very seriously. “It’s what I want.”

“Okay,” I managed, and then unbelievably lapsed into nervous babble. “Okay, I’ll make it good. I’ll be careful, I won’t hurt you.”

Henry stopped me. “I know that,” he said softly, eyes heavy-lidded and hungry. I eased him onto his back and kissed a path down his sternum, making a small detour to take his right nipple into my mouth. Henry hissed, spread his hand against the back of my head, and held me in place for a moment before he tugged me up, burying his face into my neck.