Page 27 of Gap Control (Lewiston Forge #3)

Chapter twenty-two

Mason

T he sketch wasn’t going anywhere.

I’d been staring at it for ten minutes, pencil hovering just above the page. The lines were clean enough—shoulder, cheekbone, the edge of a glove—but every time I tried to move forward, something made my fingers freeze like I didn’t have permission.

I wasn’t blocked. I was bracing.

The charcoal smudged anyway when I shifted my wrist. I wiped my hand on the side of my jeans and leaned back in the kitchen chair, staring at the ceiling.

My phone rang.

Not buzzed. Rang. It was a real phone call from a real person. The number wasn’t in my contacts, but it had a Portland area code, and for some reason, I answered.

“Hello?”

“Is this Mason Ryker?”

The voice was feminine, sharp-edged but warm.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“This is Elena Vasquez. I run the Cornerstone Gallery on Exchange Street, here in Portland. A piece of your work recently came across my desk, and I’d like to invite you to bring in a few more sketches for review.”

I stared at the sketchbook in front of me.

“Uh. Sorry, I think you might have the wrong person.”

There was a pause, long enough for me to think I’d dodged a weird scam.

“You didn’t draw a hockey player mid-stride? Charcoal on cream, slightly unfinished on the left side?”

I swallowed. “Okay, that does sound like mine, but I haven’t submitted anything anywhere.”

“Then consider yourself lucky. The work speaks for itself.”

“How did you—?”

“I’m less concerned with how it got here and more concerned with whether you’ll let me see more of what you do in person.”

I leaned forward. The kitchen chair creaked under my weight. “You want to see more?”

“Yes. Tomorrow. That's Saturday, if you’re available. Informal. I like to meet the artists I’m considering. Helps me know whether to hang the work at eye level or near the bathroom.”

I blinked. “Saturday works.”

“Good. Bring ten to fifteen pieces, if you’ve got them. Nothing too polished—I’m more interested in line than finish. Emotion over perfection.”

“Right. Okay. Yeah. I can do that.”

“I’ll be there all afternoon. No appointment needed. Ask for me at the desk.”

She hung up without saying goodbye.

I stared at my phone, waiting for the call to evaporate from the call log as if it were a figment of my imagination. Thirty seconds later, the number was still there.

Elena Vasquez. Cornerstone Gallery. Saturday.

I stood up too fast and nearly knocked over the chair. The sketchbook hit the floor, and my pencil rolled under the stove.

I didn’t care.

I didn't have words for the sensation yet, but I knew I had to tell someone. I started typing on my phone:

Mason: You’re coming with me tomorrow. Wear something distracting so they don’t look at me.

TJ showed up less than twenty minutes after I texted him, no questions asked. He wore a sweatshirt two sizes too big and joggers that might’ve once been navy but had clearly lived a full, chaotic life. His hair was damp like he’d just sprinted through a car wash, and he offered me a granola bar.

“I brought sustenance. And vibes. What are we doing?”

It took me a moment. I had to remember how to talk like a normal person.

I pointed to the kitchen table, where my sketchbook sat open, two pages I’d never shown anyone facing upward.

TJ’s eyes flicked from the sketchbook to me, then back again. “Did the hockey gods finally send you a muse? Or did the caffeine hit weird today?”

“Elena Vasquez called me. Cornerstone Gallery. Portland.”

He blinked. “Wait. What?”

“She saw one of my drawings and wants me to bring more tomorrow.”

He blinked again. “Are you fucking with me?”

“Do I look like I’m fucking with you?”

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I flopped into a chair, still buzzing from adrenaline. “I think I might puke.”

TJ dropped the granola bar, crossed the room, and wrapped his arms around me from behind. His chin rested on top of my head. “You’re not gonna puke.”

“I might.”

“Okay, but you’re not gonna do it on the art. That stuff’s valuable now.”

I swatted at his arm without much conviction. “She said ten to fifteen sketches. Line over polish. Emotion over perfection. I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means you’ve got the goods. You’ve got emotion leaking out of your ears half the time. Just pick the ones that make you feel something.”

I tilted my head up to look at him. “You’re coming with me, right?”

“Do I look like the kind of fake boyfriend who’d miss a gallery debut?”

“It’s not a debut.”

“It’s close enough. I’ll even wear a shirt with buttons if it helps your street cred.”

I smiled. “I told you to wear something distracting.”

“Oh, I will. I’ll be so distractingly handsome they’ll forget to look at the walls.”

He grinned at me, totally unselfconscious.

“You’re gonna kill it,” he said. “I’m proud of you.”

I didn’t know what to do with that. Part of me still didn’t believe it—still thought the call had been a mistake or a prank or a weird dream, and I was still sleeping.

TJ believed it.

That would get me through until tomorrow.

***

I had to pee twice before we even got in the car.

By the time TJ parked in downtown Portland, I’d started to second-guess every sketch in the folder on my lap. The charcoal was too smudged, the linework too raw, and the expressions too exposed. I kept flipping through them, searching for a reason to call the whole thing off.

“You good?” TJ asked.

“I’m great.” I immediately opened the folder again.

TJ reached over and gently shut it. “We’re going in.”

The Cornerstone Gallery looked exactly like I imagined it would—clean and bright and terrifying. It was the kind of place where art floated on white walls like it had been placed there by magic. The air smelled of citrus cleaner and turpentine.

I followed TJ through the glass doors, trying not to clutch my sketch folder like it contained national secrets.

We were barely two steps inside when a woman’s voice rang out from the back.

“Well, look who’s not dead.”

TJ froze beside me.

I turned my head in time to see a small, silver-haired woman emerge from behind a canvas taller than she was. She had a paint-smeared bandana wrapped around her head.

“I was starting to think you ghosted me, Jameson.”

TJ smiled. “You told me not to show my face unless I brought backup.”

“Fair.” She sized me up in one long, unhurried glance. “So, this must be the artist.”

Wait.

Jameson.

Elena Vasquez knew TJ. Not just vaguely. Not in a “once met at a party” kind of way. She sounded far more chummy than a fan at a meet and greet. She’d called him by name. Teased him.

I looked from her to him. Suddenly, everything made sense.

The call.

The mysterious discovery of my work.

How she’d known my name.

I didn’t say anything. My expression didn’t change.

He hadn’t told me.

He’d taken one of my sketches—without asking—and shown it to her. And she’d liked it. And I was here.

I swallowed hard.

Elena, oblivious, gestured toward the front room. “We’ll start in the small gallery. Light’s better in the afternoon.”

I followed her, feet moving on autopilot.

TJ brushed my shoulder lightly as he passed, a whisper of contact. He didn’t say anything.

Good.

Because I wasn’t sure what I would’ve done if he had.

***

After we returned to my apartment, TJ tried to make spaghetti.

He always did that when he didn’t know what to say—puttered in the kitchen like a man on a cooking show called Avoiding Eye Contact with Emotional Stakes. I sat on the couch and let him fumble with the garlic.

The sketch folder was in my lap again. Same pages, same hands, but they looked different now. Not worse—exposed. Like someone had snuck into the darkroom of my brain and developed something I hadn’t agreed to share.

“So,” TJ called from the stove, “Elena liked your stuff.”

“She did.”

“She said the shading was deliciously uncomfortable. I'm thinking that's a huge compliment.”

“It is.”

He turned the burner off. “You’re mad.”

“I’m not.”

He turned around slowly. “You’re definitely mad.”

“I’m not mad,” I stood and crossed the room to him, “but I do think you owe me an explanation. And maybe… a little restitution.”

“Restitution?”

“Mm-hmm.” I slipped between him and the counter. Close enough that his breath hitched. “You showed my work without asking.”

“I wanted her to see it. I knew she’d see what I saw.”

“You didn’t give me a choice.”

TJ looked at the floor. “No, I didn’t.”

I leaned in close and whispered, “You gonna be good for me now?”

He raised his head, a sparkle starting to appear in his eyes. “Define good.”

I spun him gently, pressing his hips into the countertop. My hand landed on his ass with a soft smack .

“That’s for taking my art behind my back.”

Another swat. Harder. “And that one’s for kissing Elena on the cheek like you weren’t hiding something.”

He let out a breathy little laugh. “Totally deserved.”

“You think I’m done?”

“I’m hoping you’re not.”

I reached around and unzipped his jeans. “You could’ve asked me. You should have.”

“I know.”

My fingers curled around his waistband. “But I probably would’ve said no.”

“I know that, too.”

Another swat, firm and low. He moaned.

“This is me telling you that you don’t get to steal my sketches…” I pushed him gently to his knees, “unless you’re ready to earn it.”

He looked up at me, breathless, eyes gleaming.

“I wonder,” he said, “if Picasso was like this in the bedroom.”

“Shut up, Jameson.”

His mouth opened to take me.

I watched him—no, I admired him—lips already parted, tongue peeking out, eyes hungry and unblinking and so goddamn in love it nearly made me laugh. Or maybe cry. But mostly, for the moment, laugh.

“Don’t dent the linoleum,” I muttered. Then, TJ’s mouth was on me.

Warm, slick, him. He settled his hands on my hips, bracing for a rough ride, and I raked my fingers through his hair.

TJ took me deep, like he’d been waiting all day, or all week, or maybe all the late-night phone calls and charcoaled stick figures that had ever happened between us. His cheeks hollowed out on the pullback, and my knees nearly buckled; he steadied me by squeezing my thighs—harder, then sweet.

“This is so—” My voice went up half an octave and I couldn't finish my thought because TJ swallowed my cock again, lips tight and tongue swirling on the head. His jaw flexed.

He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He focused. He treated me like I was a puzzle and he was determined to solve it with nothing but suction and willpower.

I gave up trying to stay quiet by the third bob of his head. TJ’s phone buzzed somewhere in the next room but neither of us cared. All that mattered was heat and friction and the obscene, syrupy slickness that made my toes curl.

“Damn, TJ.” He'd done something desperate with his tongue that made my hips jerk forward, and I was dangerously close to collapsing in front of the fridge. If I died in the next hour, at least the last word I ever spoke was honest.

He laughed lightly—felt more than heard. It caused a vibration at the base of my cock that sent a pulse straight through my core. I gripped his hair, and I narrowed my focus to the heat of his mouth and the flex of his throat.

He pulled back and licked his lips, smeared with spit and me and something stupidly proud. “You gonna punish me for the rest of the week, or only tonight?”

He looked up at me with his head tilted back and a wild, smiling dare in his eyes. I couldn’t answer. I shoved him back down and he groaned, taking me as deep as he could manage.

Everything after that was blurry—fingers in his hair, my knees giving out, and how TJ’s shoulders looked hunched and sturdy while he swallowed me down. He reached up and squeezed my ass.

When I came, it landed all over, messy and too much at once. TJ swallowed most of it before leaning back on his haunches, mouth bruised and smiling like he'd just gotten away with murder. I gripped his biceps and I tugged him up, ignoring the squelchy, wet sound as he detached.

"You're a monster," I grunted.

He licked his lips again, slow and deliberate. "Only for you, Picasso." He grinned so wide it hurt to look at him. "Do you forgive me?"

I wanted to say something clever, but all I managed was, "Shut up and kiss me."

He did, mouth still tasting of salt and sweetness and us. If there was pure, unfiltered art in the world, it was TJ's tongue tangling with mine and his hands cupping my jaw.

We stumbled onto the couch, giggling. My head fell into the crook of his arm, and he started tracing the lines on my bare stomach with a fingertip.

"Tomorrow," he said, voice soft against my hair. "We're celebrating. I don't care if your work never hits the gallery. We're getting ramen and cake and maybe publicly making out on Portland's art walk until somebody calls security."

"And if they hang my art in the bathroom?"

"Then I'm telling everyone that the bathroom is the coolest room in the building." He kissed the corner of my mouth. "And then I'm going to drag you into it and blow you against the hand dryer."

Less than ten minutes later, TJ fell asleep with one hand curled under his cheek and the other on my thigh.

He’d pulled on one sock and nothing else, and there was a smudge of stubble burn on his collarbone where my mouth had lingered. I could’ve stayed there forever, tracing the edge of it with my thumb.

Instead, I sat back against the couch and watched the room dim around us.

He hadn’t apologized, but I didn’t need him to. He’d taken something I wasn’t ready to share and given it to someone who saw me. Not only the sketch—but me. He’d probably done the right thing.

If he’d asked first, I would’ve shut him down.

TJ stirred slightly in his sleep, forehead wrinkling. I smoothed it with my palm, and he settled again, breath slowing.

I didn’t say thank you. Not out loud, but I stayed and let myself be seen.