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Chapter Forty-Two

T here's a tray of food in the hall. The scent of it whirls into the room as Sarah exits.

I'm suddenly starving. Under a cloche, I find roasted potatoes and an omelet made of vegetables from the kitchen garden, still warm.

I eat, and then shower. While I'm in there, thinking-not-too-seriously about whether it's worth shampooing my beard when I plan on shaving it all off in a few minutes (don't picture Dav with beard burn around his mouth) (okay, picture it a little) I also think think.

See the thing is… I've been pretty directionless. No secret there.

It's been well over a year since I graduated, and if I'm honest with myself (which, hey, I don't tend to do a lot. GenZ Gallows Humor, it's a thing,) I can admit that I wasn't trying all that hard.

The pressure to go from Degree to Career to Marriage to Home Ownership to Happy Little Reproducing and Consuming Member of Society is late-stage capitalist nonsense, we all know that. But it's so pervasive. It gets its hooks into you. It feels like it's natural to want, to need those things.

And maybe I've been resisting it, as much as my queer ass can.

I didn't really want the picket fence, kid, and 2.

5 dogs. Rebekah and I had made plans, and the minute they stopped matching up, they melted like candy floss in the rain.

But that's not what kept me working a job that, while enjoyable, isn’t what I want to do with my life.

It's not the reason I kept slogging through a tedious string of one-night stands.

It was apathy.

It was aimlessness.

It was, to be honest, grief.

I wanted my father to be grinning up at me from the audience when I was awarded my degree, and when he wasn't?

It knocked the stuffing outta me.

I’ve been drifting because things didn't happen the way I expected, and I… I wasn't being proactive, or thoughtful, or even concerned about my own choices. I was just letting life happen to me, around me. Even Dav. I let him just happen.

Thank god he just happened.

Where would I be if he hadn't? Not standing in a shower, wondering if I could reconcile my own moral values with the reality of my situation, that's for sure.

But also, not being adored by one of the most emotionally available and kind men I've ever met.

Dav's charming, and thoughtful, and gives a shit what I think.

He doesn't want to change anything about me. (Even though he keeps trying to get me to dress better. He’s not the first.) He doesn't make fun of me for the romance novel thing.

He gets it about Dad. He's felt the same kind of devastating grief that comes of losing someone so quickly, so unexpectedly, and so permanently.

He has terrible jokes, and terrible socks, and he tries so damn hard to be what everyone needs him to be. He's so fucking selfless, and he's really good in bed.

He doesn't rush me. He understands the choices I need to make, and he's not trying to make them for me.

He meets me where I am.

I don't get what he sees in me. There are hundreds of humans like me out there. He could have picked any of them. I was just convenient.

But then again, people don't completely overhaul the way they run their farms for convenience.

It's a fuck of a Grand Romantic Gesture.

My friends, my family, my roommate, my goddamned therapist keep asking me: "What do you want, Colin?"

I want…

I want a partner who wants me. Romantically, and intellectually, and emotionally, and physically.

I want a purpose, and a career I'm invested in, and passionate about.

I want to change the world for the better.

I want comfort, and financial security. I want to be surrounded by people who care about me, and are invested in my well-being and happiness, as much as I am in theirs.

That's what I want.

And I…

That's…

…that's what I have.

I slide to the floor, legs tented, forehead resting on my knees, as the soap drifts down my back and the revelation sinks in.

I have everything I want.

The partner who wants me enough to fight for me, to defy his culture and his traditions to have me.

The purpose, in his farm—my thesis come to life, my passion played out on a grand scale, and if it works, the clout to roll it out to other wineries, to literally change the industry.

I have a roof over my head, good food, a warm bed, and the security knowing my every need will be met.

I will never have to ration my meds, or skip sessions with Dr. Chen because funds are tight.

And I am surrounded by people I love, who love me in return. Family, and friends, and… and hoard.

I have everything I want.

All I have to do is get up off the goddamned floor and figure out how to make it work.

So I get up off the goddamned floor.

When I find Dav, with the silent chin-jerks and eyebrow waggles of three staff members whose names I really should learn, he's in the stuffy wood-paneled study on the ground floor.

"Heya," I say, sticking my head around the frame.

I startle him so badly that the papers he'd been reading flap across the desk, and his mouth sparks.

Right.

Must not sneak up on a concentrating dragon.

His hair is a mess, and his waistcoat discarded.

He's wearing a white button-down so fine that it's almost see-through and, yeah, okay, despite everything I am absolutely still thirsty for this man.

He's got his shirtsleeves all bunched up at the elbows, not even properly cuffed, and yes please and thank you, forearms .

It's not my fault that I get distracted for a second, okay?

"Colin! I didn't know you were—"

Down. Out of your room. Over being a cranky bitch. Alive , my brain supplies for him.

"Feeling more the thing," he finishes lamely.

"Kinda." While I am feeling better, nobody gets over a week-long depressive episode in an hour.

"I checked in on you."

"I know." I step into the office and close the door behind me. There are ears in the hall, even if I can't see the bodies they're attached to. "I appreciate it."

"I'm sorry you're so unhappy," Dav says. "And I'm sorry for my part in it."

"I'm, uh, scared of what happened. And I'm angry as hell at Lt. Gov. Shitstain." Dav blinks hard at the crass nickname, a smile threatening to break through his shock at how abrasive it is. "But I… I don't think I'm unhappy ."

Relief rushes out of me on the same breath as the confession.

"Truly?" Dav asks, hopeful. He steps around the desk, tentative and unsure of his welcome.

Feeling a thousand pounds lighter, I lean against the door jamb, cock my hip out, and grin.

Come and get it, big boy. "We still gotta talk through some stuff, and we definitely have to figure out how to handle Lt.

Gov. Fuckface, but more-or-less on-the-whole kinda-sorta… yeah? I've had time to think—"

"—wallow," Dav snorts, almost giddy. He prances a few steps closer, skittish.

"— think , you ass," I correct. "Sarah helped, but I've realized—"

"I didn't ask Sarah to—"

"—I know." I hook my fingers into his belt loops, pulling his pelvis flush against mine, closing the gap.

Slouched against the closed door, the height difference between us is more pronounced, and I raise my chin as Dav lowers his. This is an echo of what it was like when he held me down. But there's no menace here. There is patience. There is respect.

This isn't that.

It will never be that again.

We won't let it.

Dav's gaze flicks to my mouth, but he waits for me. Waits for me to take the first step. Waits for me to be ready. Waits for me to invite him, just like I told him he had to. Just like he always has.

Dav may have just happened to me, but I invited it.

I let him happen.

Willing to stand in it with him , I remind myself.

"Let me apologize," he whispers, his breath smelling of campfire.

"You don't—"

" Let me," he says. "Onatah warned you about skin-to-skin contact, but I should have told you why . That's my fault."

"When you say it like that, yes, it is," I say, mulishly.

"I don't blame you for how you reacted when you returned."

"Good."

"And I appreciate your boundaries."

He does. Those delicious, freckly forearms are planted on the door on either side of my head. No part of him is touching me that I didn't reach out and grab for myself.

"Thank you."

"I respect you, I want you to know that."

"I do."

"My love. My darling," he says, and after a quick consent check— this okay? Yeah, it's okay— presses his lips to my cheeks and eyelids, the underside of my chin. "My treasure."

I giggle, giddy with joy and relief. I slide my arms around his neck, smear my words against the skin next to his ear: "If you call me 'my precious', I'm gonna kick you."

"My prec—"

"Shut up and kiss me."

Dav slides his hands up to cup my face. Slowly, tortuously, keeping eye contact determinedly, he leans forward and brushes his lips over mine once, twice, an exploratory, questioning touch, eyes open wide and watching, making sure I’m still okay.

Fuck, that's hot.

My head is spinning. I feel like I'm falling. I'm braced for the inevitable shock of hitting the ground, and I don't want it to ever come. When you love a dragon, maybe it never does.

Maybe you just fly.

"A horse ?" I splutter, curled up with Dav on one of the club chairs by his desk, bare-ass naked and covered in sweat. His thumb sweeps back and forth over the five round scars on my bicep. "You said Charlotte was a fairy, and you think I'm a horse ?"

"A kelpie!" Dav defends. "Long legs and graceful dark lines."

"That drowns people!"

"You did take my breath away the first time I came into the café and—"

"Shut up, oh my god, you loser."

It devolves into a tickle fight. I pinch the flesh above his knee playfully and he flinches, so I smooth my hand over the hurt. "Sorry."

"No, I… it's alright, if you want to."

I cup his chin and turn his face to mine. "Do you not like it? I'm only doing it to tease."

"I know, so it's fine—"