Page 17 of Regret Me Not

“Sure. They’re on the counter.” Sometime after that, in his dreams, he felt the brief touch of fingertips on his temple as he slept, but he was too tired to open his eyes and see if it was real.

He woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and realized Hal had taken him at his word. The bed—a giant king-sized pedestal affair that made Pierce think of sleeping on the divan of the gods—was big enough that Pierce hadn’t even realized that sometime in the night, Hal had just stretched out in a pair of sweats, covering up with the throw he’d pulled out a few days before. He was huddled under it now, like he was cold.

After Pierce hobbled to the bathroom, he took a mild painkiller—the cramping in his leg and arm hadn’t eased up, and he had to concede he’d overdone it. The good news was, the rubber matting under his feet softened the impact against the tile, and what used to feel like a death march without his flip-flops was now just averagely uncomfortable. After the painkiller, he went to the linen cupboard and grabbed one more afghan.

He paused on the way back to bed. He hadn’t drawn the blinds in front of the sliding glass door to the beach, and for a moment he stood, mesmerized by the view of the moonlight, bright against the black sky and luminous on the water.

“Whatcha doin’?” Hal mumbled from the room behind him.

Pierce turned and smiled, because he sounded sleepy and dear. “Nothing. Taking an Advil. Get under the covers, baby—you’re cold.”

“Mm’kay.”

Pierce walked back into the room and laid the throw at the foot of the bed in case they got cold, then crawled in. He turned toward Hal, wondering if he’d feel anything about having a man in his bed again, but Hal was on the edge, not even close enough for Pierce to feel his body heat.

He closed his eyes, letting the painkiller do its work.

In that honest moment between sleeping and dreaming, he was brave enough to admit that it would be nice to roll over and snuggle that hard young body, to bury his nose in the hollow of Hal’s shoulder and see what he smelled like when he was warm and soft in the dark.

HAL TOOKPierce’s rehabilitation damned seriously.

He’d upped the workout—Pierce was at an hour and a half now, much of it stretching, with more stretching in the hot tub.

Hal always got in and rubbed him down, hands solicitous and impersonal.

Pierce was starting to… twitch every time Hal stopped at midthigh or his glutes. The rubdown felt incomplete, he sulked to himself.

He didn’t even want to admit to the vague ache of arousal that plagued him when they sat and ate lunch or dinner in front of the television. He tried to justify it to himself. He and Cynthia hadn’t been having sex before the accident—it had been a while.

Hal was cute—by anybody’s standards—and he’d been kind and generous with his time.

He was entertaining—he kept up a constant stream of snark and banter when they were together, and after that moment in the café, he’d kept it light—stupid things that occupied their time and made them smile but didn’t tap too deeply into the heart muscle.

He had good hands, Pierce thought. Good, long-fingered, competent hands that worked deeply into his calf or his thigh or his instep or bicep or forearm, and he could take care of every sore part of Pierce’s body.

Even his psyche.

Even his heart.

That was it.

It was his hands.

Right.

The next “light” workout day, they put off Christmas shopping again and went grocery shopping. Pierce insisted on paying, buying enough groceries for both of them since Hal seemed to be staying more at Pierce’s place than his own.

Pierce hadn’t even seen Hal’s condo. For one thing, it was on the top floor, and that was a pain in the—literal—ass. All he really knew about the place was that it must have an amazing assortment of clothes, because Hal wore something different every day.

The day after grocery shopping, Pierce doubled down after his workout and proclaimed it laundry day.

Hal helped him pull the linens off the bed, neither of them mentioning that he’d been sleeping on the far end, only returning to his place to work out and shower in the morning before Pierce’s time in the pool. After the load started, Pierce turned to him.

“So, go up to your place and get a load of undies or something. We’ll put it in next.” He knew Hal had his own washing machine—he must, because the unit above Pierce’s place did laundry almost constantly, it sounded like.

Hal cocked his head, and for a moment Pierce expected him to say “Naw—I’ll go run a load upstairs,” which was way more logical.

Instead he looked Pierce in the eye and said, “Okay. I’ll bring my toiletries here too, and some clothes.”