Page 17 of The Seascape Between Us (The Men of Saltwater Cove #4)

Chapter Twelve

Grey

M y head felt light, like an overfilled balloon ready to pop. Conversely, I couldn’t seem to breathe in enough air to fill my lungs. I could feel Daniel’s gaze on me, watching me, gauging my behavior since we’d walked into my father’s house.

Standing in the dimly lit foyer, surrounded by gleaming dark wood on the floors, a wide staircase with a square newel post and banister.

Little had changed in seventeen years. I could see the living room, still decorated with the same dark wood and deep red accents and packed tight with my father and his husband, Sean’s, collection of art and knick-knacks, cluttering what would have been a good-sized room without all the crap.

The students had left the house in good shape, and Finn had someone in to clean after they’d gone. The smell of lemon-scented wood polish hung heavy in the air.

“Are you sure about this?” Daniel asked.

I nodded, pulling my phone from my pocket, eager for a distraction from Daniel’s watchful gaze. “You should get off your feet.”

“I’m fine. I can stand. My legs aren’t broken.”

“Stop being stubborn,” I told him without looking up from thumbs flying over the screen while I sent out a flurry of texts. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

Daniel muttered something under his breath, and I glanced up from my phone long enough to catch him rolling his eyes before he made his way into the living room and dropped onto the couch.

He could claim all he wanted that he was fine, but I wasn’t buying any of it.

He looked exhausted. Dark smudges bruised the pale skin under his eyes like he hadn’t slept in days, and I didn’t care what he said.

His arm and his head had to be hurting him by now.

The emergency room doctor had said over-the-counter ibuprofen should be enough to manage his pain, but there wouldn’t be any in this house with the students gone.

I quickly sent off another text.

Once I had finished making all the necessary arrangements, I sank onto the sofa next to him.

I still couldn’t believe I was back here, inside this house, after so long. It felt strange. So little had changed while I’d been away. I half expected my father or Sean to come strolling into the room. A lump formed in my throat, and I did my best to swallow it away.

Besides, what choice did I have but to come here?

There was no way Daniel would have let me take him back to Portland, no matter how I tried to convince him.

And I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he would never have relaxed at the Seascape, especially with the roofers working from dawn until dark overhead every day until the roof was finished.

My father’s house had felt like the best and only option.

“Grey,” Daniel started, his voice dropped, adopting that infuriatingly serious tone.

“Don’t,” I said, before he could ask me if I was sure about being here again. “This is just a house.”

And I wished that was true. I don’t know why being here bothered me so much. After my father left my mother when I was twelve, I barely saw the man. But even before then, things had been tense between us.

My father had wanted things for me, for my future.

As a university professor, education had been important to him.

When it came to school, I’d been bright but lazy, doing the bare minimum to squeak by, which had been unacceptable to my father.

Maybe screwing around in school had been my way of rebelling against his heavy-handed demands where my education had been concerned.

Once he and my mother had divorced, and he’d moved to Saltwater Cove and started living with Sean, me and my education were no longer priorities for him.

With his obvious disinterest, there’d been nothing for me to rebel against. I started working harder, improved my grades and went on to university. By the time I’d chosen to spend a summer in Saltwater Cove, my father and I had really only seen each other a handful of times.

Around the same time, though, my mother had remarried, and I couldn’t stand Lance.

He was loud, opinionated and stupid—as loud as opinionated people often were.

That year, spending a summer with a father I hardly saw had to be better than a summer with a stepfather I couldn’t stand.

While my father and I had been awkward around each other, I didn’t care because that was the summer I fell in love with Daniel.

Though, by the end of the summer, I thought something had changed between my father and me.

When things fell apart between Daniel and me, he’d been unexpectedly supportive.

I guess that’s why it hurt so much when he iced me out after.

Now, my father was gone and Daniel was here next to me, looking adorably bored and frustrated.

As if reading my mind, he looked over at me. “What am I supposed to be doing here?”

“You already know,” I told him. “ Resting .”

I couldn’t stop a grin from spreading across my face. His scowl deepened. “I don’t feel very rested here.”

“You will,” I promised.

As if on cue, there was a loud knock at the door. I stood and pulled it open. Carter stood almost buried under a pile of linens from the hotel.

“Here,” Carter said. “I brought everything you asked for, Mr. Mackenzie.” He passed me the pile of bedsheets and blankets.

“I don’t see towels,” I said.

“In the car. I just couldn’t carry everything at once,” Carter explained. “I’ll be right back.”

While Carter hurried out to his car, I dumped the blankets onto the bed in the primary bedroom. My father’s bedroom, but I tried not to think about it.

“Are those linens from the hotel?” Daniel asked, as I walked past him on my way back to the door.

“They are,” I said. “There won’t be any here now that my tenants are gone, and I don’t think I’m going to have time to buy anything new. Besides, they’re not getting any use back at the hotel with no guests. They’ll do for now until I get something else.”

At the door, Carter had returned, this time with an armful of towels and a bag from the local drugstore. I took all of it from Carter’s arms, awkwardly clutching the pile to my chest. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Daniel starting to rise.

I turned and faced him. “No!” I pointed to the couch after juggling towels in my arms. “Resting, remember?”

“I think I can handle helping you carry towels from the door without injuring myself.” Frustration edged his voice.

“You probably could , but you’re not going to. You’re going to stay right there and rest. I knew I couldn’t trust you at the hotel.”

“Is Daniel okay?” Carter asked, a little anxiously.

“He is, but he has twenty stitches in his arm and is under doctor’s orders to rest for a few days. In the meantime, if there’s anything that needs attention, you can call me directly. Pass the word around.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Daniel was shaking his head and looking up at the ceiling.

I thanked Carter and closed the door before dumping the towels off in the nearest bathroom.

Then I went to the kitchen and poured a glass of water.

The dishes, which had been here before the students moved in, were different from the ones my father had when I visited.

He must have replaced them over time. I took a glass of water and two of the ibuprofen out to Daniel.

“Are you hurting?” I asked him.

“I’m fine,” he ground out.

“I didn’t ask how you were. I asked if you were hurting .”

He sighed and flopped back against the couch. “My arm hurts a little,” he admitted. “But nothing unbearable.”

“Your head?” I asked.

“Just feels bruised, like I said.”

I handed him the pills, then passed him the glass of water. I was mildly surprised when he swallowed them both without further complaint.

He set the glass on the table and looked over at me. “So now what?”

“Well, I’m going to make up the bed, then you’re going to lie down and get some rest. I’ll order something for dinner a little later.”

He looked down at his dirty t-shirt. “All my things are back at the hotel.”

“Carter picked us up some toothbrushes and toothpaste, shampoo and everything we need to shower when he was getting the ibuprofen,” I explained. “I’ll pick up your things when I check on the hotel tomorrow.”

“I think Carter might have a crush on you,” Daniel said, eyeing me speculatively.

“Nah, I don’t think so,” I told him. “I’m pretty sure the kid’s hot for you. He talks about you as if you’re the second coming.”

“But he looks at you as though you are the second coming.”

I batted my eyes at Daniel. “Who could blame him?”

Daniel laughed for the first time in entirely too long, the sound warming me from the inside out. While we’d been sitting together, his hair had fallen across his forehead, and it took almost everything I had to fight the urge to use my fingers and brush it back from his face.

Instead, I got up from the sofa. “I’m going to make the bed.”

I hurried away from Daniel and his hair flopping across his forehead. After making up the bed, I went back to the living room.

“Okay, the bed’s made. You can lie down for a bit before I order dinner.”

Rolling his eyes, Daniel stood. “I want to shower first.”

I didn’t blame him. Between grime from pulling out the old bathroom and his blood, he probably felt like he was covered in dirt. “Okay, just try to keep your arm dry.”

He nodded and made his way to the bathroom across the hall from my father’s room—Daniel’s room, at least for the next few days.

I heard the door click shut and less than a minute later, the water running. I tensed, and my cock twitched. Images of Daniel naked under that hot spray, tiny rivulets of water following the grooves of his muscled chest and abs trickling between his ass crease cluttered my brain.