Page 10 of Forged

“No, I love spending time with you,” Nick said, too fast to be anything but perfectly honest. That had Bax smiling from the inside out. “It’s just that I’m desperate to get work done on Raina’s unicorn.”

Whatever warm, fuzzy feelings of hope had been building in Bax flattened. “I’ve lost out to a unicorn,” he said, letting his arm drop. “I can’t say that would be the first time.”

The joke went over Nick’s head.

“No, I didn’t mean that I don’t like being around you,” he said, stumbling over his words a bit. “I definitely like spending time with you. I don’t really have a lot of friends, well, other than the Hawthorne family, and it’s just nice to spend time with you.”

Bax grinned, his hope sprouting anew. He still didn’t have the first idea if he actually stood a chance of having his fantasy of Nick naked and covered with sweat coming true, but he didn’t feel like that door was entirely shut either.

“Do you need help polishing your unicorn?” he asked, unable to keep a straight face.

Instead of blinking and blushing, Nick sent him a sideways look and said, “That one was just blatant.”

Bax laughed out loud. “I can’t be subtle all the time. Sometimes you just have to ask for what you want.”

They were near the fork in the path that led either to the house or to the forge, so Nick stopped, causing Bax to stop with him.

“What do you want?” Nick asked.

There was a sort of frustrated spark in Nick’s eyes and a tension to his shoulders that puzzled Bax. His first instinct was to make some sort of joke that wasn’t a joke in return, but he didn’t see that going over well. If he didn’t joke, though, he didn’t really know how to respond.

Whatdidhe want? To get in the pants of his dead cousin’s possibly straight husband? That didn’t seem right. To have Nick smile at him and call him a good boy, like he had with his toddler son? That didn’t seem at all right either. To have a genuine and yet also sexual connection with a man he admired and felt drawn to? That was definitely it, but without knowing which way Nick went, asking for what he wanted could backfire on him spectacularly.

He was saved from a potentially disastrous answer by his phone pinging in his pocket. It was just a WhatsApp message, he could tell from the sound, but instead of ignoring it like he should have, he scrambled under the layers of costume and coat to reach for his back pocket.

“I can give you some privacy if you’d like,” Nick said, turning like he would head on to his forge.

“No, it’s just a text,” Bax said, praying Nick wouldn’t walk away.

Nick waited as Bax freed his phone and tapped the screen a few times to get to the message. What he saw sent his heart plopping to his feet.

The message had been sent to the group chat for his former coven. It was an announcement of their upcoming Imbolccelebrations and a request for people to help out with the feast and ritual preparation. In the past, Bax had always been the one to plan the midwinter ritual welcoming the first signs of spring and to gather the elements they would need.

“Is something wrong?” Nick asked, taking a step closer to Bax.

“No,” Bax answered, lowering his phone. He cleared his throat in an attempt to banish the knot that had formed there, then said, “I’m still on the group WhatsApp chat for my old coven. They’re just planning for Imbolc.”

“What does planning for Imbolc mean?” Nick asked.

“Imbolc is one of the eight major holidays of the pagan calendar. It’s High Winter, a celebration of the first signs of spring.” He gestured to the set where they’d just been filming. “The Early Christian Church changed it into the celebration of Candlemas, when the candles in churches would be blessed, which is basically celebrating the return of more light to the world. It’s generally celebrated with a similar ritual of light and with a feast. I used to be in charge of my coven’s?—”

His babbling explanation was cut off by another notification from his phone. Bax lifted his phone to take a look only to find a notification that he had been removed from the group chat.

It was like a dagger in his heart. Just like that, someone had clicked a button somewhere, and now he was truly cut off from the people who had played such a meaningful role in his life for the past few years. It hurt more than the conversation he and Damien had had that had ended things.

“You okay?” Nick asked, stepping closer to him still.

“Yeah,” Bax lied. “I think they sent me the message by accident. I’ve just been removed from the group.”

He swallowed, then glanced up and met Nick’s eyes. He saw sympathy and strangely enough a similar sort of grief.

“That sucks,” Nick said.

He then did the last thing Bax expected and the one thing he wanted more than anything. He stepped forward and folded Bax into a warm hug.

It was everything Bax had dreamed of. Nick’s body was bigger than his and so solid. He could lean into it, close his eyes, and feel truly enveloped. Even though they’d been outside all day, Nick smelled of fire and metal. He hugged Nick back without thought or expectation. Instead of being something sexual or a prelude to more, the hug was affectionate, genuine, and perfect. Nick wasn’t just an object of lust, he was the kind of man Bax could see himself spending his life with.

“Hey, you two. Don’t wander off with those costumes. They belong to the production company,” Robbie’s amused voice broke the moment.

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