Page 12 of Winter's End

CHAPTER 4

DREW

Istared out the window of Shane’s truck as we made the drive into the mountains. I needed to stare out the window, or I would continue to stare at the man’s sexy hand lazily resting on the stick shift between us.

He had finally gone back to work at WAQ for the last few days of his co-op. Emmett had tasked him with checking on the survey markings for the proposed bridge project. The tender release had been delayed three times, but the final go-ahead was expected this week, so they were dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s.

Since I was now a jobless bum living on my parent’s property, my gracious friend invited me to tag along.It was that, or contemplate my lack of a future for the billionth time, so here I was, sneaking glances at the Native American hottie in the driver’s seat, wondering if he daydreamed about me as much as I had been daydreaming, night dreaming, and fucking my hand in the shower to thoughts of him and Winter.

As if reading my mind, Shane reached out and playfully stroked my knuckles on the hand that had slowly inched closer to his in the past half hour.

I looked over to see an amused twinkle lighting up his gray eyes as he turned my hand over and interlaced our fingers. I enjoyed the feel of his warm, calloused palm against mine. Winter’s hands were delicate and smooth. Shane’s were strong and rough.

I loved the feel of them both.

“Sorry.” He squeezed my fingers lightly and smiled with a wink. “I’ve been wanting to hold your hand since we got in the truck. Is this okay?”

I couldn’t help the dopey grin spreading across my face. “Yeah, this is okay.” I squeezed his hand back, the fresh memories of him stroking my dick overwhelming my senses and causing an immediate hard-on.

“Are you alright if we take a detour before heading home?”

He eyed my growing erection with a smirk and pulled over to the first arrow of paint on the side of the road.

“We’ve got ten markers to check over the next ten miles or so. Then I want to show you something.”

“Okay.” I smiled curiously, missing his hand already when he pulled it out of mine to get out of the truck. “How can I help?”

He and I unloaded the gear, set it up, and tore it down at all ten stops. It took nearly four hours to finish the task, but the weather was on our side. Early April was a crap-shoot in the mountains, but the spring sunshine lifted my spirits and got me out of my head.

It helped that Shane cracked a joke every few minutes and took the time to explain the project to me as we confirmed each marker and double-checked the measurements on his GPS.

An old abandoned mine from gold rushes of eons past would act as the central tunnel for the proposed record-breaking bridge on the other side. We never went inside the tunnel entrance, but we marked out the distance from the current road into the ominous opening, and that had been far enough for my liking. Caves and mines and dark, dusty spaces were not for me.

Cascade Falls was a tiny town, but this project was a much bigger deal than I realized. Shane’s face lit up when he spoke about concepts I didn’t understand and acronyms that went over my head.

Still, he was so damn cute I didn’t stop him. I didn’twantto stop him; there was nothing in my life that brought the same enthusiasm Shane had with engineering. I could only hope I would find something to give me that same spark one day.

We packed up the truck and Shane grabbed my hand again once we were back on the road. Then he took a turn down an unfamiliar dirt path into the deeply wooded side of the mountain.

“Where is this detour?” I mused as I squinted to see into the thick of the treeline. The forest in here was so dense, the sunlight only dappled the tree trunks through the spruce boughs. I had no idea where we were going.

He painted circles on the back of my hand with his thumb, the gentle touch shooting currents of electricity through me.

“We’re checking out the Quicksilver family cabin.”

He pulled off onto another road; this one muddier and harder to get through. Flecks of dirt splashed the windows as he drove through the patches of soggy ground. Finally, he stopped in a clearing.

A simple log cabin sat in the middle of it, the chimney stack of an enormous stone fireplace taking up most of one side. It didn’t look abandoned per se, but it definitely hadn’t been tended for a long time.

Shane bounded out of the truck with a ‘whoop’ and barreled towards the front door. “Come on!” he hollered back to me, a wide grin lighting up his features. “This is my happy place!”

I followed him, unable to contain the grin filling my face, too. His energy was infectious, and I couldn’t stop the butterfly flutters in my stomach, like I was a lovesick 14-year-old.

We were out in the woods, alone. We’d been alone a hundred times before now, sure, but that was before we kissed.

That was before Shane had jacked me off in a public pool, and before I fully understood I was into this man.

And fuck me, I wasintothis man.

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