Page 30 of After Hours

After I caught my breath, I pulled out as gently as I could, disposed of the condom, and fetched a warm washcloth to wipe him off. He lay there, watching me with a shocked, tender look on his face until I cuddled up next to him. I pulled the blanket over us and wrapped my arms around him.

“Zane,” he said after a long, quiet moment.

“Yes, baby?”

“I want to do that again.”

My eyes popped open, and I leaned up on one elbow to look down at him. “Right now?”

He giggled and tucked his head onto my shoulder. “No, not now, but soon. A lot.”

We laughed together, cozy in my bed, and traded gentle touches and soft kisses. “We’ll have a lot of time to explore all sorts of things together. In and out of bed.”

He nodded. “I can’t wait. I don’t want to miss a thing.”

I’d happily keep Oscar in my arms forever, but he wiggled out from under my thigh and rolled off the bed. “Where are you going?”

He half turned in the dim light of the bedroom and looked back over his shoulder. His pert ass cheeks hovered just out of reach, and I groaned. “You’re killing me, baby, with how cuteyou are… and how far away you are. What are you doing?” It was too dim in the room to see if he blushed or not.

“I have something for you.” He crouched next to his backpack and dug around in an inner compartment. “I’ve carried it around trying to figure out when the best time to give it to you was.” He sat back on his heels and looked up at me, eyes wide. “I guess this is it.”

The moment he got back in range, I looped my arm around his waist and pulled him back under the covers. I didn’t want Oscar to get chilly after all. Who was I kidding? I didn’t want to stop touching his beautiful, naked body.

My lips ghosted over his shoulder. “What did you get me? You know I don’t expect gifts. You don’t have to buy me things.” Despite my attempts to keep him plastered to my body, he sat up and reached for my hand. I followed him into a cross-legged position, the sheets pooled around us.

“I made it.” He held out one loosely fisted hand. “Here.”

At first, I couldn’t figure out what the jumble of leather cord and something heavy was that he dropped into my hand. I carefully disentangled it to find a smooth stone carved into a complex shape, strung with leather laces, and with a metal clasp on the other side.

“Is this a tiny carabiner?” I rolled my fingers over the barrel to loosen it before opening the clasp so the leather could slip in and out. “Oscar, what is this?”

He bit his lip before answering. “It’s a bracelet.”

“I can tell that!” I reached for his arm and pulled him against my side. “What is this?” My finger trailed over the stone. Expertly carved in striped, gray rock, two hearts knotted together in complex shapes. It was solid in the middle with raised lines, but the outer edges of the hearts were open for the laces to pass through.

“It’s a Celtic love knot. I picked up the stone when we hiked up to that pretty cliff with Sugar.” His cheeks were rosy and his eyes so bright. “I made it for you because I love you.”

All the tiny, unique things that brought Oscar to me – his family’s rejection, Finn, him slipping on the rocks at the Halcyon Inn, and his job at Camp Rocky Cove – were like cracks and crevices in life, hand and footholds that brought me to the highest point my heart, my life could ever go. I thanked the universe for all of them. “Well, put it on me.” I stole a kiss before he reached for the clasp.

The stone lay cool against my wrist, a perfect fit and a perfect reminder of the love of one very special man. “I love you, Oscar. I love this.” All that emotion overflowed and filled up the messy, dark bedroom. The bracelet carved with love was the only thing I wore the rest of the day while we discovered more ways to explore that love together.

***

“You’re going to make me fall.” Oscar laughed as he shuffled forward on the cracked cement patio outside my back door.

I leaned in to kiss his neck without moving my hand from its position over his eyes. “Never, baby. Just a few more steps.” It took a lot of sneaky behavior to keep Oscar from seeing my surprise until I finished everything. We spent more time at his place, and I ever told a tiny fib that the neighbor next door had asked about strange noises coming from my place at night.

Oscar’s blush then was almost as cute as his giggle as we stumbled the last few steps toward the little shed I’d put together against the back wall.

“Okay, you can look.” I dropped my hand and stepped to his side so I wouldn’t miss a moment of his reaction.

He didn’t say anything for a long moment before shooting me a side-eye glance. “It’s a shed. You built this? Um, it’s nice.”

It was my turn to laugh. Of course, a closed-up shed didn’t look very interesting. It was a pale gray box with two wide doors in the front. “It’s for you.”

His side-eye glance added in a pair of raised eyebrows, and I chuckled harder. “Come look, baby.” I took his hand and led him across the grass to unlock the shed and swing both doors wide open.

That was the reaction I had hoped for. Oscar gasped as his hands rose to cover his mouth. “Oh my gosh, Zane. What did you do?”

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