Page 58 of Just Say Christmas
HAYDEN
It was after four, and Hayden was still trying to focus on the details of this contract, a complicated thing involving an overseas firm and the logistics outfit that was going to be handling the import process. He stared at the document again, but the clauses swam in and out of his vision no matter how many times he tried to corral his thoughts.
“You’re a compartmentalizer,” he muttered to himself. “So do it. Compartmentalize.” He’d get through two pages, he decided, and then he’d take a one-minute break and think about other things.
One clause down. Two. Three.
Good. He was on a roll here.
It wasn’t fatigue, at least not because of the time he’dtriedto go to sleep last night. It had barely been nine-thirty when Luke had climbed out of Hayden’s car while Hayden himself gripped the steering wheel and watched the absolutely upright form, its shoulders twice as broad as anybody’s had any right to be, head through the parking garage and toward the lifts.
Luke wasn’tgood-looking, no, but he was wrong about one thing. He wasn’t strong as oak. He was strong asrock.Witness the walking-away part.
He felt like safe harbor, and Hayden had been out in the storm so long. He was thirty, and sometimes, hedidfeel fifty. Possibly not because Zora’s life was so domestic, he was realizing for the first time. Because his wasn’t, and he wasn’t sure how to change it. He’d always thought of himself as daring, but the truth was—he might be afraid to ask for what he wanted here.
What he wanted was the same thing Zora had. To be swept off his feet. To fall headlong. To take the plunge, knowing there were arms down there to catch him, and that he could be that for somebody else too.
He’d been that safe place, that solid backstop, for Zora and Isaiah, or he’d done his best to be. They didn’t need it anymore, though, because they had Rhys, and maybe Hayden missed being needed. What would it be like to feel necessary to somebody else’s happiness, and to let him be necessary to your own?
Scary, that was what.
Also, the problem with being gay wasn’t finding a spot to have sex. It was finding a spot for the part before that, the part you never really got to do. Maybe other men didn’t want it, except that he thought Luke might, too. A place where you could hold somebody’s hand, look into his eyes, and not worry about who was watching, what they’d say, what they’d do. Where you could kiss him, finally, and then kiss him some more, and not move on, not yet. To be romantic, not transactional.
A place where you could fall in love.
He hadn’t even realized how much it mattered until Luke had said last night, when Hayden had pulled the car into a parking garage near the hotel and found a space, “Maybe we could sit a bit, eh. Maybe turn on the radio.”
“Oh.” Hayden hadn’t listened to the radio in ages. He turned the car on again, switched on the sound system, and fiddled with the dial. He was having a hard time focusing, because his mind insisted on rushing ahead, and his heart was beating like there was something it had to do. Like there was danger out there. Or in here.
Like he wanted too much.
“Here.” Luke put his hand over his, the same way he had in the bar. Not in a shoving-aside way. In a calming way. “I can do it, if you like.”
“You can’t know the stations. You don’t even live here,” Hayden said. Which was possibly the issue.
“But I can still find music,” Luke said, and he did. An alternative station, it had to be, maybe the university’s, playing something reggae-inspired, smooth and driving at the same time. He asked, “OK?”
Hayden said, “Sure. I like that you asked. Shows patience, consideration, and so forth. All admirable qualities.”
Luke was quiet a second. They both had their seatbelts off, but nobody was moving, and a wave of anxiety washed over Hayden. He hated this part. Luke finally said, “We don’t have to do anything tonight, you know.”
It took a few breaths for Hayden to say, “You know, your gentleness is pretty devastating.”
Luke looked at him some more. A car drove past, the band of its headlights sweeping over his bearded, battered face as he said, “When your job is being a hard man, you lose your taste for it as recreation, maybe.”
“Hopefully not completely,” Hayden said.
Luke smiled. Slowly. “Never mind. I think I know what you like. And if I don’t . . . you can tell me.”
Hayden put his face against the steering wheel. “OK. I give up. This is too bloody much. I maybein Paris. If you get any better, they’re going to put you in a film. Please. Come on. Kiss me.”
Luke had. He’d held Hayden’s face while he’d done it, and his touch had been gentle, and after a while, not quite as gentle, and Hayden had been so ready. More than ready.
Which was when Luke pulled back and said, “I’ll text you tomorrow. We could have dinner, and see where we get. Sound OK?”
“Yeh,” Hayden said, all his brilliant line of chat deserting him, and Luke smiled, kissed him once more, said, “I’ll see you then,” and walked away. And Hayden thought,Bloody hell. Bloodyhell. An articulate man made completely inarticulate.
Now, he stared at the contract on his screen some more, highlighted a sentence, added a note, and thought,He lives in Paris, which is eighteen thousand kilometers away, which you know because you’ve already checked, like a romantic schoolgirl about to write a boy’s name in her exercise book. Before you draw hearts around it. All you’ve done is kiss him, and paint with him, and have . . . you couldn’t even call it a chat, because he doesn’t talk enough. You need to get real.
