Page 52 of A Box of Wishes
Rewards
“Come home with me,” Ben said two hours later, when his colleagues had taken Ryan’s statement and carted his assailants off to the local nick. “They didn’t get what they came for, so your place may not be safe.”
Ben had made tea and located the cocoa nibs Ryan liked to nibble on. Settled in the corner booth with Morris on his lap, Ryan had let Ben fuss over him. A sign, if Ben had needed one, of how much the attack had rattled Ryan.
“Come home with me,” he said again, and felt warm all over when Ryan agreed.
It wasn’t until he parked in his usual spot that he remembered the state of his home.
“It looks a little… unfinished. Just ignore the gaps.” Ben’s face burned as he led Ryan inside. “I’ve been meaning to go furniture shopping, but every time I make plans, work gets in the way.”
“Today, that may have been Providence. If you’d been earlier, you might not have caught those two guys.”
“If I’d been earlier, they wouldn’t have attacked you.”
“You can’t know that. If they’d realised that you were there, they might have come back mob-handed. My uncle says that’s what often happens in pub fights.”
“True.” Ben breathed a sigh of relief when Ryan didn’t comment on the empty spaces on his walls. At least his bookshelves no longer looked like a mouth with missing teeth. He found tumblers and poured a finger of Scotch for each of them. “Here. Something to combat the adrenaline.”
Ryan fell onto the sofa, wincing a little. “Does this actually help?”
“It numbs for a little while. I’m not one for drowning in a bottle, so I can’t comment on the effects of large quantities of the stuff.”
“What do you do to de-stress?”
“Lift weights. Go running. The more stressed I am, the more I work out.” He settled on the sofa beside Ryan and wove their fingers together. Having Ryan in his home was comforting. The missing furniture, the empty spaces on his walls where pictures had been, even the memories of hours in the gym… they vanished into insignificance with Ryan here.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t in time to stop them.”
Ryan sat stiffly. “Don’t be silly. I’m beyond grateful you turned up when you did. I had no fucking clue what they wanted. They kept asking—”
Ben put his fingertips over Ryan’s lips. “Wait. Do you really want to go over this now? You’ve already had it twice and tomorrow, we’ll all ask you several times more.”
“I don’t think it makes a difference when I tell the story or how often. They asked me where the recipe was. I run a coffeehouse, and I bake for a living, for Christ’s sake! I have hundreds of recipes. Have you ever heard of someone being assaulted over a recipe for gingerbread?”
“Maybe it was your lemon cheesecake they wanted,” Ben suggested, mouth watering at just the idea.
Some of the anger and tension bled out of Ryan at the sight, and he leaned into the cushions. “I’ll make you an entire tray of lemon cheesecake tomorrow.” He lifted their joined hands and dropped a kiss on Ben’s knuckles. “I have to keep my hero fed.”
Ben’s cheeks heated, but his smile didn’t lessen. “I’m already the envy of all my colleagues. You keep this up and you’ll have coppers falling over themselves, wanting to guard you and your shop.”
“Guard the cheesecake, more like.”
“And the gingerbread with the cinnamon frosting. Not to mention the beef and chilli melts and the iced buns.”
The conversation deteriorated into silliness. They both lost it when Morris hopped up, intent on settling on a lap, and caught a whiff of the whisky in Ryan’s glass. The disgusted expression on his little face was as hilarious as the haste with which he shot off the sofa, and the loud meow that proclaimed his distaste.
“Oof!” A heavy weight landed on Ryan’s tender stomach. He flailed in panic before he realised he was in Ben’s bedroom and the wrecking ball that had attacked him was Morris.
Dislodged from his perch by Ryan’s startled movements, the cat balanced along Ryan’s thigh, skirted his crotch, and plopped down on Ryan’s chest, purring up a storm. Green eyes blinked, their colour amplified by the light from the alarm clock on the bedside table.
Ryan scratched under Morris’s chin.
“You startled me,” Ryan whispered. “I’m not used to having a cat to snuggle with at night. Ben doesn’t even stir when you do this.”
Ben lay on his side with his arms wrapped around a pillow, breathing slow and steady. He hadn’t been so relaxed earlier in the evening when he’d admitted that his spare bedroom no longer had a bed in it. He’d even offered to sleep on the couch.
Ryan hadn’t wanted that. He’d been loath to admit it, but the attack had shaken him and he’d wanted Ben close.
