Chapter 20

Chapter

Twenty

“I can’t believehow far we’ve come in a few weeks.”

Even while treading water in the ocean, I’m just staring up the beach toward the woods beyond.

As long as I can remember, even when I was a little kid, the orchard has only ever been a tangled jungle. But after these last few weeks spent in a fugue of hammering, sawing, pruning, cutting, you name it…

It’s been transformed into the orchard it was always supposed to be—the one in all the old photos that caught my imagination.

I can’t believe we’ve brought it back to life this quickly.

The grass is neatly clipped, with banks of wildflowers around the edges. The veteran trees have all been checked over. Every tree we could save, we’ve carefully pruned. The fences are freshly painted, and the paths are all marked out. There’s even space marked out for new trees to be planted, to officially begin the new era of Sunrise Cider.

The orchard is ready. The cider arrives tomorrow evening. And then, the next morning… it’ll be time for the festival.

Time really does fly.

“Really? How far is that?” Kieran swims up alongside me and tries to playfully grab me as I do my best to evade him. “Because I’ve only come a hundred feet. And you’re still in the same place, more or less. Maybe a little further out to sea…”

“What do you—” I break off my question as I suddenly realize what he means.

This is my first time skinny-dipping here since the first night. But this time, Kieran’s right here with me.

“Kieran,” I groan.

He just giggles, swimming away from me and up toward the beach. “What? Don’t be shy. That night sold the whole package to me. Or… your whole package sold that night…” He laughs at the look on my face, and then he makes for the shore. “Come on, let’s go. I’m getting cold, and the coast is clear.”

“Kieran, Kieran, Kieran,” I mumble under my breath, shaking my head. With one last look at the stars overhead, I swim back to the beach.

The man who’s calling to my heart leads us both toward the orchard that called my heart here in the first place. And with that thought, I’m pretty sure everything really was meant to be.

I can see the future, as clearly as a vision.

Our future. The orchard, when the as-yet-unplanted trees have grown tall and burst into flower. Kieran’s hand in mine as we sit side by side on the porch, quietly watching the sun set over the harbour, just as we will have done a thousand times by then.

I’ve always been the sturdy, plain old branch on the family tree… but I’ve finally found my flower.

“A towel, if you must,” Kieran says when I reach the last boulders before the woods. He tries to hold it out of reach, but he’s way too short to get away with that.

“You’ll see the rest of it again soon,” I promise with a laugh as he whines in protest.

“But home is so far away. So very far away.”

“Not that far at all,” I promise him, softly pressing a kiss against his lips until he yields and tilts his head back with the sweetest little smile.

At last, I pull away and Kieran looks around the orchard. “It is amazing, though,” he says softly. Solar lights are jammed into the ground now, softly illuminating our surroundings.

He’s waiting to let me choose the route back to his place—via the road or the beach. Little does he know what I’m planning. He follows me up the solar light path toward the porch steps.

He hasn’t voluntarily entered the cabin since that first night, either, and I can’t really blame him.

“Gage?” he asks, stopping in his tracks.

“I forgot something,” I tell him with a straight face. “Come on. Just for a minute.”

Kieran groans doubtfully. “Okay. But you promise there’s no spiders now?”

“And no unexpected wetness.”

As I’d hoped, that distracts Kieran into giggling. “Only expected wetness?” He steps inside without even really noticing where he is—and then he stops in his tracks and stares.

“Watch your eyes.” I flick the lights on, illuminating the newly-refurbished cabin. “You like it?”

Kieran blinks slowly, several times, like he’s dazed.

Over the last few weeks, this was the hardest project to pull off without letting anything slip. But it only took a secret work party, several gallons of varnish and cleaning supplies, a team to move the furniture…

Okay, so it took a lot of effort. But it was worth it, I hope.

Every wooden surface is polished and gleaming. The kitchen counter is gone, replaced by a long worktop—or bar top—made from aged apple wood. There’s comfortable bar stools sitting along the kitchen island. I even have a dining table and a sofa and chairs.

There are shelves built from the original wooden crates that once sat in the corner gathering dust. Upon them sits all the memorabilia I found boxed up inside them, now taking its rightful place.

“This space could be a living space… or a tasting room on special occasions. Like a cider fesival.”

“Oh,” Kieran breathes out as his eyes land on the centrepiece of the room—the framed, hand-drawn map hanging from the wall above the fireplace. On the mantel sits a row of glass bottles—and in the middle is a certain bottle with a hand-painted signature that I thought he might recognize.

Of course he immediately did.

“Berty thought it belonged here,” I say quietly as he walks up to the mantel to touch it.

Kieran nods slowly, blinking up at me and shaking his head. “Yeah. Yeah, it does. Gage, this is…” he trails off.

Speechless. That’s a good sign, all right.

“The bathroom’s still mint-green,” I grimace apologetically. “But there is hot water, and electricity, and no spiders, if you wanted a hot shower after our dip.”

Kieran rushes back to me without a word and flings his arms around my neck. He jumps up into my arms, his towel slipping free across my arms.

I hang on tight, grinning as I remember the first time I held him like this—in this very room, but when it looked very different.

“Take me there,” Kieran murmurs, resting his forehead against my shoulder. “Oh, Gage. This is perfect.”

The one thing he doesn’t say is the rest of that sentence, leaving me wondering as I walk down the hall with my arms full of my beautiful boyfriend.

Perfect for the business? Perfect for me? Or… perfect for us?

The shower is exactly as hot as I expected and hoped for—in every single way. It’s impossible to keep our hands off each other. Especially after such a long few weeks of working side-by-side to bring my visions to life.

And Kieran has been instrumental in making all of it happen. The very least I owe him is a very, very good night.

It’s such a playful mood between us as we kiss each other tenderly, rinsing each other off and then indulging ourselves with as much slow, sensual touch as we can get away with. When we step out, I hastily scrub myself dry so I can await him with a towel—and pat him dry far more gently.

“This has been an amazing surprise,” Kieran murmurs. “We have our own little beach house!”

“Oh, but there’s one more room to see.” I wink at him.

Kieran’s eyes light up. “The bedroom! Come on, then!” he exclaims, grabbing my hand to tow me behind him, flinging open the door.

The room couldn’t look more different now. There’s a four-poster bed, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers, a mirror, and a little sitting chair in the corner.

“All that’s missing is artwork, but I thought I’d ask your help with that,” I murmur, winking at him. “I could use your touch in this place. And this place could use it, too.”

Kieran giggles at me, wrapping an arm around my waist to snuggle into my side. “It’s so pretty, though,” he murmured. “And it could be a guest cabin, too.”

“Mmhmm.” I run my hand slowly up his back to play with the hair at the back of his head. “If anyone ever wants to come stay and visit one of us, you know…” I trail off, trying to figure out how to ask either of the things I most want to ask.

One of them is easy: will you move in with me?

But the other is going to be a lot trickier to navigate.

Kieran hears straight through my question. He pivots on the spot until his shoulder rests against my chest, resting the side of his head against my shoulder. “To visit me, you mean.”

I sigh and press my lips into the top of his head, running my hands gently to his shoulders and then down his back. “Yeah. I’ve… I’ve had a lot of questions I’ve wanted to ask, but I didn’t know how.”

Kieran turns again, wrapping both arms around my waist and turning his cheek away from me. “There’s nobody,” he says, like he’s trying to spare me coming up with any of them.

Shit. Oh, Kieran.

I can’t say I’m surprised. He’s given me enough clues over the last few weeks. But my heart still aches for him. My grip is getting tighter and tighter on Kieran, like he’s going to turn into a waft of smoke and dissolve right through my arms if I let him go.

“They wouldn’t come, or I wouldn’t want them to. I didn’t have any good friends in school, and I kept to myself. My family… well, I left when I was eighteen and I never looked back.”

Kieran finally squirms his way looser in my arms so he can look me in the face, and I’m surprised to find that his eyes are just a little misty.

He’s really been through it, hasn’t he?“Shit,” I breathe out softly, and even though I know the answer, I feel like I have to ask. “Why?”

“They wanted someone they could look the other way about.” Kieran’s lips curl into an amused, ironic little smile as I can’t help glancing up at his bright pink hair. “Right? But even before that, it was obvious. I’ll never be that, and I never wanted to be.”

Yet again, Kieran’s left me stunned. How he managed to turn all the pain and bullshit he’s been through into warmth, charm, and sass… it feels like magic, and I only want to hold on tighter to him.

“So you left,” I whisper in awe, shaking my head. “Good for you. I’m so fucking proud of you. That… that takes guts.”

Kieran’s smile grows a little bit sad. “Is it the brave choice, though? Or am I just avoiding anything that hurts by putting space between me and it?”

“Trees need a lot of space. You’ll see when we plant the new ones,” I murmur, running my hand down his back gently. “They look ridiculous when they’re saplings, with so much space between them. But that’s because they need room to grow into the biggest, best versions of themselves.”

Kieran sways into me, suddenly clinging tightly to me, and I hold him and hold him until the breath rushes out of his body.

“Take me to bed,” he whispers against my chest. “Please.”

And I scoop him right off his feet, kicking the door closed as his towel slips free, and so does mine, and neither of us care one bit.

We won’t need those where we’re going.

We’re bursting with tender, sweet, frantic energy that neither of us really fully understands… but if it comes from Kieran, or the way his body and soul meet mine, I’m not afraid of it.

The way he takes me into his mouth, the unspeakable things he does with his tongue and lips… time just disappears. As every second consumes me, and the heat of Kieran surrounds me and somehow fills a space I didn’t know was missing anything…

Everything disappears.

Even when I’m crying out and arching off the bed and losing myself to the fuzzy, hazy blackness, nothing seems to matter except Kieran’s smug grin when I finally open my eyes again.

“Not bad, huh?” Kieran whispers, but I can see it again in his face—the sunshine he uses as a shield. Like he thinks that he’ll get away with sucking my cock to keep himself at arm’s length.

But I want to be right there with him, supporting all the most tender branches as he sends out the delicate, soft new growth he needs so badly.

He really doesn’t understand the way I’m going to worship at his feet.

“You were worth waiting for,” I whisper hoarsely. Then I grab him and pull him to the edge of the bed, sliding right off it to kneel between his legs and gaze right up at him.

There. The truth is awake again, outshining the sunshine Kieran wants so badly to wrap it up and hide it in. Instead, I’m getting another look at that sudden, silent, intense ache—the one I finally know a little more about now.

Or maybe it’s something else. I don’t know.

Maybe he’s not aware of how easy he is to read. When that pain is filling him up, it’s written all over his face. But by now, I also know how to bring him back to this moment where it’s just the two of us and everything we’re building.

I can only pray that if call him back to me enough times, if I wait patiently and hold him firmly, he’ll trust me enough to finally let the rain fall.

I dip my head, run my tongue across his velvety, warm, firm length. He whimpers and flops onto the bed, cursing thickly and complaining about how long it took to get me on my knees while I smile with relief.

There. That’s the man I know and love.

It’s time to reward Kieran for what he’s done to help me get everything I’ve ever dreamed of. And, in turn, I hope he can feel my promise to him: I’ll do the same whenever he needs it.

I can’t think of a better foundation to start our future together.