Chapter 12
12
HAYDEN
The problem with being too busy for a love life while making hay and money is that I’m rusty.
Rusty?
Before leaving football behind, I didn’t have a single boyfriend. Way too risky. Ruin my one shot by turning my own team against me? That wasn’t a chance worth taking, and yes, I can see how that is messed up, and that I likely wasn’t the only queer player chasing a contract.
Benefit of hindsight, right?
Now my eyesight is twenty-twenty. I’ve lost my blinkers, like the ones racehorses wear so they only see the finish line while breaking their hearts to win trophies for owners who will shoot them if they stumble.
My hindsight is crystal clear these days, but there was never anything wrong with my hearing, and I defy any fifteen-year-old kid to listen to a stadium full of football fanatics howl and then do anything other than keep their head down.
Later?
I had even less of a chance to meet men on my wavelength, and this evening drive with Rae beside me is a reminder of why.
My stepmum drove me through similar woods when I was seventeen and left me with a man who did teach me how to handle one type of big chopper, but Aleksander was all about trees, not hookups. Apart from that, my relationships have all lasted for as long as vacations—tourists who spent a week or two here. Lately, I haven’t even done that. I made a conscious decision to focus on working as hard as I can, so I have absolutely no fucking idea if it’s normal to want to hold Rae’s hand this much while driving.
That’s what I want.
To hold his hand.
It’s a stupid minor detail to mind fuck when he’s already bent me over a bed and banged me.
He already knows that I’m no virgin, and I certainly can’t forget why. For the last few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time reliving sex that I can’t compare to sleeping with holidaymakers or app-based hookups. Most of those were one-offs.
This isn’t.
Even the selfie he sent was nothing like the ones I used to scroll through. I’ve seen plenty of anonymous torsos. His was a reminder that I already knew what his chest felt like against mine while we kissed for fucking ever. And that sleep-creased and soft expression that he sent to me when he was camping?
I already knew it. Had seen it. Know that it was exactly what he looked like when he rolled over after our night together, and we started over.
We held hands then too.
I want to do the same now.
I almost do it. My hand even flexes a few times on the gearstick, and I wish I’d walked slower across the car park rather than jogging. I could have felt his fingers thread with mine for longer if I’d taken my time. But like that night when he returned as if I’d wished him into reappearing, this evening I get another wish granted.
Rae’s hand lands on mine after we leave Glynn Harber behind us.
The road ahead is straight, no reason to swerve my vehicle at that contact. I hold steady, and who knew that I’d like the weight of his hand on mine this much or that, if I spread my fingers a little, his would slip between them and hold on even tighter.
It doesn’t matter if that contact only lasts for a few minutes. Even him lifting his hand away isn’t a complete loss. He points out something in the distance and starts talking, and I like that too, but I’ve learned new things about brain development today from Charles. About how communication helps even the most neglected brains to flourish. Couple that with sensory input, and Charles says that hearts can grow too.
Maybe that’s why I soak up this bullet spray of Rae’s conversation, why I don’t interrupt what starts as rapid-fire and almost nervous-sounding. It means I get to reap the reward of him explaining why we’re heading inland.
We drive alongside moorland that I grew up with as a backdrop, and he tells me all about it. “That’s High Tor,” he says, as if I wouldn’t recognise a craggy outline I grew up seeing almost daily on the way to footy practice. His hand lands on mine, only to lift right away to point again. “And that smaller tor beside it? There’s a really deep?—”
“Quarry right below it?”
I glance sideways to see him rolling his eyes at himself. “Of course you already know that.” He sinks into his seat, his voice less animated. “Ignore me.”
Guilt flickers. I’ve rained on his parade right after he helped me out of a similar quarry-deep hole with Charles. It makes me quicker to talk than usual, faster to mention someone who used to make those almost daily drives to footy practice with me. “Dad always said that quarry had stories to tell.”
Rae asks, “Yeah?”
“Yes,” I agree firmly and glance sideways. Rae sits taller in his seat, and that’s better, so I keep going. “He said smugglers would drop their loot over the edge.”
“Into the water? Why? And how would they?—”
“Get their loot back out?” I snort. “Dad had some ideas.” Which were wacky enough that I’m pretty sure they were all tall stories. “But smugglers did run Cornwall for generations, back in the day. Anything that washed up after shipwrecks was meant to belong to the crown. We thought differently.”
“We? You count yourself as Cornish?”
“Course I do. And Polish. I was born here. So was Dad, but he still would have told the tax man to take a hike if he’d been a Polish national. He was fierce about what mattered to him.” Like I am about my stepmum and the girls, so I guess that apple didn’t fall too far from Dad’s tree. “Give anything up? Nope. Not him.” He never gave up on a single thing for us until that choice was taken from him.
Another sideways glance shows that Rae is soaking this up like I soaked up his description of his camping adventure, which I guess proved Charles right. He told me that communication with kids only works when it is two-way. That even if they are silent, every mark they make is them trying to tell their story, so we should watch them closely. Rae is better at this than me. I just shut him down even if I didn’t mean to. He does the exact opposite by saying, “Don’t stop. Keep going. What else did your dad say?”
“That there’s a cave hidden by an overhang at the base of the quarry, and it’s full of Spanish gold and silver.”
I focus on the road but can hear his smile clearly. “Next you’ll be telling me that smuggling is a Novac family tradition. How did he even know? Did his dad tell him?”
“I don’t think they did a lot of talking. Different generations.” I answer an unasked question. “I don’t remember him. My grandfather wasn’t a well man after the war.”
“Ah, sorry.”
I shrug. “Dad said he promised to make sure I knew where we came from. That I’d speak and read the language. He only spoke to me in Polish if I went to work with him, or if we were at footy practice.” I give examples and hear them in Dad’s voice, not mine, which is a weird yet also a surprisingly warm blast from the past. “Reach for the save, son,” I say in Polish. “Keep playing like that and you’ll go all the way.” This comes out more thickly in English. “Anyway, he told me you could only see what was sunk in the quarry when the water was particularly low.”
“Did you ever go look with him?”
I wish I had when I had the chance to.
Perhaps Rae guesses that. He continues before I can say so. “Do you think any of that is actually true?”
“About treasure being hidden in the quarry?” I’m about to say no when a memory flickers a whole lot brighter than any Spanish gold or silver. It glitters like I remember seeing something else under that water with my dad’s hand tight around mine. “Yes.”
I slow down below a line of camper vans all lollygagging over this tor-filled view, which makes it easier for me to look Rae’s way for longer, and his gaze?
It glitters as well.
Who needs treasure?
I have to focus on the road before I steer us off it. Knowing my luck, I’d tip us straight into that quarry before I get to kiss him again.
Because that’s what I want even more than getting to hold his hand like some kind of lovestruck kid. I want to kiss him for the first time in days, but I have to settle for giving him a new journey to add to his collection. “Dad worked on the moors as a warden. One summer, we had a drought and the water was really low. So low that I did see something.”
“What?” I can hear his grin again. “A barrel of rum? A cave full of silver?”
“No.” The traffic has moved on. I chance one last glance at him. “It was a car.”
“In the quarry?”
“Yeah. Must have been there a while, Dad said. An old classic car, he called it. I just remember it being bright blue and shiny.” I must be misremembering. Something that had been down there for decades wouldn’t shine, would it? “You’d never know it was down there unless you looked at the right time.”
At least Dad and I got to see it together.
That hike with Dad still replays when we reach the spot Rae wanted to show me. I’m caught between the past and the present, which only continues after I pull off the road and take a track that cuts straight through the kind of managed woodland he liked the least. These regimental rows of fir trees don’t belong here, all lined up like ranks of waiting soldiers, but that’s what they lead up to, Rae tells me—homes for Polish soldiers and their families, who waited for the country they’d fought for to build real homes for them.
I park next to a wilder section as Rae says, “Like in this image.” He unfastens his seat belt and slides closer along the bench seat. His phone is in his hand, and he shows me a photo of an old drawing where tents stand in similarly neat rows. He scrolls to another. “I took photos of Olek’s scroll and diary before I left. This next image comes later.” Other structures have replaced the tents, even if they still look temporary. “Prefab huts,” Rae confirms. He expands a section of writing. “Can you translate this?”
I take his phone, our fingers grazing. That’s a light touch, a slight brush, that’s all.
It’s all I can feel.
His thigh too, pressed against mine.
We’re so close, I can even see dots on his fingertips that are a reminder of ones I got while threading prickly flowers through an arch and around a chapel doorway. He must have found some gorse while on the moors, and a teenage part of me wonders if he thought of me when he saw it. I don’t have to wonder for long—I must cradle his phone tight enough that it locks and I’m faced with…
That’s me.
I’m on his lock screen, only this version of me is bigger. I’d need to be a giant to roll a hay bale uphill like he’s drawn. My arms are braced, and he’s found a way to convey effort. I can almost feel this strain, this exertion, this sweat beading under a circlet of the same flowers that had to have prickled his fingers while he was camping.
He touches my face on his phone screen before cupping my jaw for real. “I’ll have to redraw you,” he murmurs as I shift in my seat to face him. “Without the beard.” His smile flickers like the last of the light does through the trees that shield us, and I need to close my eyes as well, because each time he shows me how he sees me?
It does a number on my self-perception.
I open them again to see him looking down at the phone I still hold. This time he traces the strain in my arms and shoulders, in my hands too, as if this shaking he’s drawn is a signal of strength, not of?—
“I liked your beard,” he murmurs. “Like you this way too. Kinda want to see if you grow it again.”
He’s moved on to touch my face again, only on that screen instead of for real, and I know which I prefer him touching, so I let his phone drop to my lap, and I catch hold of his hand to put it back where it feels so much better. I also tell him what I’ve had weeks to turn over. What I’ve kept kicking away but someone keeps kicking back to me to deal with, and Dad used to do that, didn’t he? He’d shoot balls at me in our back garden and cheer whenever I reached far enough to stop them.
Turns out that when someone I’m invested in asks me to stretch even further, I can. That’s got to be why this comes out way lower than I expected. My voice rumbles, and I’ve never sounded more like the man who taught me to throw my whole self into everything I take on. “I want you to stick around to see that.”
“Yeah?” There’s another flicker that I can’t blame on the last of the light filtering through leaves. He isn’t as certain as me, and when he swallows, I hear that dry click over the tick of the cooling engine. Over a sudden drumming in my chest too when he adds, “Some people say I can be a bit full on,” as if that’s a bad thing.
I stretch for the right words. Reach like Dad taught me, and right now, I’m glad I haven’t had more practice—that this first time is for someone who has drawn me like I’m a hero. “Some people should have told you that being full on makes you fucking amazing.”
When Dad used to cheer at me going all out, my stepmum used to knock on the window, eyes dancing with laughter all while warning Dad to keep the noise down. Rae’s eyes dance the same way now, warm and happy, and just like that, we’re kissing.
I love this. How our noses nudge. How his camping stubble rasps against my new smoothness until we get situated. And so what if that involves me fighting with my seat belt, the steering wheel, and the gearstick? I’m all arms and legs and not enough space to get him where I want him, which is straddling my lap. But that weight, once I make it happen, is so much more than grounding, although that’s what I need when his mouth opens for me. My tongue slides against his, electricity surges, and it’s explosive.
Land Rovers are built to withstand bumps and crashes. I have no idea how the windows of this vehicle don’t shatter or how the tools secured behind us don’t roar to life due to this pulsing current.
Energy soars.
Roars.
My chainsaw isn’t responsible for it, or for my hands shaking as I fumble to shove his T-shirt higher. My touch stutters over bare skin all while I almost vibrate with how much I want him—with how much I need to pull him even closer—only he pushes me away like I’ve jumped the gun.
That’s a no?
I freeze for a single, soul-crushing, second-guessing moment.
Rae melts me just as quickly.
He pulls his T-shirt over his head, knuckles banging the Land Rover roof in the process, before he gets to work on my shirt buttons, and I’m no artist but I know determination when I see it, so I guess that push back was a yes, only on his terms, and I’m more than okay with that.
Have someone else make decisions that mean we’re bare from the chest up, pressed together again like I’ve spent weeks remembering, and kissing again?
Yes, please.
It’s so much better than thinking I’ve misread the situation. We’re on the same page right now. He grinds against me as I push up to meet his movements, and that’s another reminder of a night I’d half put down to a fugue caused by wedding-induced exhaustion. The rest was down to magic, and so is this. It’s also real and raw and needy. At least that’s how my groans sound as he rocks against me.
I try to claw back those needy noises.
Each grind feels so fucking perfect that I can’t do it.
The word perfect must slip out with his next slow grind. “Yeah?” Rae pulls back just enough for me to see my own inky reflection in his pupils, and yeah, needy does describe me. So does perfect for him because I focus on what else he shows me. Rae flushes— blushes —and gets a hand between us. He wrenches at my belt, at my buckle, at my fly, and there isn’t room in here with me sprawled across the bench seat for him to kneel and blow me. He tries to regardless, and I don’t think I’ve ever been harder than when he slaps one of my thighs and says, “Up.”
I do what he orders, but I’ve been well-trained at following instruction, haven’t I?
I don’t mean by team doctors, or by those last coaches who never cheered me on in Polish. I mean that I always willingly worked the hardest for someone who was on my side. I feel the same rush now when Rae yanks my trousers down far enough that the head of my dick is visible over the underwear he reaches for next.
He pauses. Not due to hesitation this time. I guess the long look he takes is his version of taking a mental photo. He can go ahead and sketch my cock all that he likes later. For now, I strain without meaning to, sliding against the seat until I’m a few inches closer. My back is wedged against the driver’s side door, and this angle doesn’t make for easy fucking; in fact, it’s uncomfortable as hell, but that’s okay. My later coaches trained me to play through that without complaining.
Rae had been trained to do something different. He observes before issuing another order. Following it comes as easily as breathing when he says, “Up,” again, only more quietly than the first time.
He shoves our shirts behind me, which act as padding when I settle back, everything softer apart from my dick. That’s never been harder, so maybe I have a care kink. His touch is another contrast once he gets my underwear out of the way, if only barely. I’m tied by the tangle of my trousers, by Rae trapping my hands in his, and I couldn’t care less. Not when our fingers thread and Rae looks up like I’m…
Like I’m…
“So glad I got to come back.” He barely touches where I want him to so much that I’m already sweating with sexual tension. “So fucking glad,” he says quietly enough that I barely hear him over the drumming of my heart. It hurries. Rae doesn’t. He acts like he’s got all the time in the world to trace the outline of my dick before bending to kiss where the head shines.
That’s where he makes an equally quiet promise. “Not gonna fuck it up.”
He means his project. His book. A story he wants to weave with pictures but he told me he didn’t know how to start in one of his texts sent while camping.
That’s what I assume as he sucks the head of my cock. Then my brain disengages.
All I can do is hang on, and I need to after his fingers unthread from mine. Who knows why that feels like falling, but he must notice. He slides a hand up my forearm to press one of my hands higher.
I find the headrest then and cling on.
He guides my other hand to the steering wheel next, and I have no idea how he does it while flicking my frenulum with his tongue. I don’t even know how to describe what that does for me. All I know is I grab hold tightly, anchored where he wants me, and it is all that stops me from squirming away at the graze of his teeth when he takes me deeply. This edge of danger must do it for me the same way care does—I taste precome when he lurches up to kiss me.
He gets busy freeing his own cock, and I’d help him if I could let go, only I can’t. Hauling in deep breaths is all I can manage, and if I thought his gaze was busy before, I was mistaken. I’m his sole focus. It’s a lot. So is seeing him watch me open my mouth for the finger he taps against my lips.
I suck it with a good idea of what is coming.
I’ve never wanted more to be fully naked. To have a whole bed to spread out on, and yet these tight confines also do it for me. This tangle of trousers. These work boots stopping me from kicking them off. It all does it for me. So does this tight clutch I can’t let up on the steering wheel and headrest.
I can’t let go.
Can’t look away.
Have to stay right here and watch as he strokes himself off, intent now on pressing that wet finger just inside me.
His mouth finds the head of my dick again then, and…
I’m gone.
Shattered like I thought could happen to the Land Rover windows. The whole world crashes off its axis, tumbling like we’ll both fall and join that car I once saw glint under quarry water, only I don’t sink.
I can’t, not when Rae looks up, that dark gaze locking with mine as he says this hoarsely. “I’m not gonna fuck up this chance. I’m gonna work as hard as you do.”
I didn’t hit the bottom of a quarry, but that single sentence?
The way he sees me?
It wrecks me.
I also still cling to a headrest and the steering wheel, watching him get off, and who cares if the spatter of his come lands on my trousers? He can stain them as much as he likes. You better believe I’m not moving, not when it’s my thigh that he braces on, fingers digging in hard enough to leave his own mark on me.
I stay right where he needs me to be until he stops panting and raises his head to remind me of what he looks like after coming.
He’s so fucking pretty.
So strong too.
He needs to be to prise my fingers from their death grip.
It’s a contradiction I can’t get enough of, like I can’t get enough of him curling against my chest and almost purring when I rub his back, which I’m in no hurry to stop after he says, “Gonna get my shit together and start this story over so I can stay for even longer.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He lifts his head. “Pretty sure my story starts in there, only I can’t see how to get closer to it.” He glances out the window, and I’ve never been happier that my first shot missed.
It means I’ve got tools to help him.
I get out and retrieve one, and this blade is bright and shiny, so I have no idea why this emerges sounding rusty.
“Your story starts in there, Rae?”
He nods, eyes alight in that way I can’t get enough of. He’s still sex-flushed. Still so fucking gorgeous. Still looking at me like I’m his answer instead of a letdown or a problem.
I wield my cutter then, like a knight might with his broadsword. Brambles don’t stand a chance against it, or me. And by the time I’m finished?
Not a single thorn is left to scratch him.
It’s the strangest place in the world to remember watching Sleeping Beauty with a lap full of little sisters. I must be under the same spell as in that movie because Rae kisses me on the way past, and my eyes weren’t closed, but it feels as if they open for the first time after a long sleep.
Open?
I wake the fuck up, and, for once, the past doesn’t have a stranglehold on my thinking.
Rae heads through the gap I’ve cut for him, then stops still. “Oh, my fucking god. This is perfect.”
He looks back at me as if I’m an actual hero.
A real giant.
I’m far from either, but if he keeps looking at me like I am?
I might have to start believing.