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Chapter 7

7

RAE

Hayden has hidden talents. I thought that the first time after seeing those big hands twist willow into a dainty circlet. I thought it for a second time after he pulled together the kind of planning I can never manage to start, let alone see through, no matter how many times Sol tried to corral the bucking bronco of my attention at college.

Tonight, Hayden proves he has a whole other string to his bow, and not only for making weddings happen, because this isn’t only a place for honeymoon happy endings. It’s a home away from home that he’s made out of almost nothing, one that he’s traded favours to furnish. I’ve seen that happen in camps. That’s where I first watched people from different nations swap a meal for minutes of mobile data or exchange bedding for a chance to search for news of family.

Hayden has traded carpentry and plumbing for his manual labour. Traded his muscle for warmth in winter, and I don’t know why that stove keeps catching my eye. It doesn’t glow right now, yet that’s what I see in my mind’s eye—a cherry-red glow, and a big man with snow in his hair, crouching to feed it with kindling that he cut with his great big?—

I yank at my belt, warm all over despite that stove being unlit. I’m already on fire and in a hurry to get this party started. “Why are you still dressed?”

Hayden doesn’t answer my question.

Doesn’t move.

Doesn’t look as if he even breathes, but that’s okay. I stopped breathing too, didn’t I, last night.

When we kissed.

I would have traded plenty for more of that—would have handed over my phone and all of its data to carve out more time with him. Now we do have time, at least until the end of the wedding party that I can still hear faintly, and if I learned a single thing from watching all those exchanges made behind sand dunes, it was to make the most of mutually beneficial chances.

Most people don’t get a second.

I’m not wasting this one, so I stop asking questions and issue an order.

“Get over here.”

He moves then, and for a first time, I glimpse what it must have been like to face him in his first life. He commits, going all in with nothing held back, and that always does it for me.

I hit the mattress with him on top of me, and me being half naked while he’s still dressed also does it for me.

I’m back to picturing that stove, that kindling catching alight, with no idea why this contrast between skin and fabric ignites me. Maybe it’s down to friction—the scuff of his suit jacket against my chest. My nipples are hard enough to cut glass already, and that’s a sharp shock, a little unexpected burst of sensation while our mouths are locked together.

His belt buckle against my stomach is another contrast. That prod of metal is as hard as his dick soon gets, which means I can’t just lay here getting tongued to death by someone who kisses like he hasn’t stopped thinking about last night either. Not when more than a wedding-party clock is ticking.

I’ll be gone tomorrow.

It’s still hard to hurry, and what started out as hard and fast now slows to almost glacial.

His tongue slides against mine in careful exploration like we’ve got all the time in the world, and I’ve never been more turned on from so little.

From so gentle.

It’s another mind-fucking contrast, like his lips being this soft while his hold on my jaw tells me I’m going absolutely nowhere.

I don’t want to.

I’ve seen enough shitty human behaviour to recognise a good guy when I meet one despite his axe-murderer first impression, so I wiggle a hand between us and wrench that buckle of his open to get his fly down.

His mouth leaves mine. Not to tell me no. His lips explore my jawline while I trace the thick, hard outline of what his underwear still covers. He must like where the heel of my palm presses. A hum rumbles through him, and I’m glad we’re chest-to-chest so I get to feel that, even if it means my hand is trapped between us.

If I was warm before, I’m on fire when his mouth reaches my throat, sucking, and I’m not sure if it is my dick that throbs or his. I shiver at the graze of his teeth shifting lower, which isn’t due to his beard scratching. My tremor is involuntary, a response to him being so hungry for me that our teeth clash when we next kiss.

Only for a moment.

He repositions to suck on my tongue like he can’t get enough of me, so it’s no wonder I’m caught between wanting to melt and combusting at the same time.

He lights me up so fast, and so what if we’re both a little clumsy or that his lips slide wetly while he’s figuring out how we best slot together. His hands find my arse, pressing us closer together, my hand still caught trapped where his cock swells, and I’ve never got harder faster than when I squeeze and he lets out a small sound.

It says so much without speaking.

That groan was an almost silent fuck, yes followed by a don’t stop that I can get on board with after spending a whole day wanting this with someone who goes all out for other people with no showboating.

I wonder if he knows how rare that is—how plenty of people turn up at the camps with flags and banners to advertise their do-gooding before disappearing the minute shit gets real. Reece’s boyfriend is one of them, which is surprising. I’m already pretty sure Hayden wouldn’t act anything like him. Fuck it, he’d probably weave lifeboats out of willow, or at least try to, and that makes it easy to want to give back, so I do.

I push him onto his back, and he lets me. He also doesn’t argue when I look down while those little lamps highlight that he’s still dressed. If we had longer, I’d strip him fully naked, but music rises from a party that I can’t help thinking Hayden should be at. Because here’s something else I’m not sure he sees but I’ve noticed over and over—he made it happen. All of it. The whole thing from start to finish.

Him.

That dance floor where I dodged a good-looking soldier? Hayden is the reason that it’s full of happy couples. And that singer who so many wedding guests now dance to? He’s only here due to the man who cups my face as I bend to kiss him.

I heard every word of that careful phone call. Saw him wince, not wanting to put that singer under pressure. No wonder people can’t resist saying yes to someone who only asks instead of demanding. He doesn’t demand a thing from me now, but I’m about to suck his dick, so maybe I’m a good example.

That music fades out and other sounds take over, like his rough inhale and my hum after pressing my face against his pelvis. His cock is hot through the thin cotton of his boxers, and I groan. I also inhale his musk, which pulls exactly the same internal trigger as him sucking on my tongue did. Saliva floods my mouth, wetting cotton as I map him, delaying the moment that I guess we both want when he grinds out a rasping, “Please, Rae.”

I free him then, pushing his underwear down far enough that I can cup his balls and roll them while taking a first taste of what slapped thickly against his belly. Then there’s only heavy breathing and the lapping of me getting him wet before sucking him down, my turn to be greedy. And I am so hungry for him, even if he’s a lot to handle. I still try, because he trembles, and not in that chainsaw-induced way.

This is him holding back.

He pushes himself up on one arm to reach for a lamp. It almost topples, but that’s okay. I almost do too at him wanting to see us like this more clearly. He takes advantage of my distraction, shedding clothes like he’s got all the time in the world.

We don’t, so I get busy, and when I next pull off, both of us breathe harshly. His chest hitches when I focus on the now slick head of his cock. On his shaft. On every vein carrying blood on a pulsing journey. That’s where I can’t resist the urge to spend long minutes, and if time ever had any meaning for me, I forget it until he touches my jaw where it hinges. His hand slips lower as I suck him again, and it’s my turn to be mapped, only he explores my throat, feeling himself from the outside, and almost crumples each time I swallow.

His light clasp of my throat tightens, and don’t ask me why I like it. I was joking about being tied down and left waiting, but this hold? He’s got me in the palm of a hand, and knowing that it is speckled where thorns jabbed him only makes me want to take him even deeper.

I’m hoarse when I have to pull off.

My eyes blur, so I don’t see his reaction right away when I ask, “Want to do me?” I wipe dampness away and can see more, so I ask a different, more careful question. “Or do you want me to do you?”

I didn’t have him bending over the edge of a bed on my wish list for this evening. Now it’s what I’m going to remember when my mind drifts like it does so often, when it skips from what I should be doing to something more compelling. And he is compelling while I slick my fingers with supplies meant for married couples. Thank fuck for them. I didn’t come to Cornwall prepared, and PrEP isn’t for people who lose track of time like me. Now I smear lube where a swirl of dark hair circles, and I press in a finger.

His low groan rumbles.

The whole world doesn’t tremble. Doesn’t quake or shake or tilt off its axis. I still feel like I’m falling each time I press in deeper and he tells me without words that this is what he wanted—what he must have needed really badly to push back until I’m up to my last knuckle and he’s ready for another.

And all my thinking about fire? About heat? About being lit up?

He looks back at me, his eyes wild and desperate, and that’s the hottest thing I’ve ever witnessed. I’ve never ripped open a condom wrapper faster. Never sworn as loudly at fucking up rolling it on. Never paid more attention to the steadiness of his hands as he turns to do it for me.

He’s got this, and me, with no problem, and I only stop him when he starts to turn away again. Then I grasp his shoulder, a slick hand sliding across scars I wouldn’t notice from a distance.

They’re faint.

This isn’t.

“I want to kiss you.”

I do.

I want that almost as much as I want inside him, and that’s what Hayden makes happen just like he’s made everything else I’ve witnessed and then locked away to draw one day when I don’t have deadlines. He lays back and hooks a hand behind a knee, spreading for me, still on the edge of the bed, and I have to squeeze the base of my dick at the sight of him spread out like a fucking wedding breakfast.

My dick nudges where he still feels impossibly tight for a moment. Then I’m inside him, and it’s incredible. So much so that the inside of this lamp-lit tent spangles. Light splinters, swirling into fractals as I push all the way in, my vision turning into a kaleidoscope with him at its centre, and that’s where he stays.

He’s my focus now.

All that I see.

A gentle giant I didn’t know was on my horizon after staring at so many, and getting to kiss him while we fuck only makes that wait worth it.

I don’t want to stop. Can barely coordinate breathing while finding the right angle for him. I even give up inhaling or exhaling when I hit the right spot, and fuck anyone who ever said concentration was my weak point. I have no problem focussing on getting him off.

His cock is hot and hard in my hand, and slicker each time I get it just right for him. I do that until the coiling low in my belly winds too tight to stave off, but we’re on the same page, or maybe we’re just in the right place at the same time to synchronise this closely.

I thank fuck that I washed up here.

And I thank Sol too for answering a distress signal sent from outside that agent’s office. Most of all, I thank myself for taking a wrong turn in the woods. Then I get back to the business in hand—I tug on his cock while fucking him hard and fast until he clenches, coming, and I quit thinking.

I’m sprawled over him moments later. Those moments turn into minutes. And if we lay here for even longer, what does it really matter? Tomorrow will come regardless. For now, I only move when Hayden whispers, “Want me to show you something special?”

He’s already shown me plenty, but he shows me another special sight outside.

“Look up.”

I do, standing outside the tent while wrapped in a sheet. We’re under a blanket of stars, a canopy of deep purple velvet studded with diamonds above us, and I lean back against Hayden to count their constellations. His arms are snug around me and his hold isn’t much looser when we go back to bed, where he lets out another of those deep rumbles of satisfaction.

Music drifts faintly to us, and I can’t keep this in. “How come no one’s snapped you up already?”

“Me?” It’s cute that he’s surprised. This statement is less so. “I’m not exactly a long-term kinda person, Rae. You see yourself staying in one place for good?”

I shake my head. My work is wherever the tide takes me.

His must be too. “I can’t see a future like that for me, either.”

I trace the breadth of his bare chest, and I take my time about it, in zero hurry right now to be anywhere else but here. I don’t want to head back to that wedding, nor to make a start at meeting my deadline. I’ve got a whole day left, or almost. There are hours and hours to go yet, and with Hayden wrapped around me?

Short term or not, right now that feels like ages.

I fall asleep in Cornwall but wake up in France.

That’s how it seems when the shush of the sea registers. Only I’m not behind sand dunes this morning, and this shushing is different. It’s the wind through leaves as well as the rhythmic wash of nearby waves, and I’m not alone in waking disorientated.

Hayden stretches behind me. His hand on my hip flexes, fingers tightening before his arm slides to gather me closer to him. I’m enveloped, held captive by a heavy arm, and a sleepy rumble travels through me.

It’s a contented grumble, a satisfied and gruffly wordless expression of someone almost awake and happy. His dick is just as pleased. It gives me a warm and friendly nudge of morning wood that I’m down with.

Down with?

This is the best I’ve woken up feeling for ages. I also feel it when he wakes up for real.

Hayden goes still.

That heavy arm around me lifts next, slow and careful as if it might be unwelcome. He adds an inch of distance, and fuck that. Fuck it. I’m exactly where I want to be, thank you very much for asking. And no, I haven’t woken in France this morning, but that’s where I learned to never hurry waking. Much better to stretch out the gap between unconsciousness and the moment reality gives me my daily kick in the nuts.

I don’t have to search my gang of little artist-heroes for missing faces today.

Won’t have to scan the sea and wonder if they’re scared or sinking or?—

No.

I don’t have to do that this morning. I roll to face him instead, and find a sleep-rumpled version of someone not worried, exactly, but clouds do gather in a reminder of him baring his soul outside a chapel to a couple having their worst day ever. I have no idea why until he asks, “What time is your train?”

Train?

Here goes reality taking aim for my nuts.

My train. It leaves at eleven.

I lurch upright, scrambling through discarded clothes for my phone where—thank fuck—I find it’s only a few minutes past six. “Not for a while. Eleven. That’s ages yet. Hours and hours,” I tell him and slump back to where it’s warm and cosy. He’s up on one elbow, and there’s a lot of him to look at, so I do.

Shadows flicker. Not internal ones this time. These are cast by the sunrise through the trees around what he described as an occasional home. As temporary, like most of the work he mentioned while in the marquee. I get it. I spend most of my time with temporary people, both migrants and project workers. Only big operations like the one Reece works for last the distance.

I want mine to as well.

Need it to be permanent.

Perhaps that’s why this pops out. “Why don’t you rent somewhere?”

“Me?”

Something in his gaze shutters. Closes. Keeps me out, which isn’t what I want for this last time I’ll get to see him. I give myself a mental slap to wake the fuck up, and to try harder not to add another bruise to someone whom life has scarred already.

“You’ve got so many skills, is all.” I gesture around us. “And I heard someone at the wedding say that you made a whole new playground at the school out of nothing.”

“A Forest School space,” he corrects me quietly, but those shutters lift and he smiles when I keep listing everything else I’ve noticed.

“You aren’t just a school groundsman, even if you are pretty handy with a…” I sketch the shape of that wicked blade he used to slice through willow before twisting it into leafy circles.

“A bramble cutter.”

“Yeah, that. Plus, you used to run nature courses, didn’t you, and you know your way around farming.” Plenty of people came up to him last night while I was sketching, wanting to book him in for harvesting duties that he had to turn down, his schedule full already. “You’re in demand and have a lot of local contacts.” Anyone who watched him pull this wedding celebration together out of nothing would guess that. “So why?—”

“Do I live here between jobs? It’s free.” He says that as if it is a complete answer. Maybe it is, but he offers more, and I’m done listening to this still-sleepy softness. “I’m saving up.” He doesn’t say what for. I don’t ask because he follows it with something perhaps he didn’t mean to say aloud. “While I still can.” This comes out much faster. “Because I rely on seasonal work. Spend it all now and there won’t be enough for later. I know that’s not exactly the definition of successful.”

He lays back, so I go up on my elbow to see a different kind of shuttering, the type I’ve seen from kids before drawing what they didn’t choose to leave behind them but had to. So many of my little artists blamed themselves for the chaos that led them to my project. Shame travelled with them, because here’s the thing about kids—they’re brave little fuckers who’ll hide their worries from their families until they have an outlet.

Provide that for them with paper and pens or crayons and with other kids to share with, and boom, that shame has no place to hide. They can let it out, and I can redraw it for them.

I want to redraw Hayden now.

He doesn’t let me. He shifts again, adding a few more inches of distance, and I’ve thought fuck that once already. Fuck this right in the eye too, because someone who goes all out to help strangers for no payment or need for kudos can’t have anything to be ashamed of, so I move with him.

I also document how the sheet slips lower, and the shadows of leaves fall across his torso like when I drew him wearing a crown and ivy. All he wears now is a reminder of what those kids carried, and fuck that too. “I’m not judging,” I promise. “It isn’t like I’ve got a place of my own.”

“I could have my own place.” He meets my eye. “I have had plenty of times before. Rented locally. And I said that Marc and Stefan keep offering me a room. Saying no meant they could let the cottage out. Farming isn’t easy. Starting a wedding business wasn’t either. They need the income, and me renting anywhere else would be a lot of cash that I could...”

I take a guess, remembering something else he said while I sketched wedding guests and we chatted about everything and nothing. “Spend on your sisters? Or on more fast fashion and Taylor Swift tickets?”

He actually laughs, and that’s a great sound. He also meets my eyes, and that’s even better. I’ve left a picture I drew for him back at the stables to find when I’m long gone. Now I wish I could take another stab at adding everything that means I can’t resist this impulse.

I kiss him.

He kisses me back, closed mouthed but soft, and that’s what is missing from my drawing. This not a long-term kinda person is as soft as butter. On the inside, I mean. He’s plenty hard in other places that I roll against now, and we get off again, slow and unhurried, because there are hours left on my clock, right?

That meeting might as well be forever away while his hand wraps me. It could be years off when we get so hot and sweaty we need to make use of that shower he built for honeymooners. And if washing each other led to getting off for a third time, that was all good to hurry.

Time still rushes, and in no time at all I’m waiting at a station where I can’t avoid that I don’t have anything new to present to that agent.

It is almost the very last minute.

I’d hate myself if I wasn’t making the most of a final kiss with Hayden that comes with another quiet rumble that I barely hear over the sound of the station announcement. The next arrival will be the train to Paddington. I need to be on it.

“Good luck today, Rae.” He takes a step back. “Hope you get everything you want.”

“I’m gonna ask for it.” It’s so worth tagging this on. “You should too, Hayden. Ask for what you want, as well. You deserve something for you.” And that means I get to carry the surprised shift in his expression onto the train with me.

I’ve got work to do now, no way to ignore this deadline any longer, but I still prop up my phone, get out my sketchbook, and draw who I left on that station and who I won’t see again.

Cornwall blurs outside the train window as I sketch moorland as rugged as him. Towns and fields fly by too. The train must pass a music festival, I guess. Tents cram close together, and I add them to this drawing, only not exactly. These aren’t music festival tents or the nylon jungle I left across the Channel. I recreate the neat rows I last saw on a different child’s journey, one found buried under a school foundation.

Then I look up, watching the trail of an airplane flying high above the southwest of England.

Who knows why that comes out on my page as a Spitfire trailing smoke over Hayden—it wasn’t his life journey on that fragile postwar scroll, was it? It is him I draw again now, a giant extending a hand to a ghost, a wraith, to a vague outline of a child with hopes and dreams who washed up in this country after?—

I add flames to that Spitfire. Draw more around a blazing forest that caught fire the last time the world marched together against Nazis, which has nothing to do with the kids I’ve worked with in France.

Only…

Something clicks for me then, and yeah, I’ve often cursed myself for being scattered, but these moments of clarity? This intense hyper-focus? They almost make it worth saying no to the prescription medication that could save me from playing fast and loose with deadlines.

I flip back several pages, leafing through miniature hero after hero. That agent’s instruction repeats in time with the clack of wheels against the train tracks.

Put a unique spin on a journey.

The train hurtles towards my second shot at getting this right.

And as for me?

I get busy drawing.

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