Wanderlust (Filling Spaces #1) (6 page)

Only silence greeted
him, and he realized Jamie’s arm around his waist was limp and slack.  Troubled,
Shea exhaled slowly, staring blindly into the darkness and listening to the
deep and even breathing of the man behind him.  “Goodnight, Jamie,” he said
quietly, and tried not to think of goodbyes and the life that waited for him at
home.

Sleep, he knew, wouldn’t
come for some time yet. 

IV.

Jamie didn’t wake up until
the early afternoon.

Groggy, he squinted at
the sunbeams that poured through the fractured windows.  Morning light had heated
the sleeping bag draped over him to an uncomfortable degree; he shoved away the
synthetic fabric and sat up all in one motion, wincing at the ache in his
back.  “Christ,” he muttered, and dampened his tone instinctively before he
looked to the side and realized what he should already have known:

Shea was gone.

For a moment the slim
young man simply sat where he was, his gaze fixed on the bare spot beside him and
the tangled sleeping bag on the floor as the sun warmed his naked body. 
“Asshole,” he muttered to no one in particular.  “You’re welcome for the food. 
And the orgasm.”

Irritable, he came to
his feet and sought out his clothes.  His shirt hid tangled in the sleeping
bag; his jeans had landed halfway across the floor.  As he dressed, his
thoughts drifted to last night, to Shea—to blue eyes feverish with longing, to
that slim body open and longing under his mouth and his tongue, to the long
languid kisses and that blond head buried in his lap.

Jamie sighed.

“Asshole,” he muttered
again, but the word held no real malice.  It wasn’t as though he’d expected
anything to come of it, anyway.  Yawning, he finished tugging on his shirt and
scrounged for the last granola bar in his bag, holding it in his teeth while he
finger-combed his hair.  Shea had...well,
some
sort of life, surely. 
Graduate school, he’d said.  Jamie tried to picture it, a world outlined by the
proud stone archways of an elite university, the bland white walls of a
comfortable apartment, a regular schedule that blended work and school and a
social life.  Just as well he was gone.  Shea was the type of guy who wouldn’t
make it one day without a schedule, would lose his mind not knowing what the
next day would bring.

Pampered.  Spoiled. 
Stupid picket-fence—

“I hope you don’t have
anything against fast food.”

Jamie started and
dropped his granola bar as the kitchen door slammed, then accidentally stepped
on it as he turned to the cabin’s entrance.  Shea seemed particularly alert,
his pale hair only faintly ruffled and his blue eyes cheerful.  His limp had
improved, too, and he held forth a crumpled white bag, grease-stained here and
there, in offering.  “Breakfast,” he announced.  “Bacon, egg, and cheese.  I
don’t know what your tastes are, so I hope it’s okay.”

Jamie regarded him
warily.  “What are you
doing
here?”  Misplaced pride pricked him,
spawned a new and unpleasant worry.  “If this is just because I gave you a blow
job—”

Shea favored him with a
laugh.  “I’d say last night was probably worth more than the nine dollars I
spent on breakfast,” he pointed out.   “It’s just that you fed me dinner last
night, so I thought the next meal should be my turn.”  Unperturbed by Jamie’s
obvious bewilderment, he pulled out two neatly-wrapped biscuits from the bag. 
“We have to split an orange juice, though.  I didn’t have a ton of cash on me.”

The scent of bacon made
Jamie’s stomach growl, but he ignored it to plant both hands firmly on the
table and lean forward until his face was an inch from Shea’s.  “What,” he
snapped, “do you think you’re doing?  Shouldn’t you be home by now?”

Honest confusion
touched Shea’s blue eyes as they searched Jamie’s face.  “I don’t understand. 
Do you
want
me to leave?  When you first found me here, you said I
should stay if I wanted, and last night you said I should risk something—you
said I should stay, and then maybe come with you.  I thought you were joking,
and maybe you were, but...” He glanced down at his food, then sharply back up
at Jamie.  “But part of it felt true.  So I decided to come back.”

Jamie opened his mouth
and then shut it.  At a loss for words, he plucked the second biscuit from
Shea’s proffered hand and busied himself with the wrapper as he sat down at the
crooked table.  “You’re spoiled,” he finally muttered after a moment.  “Don’t
pretend you have that much bravado.  All you did last night was tell stories
about your comfortable little life and your comfortable little school.  Don’t
act like you’re just going to leave it all behind.”

“And you didn’t tell me
anything about yourself at all,” Shea countered honestly as he started on the
biscuit.  “You’re right; I
am
spoiled.  Coming here to break into an
abandoned house is probably the craziest thing I’ve done in my life, and I know
that makes me a person who’s lived comfortably.”  He paused, brow drawn down in
thought, radiant in the morning sunlight in spite of the crumbs on the side of
his cheek.  “But I don’t want to be that person always.”

The breakfast biscuit, Jamie
decided, tasted good enough to make up for how
deranged
this idiot
sounded.  He picked up a scrap of bacon that had fallen out and stuffed it back
into the biscuit as Shea continued earnestly.  “My dad told me to come here to
say goodbye to the place, and then when I did I met…you, out of the blue.  It’s
crazy, but I really—”

Jamie eyed him from
across the table.  “Don’t you
dare
start spouting some bullshit about
fate or—”

To his surprise, Shea
smiled.  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied, but then his features softened
back into seriousness.  “All I mean is that—well, I think you’re right.  My comfortable
life, my little world…I’ve lived in it for a long time, and chosen my path
without really thinking about what
I
wanted.  I focused instead on what
felt safe, or seemed proper, wise to do…” He paused.  “And then last night
happened.”

“An orgasm changed your
life philosophy,” Jamie deadpanned.

Shea snorted. 
“Please.  More that for the first time I made decisions based on what I felt,
what I
wanted
, and it was…nice.  Different.  I don’t want to stop it so
soon.  This morning, I was going to leave, but I didn’t
feel
like
leaving. So I decided to stay instead.”

Jamie fell silent for a
moment, surprised by the unyielding will in Shea’s honest gaze and the resolve
that firmed his jaw.  “I could be an axe murderer,” he pointed out.

“That’s true.”

“Or a rapist,” he
added, punctuating the air with his biscuit for emphasis.  “A drug addict or a
convict on the run.”

“It’s definitely
possible.”

“I could be waiting,” Jamie
elaborated, mildly disturbed by Shea’s lack of alarm, “to follow you back down
to your car, where I’ll attack you and leave you for dead while I assume your
identity and go on the run.”

Shea’s lips quirked
into a smile.  “Your humanities education is showing.”

Jamie scowled.  “You’re
taking this too
lightly
,” he muttered, tearing the edge of the biscuit
into small pieces.  And he knew, saying it, that
he
sounded like the
foolish one.  All of those comments yesterday about Shea’s picket-fence life,
and now he’d decided to encourage Shea right back to it?  But even so— 

The straw squeaked
against the lid of the cup as Shea absently toyed with it.  “It’s risky,” he
agreed finally, gazing down at the cup, and his smile was tinged with sadness. 
“But
everything’s
risky.  Sure, you might be…well, any of those things
you said.  But if you’re not, and if everything I felt last night was real,
what will I risk losing if I leave?”

Driven to distraction
by the sound of the straw, Jamie covered Shea’s hands with his own to stop them
from moving.  Surprised, Shea glanced down, and a small smile touched his
lips.  “Your hands are warm,” he said simply.  Before Jamie could utter a
reply, though—
and water is wet, Sherlock
—the smaller man glanced up,
gaze both earnest and melancholy.  In that moment, Shea seemed impossibly young
and knowing all at once, and the sight stilled any response on Jamie’s tongue. 
“In the hospital before he died, all my dad could talk about was the cabin. 
How much he regretted selling it, how much he regretted all the things he
didn’t do.”  The words obviously came with difficulty; Shea turned his gaze
down to the table again and fell silent for painful, lingering moments. 

Jamie didn’t know how
to respond, and didn’t wish to dirty the honesty of the moment with false words
of comfort.  So he simply kept his hands where they were and waited, and after
a few minutes Shea cleared his throat and spoke again.  “All I know is that I
would regret leaving here without getting to know you more.  Without finding
out what I really want and what I need.  I’d regret it if I went back to a life
where I assumed that making a good choice meant making the least risky one.” He
lifted his eyes and offered a shy, hopeful smile.  “And that’s all.  I want to
stay here at least for the weekend. If you don’t mind sharing, anyway.”

“You mean if we don’t
get kicked out by whoever the hell owns this place,” Jamie felt obliged to
point out.  Shea laughed, and the mirth banished the traces of sorrow from his
face.  The sight lightened Jamie’s mood; he finished the biscuit and drained
half the orange juice over Shea’s protests that he was thirsty.  “And what
happens after this weekend?”

He didn’t know why he
asked.  Curiosity, he told himself.  That was all.

Shea leaned back in the
old kitchen chair in response, balancing it precariously on two back legs as he
gazed at the ceiling.  “I imagine,” he theorized, “that I’ll know a lot more about
what I want.” The chair landed back on all four legs with a thump; he directed
a surprisingly intense gaze at Jamie that was tempered by the obvious lightheartedness
in his eyes and the smile that curved his lips.  “And I’ll make choices
accordingly, even if it means risking the things that make my life
comfortable.”

The words felt both
like a challenge and a promise, and Jamie felt a smile of his own touch his
lips in response.  “There might be hope for you yet,” he said lightly, and
trusted Shea to understand the sentiment behind the words as he tossed the
crumpled wrapper from his breakfast into the garbage can.  Across from him,
Shea nursed the remainder of the orange juice, and for the first time Jamie
noted the faint bruises blooming on the pale skin of his throat and his
collarbone from demanding kisses and bites.  He felt seized with the sudden
urge to run his tongue over them, to map out the intriguing terrain of last
night all over again, and told himself it could wait for now.

You have all weekend. 
Maybe more than that.

Jamie didn’t want to
think about why the thought brightened his mood so much.  And he didn’t want to
think, either, of what this might mean for the hurts he kept hidden and all the
words he didn’t know how to say.  Nor of what Shea’s choices might mean for
his
future, and the comfortable—if more subtle—routines in his own life.
Instead, he reached out and caught Shea by the hand, tugged him bodily out of
the chair.  “Up, now.  Up, up.”

Shea staggered along
willingly, still clinging to the orange juice until Jamie kissed him, tongue
lapping the sweet-tart from his mouth; he promptly dropped the cup where it
rolled along the floor before coming to rest against a cabinet. “Hey,” he said
breathlessly when the kiss broke.  “What’s that for?”

“Risk demands reward,” Jamie
murmured against his ear, and thrilled to the way Shea curved instinctively
against him, tangled arms around his neck.  “And a busy night deserves a shower
in the morning.  Want to share?”

 “Water’s cold,” Shea
mumbled, but he smiled against the soft material of Jamie’s shirt.  “So only if
you can keep me warm in there.”

Jamie forgot his
promise to himself to wait and lowered his head to the red mark on Shea’s
throat, traced it with his tongue and then sucked gently.  The gesture drew a
satisfying whimper from Shea, and Jamie gave up all thoughts of starting off
for the shower entirely as the smaller man drew him back down again into
another kiss that made the first seem insignificant.

Behind them, a ladybug
tracked a slow path across the table to investigate the empty food wrappers. 
The fractured sunlight that streamed through the broken windows fragmented into
prisms along the floor, illuminated the dark walls with rich golden light as
squirrels played in the trees outside.  And Jamie breathlessly lifted his head
from the kiss to look down into brilliantly blue eyes, to Shea’s features
alight with desire, wonder, and—to his surprise—trust.  “I’m happy,” Shea
admitted honestly.  His fingers tightened on the sleeves of Jamie’s shirt. 
“That I came here and that I’m here now.” Somehow he managed not to sound
ridiculous spouting such sentimental bullshit; Jamie, aware that his language
fluency extended largely to sarcasm, didn’t trust himself to say something as
honest or meaningful.  Instead, he spoke in the only way he knew how, and
brushed the back of his hand against the softness of Shea’s cheek, a touch that
he hoped would say everything he couldn’t:

You’re odd.  You’re
smart and special.  And I’m glad that you chose to stay.

Shea’s smile said that
he understood, and together they started for the shower.  As they argued about
the water temperature, the relative virtues of fast food for breakfast, and the
possibility of spiders hiding in the corners of the bathroom, Jamie found that
he felt uncharacteristically hopeful.  Who knew what might happen, or what
might come from this?  Maybe something new and different.  Maybe something
amazing.