Baylor’s face goes blank, eyes wild, features closing down. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want an answer to,” he snaps, trying to step past me as he grabs the abandoned case at our feet.
“The fuck? You aren’t walking away. We aren’t done here.”
His back is to me as he makes it a few steps across his entry way, and I can read the tension in his body and the turn of his head over his shoulder.
“When then?” Baylor spins to face me, eyes over-bright and confusion rolling off him in waves. “When are we done? You want to give me a fucking timeline? Is it at the end of this album? The next one? After anotherGrammy? Tell me when we are done, Cas. Because you aren’t here, yet you still never leave.”
I throw down my ace in the hole, too tired of trying to hide how I feel about him. I can’t do it anymore. I reach for him, and he is unmovable, drawing me to him instead. “We will never be done, Baylor. I can’t stop being in love with you any more than I can quit singing or breathing. You and I — we weren’t meant to end.”
Baylor gives a sharp intake of breath. His hands are clenched, one in my shirt, one on the handle of his case, and I want to do anything to wipe the hurt, confused look off his face. “If you are in love with me, if you were, why all the time, Cas? And the. . .Why?”
I press my mouth against his, firm and quick, just to get close to him. For courage that I can say what I need to and have it not ruin us. Or ruin us more. “I wasn’t the only one creating distance, was I? That door works both ways. But, I’ll own my part. I knew I loved you when we parted. But what did I have to offer one of the Mann brothers? Hell, you alreadyweresomeone, Bee. You had the option tonotgo to LA, tonottry and make it. You had something else waiting for you. Other dreams you could chase. And I knew that I needed to make something of myself first, before I could ask to be anything to you.”
I run a hand through my hair, frustrated at time’s ability to fuzz out the reasons that seemed so clear at the time. Frustrated by the inadequacy of words to explain the things that really matter. “And this business...it just alters time and people. And I guess I thought if you were writing my songs, we were still connected. I kept thinking I had to keep proving myself. Keep working harder. I thought I still had time.”
“And then I said I might not renew,” Baylor says.
I nod in agreement. “And then you said you might not renew. You were finally gonna leave. And you wrote a fucking love song. And I had to face it.” My voice breaks on the last word, but I let it. Vulnerability is a safe place with Baylor. Always. Time between us can’t change that.
“Cas, I—” Baylor blows out a breath. “I didn’t know. Back then, my feelings weren’t clear, weren’t accessible. I was. . .fuck I was barely able to legally drink, barely used to the fact I had a family. All I wanted was to come back here and have this life.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “Who expects to meet the love of their life that young? I didn’t know that what we had was—”
“What we have,” I correct.
His hand stills on his own face, and the other reaches out to mine. There are maybe six inches of air to cross, but those inches might as well be years. The tips of his fingers stroke my face and I shamelessly lean in.
“I thought it was a crush, something I would get over, and by the time I figured it all out, you had a number one hit that I had written and...” Baylor trails off and his free hand sort of makes a helpless gesture. “I thought that was all there could be to it. I couldn’t say something and take away what you wanted so badly.” Baylor swallows hard. “I built this house thinking that someday, you know, that there still could be this thing between us. I built my entire life that way.”
I wrap my arms around his neck, knowing before he does it that he’s going to pull me close.
This kiss is softer, sweeter and so tender. My head is buzzy with how it feels to be back in Baylor’s arms. I want to tell him how I have fixated on him for years. How important he is to me, but I can’t find the words.
Then the soft kiss turns deeper, and my brain forgets basic functions.
We end up on the couch. I’m laying on Baylor, wrapped up in his arms. No clothes have come off, although my hard cock is pressed close to his with layers of denim in between. I can’t get enough of his mouth, though. And the luxury of it. Just laying here, kissing Baylor, touching his skin. Still, when his hand moves to my ass, I let my dick rub against his thigh, close to needing something more, and also content to be hard as a rock, kissing Bee.
“Take me to your bed,” I tell him as we sit up.
“Is that what you want?”
I run a hand over his chest, sweeping up to place my hands on the side of his neck. He takes my hand to lead me toward his bedroom in kissing stumbles.
“Been wanting it for over a decade, now. Do you want to hear about it?” I tease. “About all the times I had to touch myself thinking about you?”
That gets me pushed against a wall, kisses turning rougher.
“Is that what you did?”
I nod, then whisper dirty, filthy things about what kind of fantasies I’ve had about him over the past thirteen years.
Chapter 16 – Baylor
Honey Bee – Lucinda Williams
Casissodamnfamiliar. . .and not. All at the same time.
His skin tastes the same under my mouth. His scent is the same, getting captured in my sheets as I press him beneath me, the way he always liked.
And at the same time, that skin is softer, stretched over a leaner, harder body than the one I remember. A man’s body. A deeper scent of lavender than the one I sometimes imagined.
