“Hey,” he said, looking into Bede’s eyes.
Unspoken was the idea that even though pretty much everybody in the valley was hooking up, according to Beck, he for, one, did not enjoy an audience, which they currently would have just as soon as the water was turned off in one of the other stalls.
As to where this might lead, he simply had no idea.
“Yeah,” said Bede, low, breathy, urgent, his jawline trembling beneath Galen’s touch. “Yeah?”
Galen’s own fears were pushed behind by desire that raced through him. He had no idea what came next, but he wouldn’t mind more of this sweet connection, the low shine in Bede’s eyes.
He wanted to answer the question that lingered on Bede’s mouth. A mouth that Galen now knew the taste of. Just as he knew the contours of Bede’s face, the tenderness of his touch. The length of his bare legs. The array of tattoos on his skin.
“Yes?” he said, his voice rising, nerves echoing through the word.
He wasn’t afraid, not exactly. But he’d always lived by a personal sense of right and wrong.
Thoughts clamored in his head. That, since he was a team lead, sleeping with one of his parolee was not a very bright idea.
Bede had said that the valley was a chance he never thought he’d get. A chance to start something new. Take his life in a new direction.
Maybe that direction was one that Galen also wanted to follow. He wouldn’t know unless he tried, but he needed a minute, or maybe a lifetime, or maybe just a heartbeat.
Maybe it was in those dark blue eyes to make fun of Galen’s reticence. Or maybe that sparkle, diamond-bright, was pleasure at Galen’s agreement.
Either way, the soft smile that went with it emboldened Galen to lay a last kiss on that mouth, and then he hustled away, just as the shower in one of the stalls turned off and a soft humming ensued, along with the low hush-hush sounds of a damp body being toweled off.
Maybe he was crazy. Or maybe he was fearless.
All he knew was that this was the most alive he’d felt since his dad had passed away. Even his daydreams about Zeke Molloy hadn’t come close to this. To this reality that felt better than any daydream.
Chapter 28
Galen
At dinner, through the general chatter, exclamations over the amazing fish and chips, Galen kept his eyes on Bede, who sat catty-corner from him on the opposite side of the long table. This wasn’t strange. They normally sat together. They were on the same team, after all.
While already feeling the lance of nerves in his gut, he could see that Bede was acting like this was any other day. That he’d not just kissed Galen as he’d come out of his shower. That there wasn’t a very good—albeit tenuous—possibility that they were going to strip to the skin in front of each other and lay hands upon one another and?—
“I’d forgotten how good it feels to go swimming,” Bede was saying to Kell and Marston, who sat to Galen’s left. “One of the things I missed on the inside. Being fully submerged. You know?”
Galen glanced at Kell, who was nodding sagely.
Marston, who’d never been in prison, looked a tad confused. But then he said, “I never thought about it like that before.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin thoughtfully for a moment, then asked, “What else did you miss?”
There was no lascivious wink in Galen’s direction, no come-hither tone in Bede’s voice when he answered, “So many things. Like good food, quality food. In prison, I made myself eat whatever was on my tray just to stay strong.”
“And some of it was pretty gross,” said Kell with a shudder.
“I’m not talking down to maggot-infested level,” said Bede, cutting low through the air with his hand held flat. “But, you know. The bread was old, the spinach was slimy. Like that.”
The conversation continued on in a casual way, not like an interrogation, but as if Marston truly wanted to know. Which he might, seeing as how deeply Marston was in love with Kell.
“I missed fresh air that hadn’t been filtered by a chain-link fence and razor wire,” added Bede.
“I can imagine,” said Marston in a friendly way, though it was quite obvious that he really had no idea.
Come to that, neither did Galen.
He’d lived a free man his whole life, and the only time he’d been locked in anything was the one time recently that the door to the men’s toilet had jammed at Ranchette’s Stop ’n Go. He’d managed to shove his way free, internally laughing at the escapade, and how his dad would laugh when he told him, and then he remembered his dad had passed away and that there was nobody to share the joke with.
