Shit, a look like that should be illegal. He made Morgan feel dirty just thinking about saying no, and yet—hadn’t he come here to avoid pity? And now he’d fallen right into being Ty’s pity project.
Then again … maybe Ty really was as lonely as Morgan. Maybe Ty got more out of his company than Morgan gave himself credit for. If that was true, then Ty was welcome, but …
“You can’t run out on me again,” Morgan said, dead serious now. “You scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know what happened to you; all I knew was that you’d gone somewhere I couldn’t follow. You could have fallen into the water for all I could tell, and I can’t—I can’t do that again.”
“I won’t,” Ty promised.
“And I won’t push you, but … look, if I make you uncomfortable by accident, justtell me. Okay?” God, what Morgan wouldn’t give for a partner who just fucking communicated with him instead of hiding things and holding off the bad news until the bitter end. Not that Ty was his partner the way Bentley had been, but the intent was the same. “All I ask is that you talk to me even if it’s just to tell me to stop. Don’t leave me guessing, and don’t give me a heart attack, okay?”
Ty nodded. “Mmm, I won’t.” He smiled slightly. “Does that mean I can stay and help you?”
Morgan almost collapsed with relief. “Please do, yeah.” Even the thought of trying to cook for himself when his shoulder and neck were so fucked up made him want to curl up in a ball. Piloting a boat was out of the question. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” Ty helped Morgan get his jacket off, then watched him bed down with a narrow gaze. “Are you sure you can’t have a painkiller yet?”
“Not yet. Just lying down is helping, though,” he added.
“Good. I’m going to make a run back to my home for a few things, but I’ll likely be back before you wake up.”
Morgan closed his eyes and nodded, already on the verge of falling asleep. The pillow was soft under his head, giving where he needed it to be, and the pain was steadily ebbing from a sharp sting to a dull ache. He exhaled, his whole body relaxing for what felt like the first time since he’d come back to the lighthouse from Ty’s place. A cool hand briefly touched his forehead, but it wasn’t a clinical touch this time. This was a gentle, almost tender drag of fingertips from his temple down his jaw before Ty finally stepped away.
Morgan didn’t hear him leave, which was exactly how he wanted it.
Chapter seven
Having Ty around again was a blessing. So much so, in fact, that Morgan wasn’t entirely sure that half his pain hadn’t been psychosomatic, because in the space of a single week, he went from being almost debilitatingly in pain to feeling as good as he had before he left. The nerve pain seemed to vanish almost overnight, which was the best part—Morgan had dealt with chronic nerve pain in his neck when he was prone to pulling overnighters to get projects done, and it had taken him months to recover back then. It helped that he wasn’t required to hunch over a computer screen so much now, but still, he’d been worried about it.
Then he’d gotten his first massage from Ty and promptly collapsed into a puddle of satisfaction on the bed.
Ty hadn’t touched him very much when they’d lived together before. Which was completely understandable and fine, justfine, Morgan didn’t have any right to expect to be touched beyond what was strictly necessary for Ty to feel good abouthelping him, butdamn.If he’d known Ty was this good with his hands, he’d have been begging for his touch back at Ty’s cabin. He knew just how much pressure to apply, seemed to be able to find the sore spots without even asking, and kneaded them to the point of pain before suddenly releasing, and the most intense heat and relief would bloom across where he’d just been. It lasted, too, and with the help of the muscle relaxants, Morgan was able to sleep well every night and get his aches rubbed away every morning.
He’d have felt selfish about it if it weren’t for the fact that Ty was so clearly relieved that Morgan was feeling better. Ty checked in on him a lot, either by asking how he was or just by staring at him, eyes running up and down Morgan’s body like he could hunt down aches and pains before they manifested. If sometimes his eyes lingered in places, or his skin got noticeably pinker, or he jolted out of gazing at Morgan like he was coming out of a daze, well … that wasn’t really Morgan’s business.
And if Morgan’s reaction to Ty’s staring was to get hard for what felt like the first time in forever, that wasn’t Ty’s business either.
He was already pretty sure nothing was going to happen between them. There might be a certain simmering level of attraction between them—there definitely was on Morgan’s part, he couldn’t lie—but it wasn’t worth damaging their friendship to act on it. Being there as a friend, helping him as a friend, was clearly important to Ty. The fact that it hadn’t gone beyond that yet even though Ty was literally rubbing him down every day, was …
Your own fault, dude. Communication, remember?
There was communication, and then there was cutting your own heart out of your chest and offering it to someone with no assurance they’d even accept it. Morgan knew himself too well; he knew if he let himself consider a relationship with Ty tooclosely, he’d want it, and he’d want to keep it. That was how he’d always been, one of the reasons he and Bentley had lasted for more than a decade even when they were falling apart—once he got something, he wanted it forever. It was hard for Morgan to let go, whether it was a lover or a company or even a memory, like what Parrish Island had been to him.
Greedy. Possessive. Taker.
It was hard to feel like a taker when Ty seemed to want to give so much, though.
“Come on,” he said one day as Morgan was finishing his coffee. “There’s something I want to show you.”
That was vague but intriguing. “Where?”
“The beach.”
Ah, the beach. Morgan had a hard time remembering therewasa beach on Parrish Island—but he’d seen it, at least part of it, the day he fell into the water and fucked himself up. It wasn’t abigbeach, more of a pebbly stretch on the west side of the island, but it was there … and as Morgan remembered, there had been a few sea lions stretched out on the rocks there as well. “Are we going to look at sea lions?”
“Mmm.”
Okay, that was a nice enough day trip. There was a glint in Ty’s eyes that made Morgan wonder if something else was going on—maybe he’d seen something while he was out on his fishing expedition that morning? Morgan decided to play along, though. He tested his shoulder, stretching his arm out carefully the way his PT had shown him. His range of motion still wasn’t great, but it was definitely improved, and he was finally getting some of his strength back as well. Maybe he could get away with—
“Use the sling.”
