“Maybe I’m just gutless.”
Fen glanced at Charlie, then back at me, his eyes darkening like the sweetest storm. “Never.”
“That’s cute.”
“You don’t like cute things, Stone?”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t call me that.”
“Not denying it then.”
His flirtation was as gentle as it had ever been, but in this moment it was somehow lighter, as if he knew in this upside down place we’d found ourselves in, I needed him to be something I recognised.
I played my part. “I never denied it.”
His grin morphed into the smirk I’d seen in my dreams more often in recent months than I cared to admit. This was the Fen Hawthorne I remembered—the man with the wicked smile and eyes that seemed to dance no matter the light in the room. Because hewasthe light in the room, especially when his epic gaze snared me like it had right now.
Repressing a shudder, I blew out a breath. We’d come full circle. He was flirting and I was loving it, but the fact remained that we hadn’t seen each other in more than a year and here I was, somehow marooned with him in the last place on earth I’d ever have thought to find him.Life is fucking weird.
Fen took my plate and dumped it into the sink with his. He seemed to sense I’d run out of brain power and he pointed at the stairs. “There’s a spare room up there with a bed big enough for you and Charlie. Why don’t you get some sleep?”
It took me a minute to compute that meant going to bed in his house. As if I hadn’t quite grasped that it was hell o’clock and my car was fucked, and even if it hadn’t been, the relentless snow had probably buried it up to the wheel arches by now. “You’re offering me a bed for the night?”
A complex mix of emotions passed over Fen’s features, each one too fleeting to catch. “Course I am. And not just because I already know your pretty face. Your sister’s been good to me since I came back here. I’d put up any brother of hers.”
Not Damon.I didn’t say it, though. What was the point? Fen would’ve given the shirt off his back to a stranger and he didn’t deserve my bitter self-pity.
Shit, I didn’t either, but bad habits were the hardest to break. “We’ll be out of your hair in the morning.”
Fen snorted. “Sure you will.”
I didn’t want to think about what he meant by that. So I didn’t. I scooped Charlie from the armchair and tucked him under my chin.
Fen watched me with a soft smile. “I never thought of you as the paternal type, but it makes sense now—all those lags you go above and beyond for.”
“You did as much for them as I did. More, most of the time.”
A quiet hum was Fen’s only answer, and I wanted to go to him, to get up in his face and unpick the complexities clouding his gaze. But with Charlie in my arms I wasn’t that man, and the fact that I wanted to kiss him was an extra complication I didn’t need either.
I hid my face in Charlie’s sweet-scented hair, just for a moment.
When I faced Fen again, his eyes were gentle. Inviting. I stepped towards him before I caught myself. “Um…goodnight? I guess? Or is it morning?”
“Not quite.” Fen stayed where he was and a tense, strange moment passed between us. Then he smiled and the light from the nearby Christmas tree made him look like a bearded, cuddly angel. He closed the distance separating us and cupped my face with his warm hand, his thumb tracing my cheekbone with a gossamer touch.
My heart thudded. I had so many things I wanted to say, but none of them felt right.
I settled for a smile.
Fen smiled back, then let his hand drop as he stepped away. “Goodnight, Rami.”
“Goodnight, Fen.”
* * *
It was the scent that woke me first. Earth and trees. Wood and smoke. Not the diesel and weed that wafted through the vents of my city centre flat.
Then it was the fact that the hot chubby hands I’d fallen asleep with were no longer welded to my face.
