He laughed, sated and raw. “I don’t think I’ll be able to walk, but yeah. I’m perfect.”
I rolled off him, pulling him into the curve of my body. He tucked his head under my chin and let his hand drift to my chest, right where I’d left a bite mark.
I looked at his wrist, at the ink still swollen and angry, and kissed it again, softer this time. “You really are mine now,” I said, and he smiled against my skin.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “Guess you are too.”
I held him tight, let the world outside fade to nothing. Just us, for as long as we wanted. Forever, if we could get away with it.
Chapter Six
~ Quiad ~
The first time I imagined building Levi a house, it was the middle of winter. The farm was dark by five, the world outside my shop brittle with frost and the sky sucked clean of color. I was on my back in bed, listening to the pipes thrum and to the faint, scratchy radio Levi played downstairs when he thought I couldn't hear it.
The thought came in fully built, like a prefab barn dropped out of the sky: a house, small but sturdy, planted by the creek where the grass grew high and nobody could get to us unless we wanted them to. I hadn't told him yet. I didn't know how.
But by the time I did, it was June. The morning in my loft above the carpentry shop looked like a page out of a paint swatch deck: the blue-tinged gray of the walls, the gold from the rising sun leaking through the warped glass, and a dirty brushstroke of sawdust coating the kitchen floor.
I sat at the table, elbows propped, coffee cooling in my hand. Across from me, Levi perched on the edge of the chair, knees pulled up tight, body swaddled in my old army hoodie.
He looked like he'd been up half the night, and he probably had. Every now and then, he'd glance at the clock, then at me, then at the clock again. Like maybe time would start behaving if he kept an eye on it.
I sipped my coffee and waited for my brain to catch up. It didn't. There were too many things in the air between us, none of them said out loud: the feel of his body under mine, the way he'd clung last night, the taste of his skin when I bit his shoulder hard enough to leave marks.
He kept the sleeve of his hoodie pushed back, showing off the raw, angry scab of the tattoo he'd gotten for me. It was still redat the edges, but the black lines held, and the swelling had gone down.
He caught me looking and twisted his wrist, just a little, like he needed to see it from my angle. Then he met my eye, blue-on-brown, and for a second the whole world spun around that fixed point.
“Coffee’s getting cold,” I said, more to break the tension than anything.
He shrugged. “I like it that way. Less risk of tongue mutilation.” The voice was casual, but his shoulders ratcheted higher, like a spring winding up.
I set my mug down and braced my hands flat on the table, waiting for the moment when I’d know how to begin. I didn’t need to wait long. Levi couldn’t let silence go unchecked for more than a minute.
“You wanna tell me why you made me sleep up here last night?” he asked, voice pitched just a touch above normal. He tried to play it off, but the tips of his ears went pink. “Not that I’m complaining. Your bed is like a memory foam slab for the soul. Just curious.”
“I wanted you to myself,” I said, as direct as I could. “Didn’t want to share you with the rest of the house.”
Levi laughed, the sound tight and a little uncertain. “I’m not that interesting, you know.”
I let the silence stand a beat. “You are,” I said. “And I want to build you a house. Down by the creek, where we had our picnic. Not too close—don’t want you swept off in a flood—but close enough we can see the water from the porch. Oak tree’s still standing, so we’ll put the kitchen window facing it.”
He stared at me, slack-jawed, a chunk of hair falling across his eyes. He brushed it back with the hand that bore my name, and when he spoke, his voice was thin as rice paper.
“You want to build us a house?” He said the words like he wasn’t sure if he’d heard right. Then, a second later, “From scratch?”
“That’s what carpenters do, Sunshine,” I said, and let the corner of my mouth twitch up.
He blinked a couple times, as if trying to focus through a magnifying glass. Then he gave a breathless little laugh. “I thought you were gonna say you wanted to build a canoe. Or, I don’t know, a garden shed. You’re talking about an actual house.”
I got up, the chair legs scraping rough across the floor, and retrieved a spiral-bound notebook from the junk drawer. The cover was splattered with paint and there were pencil shavings stuck in the binding. I set it down between us, then rooted in the drawer for a stubby Dixon Ticonderoga.
I thumbed open to a blank page and handed him the pencil. “Tell me what you want in it.”
Levi’s mouth opened and closed a few times. Then, as if remembering his body, he straightened, set his coffee down, and drew the notebook close. The tip of the pencil hovered over the paper like a divining rod.
“Anything?” he said, voice gone soft.
