He gives me that look. The one that sees through every wall I've ever built. "You keep saying that."
"Because it's true."
"It's not true. You almost drowned four hours ago. You should be in bed."
"Iwasin bed. The bed was very nice." I smile at him. "But the parking lot needs tables."
His mouth twitches under the beard with a secret. Something private just for me, that lives in the space between what happened upstairs and what's happening now.
"Fine," he says. "But if you pass out, I'm carrying you again, and this time Sheila's going to take pictures and put them on the bar's Instagram."
"You really have an Instagram account? I thought you were joking about that before."
"Sheila made one. It's mostly pictures of Big Bertha and sunset. She has fourteen followers. We're very exclusive. Twelve of them are Sheila's relatives. One is Mickey. The last one is a bot that sells discount motorcycle insurance. It's a very curated community. We don't let just anyone in."
I snort at him and shake my head. We work hard to make up for lost time. We set up tables and string lights. Tex fires up Big Bertha and I stock the serving station. It's the same routine we've done a dozen times, but everything is different. We're different now.
I'm allowing myself to see him clearly.
Not the way I've been seeing him, which was always through the filter of threat assessment first and confused attraction second. I'm seeing him the way I wanted to see him in the water when I thought I was dying. How I would have looked at him every day if I hadn't been so afraid.
I'm seeing him as the man I want desperately.
He's at the grill, laying out ribs, and his back is to me. His shoulders flex as he works, the muscles moving under the tanned skin, and I let myself look. The breadth of him. His jeans sit on his hips, low and easy. The tattoo across his shoulder that I still haven't read, dark ink against dark skin.I'm still dying to read it. I want to trace it with my fingers and feel his skin under my hands. I want to touch him everywhere.
The wanting is brand new. Not the existence of it. I've been wanting him for weeks, in that confused, terrified way where desire and fear are so tangled together you can't tell which is which. What's new is the absence of fear. The wanting is clean now. Clear.
When I look at the line of his spine and the width of his back and the way the sweat runs down between his shoulder blades, what I feel isn't panic. It's hunger. Simple, honest hunger for another person, and I didn't know it could feel like this. I didn't know wanting could be anything other than a weapon pointed at you.
Sex has always meant bad things. I'm not ready to think about the specifics, not yet, maybe not for a while. But I know that whatever happened to me before, whatever was done to me in dark rooms by hands I didn't choose, has nothing to do with this.
This is mine.
This wanting, this hunger, this heat that builds in my stomach when I watch him move, this is the first sexual feeling I've ever had that belongs entirely to me.
Nobody put it there. Nobody forced it. It grew on its own, slow and stubborn, like a plant pushing through concrete, and it's all mine.
Tex turns to grab the tongs and catches me watching. I don't look away. I hold his gaze and I let him see what's on my face, which is everything. His eyes widen just a fraction and his hand tightens on the tongs. A flush creeps up from his collar into his beard.
I wink at him.
He grins and turns back to the grill. His shoulders are stiffer than they were thirty seconds ago and I can see him breathing carefully, like a man trying to keep his composure while being tested.
The bikers start arriving around six. The parking lot fills up the way it always does with bikes and noise. I fall into the rhythm of running plates and keeping the serving station stocked.
Everything in my body hurts.
But I'm here and I'm working. Tex is at the grill and every time I pass him, I brush against him a little closer than necessary and every time I do, his eyes track me.
Around seven, he's behind the outdoor bar restocking bottles. His back is to me and he's bending down, reaching into a cooler, and I come up behind him.
I put my hand on his lower back. Low, just above the waistband of his jeans. My palm flat against his skin, warm and damp with sweat. I lean forward like I'm looking at whatever he's reaching for, and I leave my hand there.
He goes still. That stillness I know so well now, the one that means every cell in his body is focused on the point of contact. He doesn't move. He doesn't pull away. He straightens up slowly, my hand sliding up with him, staying in contact, and he turns his head and looks at me over his shoulder.
He smiles at me. "Need something?" he says. His voice is steady but his eyes aren't.
"I don't know. Maybe. What do we need?"
