“Yeah.”
My chest aches fiercely, but I refrain from rubbing it. “Law… Have you ever looked at a guy and wanted to have sex?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“No, I mean…” A cow in the dairy field next to us moos, and I realize this maybe isn’t the best place to be having this conversation, out in the open as we are. “Can we head inside? There’s something I wanna ask.”
Lawson nods, curiosity in his expression, and we continue on toward the ranch house. Instead of getting in my truck to go home as I’d planned, I follow Lawson inside, both of us taking off our boots. He leads me up to his bedroom where we’ll have some measure of privacy, closing the door behind us before going to his dresser.
He pulls a pair of jeans out that he tosses my way. “Here.”
Catching them, I switch out my muddy pair for the clean ones. Lawson waits all the while, looking pensively out the window.
I set the dirtied jeans aside, neatly folded. “Can we sit?”
He nods, heading to a chair in the corner. Another sits angled toward it, a small bookcase nearby. Once settled, I try to think how best to approach this. Lawson waits, ever patient, the sun slanting through the window lighting him in gold.
“Law… Do you think you might be ace?”
“What?”
His tone and expression give nothing away, and I realize maybe he’s never even considered it. Being that he didn’t question his sexuality until recently, it’s a distinct possibility.
“Asexual. Like…you’re not interested in people in a sexual way.”
“I’ve had sex,” he says slowly.
“Sure. But being ace doesn’t necessarily mean you don’tenjoysex. Like… Okay, when I look at someone I’m interested in, the littlest thing can turn me on. Their lips. The way they move their hands. Their ear.”
Lawson’s eyebrow pops up. “Their ear?”
“Yeah, like…” I swallow harshly, pulling my gaze from Lawson’s own ear. “Thinking about what I want to whisper into it. That turns me on. Or looking at them might remind me of the last time we were naked together, which makes me want to get them naked again. Do you ever experience anything like that? An urge to have that person right then right there?”
Lawson thinks about it long and hard, which seems to me to answer the question. But I don’t interrupt his thought process. Finally, he says, “I don’t know. Do you see now why I’m probably broken?”
“You’re not broken,” I say firmly, flicking the man’s forehead. “Cut that shit out. Tell me this. What do you like about sex?”
He huffs out a breath, rubbing his temple, his gaze on some distant place in the room. “I like…the release of it. For a while, I liked knowing I was making Laura feel good because it felt like I was being a proper husband. Like I was accomplishing what I was supposed to. But that lessened over the years.”
“Law,” I say, a catch in my throat I can’t quite disguise. “It shouldn’t ever feel like a chore.”
He swallows harshly. “No, I suppose not. But it took me a while to see that.”
God.
“But I want to have sex,” he goes on. “Forme. I want to know what it could feel like after those times where it felt almost right. I don’t need lust to be sure of that much.”
I nod slowly, my chest drawn tight. “What do you see when you look at me?”
Lawson’s eyes run over my face, the same as they always have. Warm in a way that’s never changed, not in all the years we’ve known each other. “I see the person I trust most in this world.”
It’s all I can do not to make a sound.
“You think I’m asexual?” he asks.
I let out a slow breath. “I think it’s a possibility. It’s a wide spectrum, but if you’ve never felt desire for another person before, then it might fit.”
“Or maybe I just haven’t found the right person.”
