“Okay,” he agreed reluctantly. “Night, Luca.”
“Night, Emerson.”
He was so sleepy and content that he expected to fall asleep immediately. But something needled in his brain, keeping him awake.
After a few minutes, he picked up his phone.
I would read your book any time, you know
partial or full
any version
whatever you wanted to give me
Emerson stared at his screen for many long minutes after hitting send on the final message.
He had, perhaps, gone too hard.
But another thirty seconds later, a message popped up on his screen.
thank you
And then—a heart.
Emerson knew it wasn’t a yes. He knew he’d likely never see a page of Luca James Yaeger’s book.Drift.
But he knew it was the most Luca could give him. It felt sincere.
Emerson smiled at his phone until he fell asleep.
eighteen
When Luca broughthis laptop to the kitchen table the following Sunday afternoon, Emerson was already in the room, processing dried herbs.
He wore an apron and white gloves, standing at the kitchen island with an array of supplies before him: tiny glass bottles, clean bowls, trimming shears, the herbs themselves on a variety of cutting boards. Luca had noticed, when he’d stopped by his room for his laptop just now after spending all morning cleaning his cabin, that some of the herbs that normally hung from strings across his ceiling had been missing. But he hadn’t expected…all this. Emerson looked like a cross between a science professor and a chef.
And like always with Emerson King, it was absolutely working for Luca.
“Hey,” Emerson said with a soft smile.
Luca slid into his regular chair at the table. “Hey,” he said back, feeling strangely shy.
The house was quiet again, with Daisy gone. Emerson had dropped her off yesterday at Jayden’s during his regular Saturday visit to Portland. As soon as he’d returned, he’dfound Luca in his bedroom, jumping on top of him with a kiss. They’d never had sex in Luca’s room before, and Luca had liked it: the way he’d heard Emerson’s footsteps on the stairs seconds after hearing the front door slam, the almost desperate way it had felt between them, being truly alone and free for the first time in a week, how it felt to fuck in Luca’s own space—because he had started to think of the room as his own space—without the photographs on Emerson’s walls hanging over them. They had both laughed as they’d recovered, slaphappy in the lazy sunlight of late afternoon.
But when Luca had woken up this morning, grabbed a quick bagel alone in the kitchen before heading to his cabin—Emerson had probably already been working, in the barn, somewhere out in the fields—the quiet stillness of the house without Daisy there had only made Luca feel sad.
“I’m gonna try to get some work done,” Luca said now, opening his laptop. “You can pretend I’m not here.”
Emerson only gave him another soft smile. “Okay.”
Luca watched him work for a few minutes before turning his gaze to his screen.
Emerson probably thought Luca was working on his book. He was smiling like that because he thought Luca being a writer was romantic instead of excruciating. When the truth was, Luca had barely been able to write anything new since sending his manuscript to that agent four days ago. What if he worked on some of the new threads he’d been playing with, and then he got feedback that everything he was doing was all wrong?
Not that he’d likely hear back at all. He didn’t have to check his writing email or update his spreadsheets like he had the last Sunday he was alone with Emerson in the kitchen like this, because he’d been checking his email every day again. He’d already checked it today. Three times.
Like an idiot.
