Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 69895 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69895 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Moon laughed and clapped him on the back.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that Bram really—”
“Got hurt terribly when his boyfriend and best friend betrayed him. Bram is a sweet, kind, trusting soul who needs to be protected. Did I get that right?”
Moon blinked. “Well. Yes.”
“Great. But here’s the thing. Bram doesn’t need to be protected. He’s strong and resilient and everyone gets hurt, but he got through it and he’s fine. I’m his boyfriend, not his parent. I don’t need to protect him from the world because he can protect himself. He’s not a child who doesn’t know how things work. He’s trusting because he enjoys the feeling of trusting people. Must be nice. Anyway. I know you all mean well, but the best thing you could do for Bram? Is stop trying to run interference between him and the world.”
Moon’s eyes had gotten even wider as he spoke, and when he finished, he realized his voice had risen in volume and the living room had gone silent for the first time since they’d all arrived.
“Um,” Moon said.
Arms came around Zachary’s chest and he was hugged from behind. He let himself melt into Bram’s strong chest and breathed in his smell.
“Thank you,” Bram said seriously.
Zachary turned and saw Bram’s eyes glowing with love and unshed tears.
The mythical “happy tears,” which he’d read about but never believed were real until meeting Bram.
“You weren’t supposed to hear that,” Zachary muttered.
But Bram just squeezed him tight and kissed his temple.
When they went back into the living room, every Larkspur’s gaze was on him. He tensed, but as he looked closer at their expressions, he saw they weren’t hostile or defensive. They were happy, gratified, a little ashamed, surprised, and impressed, respectively.
* * *
“Is this your childhood bedroom?” Zachary asked.
The eating, drinking, and talking had gone on for hours and Zachary had gotten exhausted with it after a while, and simply put his head in Bram’s lap and gazed out the window at the garden lit with solar-powered fairy lights. It was beautiful.
Now the crowd had dispersed, and Bram had shown him to a room draped with tapestries and plastered with band posters and stickers, and cluttered with vases of dried flowers, books, art supplies, and wood shavings.
“Yeah, kind of. There are four rooms besides my parents’, so we kind of swapped around who shared with who, and who got their own room over the years and when we started moving out one by one. This was my room most recently, but I think Moon stays in here a lot when she comes to hang out and doesn’t want to drive home. She and my dad have gotten into whiskey tasting.”
Zachary shuddered at the thought of the already brash Moon intoxicated.
They brushed their teeth in a small bathroom in the hallway that was packed with plants. The toothpaste tasted weird.
In the bedroom, Bram had opened the window and cricket song poured in with the breeze. It smelled of ozone and moss and dirt and made Zachary feel instantly sleepy.
The bed was small, and Bram was large, so they ended up wrapped tight together with the worn, homemade quilts that smelled of cedar tucked up to their chins against the fresh, cool air.
Bram stroked his hair. With his ear to Bram’s chest, he could hear the slow and steady thump of his heart. It beat so steadily that Zachary sometimes thought, as he drifted off, that it was the only truly dependable thing in the universe. And he was so very glad that it was his.
“How are you doing, baby?” Bram asked. “I know today was a lot.”
“I’m so comfortable,” Zachary murmured, snuggling closer.
“Good.”
They lay like that for a while, Zachary’s mind ranging back over the conversations he’d had with Trent and Mirabelle about solar paneling and a design he was currently working on, the way Bram’s rough fingers had run so tenderly over the seedlings in the garden, and the smell of the country air lulling him to sleep.
“Would you want to live in the country?” Zachary asked carefully.
“Yeah,” Bram said without hesitation. “I like to be within close driving distance to things, but I would love to have a plot of land. Enough to grow vegetables, have a few animals. Wander around naked whenever I feel like it.” He squeezed Zachary’s butt.
“You basically do that now,” Zachary muttered.
“Shirtless is not naked, darlin’,” Bram said breezily.
Zachary thought hard.
“Enough space that some of your family could stay when they came to visit. A woodshop like Charlie’s.”
Bram turned on his side and gathered Zachary even closer.
“That sounds like heaven.”
Zachary’s heart pounded. “I could design that. I could design whatever you wanted.”
Bram kissed him. “Whatever we want.”
“Yeah?” Bram sounded so certain.
“Hell yeah. Of course, baby. I’d love that. Don’t you know that?”
Zachary dragged himself up and leaned against the wall. Bram sat up too. The moon was nearly full and once his eyes adjusted, Zachary could see Bram’s face in the silvery light.