Crave (The Gibson Boys 3)

“I’m a terrible liar.”

Ignoring him, I direct my attention to the little window. On the other side is a sink that won’t have dishes in it because Machlan can’t stand dirty dishes. There will be a bottle of soap on the left side of the faucet and a strainer in the right sink basin.

“Did you hear me?” Peck asks.

“Nope. What?”

He dangles a set of keys in the air.

“Are those to the door?” I ask.

“Unfortunately.”

Snatching them out of his grip, I pop them in the lock, and the door swings open. “Peck,” I say, handing him the key ring. “You’re my favorite person tonight.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

We step inside and flip on the light. It’s exactly as I expect it.

A sink sits to our right, soap and strainer in place. A little table sits a few feet away with an aloe vera plant in the center that was a start from Machlan’s grandmother. A hideous orange and brown sofa is backed up against terrible brown paneling, and a television sits across from it. The long back wall has a futon, a dresser, and a little desk with a lamp.

“Smells a little musty in here,” Peck notes. “Maybe we should open the window a bit.”

“Yeah.”

I venture into the room as Peck wrestles with the window. My heart sits at the base of my throat, pulsing with every beat. I’ve sat on that sofa many nights, listening to the chaos of the bar below as I waited for Machlan to come up after Crave closed. I’ve woken up on the futon with my face on his chest with our legs wrapped around each other so crazily that I didn’t know where his started and mine ended. I’ve tasted his lips, felt his skin, loved his heart on those sheets, and my own heart tugs a little as I think about it.

“You okay?” he asks.

I jump at Peck’s voice and turn around. “Yeah. Just thinking.”

“Just in case you were thinking about it—or not,” he adds. “Maybe you weren’t thinking of this at all, and now I’m bringing it up and—”

“What, Peck?”

He sighs. “Machlan doesn’t bring women up here. He comes in early and does some paperwork before the bar opens. He’ll nap up here if the bar is dead and he doesn’t need to be down there. He does all kinds of things, but never … that.”

My swallow is hard to pass. My tears are hard to blink back. I manage to do both.

“Thanks for telling me,” I say. The words scald my throat as I think of Machlan holding another woman or letting her hear his heartbeat in the dead of night.

My arms fold around my middle. Peck notices.

“If you want me to stay, I can stay,” he offers. “Or, despite my aversion to coffins, you can sleep at my place.”

“I’ll be fine. Thanks, buddy.” I give him a weak smile. “I won’t tell Mach you helped me.”

His brow furrows. “Nah, fuck it. Tell him.”

“That’s a quick change of heart.”

“Maybe it’ll be good to fire him up some. It’ll keep him off my ass for my tab.” He grins and closes the distance between us, pulling me into a hug. “I’m not asking for details because it’s safer not to know.” He chuckles as he lets me go. “But I feel like you have something going on, and I hope it works out for you.”

“Me too,” I whisper.

He heads for the door. “If you care, Mach is usually here by ten. Unless you want to deal with him, you might wanna be out of here by then.”

“Noted. And Peck?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. I appreciate you.”

He winks. “Lock this behind me.” He waits on the other side until I slide the lock in place. It’s only then I hear his footsteps descend the stairs and his truck start and pull away.

The room seems to shrink with only me in it. I stand next to the table, a piece of furniture I know Machlan made in a high school woodworking class, and wait for a chill. An unsettled feeling. A gnawing sensation at the back of my mind.

Meandering through the small area, my lips part in a smile. It grows as I remember making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the tiny counter space next to the microwave and gets wider when I remember the night Machlan broke up a fight in the bar. I spent a couple of hours up here tending to his bloodied knuckles and black eye.

My eyes grow heavy as they land on the futon. Yawning, I pull back the navy blue comforter and inspect the sheets. They’re crisp and clean. Slipping off my flip-flops, I flop on the mattress. The frame groans under the movement. I nestle in the pillows, yanking the blankets over my body. The entire bed smells like a mix of Machlan’s laundry soap and cologne, and I sigh as I float into a dream that I never want to wake from.