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“Here, grab that side,” Shiloh says, clearing his throat and looking away from me, but not before I catch the flush on his cheeks through the short beard covering them. I smile at his back as I follow him to the bed, happy that my quiet, slightly shy lobsterman wasn’t fully replaced by the confident one.

We slide the bed against the wall, and Shiloh lifts the ends so I can tug out the towels he’d placed underneath the feet to protect his hardwood floors. I survey the room as I do, noting the big window looking over the front drive. No ocean view from this room, but the thought of working in here and watching for Shiloh’s truck to come home at the end of the day…call me crazy, but it feels like I’m winning in this scenario.

“I’ll bring this downstairs,” he says, drawing my gaze away from the window over to where he’s standing with a handpropped on his hip and the other gesturing toward a dressing table. “You might need the chair, though?”

“Maybe,” I agree, glancing at the soft little armchair. It looks slightly familiar, scratching gently at my brain like an upholstery déjà vu. I wonder if it came from his grandparents’ house. “We don’t have to move all your stuff out, though. I can work around. Although we will need to cover everything with plastic.”

“Everything? Really?” For some reason, he sounds delighted by this, an excited little lilt to his words as though he’s imagining me up here flinging a paintbrush around and splattering the walls.

“Just to be safe, yeah. I don’t want to ruin your things, and no matter how hard you try and keep paint on the canvas, it somehow always manages to find its way everywhere else.”

“Don’t worry about that. You can’t ruin any of my stuff.” He scoffs, shaking his head like he finds the suggestion ridiculous. “It’s just stuff. I want you to be comfortable, and if we cover this room in plastic, you won’t be. You’ll feel like you’re painting inside of a crime scene.”

It’s just stuff, he says about furniture that all looks like something you’d find at an antique fair. And knowing Shiloh and his family, it probably is. He’s not the kind of guy to buy new. He’s the kind to refurbish and repurpose—if it isn’t broken, it doesn’t need fixing. Everything in this room would probably earn a lot of money at an estate sale.

“Let’s move that downstairs,” I agree, pointing to the dressing table. If he’s going to give me a hard time for drapingeverything, maybe it’s best to move as much out as we can. The path of least resistance and all that. Once it’s out, I can push the chair into the opposite corner and use the other half of the room for the easel and painting supplies. I’m still planning on putting tarps down on the floors, but everything else will hopefully be safe if I’m careful.

It doesn’t take us long to move the table downstairs, although my back complains about the additional work being asked of it today. Once we get it settled in a corner of Shiloh’s office—which he assures me is rarely used—he catches me rubbing at my hip, a knowing smile on his handsome face.

“Back sore?” he asks.

“And hips and arms and abs,” I confirm. Thinking about it for a second, I correct myself. “Well, the abs might be fresh from today.”

He laughs. “Hauling a few hundred traps is no joke. I’ve got some muscle cream, if you want it. And some painkillers.”

Judging by the sincere and slightly worried look on his face, I’m assuming the offer of muscle cream is genuine and not a play to smear something oily all over me. Too bad.

“Thanks. Maybe later, before bed.”

A flush suffuses down his neck as he leaves the office. Forgetting all about my back, I follow happily. This is turning out to be the best day of my life. We get my Jeep unloaded in a quarter of the time it took me to toss everything in there, and Shiloh grimaces in dismay at every carelessly placed canvas he pulls out. Several are smudged with dirt, and one has a puncture in the corner. That’s the one I’m going to paint first, I decide.

“Maybe we should have left the table,” Shiloh says once everything is in the spare room, and he’s looking around with a frown on his face. “Where are you going to put your stuff?”

“Let’s eat,” I say in the hopes of distracting him from interior decorating. Honestly, I’m not going to be doing anything crazy up here. I can mix the paint sitting on the floor, for all I care. In my old apartment, I used to utilize the kitchen for painting supply storage. I’m easy—no need for anything fancy. I’m also a little worried that Shiloh will completely redecorate this room into some sort of art studio for me, bend over backward to give me a space I don’t actually need.

As I hoped it would, the mention of food does pull him away from redecorating. The man is oddly obsessed with feeding me. I can’t say I mind, since it feels like the best sort of attention, even if I am a little flummoxed by it. I’m a normal-sized man for one who lives a fairly sedentary lifestyle. But I think I might also be a bit of a selfish man, so if he wants to lavish me with attention and feed me up until I’m fat and happy, I’ll open my mouth and take it.

We eat on the back porch once more, and again, the second chair is already waiting for me. I adjust the setup a little bit, pulling the little table forward and sliding my chair closer to Shiloh’s. Once the arms are nearly touching, I’m happy. Shiloh, carrying the plates of food outside, pinches his mouth together when he notices but says nothing. Nor does he move them back. Happy, I recline and hold up a hand to accept my plate. I make the appropriate—and truthful—noises about how good the food tastes and smells, all while thinking back to how Shilohtasted and knowing nothing will ever compare.

This time, when the sky darkens and the stars pop to life, so does an air of expectation. As cool as the evening is, I can barely feel it over the burn of anticipation. Shiloh hasn’t asked me to leave, and fifteen minutes ago, he put his hand on my knee and left it there. My pulse is rabbiting in my chest, and there’s a tingle of nerves in my extremities, like they’ve been asleep for the past hour and I’m just moving them back to wakefulness. Putting my hand on top of Shiloh’s, I squeeze his fingers. Rough, overworked skin against my own calloused palm. I want to feel that scratch on every inch of sensitive skin on my body. I also know that I need to calm down and move slowly. This is Shiloh, and I’ve been gifted a second chance I didn’t expect and probably don’t deserve. This isn’t the time to throw him down and fuck his brains out. This is the time to show him exactly how much I love him, and if that means doing nothing more than this, then that is what we will do.

It’s fifteen solid minutes of silence where we do nothing more than look at the stars before Shiloh speaks. He’s got a lovely voice, masculine and deep, the kind of timbre voice actors could only dream of having. It’s a voice meant for the space between cool sheets, for shadows tangled with low light. I wonder if I’ll ever get a chance to hear it with an ear pressed to his chest.

“Do you want to stay?” Shiloh asks, his hand still trapped beneath mine, thumb stroking back and forth over the parts of my fingers he can reach. It’s sweet and makes me feel surprisingly shitty. Sweetness isn’t something one usually finds during a hookup, and hookups are really the only intimacy I’vepartaken in these past years. Emotions are hard for me, both understanding and dealing with my own, as well as accepting them from others. Running away from Shiloh felt like the best choice when the alternative was to confront my feelings for him. I’ve maintained an emotional distance from everyone since then, and up until now, I’d have said it was working for me.

“I want to stay,” I tell him, verbally agreeing to staying tonight while also making a private little vow to myself to stay forever.

It’s something I’ve been avoiding, while unconsciously already having made the decision. My heart wants to stay, while my brain glitches out the moment I start wondering what sort of logistics might go into that. Leaving Siren’s Point had been as simple as packing up my car and stopping for gas. Leaving LA won’t be quite so easy, and the thought of having to untangle the mess is daunting. Tonight isn’t the time to start, though. Not when Shiloh is standing up, slipping his hand out from under mine, and sliding his fingers into my hair. Sweet, again.

“Come on, then,” he says, and I obediently rise to my feet, gladly giving up all autonomy.

The house is dark, which I’ve come to realize is Shiloh’s preferred way of enjoying the porch. Not one for light pollution, my lobsterman. It’s early enough in the evening that the dark isn’t absolute yet, though, so I have no trouble following him through. I wait while he locks up and loads our plates into the dishwasher, my heart once more kicking up to a rate that borders on painful. I’m really quite nervous, and the longer we take to walk up these stairs, the worse it becomes. Fucking a stranger iseasy. Fucking your best friend is terrifying.

Instead of leading the way, Shiloh puts a hand on my lower back and gently propels me up the stairs. At the top, he murmurs, “Second door on the right.” Silently, I approach the second door on the right and push it open. Shiloh immediately walks over to the side of the bed and clicks on a lamp. Because I’m facing him—facing the wall where the headboard backs up to—the first thing I see is the painting. A punch to the solar plexus couldn’t have stolen my breath quicker, and I sway, suddenly finding myself low on oxygen.

“Shi.” I manage to gasp out his name and then become lost in a hurricane of emotions. Sadness, pain, longing, and a dozen others I suddenly can’t name. Looking at the painting hanging above his bed, tears burn in my chest. I never thought I’d see it again.

“What’s wrong?” Shiloh asks, frowning at me, hand raised between us like he reached for me but stopped before making contact. He follows my line of sight, and his cheeks turn red, the bloom of color immediate. He sighs. “Oh.”