Page 22 of Jackrabbit

“So, more sim?” Colt asked as he scraped the last bite of food off his plate and finished the electrolyte drink Beau had given him.

“Let the food settle for a few,” Beau said. He took their dishes and carried them to the sink. “Don't need you puking in my garage today.”

“Lemme do the dishes.” Colt stood, his chair scraping across the floor.

Beau didn't even turn around. “No. Go sit on the couch with the fan on.”

“Woof. Bossy,” Colt mumbled, low enough that Beau had to strain to hear.

He went to the couch anyway, so Beau let it go. Such a cheeky shit. Always a comment or a quip.

By the time Beau was done with the dishes, the house was silent. He wandered into the living room to make sure the boy was still alive, and found him on his back on the couch, dead asleep. Beau’s cat was stretched all across his torso,purring like a motor with his face buried in Colt’s neck and Colt’s tattooed hand in the cat’s fur.

Beau tried to remember the last time someone had been this comfortable in his space and couldn't. Men he brought for the night didn't stay, and he actively discouraged anyone he knew in his everyday life from visiting. Colt’s stomach rose and fell, taking the cat with it. His eyelids fluttered. Should Beau wake him?

Instead, he pulled a blanket out of the basket by the couch and draped it over both of them. His cat looked up at the added pressure, and he meowed softly at Beau before pressing his face back into Colt’s neck and sighing.

Colt wasn’t peaceful even in sleep. His face shifted between micro expressions, fingers twitching. Always moving. He reminded Beau of a storm, the type without warning that whistled in your trees and kicked up leaves long after the loudest of it had passed.

Beau left them sleeping on his couch and poured himself two fingers of whiskey. He took it to his back porch and sat, propping his boots up on the railing and watching the sun settle behind the mountains in the distance.

Chapter 14

Three weeks and four days after Colt’s arrest, he burst into Beau’s shop wearing a full three-piece suit, already yanking his tie off. Rosario honked as he drove away, and Camila and Beau looked up from whatever they were doing at the front desk.

Camila dropped her clipboard and came around the desk so she could yank up his pant leg. “Nice ankle, babe. Very exposed. Very Victorian.”

“I got off!” Colt wrapped his arms around Camila and pulled her off her feet for a hug. “No more house arrest! Freedom!”

Laughing, Camila hugged him back and kissed his cheek. “I’m happy for you. How’s it feel?”

“Naked.” Colt let her down and wiggled his eyebrows at her with his arm around her shoulders. “Rest of me could be, too. You should see my pecs. Maybe you wouldn’t have turned me down when we met if they’d looked like this.”

Camila elbowed him in the side and he grunted. “You’re gross.”

“Do I need another meeting about harassment in the workplace?” Beau rumbled.

“Uh, yeah.” Colt let go of Camila and turned to grin at Beau instead, who had his coveralls tied around his waist like a goddamn calendar model. He had a kind of soft middle, and it showed, and Colt kinda wanted to bite it. Talk about harassment. “Did you see how she hit me? I think I'm gonna bruise, Mr. Moore.”

Beau rolled his eyes, and Colt kept his gaze trained on his face instead of letting them wander. He wanted to believe that there was something soft in that usually stern expression, like Beau was happy for him, too.

“I heard something interesting,” Colt said as he finished loosening his tie and leaned back against the desk next to Beau. “Would youbelievethat I got a character witness statement?”

“That right?” Beau asked. He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “How ‘bout that. Guess someone thinks you're worth somethin’.”

“Don't let him play it cool, Sunshine.”

Colt and Beau turned as one to see Joyce bustling through the front door, all the guys at the shop coming in behind her carrying boxes. She beamed at Colt from under her rainbow, knitted bucket hat. “That boy gathered the letters himself. Never would have known to send one if he hadn’t. You should've told me, you know.”

“Joyce,” Beau sighed.

One look at the pink dusting Beau's cheeks was all the confirmation Colt needed. Beau had really done it. Had gone to Joyce and who knew who else and asked for letters he got to the courts himself. And Colt knew they were why he'd been let go. They'd told him so right there.

And if he hadn’t been slipping in too deep for this man before, he sure as fuck was now.

“Oooh, you like me.” Colt beamed at Beau and threw his tie on the counter. His heart was trying to break out of his chest, he was pretty sure. “It's too late now, Mr. Moore. You can't take it back.”

Beau's eyes were amber. Warm like melted honey, ringed in dark brown. They locked with Colt’s, and Colt lost track of everything else in the shop for those fifteen seconds.