Page 47 of Summer Holiday Lifeline

“Jake.”

“No. Me. Going outside to make sure Jake was okay. I haven’t been farther than the swing on my front porch in months. Really. Not since Christmas. I haven’t been out hardly at all over the winter. These four walls.” He glanced around the cluttered kitchen. “They’re safe.”

“Outside isn’t?”

“I’m sure it’s fine. I don’t really know why.” It was his turn to study the cracked linoleum tiles. “It’s less that I’m afraid of out there than that I’m comfortable in here. Really comfortable. And there’s a lot to do.” He waved around the room at the mess he didn’t keep up with clearing away. “As you see. I couldn’t leave her like this while I go out, right? It could be dangerous. Something might happen.”

Put like that to Myles, it sounded even more ridiculous than it had either in his head or out loud to his twin sister.

Myles, however, smiled a soft smile and tugged him against his body, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “What might happen?” he asked as he rested his head against Steven’s and let out a deep breath, like the contact soothed him in some way.

“I have no idea.”

“But something.”

“Something.” The man was warm. Solid. The panic of a moment before didn’t fit with the firm embrace Steven found himself in.

“The thing about irrational worries,” Myles said after a minute, “is that they are irrational. You don’t have to make it make sense.”

“How do you fix something that doesn’t make any sense?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have just scalded all the skin off my knuckles washing away a bit of harmless dust.” He pushed Steven away, but not too far. Just enough to look him in the eye. “You know, you really should turn down the temperature on your water heater.”

Steven snorted.

“No, seriously. If Shelly is going to spend any amount of time here, that hot water is too hot. It will hurt her.”

“You figure she’s going to spend time here?” Steven’s skin prickled, and his heart sped up. He liked the little girl, but he liked her uncle more, and if she was going to be here sometimes, that meant…

Myles squared his shoulders. “She will if I do.” How this muscled ex-army guy with the sad eyes could look so hopeful and so terrified at the same time, Steven didn’t know.

But he could do something about it, couldn’t he? And he didn’t even have to leave his house. “I hope you will. I want you to.”

Myles’s face softened into a smile again. His eyes lost a bit of the sadness. Or, maybe more accurately, something less sad pushed his grief back.

“Yeah?” He lifted Steven’s face a bit with two fingers, ran his thumb over Steven’s chin.

“Yeah.” The air in the room had grown suddenly thin. Steven gulped.

“That’s good.” Had Myles leaned closer?

“Yeah,” Steven said again. Or whispered, because Myles was so close it seemed rude to speak any louder. “Are you going to kiss me?”

Myles’s mouth twitched, like another smile wanted to form. He nodded. “I was thinking about it.”

“Less thinking. More doing.”

Myles grunted and lowered his head until their mouths met. It was a slow-release kiss, starting as a touch, deepening until Myles had cupped his head and Steven wrapped both arms around Myles’s waist.

It was probably a bad idea. Almost definitely a bad idea. Myles didn’t live here. Steven didn’t go places. But hell if he cared right then. The man could kiss. Did it have to be more than a summer fling?

Steven groaned, trying to turn his brain off.

Myles’s other hand wrapped around his neck, and his tongue flickered over Steven’s lips. Steven’s brain voluntarily went offline until he realized Myles had retreated enough to press his forehead against Steven’s and gasp for a breath.

“Huh,” Steven muttered, brilliantly.

Myles chuckled, released him, then stepped back. “Should we go count books?”