Everything for You (Bergman Brothers #5)(39)

I hop off the bed and stroll over to the thermostat. “It’s blinking. Is that bad?”

Gavin groans as he tosses aside his book. He eases off the bed stiffly, then stalks my way.

I peer closer at the thermostat. “Think it’s broken.”

He nudges past me to get a look for himself. “Fucking hell.”

Sweat drips down his temple. It beads along my throat. It’s so damn hot.

“We can ask them to come fix it,” I offer.

Gavin turns away, shaking his head. “It’s late. And even if they could get someone in here to fix it, I told you already, there are no free rooms. We’ll be stuck, sitting up and waiting for the HVAC guy to leave, and we’ll lose out on sleep.”

“Well, I got news for you, Hayes, I won’t be sleeping much in heat like this.”

“We’ll be fine,” he says, sinking onto the bed, on top of the blankets again. Gavin rips off his shirt, and my mouth runs dry. Massive, round shoulders. Thick torso. Muscles rippling in his back as he tosses his shirt aside.

“Get that blanket off,” he orders.

I’m too hot and bothered, in every sense of that phrase, to complain about how bossy he’s being. While I drag the blanket down and off the bed, he rearranges the pillows down the middle of the bed again, then tugs the chain on the bedside lamp, bathing the room in nothing but moonlight and the glow of the stadium painting the room pearly white.

“Are you taking off your pants, too?” I ask, as I yank off my shirt.

“No. I thought I’d poach myself to a meaty boil in my sweatpants all night, get no sleep because I’m so miserably hot, then play like shit tomorrow. Yes, I’m taking off my pants.”

“Oh, thank God.” I tear off my joggers and launch them into the air, where they land on my bag. Gavin’s lying with his back to me, the sheet tucked neatly along his hips. “Want to tell ghost stories until we cool off?”

“Go to sleep, Bergman.”

“I’m not tired.”

“Jesus Christ,” he growls.

I slip under the sheets, kicking one leg out on top of them to help me cool down. “I was gonna watch a little Hamilton until my eyes got tired. It’s sort of my thing the night before a game. You mind?”

He sighs. “Be my guest. Just keep the volume down.”

“You got it.”

I turn on the TV and adjust my pillow behind me, careful not to disturb the fluffy pillow fort between us as I navigate my way to the recorded live performance. Picking up the little notepad they leave on the nightstand, I fan myself. Heat blasts from the radiators. It’s stifling.

Just a few minutes into the opening number, Gavin turns gingerly onto his back, frowning at the TV. I hold my breath. If he says something snide about Hamilton, I’m going to lose it. I recognize I might be slightly more keyed up about his potential critique of a favorite musical, but I’m sweaty and unsettled. Talking with Gavin was supposed to make me feel better, and while it eased the tension between us to a degree, now what I’ve gained has somehow made it worse.

Personal knowledge. A little trust. Now I know someone broke his heart and his body hurts and he reads poetry and he’s begrudgingly watching Hamilton.

And I want to do something ridiculous. Like curl up next to him and tangle my legs with his, breathe in that spicy scent of his soap and the heat of his skin.

Gavin snorts derisively at something Aaron Burr says, and a fresh wave of annoyance crests through me. I hit the remote, turning it off.

“Oi!” he yells. “I was watching that.”

I turn it back on, our eyes meeting in the TV’s glow. “This is my happy place. No laughing at it. No condescending remarks. Got it?”

Gavin scowls up at me. “C’mon, that line was a bit—”

“Not a word, Hayes, or off it goes. I’ll watch it on my phone if I have to.”

His eyes narrow. He flicks his gaze to the TV, then back to me, before settling into his pillows. “Fine. Carry on.”

After the opening number finishes, I ask him, “Well?”

He shrugs. “It’s surprisingly…poetic.”

“That’s because Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius. Shakespeare and Sondheim in one body. It’s all poetry.”

“Shh,” he chides as the next number starts, eyes not leaving the TV. “I’m trying to listen.”

The familiar twisty blend of satisfaction and annoyance tangles inside my ribs. I grab a pillow and hug it to my chest. It’s that or slug Gavin in the head.





12





GAVIN





Playlist: “Animal,” Neon Trees





Pain is as familiar to me as pulling air into my lungs, as opening my eyes when the sun breaks the horizon. What’s far from familiar, what’s been absent from my life for so long that I’ve forgotten its shape, its texture, teasing my senses, is pleasure.

For the first time in too long, pleasure is a glove wrapped around the bare-knuckle fist of my pain. It’s in my hands, settled against warm, smooth skin. In my face, buried in sunlight softness, the scent of a sea breeze kissing my skin. In every inch of me, hard, hot, aching where I’m nestled against a firm, tight home.

God, it’s been so long. So long since I felt anything but hurt. Gnawing in my joints, screaming in my muscles, a never-ending reverberation in my bones. My eyes prick with tears, as pleasure floods every corner of me, a deluge of hot sunlight that thaws the icy edge of my pain, softens the raw-nerve throb that scrapes my senses each day until I collapse from exhaustion at night.