The lumberjack boyfriend - Chapter 6 (Patreon)

Chapter 6

My sister, Jenna, came back on a Thursday afternoon.

I heard the Range Rover before I saw it. The sound of the engine carried across the water, and by the time I stepped out onto the porch of the smaller cabin my parents were already walking down toward the dock, smiling in a way I hadn’t seen since the first day of the trip. Mom had her arms open before Jenna even got out of the car. Dad stood a little behind her, hands in his pockets, looking proud and relieved at the same time.

Morgan was already outside.

He had been cutting wood near the edge of the trees when the car appeared. He set the axe down against a stump, wiped his hands on his jeans, and walked over at that same easy, unhurried pace he always used. Jenna ran the last few steps and threw her arms around his neck. He lifted her clean off the ground like she weighed nothing, spun her once, and kissed her in full view of everyone.

I stayed on the porch and watched.

I told myself not to. I told myself to go back inside and read. Instead I stood there with one hand on the railing and watched my sister’s boyfriend smile down at her like she was the only person on the lake who mattered. His big hands settled on her waist. She laughed against his mouth. The sound carried.

My parents were delighted. Mom kept touching Jenna’s hair and asking about the clinic. Dad clapped Morgan on the shoulder and said something about “the young people finally being back together.” Morgan just nodded, one arm still around Jenna’s shoulders, and answered in that low, easy voice of his. He never once looked in my direction.

I went back inside… my eyes were stinging with tears.

The rest of the afternoon was a slow kind of torture.

They swam.

I sat on the porch of my cabin with Haunting Adeline open on my lap and watched them without meaning to. Morgan lifted Jenna onto his shoulders in the water and she shrieked with laughter when he dunked them both. He floated on his back while she sat on his stomach. At one point he pulled her close and kissed her again, slower this time, right there in the middle of the lake. Water ran down his chest and arms. The same chest I had pressed my face against. The same arms that had held me against a tree two nights earlier.

I forced my eyes back to the page.

I didn’t manage a single paragraph.

They stayed in the water until the sun started dropping. Then they dried off on the dock, Jenna wrapped in a towel, Morgan confident in his swimming trunks. He said something that made her laugh and swat his arm. He caught her wrist and pulled her in again. I looked away.

Dinner was worse.

My parents insisted we all eat together on the big porch. Jenna sat pressed against Morgan’s side. He kept one arm along the back of her chair the entire time. Every time she spoke he watched her mouth. Every time she reached for something he passed it to her without being asked. He was charming. Polite. Completely focused on her.

He never looked at me.

Not once.

I answered when my mother asked about my book. I nodded when my father made a joke about college. I pushed food around my plate and counted the minutes until I could leave the table without it looking strange. When Jenna asked if I was feeling okay I told her I was just tired from the heat. Morgan’s jaw tightened for half a second at the sound of my voice, but he still didn’t look up.

After dinner I went straight to my cabin and stayed there.

Night came slowly.

The lake went quiet except for the usual sounds, water against the dock, insects, the occasional creak of wood. From my porch I could see the lights on in the smaller cabin. Shadows moved behind the thin curtains. I sat on the top step with my arms around my knees and tried not to listen.

I failed.

Their voices carried farther than they probably meant them to.

At first it was just low conversation. Then Jenna’s tone changed. Sharper. Frustrated. Morgan’s voice stayed quieter, but there was an edge under it I had never heard when he spoke to her in front of other people. I couldn’t catch every word, but I caught enough.

“…never here when I need you…”

“…clinic is important, you know that…”

“…feels like I’m always waiting…”

“…not fair to say that…l

Something heavy hit a surface inside the cabin. A chair, maybe. Jenna’s voice rose again, then cut off. A few seconds later the door of their cabin opened and closed hard. I saw Jenna’s silhouette walk quickly toward the main cabin where our parents were already asleep. She didn’t look toward me.

The smaller cabin stayed quiet for a long time after that.

I sat there on the steps with my throat tight and my eyes starting to burn. The same stupid, helpless feeling from the morning after he had thrown me out came rushing back, only worse, because now she was here. 

Now he had her again. Now whatever had been happening between us felt even more like something that should never have existed. I feel guilt, I like my sister.

I stood up and walked into the trees.

I didn’t go far. Just deep enough that the cabins disappeared behind the first line of pines. The ground was soft with old needles. I sat down hard with my back against a trunk and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. The tears came anyway, quiet, angry, humiliating. I hated that I was crying over him. I hated that I had let myself want something so impossible. I hated that even now, after everything, the thought of him going back to her bed made my chest feel like it was caving in.

I don’t know how long I sat there.

Long enough for the dark night to settle fully around me. Long enough for my breathing to go shaky and uneven. Long enough that I almost didn’t hear the footsteps until they were close.

Morgan stopped a few feet away.

I looked up.

He was holding a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s by the neck. His plaid shirt was unbuttoned all the way, hanging open over his bare chest. His mullet hair was messy, like he had been running his hands through it. Even in the dark I could see that his eyes were glassy and red at the edges. He smelled like whiskey and the same confusion that had been following him since the night he threw me out of his cabin.

He didn’t say anything at first. He just stood there looking down at me, swaying slightly.

Then he lowered himself to the ground beside me with a heavy, uncoordinated movement and leaned his back against the same tree. The bottle rested between his spread knees. For a long moment the only sound was the distant water and his slightly too-loud breathing.

“I fucked up,” he said eventually. His voice was rough and thicker than usual from the alcohol. “With her. With everything. With you… fuck kid, I hurt you and that shit it’s tearing me apart inside, you know?”

I didn’t answer.

Morgan took a long drink from the bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and let his head fall back against the bark.

“She says I’m never really there. Even when I’m sitting right next to her.” He laughed once, short and humorless. “Funny, right? I’ve been trying so goddamn hard to be what she wants and she still feels like I’m somewhere else.”

He turned his head toward me. In the low light his eyes looked darker than usual, almost lost.

“I don’t know how to do this shit, Gay Potter. Relationships. Being the right kind of man for someone. I only know how to work and drink and… take what I want when it’s right in front of me.”

His shoulder brushed mine when he shifted. The contact was accidental, but he didn’t move away. After a few seconds he spoke again, quieter.

“Can you… just…” He stopped, frustrated with himself, then tried again. “I don’t want to be alone right now. Can you just… stay here? With me?”

I should have said no.

I should have stood up and walked back to my cabin and locked the door. Rejected him, like he did to me.

Instead I stayed where I was.

Morgan let out a slow breath that smelled strongly of whiskey and tilted sideways until his weight settled lightly against me. One of his heavy arms came up and draped across my shoulders, not possessive the way it usually was, just tired. Needing somewhere to rest. His head dropped until his temple rested against the top of my hair.

“I’m so fucking tired of pretending I’ve got it all figured out,” he muttered.

My hands were shaking when I lifted them.

I told myself I would only steady him. That it didn’t mean anything. That he was drunk and hurting and I was just… there. But the second my palms touched the solid muscle of his upper arm through the open shirt, something in my chest pulled tight. His skin was warm. The coarse hair on his forearm scratched lightly against my fingers. I could feel the strength in him even now, softened by the alcohol but still unmistakable.

I moved slowly.

My hand slid higher, over the thick curve of his shoulder, then carefully inside the open plaid shirt. The heat of his bare chest met my palm. I felt the rise and fall of his breathing, the solid beat of his strong heart under the muscle. My fingers traced the edge of his collarbone, then lower, over the short hair between his pecs, careful not to go further than that. Just touch. Just the simple, quiet contact of skin against skin.

Morgan made a low sound that was almost a sigh and leaned more heavily into me.

“That feels nice,” he mumbled. “Don’t stop.”

I kept my hand moving in slow, gentle strokes across his chest and the hard line of his shoulder, staying well above anything that could turn this into something else. His shirt hung open around my wrist. The smell of whiskey and sweat and the faint leftover scent of the lake filled the space between us. Every time my fingers brushed a particularly tense muscle he exhaled like something inside him was loosening for the first time all day.

“I just want someone who doesn’t need me to be different,” he said after a long silence. His voice was softer now, almost drifting. “Someone who looks at me and doesn’t immediately start trying to fix the parts they don’t like. Is that so fucking hard to find?”

I didn’t have an answer that wouldn’t give too much away.

So I just kept my hand moving, slow and steady, across the warm, solid plane of his chest while he breathed against my hair. His arm stayed heavy around my shoulders. The whiskey bottle rested forgotten against his thigh. Above us the pine branches shifted quietly in the night breeze.

We sat like that for a long time.

No kissing.No roaming hands.No demands.

Just the two of us on the forest floor, his drunk weight leaning into me, my palm resting over his heart, and the clear, painful knowledge that tomorrow Jenna would still be here, and the day after that she would leave again, and nothing about any of this had become simpler just because he had come looking for me in the dark.

When Morgan’s breathing finally evened out into something close to sleep, I stayed exactly where I was, hand still inside his open shirt, staring into the trees and wondering how much longer I could keep surviving the space between what he needed and what I was allowed to give him.

All characters are consenting adults (18+). All sexual acts depicted are consensual between the characters.