The Lumberjack Boyfriend - Chapter 9 (Patreon)

Author’s note: All my characters are consenting adults (18+). All sexual acts depicted are consensual between the adult characters.

Chapter 9 

The parents’ keys were on the hook by the big cabin door, same place Dad always left them, like the lake was a house and not a borrowed week.

Morgan found them after the second pot of coffee. He’d slept with his arm over my chest and woken up like it embarrassed him. He made eggs. He didn’t talk about Friday. He didn’t talk about baby. He stood at the sink in yesterday’s black shorts and said, “We’re going into town tonight. I’m not eating steak two nights in a row like a man with no imagination.”

“We have the car?”

“They left the sedan. Jenna took the Rover. Your dad said to use it if we needed something.” He spun the keyring on one finger. “We need ice and air. We need to get off this dock before I start thinking this is a life.”

We spent the afternoon in a kind of restrained silence. Neither of us knew how we were supposed to act around the other. We swam, and he lay in the sun with the brim of his cap hiding his face. I read, listened to Taylor Swift’s latest album, and tried to relax in the shade. I was nervous, but somehow at peace at the same time. There was something about him that made me feel safe.

Around 7pm we left the lake. The sedan smelled like Mom’s lotion and the map she kept in the glove box even though the phone had maps. Morgan folded himself into the driver’s seat and had to push it all the way back. His knees still sat high. The cap stayed on the dash. He drove with one wrist on the wheel, the other on the gearshift, country low on a station that kept dying between hills.

I watched his profile. The three-day stubble. The mustache. The mullet. The jaw that had been against my temple last night while I read Zade in the dark until my voice went thin. He hadn’t fallen asleep the way he’d promised. He’d listened with his eyes closed and his hand on my stomach and every few pages he’d said, “Keep going,” like the story was a rope.

The village was twenty minutes of trees and then a sudden main street: hardware, a place that sold bait, a church, and a small Italian restaurant with a red awning and eight tables and a specials board written in marker. Tony’s. The kind of place that had been there longer than either of us.

Morgan parked across the street like he didn’t want the car associated with the date.

“This is a date,” I said, because I needed to hear if he’d deny it.

He cut the engine.

“This is carbonara and a table that isn’t a grill.” He looked at me. “You want it to be a date, you say it. I’m not putting a word on something your sister’s going to smell on me.”

“I want it to be a date.”

He nodded once, like I’d handed him a tool.

“Then it’s a date. Don’t make a speech.”

Inside it was dim and warm and smelled like garlic and old wood. A woman with a pen in her hair sat us in the back corner without asking. Two menus. A candle in a jar. Morgan looked too big for the chair. He took his cap off and set it on the empty seat and ran a hand through the mullet like he’d remembered he had hair.

He ordered a beer. I ordered water and then changed it to wine because the date needed a prop. He watched me change it and didn’t comment.

“You ever eat here?” I asked.

“Once. With her. She liked the bread.” He tore a piece and didn’t eat it. “Don’t look like that. I’m not bringing you to her table. I’m bringing you to the only place that isn’t pizza or greasy burgers.”

“I’m not looking like that.”

“You are. You do it with the glasses. The whole tragic novel face.”

I almost smiled. He saw it and looked at the specials board instead.

We ordered. He got the meatballs. I got the carbonara because he’d said the word in the car and I wanted to give it back to him. While we waited he turned the beer bottle in his fingers and stared at the little Italian flag over the bar like it had insulted him.

“I don’t want the city,” he said.

No lead-in. Morgan didn’t do lead-in.

“Jenna talks like the clinic is a hallway to somewhere bigger. More clients. A big modern apartment with a dishwasher. I listen and I nod and I think about the south pasture in January when the pipes freeze and you can see your breath in the barn and nobody’s asking you to be impressive.” He drank. “I want the farm. I want the quiet that isn’t empty. I want to come in at dusk and have a kitchen that smells like real food I didn’t buy in a package. I want a life that doesn’t need a LinkedIn.”

“That’s a lot of I want for a man who told me not to write poems.”

“I’m not writing poems. I’m telling you the shape of the thing so you don’t invent a different one.” He looked at me over the bottle. “What do you want?”

The question sat down at the table with us.

I wanted him. I wanted my sister not to exist and that’s insane. I wanted to be the kind of person who could say the farm and mean it without hearing Dad’s voice about law school and wasted potential. I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be left alone with the page. Both. That was still the problem.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m confused.”

He waited. The kitchen clattered. Someone laughed at the front table.

“Confused about me or about life?”

“Both.”

His mouth twitched.

“Why?”

“I like the lake,” I said, slower. “I like when you don’t talk. I like when you do. I like your rough hands. I don’t know if I like dirt under my nails for the rest of my life. I don’t know if I can be a person who lives in a place with one restaurant and a bait shop. I don’t know if that’s even what you’re asking.”

“I’m asking what you want.” he said. “Not what you can survive. Those are different sentences.”

“I want time. I want this not to be a secret that ends when the Rover hits the gravel. I want to stop feeling like I’m stealing something every time you look at me.” I stared at the candle. “I also want to be a good brother. Those two things don’t fit in the same mouth.”

Morgan was quiet long enough that I thought I’d ended the date.

Then his hand found mine under the table.

Not a show. Not fingers laced for the room. Just his palm, calloused, covering my knuckles on my thigh, thumb pressing once into the side of my hand like a check. Hidden by the tablecloth. Hidden by the angle of his body. Anyone looking would see a man drinking beer. Anyone feeling would know.

“I can work with confused,” he said, low. “I can’t work with you running. You run, I come get you. I already said that. I’m saying it again without the mask.”

I turned my hand over. He let me. His thumb stayed.

The food came. He didn’t let go until the plates were down and then he let go like the contact had a time limit he respected. We ate. He talked about the farm the way some people talk about a religion they don’t want to preach: the morning ice on the trough, the sound of the saw, his father getting slower and pretending he wasn’t. I talked about the bookshop I didn’t work at and the mock I was failing on purpose and the way Haunting Adeline made me feel less crazy for wanting a man who was bad for me.

“He’s still a freak.” Morgan said.

“You asked if he was a good guy.”

“I asked if you liked that he stalks her. I already know the answer.”

The waitress refilled his beer without asking and left us alone again. Morgan watched the foam settle like it had a job.

“You’d hate January,” he said. “The farm in January is ugly. Mud. Diesel. My old man yelling at a tractor that already knows it’s dead. You’d last a week and start looking at bus schedules.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you. You like the idea of a man who works. You don’t like the work. There’s a difference. Jenna learned that. She comes home smelling like the clinic and acts like manure is a personality flaw.”

“That’s not fair to her.”

“I’m not being fair. I’m being accurate.” He tore another piece of garlic bread and this time he ate it. “She wants a version of me that can sit through a dinner with her preppy friends and not look like I wandered in off a job site. I can sit through the dinner. I just don’t want the life attached to it.”

I drank the wine. It was worse than the candle made it look.

“And you’d want me there? In January. In the mud.”

He looked at me like I’d asked if the lake was wet.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You asked what I want. I’m asking what the farm includes.”

His jaw worked. The mustache didn’t hide it.

“I don’t know how to put a boy who reads fucked up books into a barn and not ruin both. That’s the truth. I also don’t know how to go back to that barn and not look for you in it. Those two things are sitting in the same chair right now and they’re not talking to each other.”

“That’s the most you’ve said without being cruel.”

“Don’t get used to it.” He flicked a crumb off the tablecloth. “You’d bring the books. You’d sit in the kitchen with that face. I’d come in at dusk and you’d look up like I’d done something worth looking at. That’s the picture. I didn’t ask for the picture. It showed up anyway.”

I had to look at the flag so I wouldn’t do the tragic novel face he’d already called out.

“I don’t know if I can be that person,” I said. “I don’t know if I can be the person who stays and the person who doesn’t destroy my sister. I keep waiting for you to pick one of those for me.”

“I’m not your father. I’m not going to pick your life so you can resent me for it.” His boot found mine under the table and stayed. “I’m going to sit here and eat meatballs and hold your hand where nobody can write a sermon about it. That’s as far as I’ve got tonight.”

The kitchen door swung. Plates. Someone’s birthday at the front, a weak little clap. Our corner stayed a corner.

“If they come back early,” I said, “this table never happened.”

“If they come back early I still had you on that dock.” He didn’t blink. “The table is just the part we did with our clothes on.”

My phone buzzed against the wood.

Mom.

I looked at Morgan. He nodded at the phone like he’d been waiting for the world to remember we existed.

“Harry? Can you hear me? The signal’s awful.”

“I hear you.”

“We’re still in the city. Your father’s in a meeting that was supposed to be an hour and it’s been four. Jenna’s clinic is a mess. Lily really did quit. Honey, I don’t know when we’re coming back. It might be more than two days. We all came in Jenna’s Rover and I don’t want your father driving at night if he’s this tired. Are you all right there? Is Morgan being decent?”

Morgan was watching my mouth. He couldn’t hear her. He could see the answer forming.

“He’s being decent,” I said. “We’re fine. We came into town to buy food. We have Dad’s car.”

“Oh good. Use it. Buy real food. Don’t live on chips. Tell Morgan thank you. And Harry—” A pause. A voice in the background that was Jenna, faint. “Don’t get in your head, enjoy. We’ll call tomorrow with updates. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

I hung up.

Morgan’s beer was halfway to his mouth.

“Well.”

“They might stay longer. They don’t know when. They all came in the Rover.”

He set the bottle down carefully.

“More days.”

“Maybe.”

He looked at the flag. Then at me. The thing that moved through his face wasn’t joy exactly. It was the look he’d had in the water when he’d asked if I wanted to be his baby — want, and the fear of naming it, and the decision to name it anyway.

“Then we have more days,” he said. “Eat your pasta. I’m not wasting carbonara on a crisis.”

Under the table his hand came back. This time he laced our fingers. Brief. Sure. He squeezed once and left his hand there while I told him what she’d said, word for word, because he liked facts better than the feeling of them.

We shared a tiramisu, and that was the most romantic thing I’d ever done with a guy. He paid cash. Outside the air had gone cooler. Main street was mostly closed. The sedan sat under a streetlight like it had witnessed something.

He drove out of town the back way.

Not the lake road. A dirt road that cut through pines, the kind that turned to dust in July and ruts in spring. No houses. No reflectors. The headlights made a tunnel and then he pulled onto a wide shoulder where the trees opened enough for a view of nothing — just dark and the smell of warm dust and pine.

He cut the engine. The tick of the cooling motor was loud

.

“Get out.”

I got out. Gravel under my sneakers. He came around the hood already pulling his lumberjack shirt off, the plaid hitting the fender, the white undershirt following. Night air on his chest. The hat stayed in the car. He looked at me across the metal like the restaurant had been the polite version and this was the sentence he’d been holding.

“Here,” he said. “Now. Before I take you home and pretend I’m a man who holds hands under tables and leaves it at that.”

“Someone could—”

“No one comes this way after nine unless they’re lost. We’re not lost, this is intentional. Come here.”

He turned me to face the hood. The metal still held the day’s heat. His hands were on my hips, then on the button of my shorts, then the shorts were at my thighs and the night touched me and I braced on the warm paint with both palms. He spit in his hand. Worked me open with two thick fingers, impatient and careful in the same motion, the way he did everything he wanted too much.

“You good?”

“Yes.”

“Say it like you mean it.”

“I’m good. Morgan. Please, I want you.”

He didn’t rush the first minute. That was the trick with him. He could be a wall and a dock and a dirt road and still make the beginning feel like he was deciding whether to be a man or an animal.

Two fingers became three. I dropped my forehead to the warm paint and breathed dust. He worked me open until my legs shook and the sedan took my weight. When he spoke it was against my spine.

“You held my hand in there like you were allowed to. Then you got in this car like you weren’t. Pick one, boy. For the next ten minutes you’re allowed.”

“I’m allowed.”

“Louder.”

“I’m allowed.”

He pulled his fingers out. Night air where he’d been. I heard his belt. The denim. The wet sound of him stroking himself once with the same hand he’d had under the tablecloth.

“If you tell me to stop I stop. You don’t get to go away in your head and leave your body here. I want both. That’s the deal on this road.”

“I’m here.”

“Good. Hold the hood. Don’t you slip. If you slip I have to catch you and I don’t want to be careful. I want to fuck you hard. Do you want it?”

“Yes, Morgan. I love when you fuck me hard.”

“That’s what I was expecting to hear.”

He shoved his jeans down just far enough. I felt him — hard, heavy, the fact of him I’d had on the dock and in his bed and in my throat — and then he pushed in against the hood and the car rocked on its springs and I made a sound that went into the trees.

It wasn’t slow.

The dock had been slow. This was the thing under the slow. He bottomed out and stayed and breathed against the back of my neck, mustache scraping, and then he started to fuck me like the extra days had lit something he couldn’t put back in the cabin. Deep. Hard. The hood popped faintly under my hands. His belt buckle tapped the metal. One hand locked on my hip hard enough to keep me from sliding. The other braced beside mine.

“This is what I want,” he said into my hair, wrecked already. “Not the city. Not the polite dinners with your sister’s fancy friends. This. You. Bent over my — over a car I don’t even own — taking me in the dark. You understand?”

“I understand.”

“You don’t. You’re still confused. That’s fine. Be confused. I’m confused too. Just don’t close up on me.”

He snapped his hips and I saw white behind my eyes. Dust in my mouth. Pine. Him. The sedan creaked. A moth threw itself at the dark headlight and missed.

I pushed back because I wanted him to know I wasn’t only receiving. He swore, low, pleased, and gave it to me harder. The rhythm turned filthy. Skin. The wet sound of him. My cheek near the warm hood. His chest hair against my back when he folded over me and bit the place where my neck became shoulder.

“Mine for the days we have,” he muttered. “That’s the honest version. I don’t know about Friday. I know about this road. I know about your mouth saying please. I know I held your hand in a restaurant where I used to sit with her and I didn’t feel like a thief until the phone rang. Then I felt like a thief and I still didn’t let go.”

“Don’t let go.”

“I’m not, baby boy.”

Baby boy… I almost collapsed.

He changed the angle and the car complained. Deeper. Meaner. My glasses knocked against the metal and he hooked them off with two fingers and tossed them through the open window onto the seat so they wouldn’t die on the road.

“There. See it without the glass. It’s just a hood. It’s just me. It’s just you taking it because you asked for a date and a date isn’t only pasta. A good date ends with a good hard pounding, at least for me.”

I could see the dark trees. I could see his forearm planted next to mine, veins standing out the way they had on the dock the first day. He fucked me in a rhythm that had nothing to do with twilight and everything to do with the extra days Mom had just handed us like a gift she didn’t know she was wrapping.

“They stay longer, I don’t go back to pretending I only look at you when she’s gone,” he said, breath breaking. “I don’t know how to do that anymore. I tried. I threw you out of a bed to prove I could. It didn’t take. You walked across the grass with my cum still in you and I sat there with a bottle like a coward. I’m not doing that twice.”

“Then don’t.”

“I’m not.” He drove in and held, grinding, the hood ticking under us. “You’re gonna feel this tomorrow when she FaceTimes and you’re sitting there with a book. That’s the point. I want you sitting on the dock sore and still telling her I’m decent.”

I pushed back again. He laughed once, wrecked, and gave me the laugh with his hips.

“That’s it. Use my cock. Don’t just stand there like a doll.”

He reached around and found me. His fist was rough. He stroked me in time with the thrusts until I was shaking against the metal and he said, “Now,” like an order and a mercy, and I came over his knuckles and the side of the hood in a mess I would think about later when I tried to be a good brother. He followed with a groan that was almost my name and almost nothing, buried to the root, pulsing inside me, his whole weight pinning me to the car like he could keep the sedan off the gravel by force.

We stayed like that.

His heart slammed against my back. A night bird called once and shut up. He pulled out careful and I felt him leave me and run down my thigh. He tugged my shorts up. He tugged his jeans up. He leaned on the hood beside me, both of us staring at the dark trees, breathing like we’d run.

“More days,” he said.

“More days.” I agreed.

He turned his head. In the leftover glow of the dash his eyes were almost black.

“When she calls tomorrow, you tell her I’m decent, that I’m a good guy and I’m taking good care of you. You tell her you’re swimming and reading. You don’t tell her I had you on her father’s car on a dirt road. That’s mine. That’s not hers.”

“Okay.”

“Stop saying okay like a wedding.”

I laughed. It came out wrecked. He made that noise in his chest again, the one from the lake, and pulled me in by the back of the neck and kissed me over the hood — garlic, marinara, beer and dust — and then he put me in the passenger seat like I might forget how doors worked.

He started the engine. Country crawled back in, weak between the hills. His hand found my thigh on the drive home and stayed there the whole way to the lake, not hiding now, because there was no table and no flag and no mother on the phone.

The cabins were dark.

He parked the sedan exactly where Dad had left it, keys on the hook, ice we never bought still unbought.

“Book,” he said. “Bed. You read. I listen. If Friday got longer, we use the pages.”

I followed him to the small cabin with the dirt road still in my body and his handprint still on my hip and the extra days sitting on the porch like a weather system that had, for once, decided to stay.