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Coexisting with Victor in a quieter house is exactly as torturous as Jamie anticipated, especially once Warren's brief holiday vacation ends and he goes back to work. Anika is ostensibly still around, but she's not much of a buffer. She's simply too busy, between her social life and the time she spends buried in her home office, doing work both paid and volunteer for more charities and nonprofits than Jamie can keep straight.
Which means Jamie has only himself and his own messy brain to find some way to hold the line.
The day he wakes up earlier than usual and nearly collides with Victor in the hall would be bad enough on its own merits. But what sends Jamie into a tailspin is the fact that Victor has clearly just finished his morning workout and is heading toward the shower shirtless and practically glowing, his hair tousled and skin burnished with sweat, face flushed with a warmth that's alarmingly similar to his expression post-orgasm.
Jamie's first reaction, after stumbling to a stop, is a strangled sound at the back of his throat. Then, when Victor just freezes and stares at him, he manages in a strained hiss, "Seriously, Vic?" He can't stop his gaze from dipping low, taking in the broad, soft contours of Victor's bared torso and the scandalously low drape of sweatpants over stocky hips.
"You're never up this early," Victor protests, somehow managing to sound both guilty and indignant at the same time.
Jamie closes his eyes and drags in a deliberate breath. When he opens them again, Victor is still standing in the hallway in front of him—still shirtless and tempting and beautiful—but Jamie manages to keep his attention on the man's face. "You're right, sorry." Then, making himself take a firm step back, "I'll stay out of your way."
That afternoon, he accepts an invitation to join some local acquaintances for drinks and burgers, because if he doesn't get out of the house for a while, he will absolutely do something foolish. He borrows his mom's car and spends several hours enjoying the company of his old high school crowd: Malia from the thespian troupe; Laurie from orchestra; Andrew from the school paper; Tamika from every AP class Jamie ever took.
There are a couple people he doesn't actually know, but that's okay. He's content to melt into the ebb and flow while pretending to know what's going on. He puts in an effort to interact when topics veer toward movies he's actually seen, teachers from his old high school, local theater productions. The group is noisy and cheerful, taking up multiple tables shoved together at one end of the restaurant, and Jamie barely has to participate to feel like part of the conversation.
Of course, it's a temporary reprieve.
Even though he's careful not to cross paths with Victor in the morning, by the next day Jamie is right back to antsy and ready to crawl out of his own skin. He feels like a pining heroine from a gothic novel, for all the helpless yearning trapped in his chest. Hell, maybe locking himself in a tower would help. Maybe, if there were some sturdy brick walls between Jamie and the man he can't stop thinking about, it wouldn't be so difficult keeping his thoughts, his hands, his heart to himself.
Or maybe the situation would still be hopeless.
Maybe he never stood a chance.
Just after lunch on December thirtieth, Jamie's phone buzzes with a call from the garage in Mayworth. Thank goodness he programmed the number into his contacts list, or he absolutely would not have answered the incoming call.
"This is Jamie Phipps," he says by way of greeting.
"Jamie, hi," comes a gruff voice from the other end of the line. "I've got good news and bad news."
The brusque words give Jamie pause, and he braces himself to learn that the repairs aren't complete, that they're going to cost significantly more than the initial estimate, that an explosion at the shop destroyed his little vehicle completely.
"Is something else wrong with the car?" he asks cautiously.
"Not at all. The replacement part arrived this morning, and we installed it straightaway. Car's ready for you to pick up."
Okay. That was clearly the good news. "What's the bad news?"
"The garage will be closed both New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. If you want your car before January, you'll need to get here by six."
"Oh." That's not nearly as disastrous as Jamie was fearing. "I think I can do that. Thanks for the update."
He asks his mom for a ride, and is honestly surprised when she says no. Apparently there's too much to do for the big New Year's Eve gala she's coordinating—a fact Jamie probably should've anticipated, since it's a board she's been on for at least six years—and she can't spare eight hours to drive to the North Dakota border and back.
So he says, "I'll ask Dad instead."
"Oh, he won't be able to take you." Anika gives him an apologetic look. "His boss is sending him out on an emergency trip to the San Francisco office. Something about a network outage, and an admin on holiday somewhere completely off grid. His flight leaves in two hours."
"Oh." Jamie blinks, considering how awful it is to spring something like that on an employee—even an incredibly highly paid employee—the day before New Year's Eve. "That's..."
"Awful," Anika agrees with a grimace. "He's not pleased to be going, especially without knowing how soon he'll be able to fly back."
"God, no kidding."
"I'm sure Vic would be willing to drive you," she says, pivoting back to the reason Jamie is standing in her study in the first place. "His schedule's wide open."
It's a terrible suggestion, and Jamie has no plausible pretext to shoot it down. Plus, he wants very badly to do it.
"Good idea," he says, decisive and maybe a little too enthusiastic.
Of course Victor agrees, albeit with a brief hesitation and a flash of something that might be alarm in his eyes. They hit the road a little after one o'clock, stubbornly pretending this is a normal road trip full of normal feelings. Neither one of them acknowledges the tension that has settled more fiercely than ever into the spaces between them.
Jamie takes a deep breath as Victor merges onto the interstate. It's only three-and-a-half hours to Mayworth, alone and in close proximity with this man he can't have. He just needs to keep up a barricade of harmless small talk and not say anything too honest. He can do this. He can survive a single drive without humiliating himself.
He just needs to keep his eyes on the road, his head in the game, and his heart out of the equation.
*
Jamie fails at all these things.
His surreptitious glances grow more frequent as the drive progresses, even once a clear and sunny sky gives way to cloudy dusk and then early nightfall. Victor Leone is distracting in the glow from the dashboard, and in the passing illumination of streetlights whenever they pass a town. Which would be fine, except that Victor keeps catching him staring.
The look in Victor's eyes isn't the slightest bit quelling. It's comprehension, and heat, and undeniable interest.
There's no way for them to get lost in each other's eyes—Victor's gaze always slides quickly back to the road where it belongs—and yet Jamie's skin buzzes with something dangerously like anticipation.
Small talk hasn't done anything to protect them. They can only delve so far into Jamie's studies, or Victor's nebulous plans for the future, or the books they've been reading. Every path leads right back to truths better left unspoken, and every path makes Jamie all the more sure they both want to speak those truths. He's caught in a tailspin of unacceptable longing, and nudging for details of Victor's work in Antarctica—which are every bit as opaque and incomprehensible as promised—feels like a poor consolation prize next to the deeper intimacy he craves.
It doesn't help that Victor is giving off signals that feel like blatant encouragement, or that the silences rising in the rumbling interior of the car—longer and longer every time—carry such a fraught thrum of potential that Jamie fears he's losing his mind.
They reach Mayworth with forty-five minutes to spare.
Jamie's body is on high alert, his senses reeling with greedy awareness as Victor parks in an open space at the edge of the garage's front lot. After a moment's extra hesitation, the car engine clicks off with a turn of the key, and then.
Silence.
Taut and straining and ready to shatter.
Jamie stares straight ahead across a sidewalk lit by both streetlights and holiday decorations. The sky is dark despite the early hour. A little after five, and yet it feels like they've been driving long enough to leave reality itself behind. Gusty wind blows along the street, and the low-hanging branches of a tree scrape quietly across the roof of Victor's car.
It must have snowed here today, because a fresh, glittery dusting covers everything. The boulevard looks like something out of a fairytale, and Jamie's chest is so full of emotion it's a wonder he doesn't explode.
When their stillness shatters, it's as though both Victor and Jamie are goaded into action by a shared spark. Jamie unbuckles his seatbelt and hears an answering click from across the cab. He lets days of longing translate into momentum, and finds Victor turning to meet him.
Neither of them speaks as Victor's hand slides into Jamie's hair. Jamie's fingers curl at Victor's jaw and slip through the rough stubble of his beard, and they meet in the middle of the bench seat in a kiss that should, by all rights, be awkward and clumsy. But Victor's mouth is demanding and sure, his guiding touch incongruously gentle. And the intensity of the kiss is enough to make Jamie's toes curl in his boots, as he melts for Victor's impossible heat.
Maybe it's the fact that they're so far away from anyone who might judge them. Maybe it's being here in particular, in Mayworth, the tiny Minnesota town where they met as strangers and shared an instant and undeniable connection. Maybe it's just the last goddamn straw finally snapping after days beneath relentless strain—the desire between them too much to resist for a single second longer.
They break apart just enough to breathe, to blink at each other, startled and feverish. Then Jamie climbs into Victor's lap and kisses him again, slipping one arm around the man's massive shoulders, sliding nimble fingers through soft hair. Jamie shivers at the drag of steady hands along his back, and oh, he wishes they were somewhere more private. Somewhere he could touch Victor Leone in all the ways he's been telling himself not to think about.
It's Victor who finally ends this second frantic kiss, gently pushing Jamie away without actually dislodging him from his place astride Victor's lap.
A complicated expression has settled across Victor's face, serious and uncertain, and it knocks Jamie out of his libido-fueled haze and back into reality. Guilt flares up in his own chest—for causing that expression, for crossing a line he has been trying so hard not to cross, for going behind his parents' backs about something so important—but it's tangled up with a frustrated longing that he no longer has the strength to fight.
"You okay?" Jamie asks. Not What's wrong? That would be a disingenuous question, when he knows damn well why Victor is looking at him like that.
"Yes. But... God, Jamie." Victor swallows hard, studying him with a scrutiny so piercing through the shadows that it's all Jamie can do not to squirm beneath his gaze. "This is still a bad idea. I want to, but I can't. I won't go behind Warren's back."
Jamie cannot fathom what makes him blurt, quick and thoughtless, "What if we tell him?" As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he recognizes an aching and desperate truth in the suggestion. He is terrified at the thought of having an actual conversation about this with his parents, when he knows how furious they will be, but he also craves it with an intensity he doesn't know how to express.
Victor's answering stillness is so complete that Jamie tenses where he sits astride the man's lap.
He tries to keep his mouth shut, to wait and see what Victor will say, but his pulse is hammering in his ears and he rasps, "You don't want to?" Even as he speaks the question, he is rerouting his thoughts, reevaluating his assumptions, trying to look at the situation from a more reasonable standpoint. Never mind the dire consequences for Victor if they come clean and tell Warren and Anika that they're involved: of course Victor won't want to go all-in on a relationship with someone he's known for a grand total of nine days.
Fuck, what was Jamie thinking?
"Hey." Victor's fingers brush his jaw impossibly gently, tipping Jamie's face up to meet his eyes and not letting him hide. The touch interrupts Jamie's unhappy spiral before it can turn truly frantic, and Victor murmurs, "Stop panicking, sweetheart. You just caught me off guard. I didn't think you were that serious about me. I didn't want to assume."
An unwilling laugh chokes out of Jamie's chest at this, at the absurdity of just how much he wishes Victor would assume. "Fucking hell, Vic, of course I'm serious about you."
It's true, even if it is terrifying to admit out loud. He was halfway in love with this man when Victor was a complete stranger Jamie had simply fallen into bed with, infatuated and hoping desperately that they could stay in touch somehow. Of course he's head-over-heels now that they actually know each other. Complicated history or not, he wouldn't be this tangled up inside over a physical attraction.
Casual sex is one thing. Jamie may not have it often, but he enjoys it just fine. This, though? This is an entirely different problem.
There is nothing casual about the things Jamie feels for Victor Leone.
Victor considers him for several silent seconds. The look in his eyes is unguarded. Warm. Fond. No hint of hesitation or fear. His thumb brushes a soothing rhythm along Jamie's cheek, and Jamie shivers as the arm around his waist tucks him reassuringly tighter to Victor's broad chest.
"If we're going to do this, we absolutely need to tell your folks," Victor says. A smile softens his expression, brighter than the quiet and inevitable shadows of trepidation. "It's the only way I can do this. We need to be honest about it."
"When?" Jamie feels suddenly breathless, giddy and terrified and exultant.
"Right away," Victor says firmly. "Tonight. It doesn't really give us time to plan a strategy, but I don't think it can wait. Warren will be pissed no matter what, but the sooner I talk to him the better."
"It can't be tonight. He's out of town for work."
"Oh." Victor blinks at him. "Fuck. I forgot about that."
"We could still tell Mom," Jamie says dubiously, "but it might be a bad idea, if we don't want Dad finding out second hand. This... seems like a conversation that should happen in person."
"How long will he be gone?"
"A couple days, probably?" Jamie's shrug is apologetic. "These emergency trips don't usually take long, but there's no way to be sure. Depends how long it takes him to fix whatever's gone wrong."
"Then we tell him as soon as he gets back. We tell both of them together. If you're sure." A ferocious light glints in Victor's eyes. "Be sure, Jamie. This won't be easy for them to accept. We're not choosing the straightforward path here. If you need a couple days to think about it—"
"I'm sure," Jamie interrupts, fierce for all that he keeps his voice low. He tips his forehead against Victor's and closes his eyes for a long moment, making himself breathe. Willing himself calm. "I know what I'm doing. I know what I want."
"Me too," Victor says, gruff and sincere.
And when Victor sounds like that, how can Jamie do anything but kiss him again?
"We should stop," Victor says a few minutes later. He sounds ragged and breathless and so inviting that Jamie wants to cry.
"Why?" He eases back, trying very hard not to stare at Victor's mouth in the dim glow of the streetlight.
Victor's eyes crinkle at the corners, making his whole expression sparkle. "Because, you fucking menace, we're parked next to a public street, and if I keep touching you I'm going to take this too far."
Heat twists, hungry and sharp in Jamie's chest, and he says with heart-pounding hope, "You mean we should stop for now."
"Yes. And you should go, before the garage closes."
"What about later?" Jamie presses, unable to walk away without more tangible reassurance. It wouldn't be unreasonable for Victor to refuse to touch him until everything is out in the open, but Jamie doesn't know how he'll cope if he gets back to Saint Paul and finds himself in the same yearning limbo as before.
"Later, we will continue this conversation somewhere more private. Tonight. I promise." Victor kisses Jamie again—one more time, quick and hard and dizzyingly deep—and then growls, "Now get the hell out of my car."