Page 25 of Hand Picked
I also did not think about the way my cock had responded to the woodsmoke smell of him since that was entirely due to being drunk. Drunk and confused.
Some people’s dicks stopped working when they were drunk, but clearly mine was the opposite.
Whack. Thud.
And, okay, even if Iwasbisexual—which the jury was still out on—andattracted to Luke Williams—which I super was not—it didn’t matter at all, practically speaking, because I was not going to act on any of it.
Fuck no. Me and Luke Williams?Pfft. That was a complicated disaster waiting to happen.
We couldn’t even get drunk without getting accidentally handfasted, for God’s sake. Plus, he was my son’s teacher, which seemed… weird.
And, most importantly, a guy like Luke Williams practically had the wordrelationshipstamped on his forehead, which was a hard limit for me.
My previous relationship had drained me dry emotionally and financially three years ago when Amanda left me and our son to go off and chase rainbows.
And then, just when I’d started to think things might be okay, Amanda had reappeared and decided she wanted back in Aiden’s life, first by freakin’kidnappinghim after school one day—an incident she dismissed as an “oversight” but which still gave me nightmares—and then by taking me to court to challenge our previous custody agreement so she could see him more often.
And the trickiest part of all that was, I was going to have to set my fears aside and work with her, because even if it killed me, I would do what I had to for Aiden—
“I think it’s learned its lesson.”
“What?” I whirled around to face the house and found Knox leaning back against the pony-rail fence, booted feet crossed at the ankles, barn coat open, shading his eyes with his hand against the afternoon sunlight.
I’d been so lost in my head, I hadn’t heard him leave the house or walk across the gravel driveway.
“The wood.” He nodded at the chopping block. “It’s safe to say you’ve asserted your dominance.”
I turned back and surveyed my work.
Shit. I’d been chopping the same half log over and over without even noticing, and now it was nothing but wood chips in the snow.
“Doesn’t really matter.” I set the ax down and pulled my gloves on more firmly. “I already have three cords of firewood laid by. This was just…”
“Clearing your head like Dad used to do?” Knox guessed.
I nodded. “Olin’s mom’s bringing Aiden home in a little while. I need to get my head on straight by then.” I picked up a new log and laid it on the block. “You need something?”
“No. Not really.” Knox rubbed his lips together. He glanced back at the house, then at the sky, then at the tree line. He cleared his throat. “You, ah… you wanna talk about it?”
I shot him a deeply questioning look, and he shrugged. “Dude. You started it. I seem to remember someone forcing me to talk about my feelings more than once last fall.”
Whack. Thud.
“That was different. When you were being an idiot with Gage, talking helped. But my shit…” I huffed out a half laugh. “No.”
Whack. Thud.
“This is about Luke Williams, isn’t it?”
Whack. CRUNCH.I overshot the log and impaled the ax into the chopping block. The shock of it reverberated up my arms.
“Fuck.” I dropped the ax to the ground and rubbed at my biceps. “Why would you say that?”
“Webb, you ran out of the town meeting last night ready to declare war on the man—”
“Exaggeration. Besides, once he and I talked, I figured out it was all a misunderstanding. Luke said he didn’t know what his lawyer was working on.”
“And you believe him?”
