Page 38 of Melting His Grumpy Heart
“Watch. It happens quickly once it starts.”
They sat in silence as the miracle unfolded. First, a barely perceptible lightening of the eastern sky, a shift from black to deepest blue. Then a line of pale gold appearing at the horizon, spreading upward, warming to amber. Clouds caught the light, their undersides painted in warm pinks and golds against the brightening blue.
And then, suddenly, the first direct ray of sunlight, a spear of pure gold striking across the snow covered uplands. The white landscape came alive, glittering with a million diamond pointsof light, the pristine snow reflecting and magnifying the sun’s return.
Beside him, Ru caught his breath. Jake turned to find him transfixed, eyes wide, face illuminated by the new light. Something stirred and twisted in Jake’s heart at the sight. A recognition, a certainty, that the universe had shifted, its axis forever changed.
“My nan said the first sunrise after solstice is sacred,” he said, voice rough with emotion. “That wishes made in the first light have power.”
Ru turned to him, face glowing with more than just the dawn. “What do you wish for?”
The question hung between them. Jake looked at Ru, really looked at him, at the man who’d sought refuge in his barn during a blizzard and who had, somehow, in just days, begun to thaw something long frozen deep within him. He studied the bruise that’d spread across Ru’s nose and under his eyes; beaten and battered Ru might have been, but it could do nothing to diminish how beautiful the man was, both outside and in. His gaze drifted over the borrowed clothes,hisclothes, that for all they were far too big, sat on Ru as though they belonged on him. And, when their eyes met, Ru gazed back at him with a softness that made his heart vault.
“To find my way home. To regain my place in the world.”
They watched in silence as the sun continued its ascent, the world transforming around them. The longest night was over. Light was returning, minute by minute. The wheel of the year had turned.
“Thank you,” Ru said, when they returned to the farmhouse and settled on the sofa. They sat closer than they had been before the vigil, as if some invisible barrier had dissolved with the night. “Sharing that with me, it was… magical, somehow. Yet that doesn’t seem enough.”
Silence wound itself around them as they sipped coffee, each lost in the gentle glow of the fire. A shift had taken place, something fundamental had changed during the long night and the dawn that followed. The boundaries Jake had established seemed less certain now, less necessary. The reasons for holding back less convincing.
Ru set down his mug. Turning to face Jake, his expression was both nervous and determined. “Jake,” he said quietly, “about the other night?—”
Jake opened his mouth to speak, to say something. Anything. But Ru shook his head and raised his hand, palm outwards. Any words Jake had withered on his tongue.
“I—I haven’t changed my mind. What I wanted then is what I still want. And I’m not vulnerable, whatever you might think. I appreciate you trying to protect me.” His voice dropped, became quieter, huskier, every letter, syllable, word firing up Jake’s nerve endings. “But it’s not me you’re trying to protect, is it?”
A weight pressed down hard on Jake, heavier than any weight he’d carried on night manoeuvres, stumbling around in enemy territory in the black of night.
“I have to be cautious. Careful.”Because if my life is ripped apart one more time, I don’t think I could survive.
“I understand caution.” Ru moved closer, close enough that Jake could smell the coffee on his breath and see flecks of silver in his grey eyes. “But there’s caution, and then there’s hiding.”
Hiding.
The word hit with unexpected force, resonating with a truth Jake had been avoiding. But he hadn’t only been hiding, he’d been running away. Not from Ru, but from the possibility of connection, of vulnerability. From the risk of caring again, and the pain that would rip through him when it all came tumbling down.
“The solstice is about balance,” Ru continued softly. “You said it yourself. Dark and light. One as necessary as the other.” His hand came to rest on Jake’s arm, warm through the cotton of his shirt. “Maybe this is about balance, too.”
Jake looked down at Ru’s hand before letting his gaze drift up to meet Ru’s eyes, so open and honest in the morning light. Something shifted within him, like ice breaking on a frozen river.
He wasn’t sure who moved first. Only that suddenly all the air between them was gone and Ru’s mouth was on his, warm and certain.
Jake’s hands came up to cup Ru’s face, careful of his bruised nose, as the kiss deepened, warm and wet, tongues exploring and tasting, all of it sweeter than honey, and more intoxicating than any alcohol could ever be. This was different from their first kiss, because Jake knew exactly what he was doing, what lines he was crossing, what walls he was dismantling. And for the first time in longer than he could remember, he didn’t care about the consequences.
Ru pulled back slightly, just enough to meet Jake’s eyes, his breathing shallow and uneven. “Still want to do theright thing?” he asked, a hint of challenge in his voice.
Jake gazed at him, at Ru’s flushed cheeks, his pupil blown eyes, the grey a narrow band encircling blackness. But it wasn’t just the want and need Jake saw. He saw a man who’d stayed awake through the longest night to witness and share the dawn with him, a man who’d opened his heart and mind to traditions and rituals so many others would have found strange, warping them into an amusing story to tell friends. But Ru wasn’tso many others.
A man who, god alone knew how, saw more in Jake than he saw in himself.
The sun was fully risen now, the world white and pristine, made new by the returning light. Inside, something else wasbeing reborn, a possibility Jake had thought long buried, a capacity for feeling he’d believed lost. He made the decision without knowing it.
Pushing himself to standing, he pulled Ru to his feet. Without a word, not letting himself think but only letting himself be, Jake led Ru through the living room, to the stairs, and up to his bedroom.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The morning light filtered through the window into the room Jake had kept private for so long. Ru gazed at him, his lips swollen from kisses, his eyes dark with desire. Jake felt a momentary surge of nervousness, not about what was to come, but about what it meant to cross the line he’d drawn long and deep.
