Page 110 of Summer Holiday Lifeline

“I could…”

Steven waited, but Myles didn’t finish his thought. “You could? What?”

“I’m afraid it would be easy to drink you instead of the booze,” Myles whispered. “I don’t want that to be who we are.”

Steven held out a hand and waited until Myles took it. “I don’t want that to be who we are, either.”

“I’m not sure I know how to avoid that.”

Steven remained quiet a long time. He didn’t know, either. And he had to be honest with himself. He didn’t know Myles well enough to know if it was a real danger. Finally, he lifted their hands to kiss Myles’s knuckles. It was the only answer he had at the moment.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

And since neither of them had an answer to that looming question, neither of them brought it up again. Myles was okay with that.

He knew he should probably look at it closer, but he preferred the easy way the summer was going, with Shelly happy going to the Y during the week, and Jet hanging out with Wyatt at the Cabin.

The boys helped Ozzy finish up some of the detail work on the bedrooms and top floor, learning valuable skills and deepening a friendship that Myles thought had been instant from the start. They went to the Y on Mondays with Shelly, where they shot hoops and swam and helped the arts-and-crafts teacher keep the room full of five- and six-year-olds from becoming a disaster zone.

Myles spent his days at the bookshop, slowly but steadily continuing to inventory Steven’s stock of books and occasionally helping him with the boxes from his labyrinthine basement.

“You know I only ever intended to inventory the books I brought up, right?” Steven said one day as he flopped onto the couch next to Myles. “The ones already up here were going to stay an anonymous mountain of dead trees.”

Myles sat surrounded by piles of cookbooks he’d hauled out from a back corner of what he assumed had once been a broom closet. He had commandeered Steven’s TV tray table for the tablet and his coffee cup, and was currently organizing the books by a complicated scheme of theme, aesthetics and age.

“Those trees gave up their lives for this shit,” Myles muttered as he shifted another pile. “The least you can do is try.”

“Hey, I try.” Steven took the books from him, plopped them on the coffee table, and wheeled the rickety cart away so he could straddle Myles’s lap.

The position seemed to be his favorite. Maybe because of the ease with which he could look down on Myles and also keep him under his control.

Myles didn’t have any strong objections to being sat on, either. He cupped Steven’s ass and stared up at him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. But cookbooks are always a draw. They should be out front.”

“And here I thought you’d want to move the classics from the back wall to the rack beside the cash register.”

“I’m well aware that my literary leanings aren’t for everyone. Or most people. There are things we could do in that section, though.”

“We, huh?” Steven grinned at him.

“Sorry. Not we, obviously. I mean, it’s your shop. I just⁠—”

Steven stopped his babbling with a kiss before he could bury himself any further in word jumble.

Thankfully, his phone rang before he allowed Steven to bury him in other things they should not have been doing in the shop while anyone could walk in off the street.

Steven groaned against his neck as it rang again. “Ignore that.”

“I would if we were upstairs.”

“Fine, fine.” He crawled off, kissing as he went, and Myles only managed to answer on the fifth ring.

“Hello?” He sounded breathless even to his own ears.

“This a bad time?” The male voice on the other end took a moment to register.

“Mr. Giroux. Hey.” Myles gently moved Steven’s leg from where it still slung over his lap so he could stand up. He held a finger up to Steven’s questioning look, then wandered around the stacks to the back of the room and out of earshot. “Thanks for calling me back.”

“Not a problem. I had a look at that letter again, and got in contact with Bentley Priory.”