Rogue Ever After (The Rogue Series Book 7)

by Tamsen Parker

  “Um, can I borrow something warm to wear?”

  Brandon moved to turn but caught himself halfway and dropped his gaze to the floor. “I thought maybe you'd want to take a hot shower. I'll get you a towel.”

  I groaned in anticipation of hot water washing away the bitterness of the cold. “Yes, please, a shower is exactly what I need right now.” I followed him toward the back of the apartment where he pointed to the bathroom.

  He opened a linen closet opposite and pulled down a fluffy white towel. Never had a giant piece of absorbent cotton looked so good in my entire life.

  “Thank you so much. I won't be long, promise.”

  I may have taken longer than I needed.

  After I got the water nice and hot and my limbs didn't feel like they'd fall off from frostbite, I started digging through Brandon’s toiletries. He did use Zest soap! Satisfaction warmed me like no hot shower could.

  He also used a drugstore brand deodorant, and a quick sniff confirmed that too was a part of his clean and fresh scent. I helped myself to some.

  With the towel wrapped around my waist, I peeked out of the bathroom to find clothes piled on the floor. Not mine. Brandon's. Sweat pants with a drawstring; I drew them up way past my waist and still the legs were long on me. The UofT hoodie was equally big, but it was warm and it felt like I was wearing Brandon’s hug. I was on board with that.

  I wandered out into the apartment, but Brandon was nowhere in sight.

  His warnings had been unfounded. While it was in the basement and a bachelor, the place was no messier than any other grad student’s apartment. A few pieces of clothes tossed over a chair. Some dirty dishes left in the sink. Nothing to faint over.

  My suitcase had been wiped down and put against the end of the couch. I went and opened it to grab some unmentionables. When I re-emerged from the bathroom, Brandon was shaking off a fresh layer of snow by the door.

  “You went back out there?”

  “Yeah, to clear out the sidewalk in case anyone walks by.”

  “But it's still snowing.”

  He shrugged. “There’ll be less to deal with later.”

  That was how they rolled out here in the wild, wild east, I supposed.

  “Thanks for the clothes.”

  He looked up and stilled as if seeing me for the first time. I was far from the sexiest I’d ever been, but there was no denying the intimacy that came with wearing someone else's clothes. I crossed my ankles and wrapped my arms around me, imagining they were Brandon’s arms holding me close.

  His lips parted, his eyes darkened. My heart skipped a beat. Maybe I hadn't fully thought through the consequences of spending the night at Brandon’s.

  Brandon blinked, and the moment was over. He ducked his head and busied himself with hanging up his stuff.

  “I put your clothes in the wash. Not all of them. I checked the laundry directions on the sweater and laid it out on a blanket to dry flat.”

  Who knew checking laundry directions would set my tummy aflutter. “Thanks.”

  “Um, and I was right about food. I've got frozen dumplings, or I can make ramen.” He still hadn't looked me in the eye again.

  “Dumplings are great. I love dumplings.”

  He nodded and went to the kitchen set in a corner of the basement. I leaned against the counter and watched him move. The pots clanged against each other as he pulled out the one he wanted. The cabinet banged shut. Water rushed from the tap loudly as he filled the pot. None of his movements were graceful, but he knew what he was doing. There was something about the certainty that made me smile.

  The first Brandon I met had had a bumbling charm about him. The second Brandon seemed more put together but not as genuine. This new Brandon was a lot more confident than either of the first two; he knew how to shovel snow, how to do laundry, and how to boil dumplings for unexpected houseguests. If anything, he was a lot more domestically competent than I was.

  The layers of nuance in this man felt endless; how many facets did he have? I wanted to tease them all out of him, despite the short time we had together. The urge was so strong it shocked me a little. I’d never been so instantly fascinated by a guy before, so utterly smitten so quickly.

  He noticed my unabashed ogling and glanced over, his cheeks turning pink when I met his gaze head on.

  He ducked his head and then peeked up again. “Why are you looking at me?”

  “Because you're cute.”

  His blush deepened. “I'm just boiling water.”

  “And looking hella cute while doing it.”

  A guitar strummed somewhere in the apartment.

  “Is that your phone?” Brandon asked, looking to the trunk in front of the couch. My phone was sitting on it. “I found it in your jeans.”

  I grabbed it from the trunk. “It's my sister.” I answered the FaceTime call. “Hey girl!”

  “Hey!” Monica appeared on the screen, and I went back to the kitchen. “What's this about your flight being cancelled?”

  “Oh my god. There’s a monster blizzard outside. I almost died! Thank God for Brandon. He rescued me or you'd be planning my funeral right now.” I moved in next to Brandon and held up my phone to show her. “This is Brandon!”

  “Hi!” Monica waved.

  “Who’s Brandon?” Another voice called out right before my friend Tobin squished Monica off the screen.

  “Oh, hey Brandon!” Tobin made no attempt to disguise his interest, and the camera’s lens made Brandon’s blush look even more pronounced than usual.

  “Ignore him.” I squeezed Brandon’s arm. “Tobin already has a boyfriend.”

  “Doesn't mean I can't look.”

  Monica made an annoyed sound from off camera.

  “What are you doing at Monica’s anyway?” I asked, half watching Brandon drop frozen dumplings into the gurgling water.

  “You were supposed to come home today, remember?” Monica wrested her phone back from Tobin. “I can't keep Lydia tonight, so I'm pawning her off.”

  “Oh Lydia! How's my little precious doing?” I was a little ashamed to say she had momentarily slipped my mind. I blamed it on Brandon. He was far too distracting.

  Tobin lifted her into his lap, and Monica pointed the phone at my beautiful wrinkled puppo.

  “Okay, don't move. I'm taking a screenshot.”

  “Oh my God. You and your Instagram. Have you ever considered that maybe Lydia doesn't want her picture plastered all over social media?” Monica asked.

  “Please. Lydia is a queen, and she loves her adoring fans. She would never want to let them down.” My beloved dog barked in agreement. “See?”

  Brandon was leaning in, dumplings left to boil on their own. He peeked at my screen where Lydia kept barking. I held up the phone to introduce my puppy to my new friend.

  “Say ‘Hi, Brandon!’”

  Lydia barked a greeting at the same time Brandon said “hi” like I'd been giving him the instructions. He even waved. My heart melted a tiny bit. Okay, more than a tiny bit. Anyone who was nice to my dog earned major points in my book.

  “She likes you.”

  “Yeah?” Brandon asked as he made silly faces at Lydia. He could not get any more perfect if he tried.

  “Yeah, which means I like you, too.” I hadn't meant to say that, or to drop my volume as I said it. Brandon turned from the phone and looked me right in the eyes, inches away, so close his breath brushed my skin.

  “Uh, hello?” Tobin was back on the screen, a knowing smirk on his lips.

  I took a step away from Brandon to clear my senses of him. “Yeah, I'm here. Be careful with Lydia, okay? Make sure she has her blankie for bedtime.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I've got it.” Tobin looked pointedly at me and handed the phone back to Monica.

  “Let me know what flight you got rebooked on. I'll try to pick you up if I'm free.”

  “You're the best, sis!”

  “I know I am! Bye!”

  I hung up and immediately pulled
up the screenshot of Lydia to post online.

  Stuck in a snowstorm away from my love. *crying emoji* Hashtag pugsofinstagram. Hashtag gooddoggo. Hashtag snowpocalypse.

  “You’re close with your sister,” Brandon stated as he scooped beautifully plump dumplings from the pot onto a plate.

  “Yeah.” I stuck my phone into the big front pocket of the hoodie. “We’re only a year and a half apart.”

  Brandon nodded. There was a slight tightness around his lips that hadn’t been there earlier, but I didn’t know him well enough to guess at what it meant. He brought the steaming plate of dumplings to the trunk in front of the couch and then returned to grab bowls and chopsticks, silent the whole time. Silence wasn’t unusual for Brandon, that much I knew at least. But this silence was different, it felt stilted and forced.

  “Are you okay?” I ventured.

  He looked at me with a startled expression, stopped halfway between the kitchen and the couch with bottles of soy sauce, sesame oil, and black vinegar in his hands. He blinked at me, hesitating long enough that I knew he was about to lie.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  More hesitation. “Yes.”

  If he didn’t want to share, then it wasn’t really my place to pry it out of him. Change of topic then. “How about yourself? Do you have any siblings?”

  Brandon shook his head. “No, I’m an only child.”

  “Are your parents close by?”

  “In Ottawa. That’s where I grew up.”

  We settled onto the couch and mixed the condiments in our bowls before digging in. I stabbed a dumpling and glistening soupy goodness spilled out into my bowl. “Ottawa, the country’s seat of power. Does that have anything to do with why you like political theory?”

  Brandon cocked his head, a little furrow appearing in his brow as his chopsticks hovered in midair. “No. I don’t like politics.”

  “You’re a political science PhD candidate who doesn’t like politics?”

  “I like the theory, the philosophy. Real life politics is mostly yelling at each other.”

  I laughed at how he’d scrunched up his face like he’d smelled something rancid. “You’re not wrong. There’d be a lot less yelling if we could get rid of those right-wing nut jobs.”

  Brandon stuck a dumpling in his mouth and chewed, his eyes thoughtful like he was testing the validity of my comment. He swallowed before speaking. “Alexander Meiklejohn wrote that freedom of speech is the foundation of democracy, that public deliberation was the most essential condition of the democratic process.”

  A smile tugged at my lips as I skewered another dumpling. “How did I know you’d say that?” At his surprised look, I clarified. “I mean, I didn’t know you’d quote Alex what’s-his-name. I don’t even know who that is.”

  “He was a philosopher and a dean of Brown University for a long time. He also served on the National Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1948, he published Free Speech and Its Relation to Self-Government.”

  I should have expected that little history lesson. “Okay, well, not to disagree with Alex, but there is such a thing as hate speech. John Stuart Mill said freedom of speech should be curtailed if it harms others.”

  “He also said we should respect opinions even if we find them offensive.” Brandon shot back. “A lot of the yelling these days is more difference of opinions rather than actually harmful.”

  “I don’t completely agree with that. There are opinions out there that are racist, sexist, homophobic—that’s harmful.”

  “But there’s a difference between an opinion expressed and an opinion acted upon. I could find those opinions offensive, but that’s not the same thing as harmful.”

  “Really?” I set my bowl and chopsticks down on the trunk and leaned in. “You truly believe that the alt-right isn’t harmful?”

  Brandon shifted awkwardly. “Well, no. I don’t agree with them. But by definition, offensive and harmful aren’t the same thing.”

  “So how do we draw a line between expressed opinions that incite harmful actions and the harmful actions themselves?”

  Brandon paused for a moment, bowl resting in his lap. “I don’t know.”

  I sat back, the usual thrill of winning a debate nowhere near as satisfying when it was Brandon on the other side. He cast a wary look in my direction, and a dash of guilt soured the food sitting happily in my stomach. I wasn’t wrong, but neither was he; it wasn’t an issue we’d be able to resolve over a dumpling dinner. “You know what? There are definitely some gray areas,” I admitted.

  He smiled, a little sheepish, a lot cute. I returned it in full. He ducked his head and grabbed another dumpling.

  5

  It felt like a dream. The entire day couldn’t possibly be real. Jonny Lim in my apartment, using my shower, wearing my clothes, eating my dumplings. But it wasn’t weird or strange. It felt like he belonged here.

  He doesn’t belong here, Brandon. He’s leaving again as soon as the storm’s over.

  He had another job offer waiting for him in Vancouver where winter snow didn’t ruin travel plans. He had family and friends expecting him to go home. Getting used to having Jonny around would only end badly for me.

  I finished washing the dishes and turned back to where Jonny sat on the couch. Watching me. He was always doing that, like he couldn’t take his eyes off me. What did he see? Why did he care?

  I sat back down next to him on the couch, not sure what to do with the hours stretching ahead of us.

  “If you have stuff you need to do, don’t worry about me,” Jonny offered.

  There was always work I could do, articles I could read up on. But Jonny Lim was in my apartment now, and I’d already made him watch me work in the library yesterday afternoon. “No, it’s okay.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool. Because I’m exhausted, and if you worked, I’d feel guilty about not working, and I really don’t want to work.” He curled himself into a ball, head propped on the back of the couch.

  “What do you want to do instead?” I asked.

  “Do you watch Voltron?”

  I did. But only because Jonny had talked about it on his podcast and watching it made me feel a little closer to him. My cheeks flushed as I nodded.

  If Jonny noticed my blush, he didn’t comment. “Have you seen the last season?”

  I shook my head. When season eight was released, Jonny had warned his listeners he wouldn’t be watching it right away, and he didn’t want any spoilers. He’d been saving it for emergencies. I guessed this counted as an emergency.

  “Want to watch?”

  “Okay.” I reached for the remote control and turned on the TV. As the electronic intro music started, Jonny settled deeper into the couch, angling himself toward me so that his head was only inches from my shoulder.

  “I love this show.”

  “I know.”

  He peeked up at me, slight surprise in his eyes.

  “You talk about it on your podcast.”

  “Oh right. I’d forgotten about that.” He turned back to the TV, speaking quietly, almost absentmindedly. “See, I really do love this show, but there is an element of imperialism to it, isn’t there? Voltron is the defender of the universe. They will spread peace and freedom, but only their definition of peace and freedom.”

  The apartment was dim, lit by a floor lamp and the flicker of the TV, adding to the coziness of our position on the couch. I matched my tone to his. “But that’s not imperialism in the classical sense. The Galra are going around killing a lot of people, and Voltron is trying to stop them. Voltron isn’t trying to exert power over other planets for economic or political gain.”

  “Perhaps not in the classical sense, but certainly in the cultural sense. It’s what Foucault wrote about. The other planets can’t control their environment, they can’t protect themselves, but Voltron can. So as the more powerful of the two, Voltron also gets to define
what is true, what is good and bad, what is desirable and not desirable.” His voice was barely more than a whisper.

  I’d slid down far enough that my head was right next to Jonny’s. I could feel his breath stirring the air between us, warm and light, like a caress that didn’t quite touch my skin.

  I whispered back to him. “That’s assuming relativism—that there is no absolute right or wrong. But there are limitations to that theory.”

  “Mm, true.”

  I tilted my head toward Jonny to find him watching me instead of the TV. Eyes half-lidded, the smallest of smiles gracing his lips. He was literally everything I’d ever wanted in a guy, and he was sitting on my couch, looking at me like I was the most important person in the world. I wanted to kiss him so badly. But this was Jonny Lim, and I was nobody. Why would he want to kiss me?

  He moved before I could react and suddenly his lips were on mine, soft and gentle. A sweet kiss that melted me down to my bones. I’d never felt anything like it before. I moaned and pressed into it. Jonny kissed harder, his hand coming up to cup my cheek.

  His lips parted and mine did too. Then our tongues met, tentative at first, then in bold strokes and swipes that left me breathless and my head spinning.

  Jonny shifted onto his knees before swinging one leg over my lap to straddle me. He held me in place, pressing his smaller body to mine from chest to groin. My hands found his thighs, his ass, his back, tightly wound sinews underneath the soft fabric of his clothes. He felt perfect in my arms, and I never wanted to let go.

  “Oh Brandon,” Jonny whispered against my lips. “I’ve wanted to do that since I first laid eyes on you.”

  My only response was a whimper that grew into a whine as Jonny rocked his body against me and something hard brushed across my dick.

  “Are you as hard as I am?” Jonny whispered between nips and licks at the corner of my mouth, along my jaw. “Cause I’m fucking hard for you, Brandon.”

  I whined again, fingers digging into Jonny’s ass to pull him closer. No one had ever made me as hard as Jonny did, so much so it felt like my dick would explode if I didn’t find release.