Winter Wonderland (15 page)

It chafed Paul every time he noticed it. It fucked with his head, because
his
vision of Kyle was someone who took charge, who made him feel safe without being suffocated. And absolutely he fucked like a man. It upset Paul to see his vision of Kyle so neutered and…well, mocked, in a way. Eventually one night as they ate dinner he said something about it.

Kyle shrugged as he stabbed a bit of salad. “They don’t mean anything by it. I tell myself it’s better than being told I’m Satan’s spawn or going to hell.”

“They shouldn’t dismiss you, though. You’re not a boy. Sometimes I think you’re more man than I am.”

Kyle’s smile made Paul shiver, and something about the way Kyle wiped his mouth with his napkin had Paul wanting to skip the steak on his plate and ask for an entirely different kind of meat. “So long as
you
don’t see me as a boy.”

Paul pushed his lust slightly to the side, because it was important to him to tell Kyle how he felt. “I don’t. I’m sorry I ever did.”

Kyle reached across the table and stroked Paul’s beard. “It’s okay. Really. It’s easy to fall into stereotypes in a small town. I think it’s less that people want to see me as sexless and more they don’t like things moved too far out of their boxes. It’s a miracle, given the voting demographic, we’re accepted at all. It’s hard for people to make room for something other than the standard male-female dynamic. If I started dating a girl, they’d move me into the
man
slot with a happy sigh and start asking when I’ll have kids. It’s not so much that they think that’s right, but it’s what they
know.
Since I’ve been out forever, they put me in a kind of sexless state.” He picked up his knife to cut his steak, smiling ruefully. “Now that I’m dating you, they’ve pretty much decided I’m a young lady with a dick.”

Which was almost word for word what Frankie had complained of. “It isn’t
right
, though.”

“What in this world is fair? I’m not saying I don’t want to change their minds. Mostly I’m acknowledging it’ll take a lifetime to do so.” When Paul still frowned, Kyle touched his lips again. “Thank you for being outraged on my behalf.”

It was things like that which got Paul. Because with Arthur they’d have argued and ended up having angry sex. With Kyle, the discussion turned into a deeper connection. Kyle touched him a lot as they did the cleanup, and while Paul did the dishes, Kyle stood behind him, fondling his ass until he finally undid Paul’s jeans and groped his cock. The num
ber of times he’d had sex in his kitchen were now too numerous to count. And yeah, the sex was great.

But the companionship was what he was there for, what he cherished. What made his heart soar and ache with fear of loss by turns.

Best yet was the way Kyle folded so effortlessly into his friendship with Marcus, Arthur, Frankie and Gabriel.

One weekend, Marcus, Arthur and Paul went hunting, and as they set off for the tree stand, their men went to Duluth for a day of shopping. When the hunters arrived at the cabin, they rendered the meat and started some stew, and when the shoppers returned in time for dinner, they revealed their discoveries. All three of them had bought something for their partners. Marcus got several packs of new socks and a new tie. Arthur got a six-pack of his favorite local beer and a Terry Pratchett novel, which Paul knew Gabriel would read to him aloud.

Paul received a DVD of
While You Were Sleeping
.

They ended up watching it the next day instead of heading to the movie theater. Paul hadn’t seen it in years, and he’d forgotten how much he enjoyed it.

“I wonder what it would be like to live in a big city,” he said once it was finished.

“Loud and busy.” Kyle settled his head into Paul’s lap and smiled up at him as he teased fingers through his beard. “I prefer small towns.
Our
small town.”

Paul didn’t always, but he’d become awfully fond of it lately.

Kyle kept petting Paul’s beard. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Gabriel and Arthur got engaged last year, Marcus and Frankie this spring. I haven’t heard of any dates set, though. What’s going on there?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Paul looked away, fighting a bloom of embarrassment. And losing.

Kyle sat up, studying him a moment. “Now
that
was an interesting reaction. I want to hear all about it.”

The more Paul hemmed and hawed, the more Kyle petted him, urging him gently but insistently to spill the beans. Paul sighed. “I don’t know for sure. I really don’t. But I think, sometimes, they’re waiting for me.” His blush heated his whole body. “To find my own somebody.”

The pause between that confession and Kyle’s reply wasn’t overly long, but it felt like an eternity to Paul all the same. He felt ridiculous with the words hanging in the air. He worried what they would make Kyle think. He worried what Kyle might say. But then Kyle shifted on the sofa and straddled Paul, taking his head in his hands, holding his face firmly in place. He brushed a kiss over Paul’s mouth before he replied.

“I’ll have to work harder, then, to show them you already have.”

A second kiss turned sultry, and after a break for air, Kyle stripped them both out of their shirts and pushed Paul onto his back before trailing kisses down the fur of his chest. When he took Paul in his mouth, though, he kept things tender, never driving their passion into a frenzy. He paused often to kiss Paul all over his body, stroking, licking, sucking, but with a reverence that made Paul feel worshipped. Adored.

Loved.

By the time they came together, mouths fused, cocks rubbing together inside Kyle’s sure grip, Paul floated in a perfect haze of tenderness and surrender. It lingered long after he came, and as he drifted to earth again, it occurred to him Kyle was the first man who had ever given him everything he wanted in one package: aggression, tenderness, domination, equality. Affection and delight. Rough fucking and wild passion. He was everything.

He was perfect.

As they lay twined together in bed, listening to the wind blow against the house, Paul shut his eyes and said a silent prayer.

Please let this stay. Please, if I get nothing else in life, please let this stay.

Chapter Thirteen

P
aul hadn’t realized how much work Gabriel and Marcus had been doing behind the scenes for Winter Wonderland until he saw it spread across Frankie’s dining room table.

For weeks now, there had been public meetings at the library, notices in the paper, and all manner of repair work for Arthur and Paul on the abandoned storefronts on Main Street. Kyle had turned part of their workshop into a design studio, where he and Frankie huddled together to discuss colors, motifs and other mystical things for the look of the project. Paul had felt the fever of the festival for some time now, and he was excited for it the same as he was for any public event.

Now it was a week before Thanksgiving, a little more than a month before the festival, and everyone who was anyone in Logan was crowded into Marcus and Frankie’s house along with the Winter Wonderland planning committee, finalizing this year’s project and making big plans for festivals to come. Standing over the mass of applications, permits and licenses, however, drove home the depth of what they were doing in a way nothing else had. This wasn’t some little party the library was throwing to raise money. This was
big
. Or, rather, it could be.

It made Paul excited. And terrified.

Frankie and Marcus’s house buzzed with people. The six of them—Frankie, Marcus, Arthur, Gabriel, Paul and Kyle—but also Corrina, the library board, the mayor and city council, and the small business association. Marcus led them all, using a PowerPoint presentation projected on a fold-out screen Frankie set up in front of the dining room’s picture window.

“Here you can see the Winter Wonderland venue sites.” He hit a button on his laptop, and the image of Logan Main Street morphed names and images into the buildings previously marked VACANT. “We’ve randomized applicants for the demonstration, but it’s important to know we have three times as many potential businesses than we have space to house them. Even filling the gymnasium will leave some leftover.”

The mayor shook his head in disbelief. “Where are all these people coming from?”

“Everywhere.” Marcus poked at the computer again, and the PowerPoint shifted to a graph. “Here’s a breakdown of which cities the applications have come from. This will clearly be a regional event. Bear in mind these are mostly established or recently folded businesses—if we’d put this application out in July, it’d be a different story entirely.”

“This is only interested
businesses
.” Frankie reached around Marcus to pull up another slide. “We took out a few Facebook ads offering a link to a mailing list for when information was available. Here’s how many people signed up.” The slide loaded, and the room gasped. Frankie’s smile was sly. “We targeted users in the Twin Cities as aggressively as we did Duluth and the local counties. We almost got a
better
response from urban areas.”

Gabriel spoke up from the back of the room. “It makes sense. Everyone wants nostalgia at Christmas, and that’s what Winter Wonderland sells.”

One of the council members nodded, her expression something between stunned and excited. “This could be what finally gets the contractors to stop telling us they might build vacation homes here and actually get around to buying the land and starting construction.”

“Which would help the mill,” Arthur said from the other side of the table. “Which would create jobs.”

“And the seasonal businesses would become year-round businesses,” the head of the small business association said in a near whisper. “But how do we make sure this is what happens?”

“We have some ideas about that. What the city needs to decide is how big we want this to get. Because it could get pretty big.” Marcus advanced the next slide. It showed a picture from the year before with Arthur in his Santa suit on a sleigh, but underneath it were the boldface words:
Logan: Minnesota’s Year-Round Christmas Village
.

The mayor blinked. “All year?”

“Yes.” Frankie gestured to the packet of paper he’d distributed before Marcus had started his presentation. “We need a hook, something to set us apart from the other small towns relying on tourism. Our lake isn’t the best lake in the area, and let’s face it. It’s Minnesota. Everybody has a lake. We aren’t close to a major city. We don’t have anything particular to draw people here, not on a regular basis. But everyone loves Christmas.”

“We’ll hate it soon enough,” one of the library board members said.

Corrina, though, had stars in her eyes. “No, we won’t. Because this won’t just bring jobs. This will bring
people
. We won’t be a dying town anymore. We’ll be the Christmas village.”

“We could even get our school district back,” someone said.

Marcus held up a hand. “Nothing magical will happen overnight. We need to let this year be the test case and carefully nurture the idea throughout the next couple of years. And we must start planning next year’s Winter Wonderland in February.”

The various city agencies and councils began talking at once, and Marcus ceded the meeting to the mayor. It was less exciting pretty quickly once Marcus and Frankie’s slideshow ended, and Paul was glad when Frankie declared it was time for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.

Since he’d been separated from Kyle when they took their seats, the first thing Paul did when it was acceptable to move around was locate him. Kyle turned out to be in the living room, sipping punch and talking to Corrina. Arthur’s mother saw Paul first and waved him over, rising and insisting he take her seat.

“I need to ask the mayor something anyway.” She kissed Paul’s cheek and bustled away.

Paul sat beside Kyle, who smiled at him in the way that made Paul’s belly get butterflies.

“What did you think of the meeting?” Kyle offered his plate of food to Paul, who took a cheese roll mostly to be polite. “It’s all very exciting, don’t you think?”

Paul nodded, chewing the roll before he answered. “If it works, it could be something else, that’s for sure.”

“I think it’ll work.”

“I don’t know. Wouldn’t another town have done this already, if it’s that easy?”

“It’s not easy at all. But we’re not afraid of hard work. Plus Logan has all of
us
.” He squinted at Paul’s mouth. “Oh, hon, you have a— Here.”

Paul held still, cheeks staining as Kyle wiped cream cheese out of his mustache with all the bigwigs of Logan looking on.

Soon people started to leave, everyone wearing smiles on their faces. Corrina was the last to go, hugging and kissing and carrying on about what a
wonderful group of boys
they were. She pulled Paul aside though, asking him to help her carry her things to her car, which turned out to be an excuse to give him a pep talk.

“Everything going well with Kyle?” She blinked up at him beneath the streetlight as if studying his face to find the answer there. “You seem happy. Are you happy, Paul?”

Paul nodded, blushing, ducking into the scarf Kyle had knit for him. “Yes, thank you.”

Corrina didn’t stand down. “Is your family giving you a tough time? I know how they can be.” When Paul’s only answer was a shrug, she pursed her lips. “Don’t listen to them. If you’re happy,
be
happy, Paul.” She patted his arm. “Oh, I wanted to tell you—we’re having Thanksgiving as usual, and you’re welcome to come. Kyle too.”

“Thank you, but my family expects me. Kyle’s probably does too.”

Corrina lifted her eyebrows. “You haven’t asked him what his plans are? You should plan to go together, wherever you decide.”

“We’ve barely dated a few weeks. It seems a bit…big to do a holiday together.”

“Are you telling me you don’t
want
to have Thanksgiving with him?”

Paul blushed, stammered. “No, I—I just mean, it’s so soon, and my family…”

Corrina wagged a finger in his face. “You won’t know what Kyle will say until you ask. As for your family, don’t bother with what they think or don’t.”

That was all well and good, but inviting Kyle to Thanksgiving meant involving them. Or inviting himself over to Kyle’s, which was worse.

Paul worried Corrina would do the asking for him. She didn’t, thank God, though he suspected she said something to Kyle, because on the way home,
he
brought it up.

“Do you have plans for Thanksgiving?”

Paul shifted his grip on the wheel. “Yeah. Going to my parents’ place at noon, like usual.” He chewed his lip, then made himself add, “What about you?”

“Work, unfortunately, though as usual Mom’s a rock and moved the family dinner until after my shift.” He tugged at his ear and smiled. “You’re welcome to come, if you can handle a second dinner. I’d say you could not eat, but Mom won’t let you out without
something.
”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to put her out.”

“You wouldn’t. She’s been after me to bring you to dinner, in fact.” He messed with his ear again. “But there will be a lot of people there, so I won’t pressure you if you don’t want to come.”

Paul honestly couldn’t decide if he wanted to go or not. “I’ll think about it,” he said, as a compromise.

Kyle smiled. “You do that.”

Paul dropped Kyle off at his house shortly after. As usual, Kyle’s father and brothers were working outside, and they waved to Paul in a friendly way. They were always glad to see him, inviting him to come in for a cup of coffee.

He thought a lot about going to the Parks house for Thanksgiving. About how good it would feel to be truly welcome somewhere, to spend a holiday with people who didn’t inject a judgment into every conversation. Weirdly, that made Paul less inclined to accept Kyle’s offer, though he couldn’t articulate why. Not until Arthur brought up the holiday at work and asked Paul if he and Kyle were getting together. Paul told him about Kyle’s offer and his failure to accept or deny.

“I want to go, and I don’t.” He rubbed his beard and frowned at the workbench. “His family seems great. I do want to get to know them. I just…I don’t know. I don’t want to rush. And to be honest, I don’t want to get attached.”

Arthur’s smile was rueful and understanding. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he regards you as a passing phase.”

The observation spawned something warm in the center of Paul’s chest, but it also increased the gnawing doubt in his gut. “He doesn’t know all my faults yet. Could change his mind. I’d rather hold off, keep some cards back. I mean, one hot young cub walks in, and what have I got to counter that?”

“A
lot
.” Arthur nudged Paul in the arm. “You’re a great catch. And the two of you are perfect together. Maybe I worried about the age difference too at first, but I don’t now. He’s good to you. Good
for
you. You’re not convenient. You’re what he wants.”

“For now.”

“He wants it to be for a lot longer than a lark, bud. He’s a long-hauler.”

Paul wanted to believe this. “It’s just easier to hold back. Safer.”

Arthur sighed and held up his hands. “You do what you need to do. Let me tell you, though, you won’t get anywhere by playing it safe. You need to open up to him. Take a risk. I get that the more you want it, the harder it is. I threw up twice before I put on that Santa suit and asked Gabriel to marry me. Part of me knew he’d say yes, part of me was equally sure he’d slap my face. And look at Marcus and Frankie. They almost walked away from each other, and now they’re playing house and picking out invitations. Sitting on the chamber of commerce together. Wouldn’t have happened if Frankie hadn’t risked it all to come back up here and open his heart.”

Paul pursed his lips. “It doesn’t work like that, you know. It’s no guarantee you get a happily ever after if you put your heart on the line.”

“True enough. But it
is
a promise that if you don’t take a risk, the happily ever after will
never
happen.”

The warning hung in Paul’s head all the rest of the day. Arthur was right, he should go. As risks went, it was an easy one to take. The worst thing that would happen was he loved Kyle’s family and later Kyle broke up with him, cutting the Parks out of his life. He convinced himself, as best he could, he could guard against falling for Kyle’s family too hard. It was his baby step toward getting his own happily ever after.

Yes, it also fed the crazy part of him that was aware Marcus and Arthur had both found their husbands-to-be in this very season. They’d known they were forever before the church bells rang on Christmas morning. He knew it wasn’t rational to think that just because it had happened for them it would happen for him.

It wasn’t rational, but Paul couldn’t stop hoping it would happen anyway.

Holidays were the rare times Kyle wished he worked in a regular hospital: while nurses still could expect to work on special occasions, major holidays meant less surgeries and zero voluntary admissions and therefore less census and less staff required. Nursing homes tended to need the same staffing regardless of what day of the year it was. As such, holidays were granted on a rotating schedule. They each had to work one major and two minor holidays a year. They did work with less staff, but it was only slightly less than a regular day.

Kyle’s mother always scheduled her meal around his shift, a pleasantry he did his best not to take for granted. He did what he could to help her with preparations in the days before, baking pies, doing the shopping, especially those little trips for things she didn’t realize she was out of until the last possible moment. It was during one of those occasions on Monday when he ran into Corrina at the grocery store.

“How are your mother’s preparations coming?” Corrina nodded at her overflowing cart. “As you can see, I’m late to the game myself. But then I don’t have nearly as many guests as she does. How many this year?”

“Thirty.” Kyle nodded as her eyes went wide. “A cousin got married out of state last month, and we’re using the holiday as a way to have an informal reception for the family who couldn’t make it. Everyone’s bringing a dish, but Mom can’t stand the idea we might not have enough of the staples. I have the feeling we’ll be able to feed the entire county before it’s all said and done.”