Peter Cabot Gets Lost (The Cabots, #2)

by Cat Sebastian

There was something deeply pathetic about lingering in town for days after graduation, but Peter Cabot had long since made his peace with being deeply pathetic.

And he was queer. Caleb hadn’t seen that coming at all. He was by no means an expert at identifying fellow travelers, but Cabot seemed, well, too boring to be queer.

“Fine,” Caleb said with obvious reluctance. Precisely dividing up gas station receipts was probably his idea of a good time.

He wished he wasn’t like this—so eager to make things right, so pitifully eager to please but so hopelessly bad at it most of the time.

Peter already had a partial list. Filed under “things that please Caleb Murphy” were sandwiches, extra fries, cheap beer, and newspapers. Filed under “things that drive Caleb Murphy into a snit” was virtually everything else, as far as Peter could tell.

Caleb studied Peter’s profile—strong jaw, straight nose, broad shoulders, and solid frame. But he looked vulnerable, and at that moment Caleb wanted nothing more than to prove to Peter that he deserved better than whatever he was used to getting.

“You are decent and good. You want other people to feel good. This is called not being an asshole. You were raised by emotionally dead rich people so you don’t know this.”

“So while your concern is admirable and this conversation, however much I hate to admit it, was probably a good idea, your worries are unfounded, and you are very dumb.”

Peter wanted to take the moment and put it in a box and bury it deep inside his pocket where he would never lose it.

Peter just didn’t know anything at all, because he was a complete nightmare of loveliness and Caleb didn’t know what to do with him.

“If you make me cry at a pizza parlor in Oklahoma, I swear to God I will hitchhike the rest of the way.”

It took fifteen minutes to get back to the car, because Peter had to stop and pet every dog they saw.

I feel that.

“As soon as I admitted to myself that I was into men, my dick decided that it had a decade’s worth of boners to make good on.”

When Peter paid for two slices of peach pie and two cups of coffee and then almost absentmindedly took the forty-five cents Caleb handed him, Caleb realized he was in love. Or scratch that. He didn’t know if it was possible to fall in love in under a week. He also didn’t care if it was possible to fall in love in under a week. All he knew was that when he looked at Peter, he felt both fond and raw, like he had been turned inside out and was glad to have had it happen.

When Peter held his arm out, Caleb ducked right under it. His head wasn’t quite on Peter’s shoulder, but it was close.

Romantic photo taking! My weakness!

He remembered what Caleb had said at Dairy Queen the other night about not wanting to be alone in a small town. Caleb had been afraid, then. And he probably was afraid a lot of the time. It was second nature for him to be afraid, but he called it being careful.

“Yes,” Caleb said too quickly. “Yes to whatever you’re asking.” And wasn’t that a strange feeling, being able to put himself in someone else’s hands without worrying about constantly needing to reassert his limits. He had already told Peter what he wanted and didn’t want, and he didn’t have a shadow of a doubt that Peter would respect that.

He seemed to have developed a fondness for pushing Peter into things and then kissing him, and Peter at the same time had developed a fondness for getting pushed against things. It seemed amazing, a lucky coincidence of historic proportions, that they fell on opposite sides of the pusher/pushee divide.

“You’re allowed to be imperfect. Anybody who expects perfection secretly likes being disappointed in people. You’re good enough exactly the way you are. Everything else is a lie.”

Caleb was going to lose his mind. Somehow, over the course of the night, he had given Peter a bruise on his wrist, one bite mark on his shoulder and another on his collarbone that Caleb couldn’t even remember putting there, and beard burn on the inside of his thigh. He felt like he had written his name all over Peter’s body.

His brain felt like it was filled with wet lint, except for when he thought about Peter, and then he was torn between a demented urge to ask if he was warm enough without a sweater and the need to bend him over the nearest piece of furniture.