Wanderlust (Filling Spaces #1) Read Online Free PDF

animals scratching at the walls.  He wasn’t used to spending the
night in such an unfamiliar place, found himself lost without the comforts of
his familiar routine: the lamp next to his bed, a book in his lap, that weekly
phone call from his dad and the promise of homework as he hurriedly finished a
muffin in the morning.  The difference between those relaxed, carefree evenings
and the current moment—as a crick in his neck demanded his attention and he
absently rubbed at the ache in hopes it would fade—painfully threw the bitter
truth into sharp relief:
    Nothing stays the same
forever.
    Shea knew it was true,
as much as his life and plans spoke to the contrary.  Jamie was right : he was a picket-fence person with picket-fence plans who never once until now allowed
himself to consider the possibility that life meant change ,
unfamiliarity, instability.  And yet here he was, cocooned in a too-warm
sleeping bag in a cabin that looked nothing like the childhood vacation home he
remembered, attempting to identify the source of those unnerving sounds
outside, knowing that even when he went home to his lamp and his books and his
bed he wouldn’t receive weekly calls from his father any more.
    The thought left Shea
unspeakably sad and his throat tightened painfully.  Instinctively he shifted
in his sleeping bag to seek out Jamie’s prone form in the darkness.  He wanted
the simple comfort of knowing he wasn’t alone, and relief took him as he made
out the barely discernible, shadowy lump nearby. Tentative, unsure of what he
sought, he reached out shyly and carefully to touch Jamie’s dark hair.  Soft ,
he thought, and felt some of the coiled tension leave his body.  The warmth of Jamie’s
hair under his fingertips, the rise and fall of the other man’s breathing, made
him feel less lonely, somehow, chased away the grief that lurked at the edge of
his thoughts.
    “Can’t sleep?”
    Jamie’s voice, full
volume and alert, startled Shea; his heart paused for a too-long second before
pounding quick and sharp inside his chest.  He snatched his hand back,
embarrassed.  “I didn’t know you were awake.”
    “Hard not to be,” Jamie
replied lazily, “with you rolling around over there.”  He stretched, a lithe
shadow in the dark, and rolled over on his side to face his companion.  To
Shea’s gratitude, he made no comment about the tentative caress.  “Something
bothering you?”
    Shea tugged the
sleeping bag up to his chin, a defense against he knew not what.  “No,” he
muttered defensively.  “I just woke up, that’s all.  Heard weird stuff
outside.”
    A rustling followed as Jamie
sat up and fumbled for his laptop on the table.  A few clicks later, pale
illumination lightened the heavy darkness of the room and suddenly Shea could
dimly make out the shape of the cabinets, the ancient refrigerator and the table
nearby.  “Nightlight help?” Jamie asked, and grinned. 
    “Oh, shut up,” Shea
said wearily, and ran his hands through his hair.  “I’m fine.”  Still, he
glanced about surreptitiously for wayward spiders or small animals and found
himself comforted to see none immediately nearby.  His fear made him feel
foolish, but to his embarrassment he did find the glow of the laptop
comforting.  Exhaling heavily, he willed his body to relax as he stretched out
in the sleeping bag.
    “I’m cold,” Jamie
complained.  “Unzip.”
    Shea blanched.  “Unzip what ?”
he asked, and then understood—he struggled with the zipper on the sleeping bag
as Jamie laughed quietly at the misunderstanding.  “You volunteered to sleep
over there, you know,” he pointed out as he finally succeeded in getting the
zipper down.  Reluctantly he crawled out of the warm nest and shivered.  “I
told you before I’d—”
    Jamie snorted.  “Stay
in there, dumbass. I’m not kicking you out.  We’re going to share.”  And before
Shea could protest—though he realized to his embarrassment he had