His smile was radiant. “A night in just for us?”
“That’s the deal. What do you think?”
“I think you need to lose more bets because this sounds amazing.”
But as I served the lasagna—layers of meat and cheese and pasta that had taken me three hours to perfect—I knew we were both aware that tonight was more than the settling of a debt.
This was me trying to show Adrian what I could offer. Not fancy restaurants or expensive wines, but something made with my own hands, in my own home. Something made with care… for the man I already cared about more than was probably wise.
Adrian took his first bite and closed his eyes, a soft sound of pleasure escaping him.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “Maddox, this is incredible.”
“My mom’s recipe, too,” I said, warmth spreading through my chest at his reaction. “She’d be very impressed to hear I made it on my own and it isn’t terrible.”
“Did she cook a lot?” he prompted with a smile.
“Oh yeah.” I nodded. “Ours was the house where everyone congregated, hoping to get asked to stay for dinner.”
“God, I had a friend like that,” Adrian remembered with a laugh. “Jack Klingman. One of his dads made the most amazing burgers and homemade fries. Every Friday night, we’d all hang out at Jack’s after shooting hoops in hopes they’d ask us to stay.”
“Yeah?” I smiled softly. “It’s great that you had that experience. It was rare to find a family with two dads around here when I was young… which is maybe surprising, given what a queer haven Legacy’s become in recent years.”
“It was pretty great,” Adrian confirmed. “I liked his dads better than the burgers, honestly. Seeing them together made me feel for the first time that being attracted to other guys was a totally normal thing to do.”
I watched him carefully. “And what did your parents think about Jack’s dads?”
He shrugged. “They politely ignored them. The Klingman family didn’t have much money, which meant they were irrelevant. Why spend time with people who can’t do anything for the business or your reputation?”
I reached over and covered his hand with mine. “Do you remember the first date we had, the one at the Marian Lodge, when you went over to meet those girls and their family?”
He crinkled his forehead, remembering. “The family from Virginia? Yeah.”
“I overheard them outside, when they first saw you. One of the girls said you changed her life. You posted something aboutburnout. And then another time, you posted about your parents. Something about family complications.”
Adrian’s fingers tangled with mine as he held on. “Yeah. That was last Christmas. It kind of sucked. My parents made a big deal of inviting me back to Connecticut for the holidays. I canceled a trip to Puerto Vallarta with some friends in LA and flew back. It was nice, at first. My mom gushed over how popular I was online. My dad asked me questions about social media and how it worked being an online influencer. It was… pretty fucking validating.”
“And then?”
“And then Dad asked if I could put him in touch with the CEO of one of my sponsors, which just so happened to be a Fortune 500 company.” His bitter laugh broke my heart. “He thought that my little ten-thousand-dollar sponsorship, in which I posted about their trendy sparkling water, would somehow translate into his being able to sell the company insurance. Enough to level up his damned company. What a moron.”
I moved closer and covered our hands with my other hand, pulling them up to kiss the back of his. “What did you tell him?”
“The truth. That the CEO of Summit Beverages didn’t know who I was, and even if he did, I wouldn’t jeopardize my relationship with them by bringing in my dad to sell them insurance.” He shrugged. “And perhaps unsurprisingly, when a couple of friends invited them over for Christmas lunch, they accepted. Hayes, party of two, not three.”
I shoved his chair back from the table and climbed onto his lap, wrapping my arms around him and holding him in the tightest hug possible. “I hate them,” I grumbled in his ear. “Hate them so fucking much.”
“Thank you,” Adrian whispered. He was quiet for a moment, just holding me as tightly as I held him. “No one’s ever cooked forme before,” he said finally, his voice muffled in the side of my neck. “You have no idea how much this means to me.”
The admission hit me harder than it should have. I thought of all the meals I’d shared over the years—family dinners around our old kitchen table, holiday spreads that took all day to prepare, the easy comfort of home-cooked food made with love.
The idea that Adrian had never experienced that made something protective and tender rise in my chest.
“If I have my way,” I said, the words coming out before I could stop them, “this is the first of many.”
Adrian pulled back and met my eyes. There was something soft and sweet in his expression. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I meant it. More than I’d meant anything in a long time.
