Aiden snaked his arms under Thomas’s, resting his cheek on his shoulder blade. “Yet, here we are, all these years later. Do you still think it’s a crush?”
How could Thomas explain it to Aiden in a way that didn’t sound selfish? That didn’t sound like an excuse. Thomas had had a million reasons for refusing him, not the least of which was his age. He’d loved Aiden but not like that. Never like that. He’d been a child. It wasn’t until later, when he finished college, that Thomas really saw him as a man. But that hadn’t changed anything.
“No, but if I hadn’t sent you away, things would have gotten…complicated. I wanted you to be happy. I know having me would have made you happy short-term, but you were a kid. I could never prey on a child that way. Besides, look what happened when you came home. How long did I manage to refuse you?”
“I was twenty-two years old, by then,” Aiden said. “I was very much an adult.”
“Only in the eyes of the law. I was thirty-six,” Thomas reminded him, heart aching. “I was thirty-six with seven children, one of which was you. Do you know what the press would have done to us had we somehow started a relationship? The scandal would have broken us.”
“And now?” Aiden asked.
Thomas could feel every deep breath Aiden took, like he was just waiting for Thomas to say something that would break his heart again. “And now, we take the risk. We’re adults. All of us. We can all weather the scandal together. Especially if we get ahead of it. But none of that will matter if we don’t find this fucking blackmailer.”
Thomas’s lids fluttered as Aiden pressed a soft kiss to the back of his neck. “I think we should tell people the truth.”
Thomas’s heart skipped a beat. “Define the truth?”
“The truth about Shane. It will be one less thing for people to blackmail us over in the future,” Aiden reasoned.
“Will it? Or will it just entice reporters to dig deeper into the family?” Thomas asked.
“Not if we let Zane do it. Let Zane write a tell-all about the entire fucked-up Mulvaney family. If people think there’s no other skeletons in our closet because Zane told them all, they’ll lose interest. People like snooping, but once they find the answers, they get bored and look for a new mystery. Just…just think about it.”
Thomas nodded.
Maybe Aiden was right. Maybe the best way to keep the family safe was to expose all of the darkness, all the abuse, the suffering, everything. Once and for all. Compared to his family’s past, his relationship with Aiden would barely seem like a blip on the radar.
Thomas just needed his family to be okay. He needed them safe and happy and free. He needed to find this fucking blackmailer so they could put him down…and figure out if he’d really made a hub of serial killers. The thought chilled him more than a little bit. Not just one monster, but a collective of them. They would all have to be dispatched before they revealed too much.
“Go to sleep,” Aiden said, slipping free of Thomas’s body and rolling them both onto their sides.
Thomas let Aiden manhandle him into little spoon, his fuzzy thigh pressed between Thomas’s knees, his arm an iron bar across his waist.
“Shouldn’t we clean up first?”
“No,” Aiden mumbled, already half-asleep.
Thomas smiled despite himself. Aiden was nothing if not decisive. Thomas loved that about him. He shook his head. He loved everything about him.
Breakfast was organized chaos. Per usual, an army of staff members descended on the house to make breakfast before Thomas dismissed them once more. As soon as the food was set out, Jericho’s boys and half the Mulvaneys fell on it like ravenous vultures, piling food onto their plates then disappearing down into the basement. After watching them all pushing and shoving, jockeying for position in line, it occurred to him that maybe Mac and Jericho were right—maybe toddlerswerethe way to go.
Outside was cold and miserable, but inside was toasty warm, making it easy to forget it was still winter. As Aiden helped himself to food, he watched Thomas, who was sitting between Ada and Ari, cutting up strawberries and dropping them into their plates. They snatched them up greedily with their tiny sticky hands and popped the offerings into their mouths. They looked like angels compared to the horde of heathens who’d just demolished a buffet in less time than it took a school of piranha to eat a fish.
Lucas had said they seemed to shoot projectiles from both ends, but he was still about to have a third. It couldn’t be all bad. What was a little puke from something that looked like a tiny version of the person you loved? Hell, Archer had puked on Aiden more than once—something they were going to have a very stern talk about now that the truth was out. It couldn’t be worse than that.
Lucas and August sat on opposite sides of each child, feeding them eggs and tiny bits of vegetables. Noah sat in Adam’s lap at the end of the table, essentially doing the same to him, forking random bites of his own breakfast into his mouth. Archer and Mac were having a conversation amongst themselves by the fireplace. They’d opted for black coffee in lieu of real food. Lola and Calliope were also at the table with Cricket, talking in low tones about something to do with proxy servers. Girls were weird.
When Thomas glanced up and saw Aiden watching him, he smiled. It felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach. He really had loved that man most of his life, from the moment he’d laid eyes on him. Christ. He was so far gone on Thomas. He always had been, but he’d never let himself have this before. This sense of…ownership. Aiden wanted the world to know Thomas belonged to him, something that was less tacky and more permanent than the hickeys he currently sported, peeking out from beneath a pale blue button-down that made his eyes as silver as his hair. Would their kids have Thomas’s blue eyes or Aiden’s?
He shook the thought away. He was getting far too many ideas watching him with the girls. He took his food and sat opposite Thomas, whose bare foot was suddenly snaking up Aiden’s pant leg all while he pretended nothing was happening.
When the plates were empty and Cricket had taken the girls to the nursery, Thomas finally asked, “Did you find anything helpful in the files? Anything that might lead us somewhere other than Shane?”
August shook his head. “No, unfortunately not. I went over the case files, had Calliope run down every person who had so much as touched the case. Even the politicians Shane’s mom had used to force the locals into silence. There are no red flags.”
Jericho threw down his napkin with a sigh. “I was sure it was going to be Holly’s secret love child,” Jericho said. “It made perfect sense.”
“Yeah, until she didn’t have one,” Lucas lamented.
