“Milk and sugar, please,” she told him.
“Got it,” he said, heading to the open kitchen.
He poured them each a mug of coffee and added milk and sugar to Evangeline’s before coming back to the living room and setting the mugs on the cork coasters he kept on the coffee table.
“Ahhhh,”Leo said sweetly, noticing his father and extending his wiggly fingers to him.
“Can I take him?” Grayson asked, feeling a pull toward his son, but not wanting to just snatch him up.
“Of course,” Evangeline replied.
Grayson swung the boy up over his head for a moment like he was flying, and Leo squealed with joy before Grayson pulled him close.
When Leo tucked his warm little face into the crook of Grayson’s neck, it felt like anything wrong in the world could surely be solved if such sweetness existed.
“He’s such an angel,” Evangeline said quietly.
Grayson glanced down at her. She was still curled up on the floor, but she was holding her mug in both hands now, the steam curling up as if it wanted to caress her pretty face as much as Grayson did. Her eyes were sparkling as she gazed at Leo.
Suddenly it felt like Grayson’s heart was wiggling and kicking the way Leo did, trying to twist its way out of his chest to get to her.
What’s happening to me?
But he knew what it was. It had happened to so many of his old friends. They met a girl and all of a sudden their lives turned upside down. Meeting someone who loved you unconditionally had that effect on people.
No one could love me unconditionally,he reminded himself.
But somehow it didn’t feel true anymore, or at least not entirely true. A lightness washed over him that he hadn’t felt in years.
He had made himself as rich as a king, and yet his heart had been starving.
“This is good,” she told him.
It took him a second to realized she was talking about the coffee.
It ought to be—he’d put in two heaping spoonfuls of sugar along with a generous splash of milk. Evangeline was sweet. She deserved sweet things.
“Mine too,” he told her, though he hadn’t taken a sip yet. “Thanks for making it.”
“I’m just going to check on the bread,” she said, hopping up.
He watched her head into the kitchen and then sat with Leo, holding the boy up on his knee as if he were standing.
“Oh,”Leo said, eyes and mouth wide. Then he laughed and started hopping with his little feet.
Grayson laughed with him and lifted him up and down so he could feel like he was really jumping.
“He had his breakfast already,” Evangeline said from the kitchen. “And a nice fresh diaper again after.”
“You did?” Grayson asked the boy.
Leo chuckled at him and reached for his nose.
“Not my nose,” Grayson said in pretend dismay.
Leo laughed and then leaned slowly in, giving Grayson his version of a kiss on his chin. It was open-mouthed and left a lot of drool behind, but Leo’s kisses never failed to lift Grayson’s heart.
“You are the best baby,” he told him firmly. “The very best one.”
