It wasn’t exactly an easy question to answer. Enzo had never really contemplated what it meant to be a grown-up. “Sometimes?”
“Sometimes?” Seven echoed, voice flat. “That’s your answer?”
Enzo huffed another quiet laugh. “You’re so demanding.”
When Seven lifted his head to glower at him, Enzo held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I give up. Don’t look at me like that. It makes me want to bend you over my desk and remind you who you belong to.”
Seven’s pupils blew wide. He trapped his full bottom lip between snowy white teeth, his breaths coming a little faster. When Enzo continued to study him, he buried his face in the older man’s neck again.
Cute.
Finally, Enzo said, “I mean, I pay bills like an adult. I renovated the top two floors of my building like an adult. I work for one of the most prestigious law firms in the country. In another ten years, I’ll probably qualify for senior discounts at restaurants. So, in that respect, sure. I’m a grown-up.”
“But…”
“But as soon as I’m with my mother and stepfather, I feel like a kid again. When my brothers and I are in a room, and we’re hurling insults at each other like nuclear weapons, I feel like a kid. When my mom is lecturing me about putting too much basil in her sauce, I feel like a kid again.” Pain stabbed through his chest, knife sharp, his voice wavering a bit when he said, “When my Nona died, I literally crawled into bed with my mom and just hugged her because I didn’t want to be alone. I was a fully grown adult but I didn’t feel like it that day. Is that weird?”
Seven shook his head from his hiding spot, his cheek brushing Enzo’s shoulder as he did. “No, it’s sweet.”
“I’ve never told another living soul that,” Enzo confided, a little surprised that it had slipped from him so easily. “Not even my brothers know.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, a heaviness hanging between them.
“I used to have sleep paralysis as a kid. I would just lie there, frozen, feeling like I was dying, like there was something sitting on my chest watching me sleep. My mom took me to so many doctors, who all just chalked it up to stress. Eventually, the sleep paralysis stopped, but then it became night terrors. I would wake up screaming, thrashing, convinced I was fighting for my life. It got so bad I started to sleep in my mom’s bed with her.”
That sounded awful. “That’s a pretty normal thing for kids to do.”
“I did it until I was sixteen,” Seven murmured. “If my friends knew that, they’d probably never let me live it down. I was already helping Jericho patrol the streets, but I would still crawl into bed with my mom just from a nightmare. Isthatweird?”
“I don’t think wanting your mom to comfort you is weird. I don’t think wanting to be near your mom during a crisis is weird. I think having a crisis and not thinking about your mom is…not weird, but sad. My brothers and sisters call my mom so often I have no idea how she manages to run a restaurant and a borderline criminal enterprise,” he teased.
“Your mom’s amazing,” Seven said wistfully.
Enzo smiled against Seven’s hair. “Your mom is, too. We’re both lucky in that respect.”
“Unless my mom goes to prison,” Seven countered, the words thick with pent-up emotion.
Enzo sighed, coaxing Seven from his hiding space under his chin. He cupped his face with both hands, forcing him to meet his gaze. “Listen, I’ll say this as many times as you need to hear it. I’m never gonna let that happen. When we get married, your mom will be there sobbing, probably as loudly as mine.”
Tears welled in Seven’s eyes, but he rapidly blinked them away, clearing his throat and gently knocking Enzo’s hands away. “I can’t believe you told Lourdes we’re engaged.”
“It was either that or go to jail ‘cause if she called you my sugar baby or boy toy one more time I was gonna reconsider my stance on not hitting women,” Enzo promised.
Seven’s laugh unknotted something in Enzo. “Don’t let her hear you say that or we’re gonna have to watch that stupid workplace harassment video again.”
Enzo grinned even as he worried about Seven. He hated seeing him like this. For all of Seven’s trauma with his father and some of the horrors he’d seen working for Jericho, he was shockingly well adjusted. But this situation had started to showthe cracks in his foundation and he was trusting Enzo to get him through this. A responsibility Enzo would have run screaming from just eight months ago. If anyone tried to wrestle that honor away from him now, he’d be the one needing an attorney. Seven was his. In every conceivable way.
“You know you’re still gonna have to propose, right? And get me a ring. I’m not letting you off the hook for that stuff. And it better be good,” Seven said, nestling his face into his neck once more. “You owe me.”
Enzo did owe him. For the rest of his life. “I’ll make it good. I promise.”
Seven’s phone chimed, letting him know he had a notification. He pulled it free without lifting his head, unlocking it from muscle memory, then thrusting it an inch from Enzo’s face. “What’s it say?”
Enzo had to crane his head back to see the message. “Arsen texted to ask if you’re playing with the rest of the guild tonight,” he read. “The guild? Is this what Jericho was talking about at the police station?”
Seven nodded. “Yeah, it’s…nothing.”
It didn’t sound like nothing. “Tell me about it?”
