“This is a very long way to tell me something, Jessica.”
“You’re so impatient.”
“What is it you want to know? Out with it, woman.”
She glares in my direction. “You have a kid. I want to know how he’s handling that. Is he warming up to parenting? Or are you two keeping the two parts of your lives separate? If you’re going to be together, you can’t keep Axl separate. We’ve never truly had reason to be around babies before Emerson, so I can’thonestly imagine how he’s handling this, Voss. I’m worried that somehow Axl’s existence will scare him away from you, and I want to know how you’re going to handle that.”
“See? Was that so difficult to say?”
Her lips press together as she glares at me.
“He doesn’t volunteer time with Axl. He doesn’t initiate picking him up. He doesn’t change him or bathe him or feed him. However, he also doesn’t move away when I have Axl. He’ll cuddle up with us. He has no complaints when I bring Axl into his room at night, even when Axl wakes up. He doesn’t talk to Axl, but he still says goodbye and hello before leaving and coming back. He’ll hold Axl when I place him in his arms, and he no longer looks alarmed.”
Jessica laughs. “I can imagine that expression.”
“Oh yeah. I wish I’d taken a picture. Axl might as well have been a bomb. He was absolutely terrified.”
She continues to grin.
“We’re doing fine, Jessica. It’s slow, and I think we’re both okay with that. Axl needs a lot of attention, which means Brek doesn’t have my full attention, and I think that suits him well and gives him time to examine how he feels on any given day. But we’re doing good. We’re happy.”
She sighs. “Good. We worry about him.”
“I know you do. He knows you do too.”
Jessica nods.
“He loves that you worry about him, but I think it feels suffocating at times.”
“Yeah, I know. We’re trying to back off a little. We recently had a conversation, and it’s brought us back into a good place. All six of us. But that doesn’t mean we don’t still worry about him. Even considering the hell that Haze lived in, we’ve all worried about Brek more than each other. Haze was always strong enough to protect himself. Brek was broken down from a very young age, and no matter how we tried to keep him together, I’m not sure he was ever really whole. You know?”
“I do,” I agree. “I think you’re right. I understand why you all hover and push the way you do, but I think that puts more pressure on him.”
“That’s why I’m glad you’re in his life now,” Jessica says. “He told us you helped him understand the shift in his aroace. He didn’t want to talk about it at all with us, but he was willing to talk about it with you.”
“That hurt, didn’t it?”
She gives me a sad smile. “It did, yeah. But it’s not about us. It’s about Brek. He needs something all his own, and that’s you. That’s why I’m asking all this. He’s let you in, and he’s never let anyone else in, Voss. No one outside of the five of us. Not to put pressure on you, but that’s a really big deal. That’s why I’m asking about your future with him.”
“If I told you it was just hooking up? Then what?”
“Then I’d have to kick you in the teeth because he’s let you in and that means something to him, even if on a subconscious level, and you’d need to get your head out of your ass so you don’t hurt him.”
“Wow. One-sided concern.”
She rolls her eyes.
My phone pings, and I look down. My smile climbs when I see a text from Brek. It fades when I see that his car won’t start. He assures me he’s got a ride home, so I let it drop.
“Brek’s car won’t start,” I say.
Jessica tilts her head. “That’s a new car.”
“Yep, I’m sending a message to Rod in the garage. He’ll go take a look at it.”
“Rod.”
I meet her eyes once I’ve sent Rod a text. “You do realize there’s something like 800 employees here, right? Including the vendors and contractors. You can’t possibly know all of them.”
