Skyler bites down on his jaw, an obvious sign of frustration. When he speaks, however, his tone is calm and his expression neutral. “I don’t know the exact reasons, but I’m grateful she didn’t. I have no other family so if it came to removal I’d have ended up in the system. I’d have been separated from Jax, and unfortunately there are some not so great foster parents out there, so I could have simply been leaving one bad situation and entering another, except I wouldn’t have had Jackson and Steph. But, honestly, removal would have been incredibly unlikely. Like I said before—there was no physical or sexual abuse, and while they weren’t creating the healthiest of environments, they weren’t involved in anything illegal or dangerous. And they were providing for my basic needs—“
“—barely,” I cut in with a harsh scoff.
Skyler sends me another of those looks telling me to let him handle this. “I saidbasic,” he reiterates. “I was sent to school, I was kept clean, I was taken to the doctors for checkups. It was the bare minimum, but it was enough that no judge could have looked at me and seen a child in desperate need of removal from an unsafe situation.”
“But…you didn’t have food…” Deacon persists, his expression bordering on tormented.
Skyler lets out a heavy breath, running a hand through his hair. “Deacon, if they removed kids from every family that had to toss a coin between rent and food they’d need to build orphanages all over the country.”
Deacon leans back a little, running a hand over his mouth as his eyes fill with dismay. I’m not sure if it’s about this new perception he now has of Skyler, or the general realization of how sheltered his life has been, but clearly the conversation has had a profound effect.
“Two minutes,” I tell him, checking my phone again. “Anything else you want to ask?”
Deacon shakes his head. “No, I’m good. Just…” he looks up at Skyler, a concerned frown marring his face. “Sky, I’m just going to say this once and I swear I’ll never bring it up again. I think you should talk to someone about all this. A therapist, I mean. Because you know this is still affecting you, right? I just think that might be helpful…”
Rather than answering, Skyler peers over at my phone and watches the last few seconds of the timer run down. When the alarm goes off he glances up and Deacon, offering a broad smile. “Time’s up!”
ChapterTwenty-One
Jackson
“Morning, Jax,”Skyler says brightly when I emerge from the bathroom after my shower to find him standing at the counter sipping at his coffee as though that’s a perfectly normal thing to do.
“What the hell are you doing over there?” I grumble, feeling incredibly put out that my morning routine has been thrown out of whack for the second Monday in a row.
He shrugs. “Drinking coffee. Yours is sitting here. It should be the right temperature now.”
“I meant, why are you drinking your coffee out here?” I ask. “Why didn’t you come into the bathroom?”
“I…thought maybe you’d want some privacy?”
My eyes widen and I throw my hands out in an expansive gesture. “Why the hell would you think that?”
He lifts a hand to rub the back of his hair. “I just read something about…you know…boundaries being important. I thought, maybe—”
I let out a soft groan, rubbing a hand over my face. “This is an ace thing, isn’t it?”
“Well…I just…”
I smile softly and stride over to him, bringing my hands up to cup his face. “I love that you’re thinking about this kind of stuff, but it’s not necessary. We’ve never had boundaries before—we don’t need them now.”
“But you’re ace now,” he persists.
I offer a wry smile. “I’ve always been ace, Sky. It’s just now I know I am.” I lean in for a brief lip cuddle. “I don’t want boundaries Skyler. I’ve never liked being apart from you before and I sure as hell don’t want to start it now.” Drawing away a little, I catch his gaze, arching an eyebrow pointedly. “I would have thought spending every night over the past week naked in bed together would have been a pretty clear sign of how comfortable I am with you…”
He nods, offering a soft smile. “Fair.” Then a hint of anxiety brushes over his face, causing his forehead to crease. “I just…don’t want you to ever feel like I’m pushing you.”
“And I don’t want you to feel like I’m holding you back,” I say frankly. “But more importantly, I don’t want to feel like you’resteppingback. Anything that was okay before is okay now. Got it?”
The corners of his lips curve up. “So what you’re saying is it’s still perfectly fine for me to hang in the bathroom while you’re showering?”
“Of course it is. Hell, it’d be perfectly fine if you got in the shower with me,” I say with a shrug.
Skyler’s brows shoot up. “Withyou?”
I nod. “I bet shower cuddling would be really nice. With the hot water, and getting all sudsy.” I close my eyes for a moment and let out soft sigh of contentment as I imagine Skyler’s soapy hands running over my wet body. “I bet your hands would feel really nice running over my body like that…like a soapy massage.”
“Jesus Christ, Jackson,” Skyler groans. “Fuck, I just remembered the other reason I thought it’d be better to let you shower alone.”
