Since April was Madden’s birth month, he felt weird about it all, which I couldn’t blame him for.
“I feel like it should be me being her parent, not any of them,” he told me one afternoon when we sat on top of a picnic table and watched Mona’s riding lesson at the outdoor arena.
We were far enough that nobody could hear our discussion.
“Yeah. I get that.” I took his hand and squeezed. “But you’ll both be living here and you can stay at Toby’s more openly, too. It’s just going to be Theo and Lake who are her guardians on paper and whatever she’ll need, she’ll get. Hell, she said she’s excited to go to school in the fall, right?”
Madden sighed and leaned his head to my shoulder. “Yeah. But…it’s been me for so long. Never officially though.”
“And now you feel like someone is taking that away from you. Officially.”
“Yeah. And I know it’s not like that, but…”
“But our brains and hearts work in mysterious ways.”
“Mad, look!” Mona yelled from the arena, making us both get to our feet.
We stood on the bench so we could see better, and watched as she encouraged Salem into an easy, happy canter.
“Are you looking?” she yelled.
Madden let out a heartbreaking little sob, then cleared his throat. “Yeah, Bug, I’m looking! You’re doing awesome!”
Theo said something to her, and she concentrated back on her task.
I pulled Madden down to sit and hugged him close. There was nothing else I could say or do, but sometimes being there for your friend was more than enough.
Epilogue
Rey
I’d always thought sex would be awesome—what teenager didn’t think that—but I’d not expected it to be as amazing as it ended up being.
Sure, it was messy and very, very real in ways opposed to what you saw in porn, but it was still the best thing. Well, thelovewas the best thing. That, I’d expected even less.
But the sex. Man. It was great.
When Jack asked me to top him the first time we ended up wanting penetrative sex, my jaw dropped. I guess we should’ve talked about it beforehand, but I’d kind of thought maybe he was a strict top. I wouldn’t have minded, I had no idea how it would be either way so I wouldn’t have missed what I didn’t know.
I’d been more scared about topping than I ended up being bottoming. I enjoyed both equally, as did Jack, which to some romantic part of my brain was proof that we were perfect together.
We weren’t, by the way. We disagreed about things sometimes, and it got heated, too.
“But she’s an adult!” I insisted.
“She’s a college student! Why would you let her borrow your cottage for spring break of all things? How do you know who she’ll take there? They’d be so fucking far away from home, too!” Jack stopped his pacing and spread his arms. “You can’t be that naïve?”
Okay. That was a low fucking blow, and he could tell what I thought about it by my expression.
“You love Samira. Hell,Ilove Samira.” And I did, same with Rhiannon. We’d gotten them to come over for a week in the summer. “She’s responsible and she’d hate to know what you’re thinking right now. She said she needed a place to unwind, so I mentioned the cabin. She might still choose something else!”
It was only late summer, so there was so long until spring break that I was pretty sure she’d find something to do closer to home before that anyway.
“But you can’t just go—”
“Yes, I can! It’s my property and she’s my family too, isn’t she?” I yelled, then stormed out of the kitchen and went outside, because I would say something mean I didn’t actually want to say if I stayed.
I walked a few steps and plopped my ass down where I’d had the kittens’ playpen last summer. Where I’d sat the first time I ever saw Jack.
