“I know,” Reese said patiently. “But if it makes you feel better, it’ll be a straightforward job.”
I sighed. I knew Reese wouldn’t know what it was like to have that near-constant niggle of worry in the back of his mind until he was a father himself.
Even the idea of my son having that kind of future someday – a man who loved him unconditionally and a child or children they could shower with all the love and attention Reese should have had growing up – eased something in my soul.
He’d have that.
I had to believe that.
The past four months had been a mix of upsand downs. Reese had found a sense of family with me, Gage, Nash, and Gage’s father and daughter, but there was still something missing for my son. He carried a lot of guilt about the events of the night we’d been attacked. When he’d learned that the men had, in fact, come after him after they’d recognized his picture on the news, he’d been completely devastated and he’d tried to do what had always served him so well in the past.
Run.
We hadn’t let him, of course, but no amount of reassurance from any of us that we didn’t blame him for the events of that night had completely assuaged him of his guilt. And while he hadn’t run, he’d withdrawn into himself more and more as time went on. In some ways, it felt like I was losing him all over again.
Which was why I was hopeful that even though I was worried about him getting back to work, it would give him back some of the sense of balance he’d finally started to feel in the weeks we’d had before the attack. Physically, he was completely recovered in that he could walk and run, but mentally he was struggling with the change in his physical appearance. His arms were terribly scarred, enough so that he avoided wearing short-sleeved shirts, even when he worked out. His chest didn’t look as bad because of the skin grafts, but it would take time before you couldn’t tell the difference between the grafts and the normal skin. My son wasn’t a vain man, but the disfigurement fed into the deep-rooted insecurities he’d carried for most of his life that he wasn’t good enough. Those were feelings he wouldn’t just be able to get over.
Ronan and I had both urged him to talk to a professional about the trauma from the physical scars he carried, but he’d adamantly refused. He carried the mantra that I’d lived with for too many years after losing Pierce.
I’m fine.
While Reese continued to struggle with his recovery, the rest of our family was doing relatively well. The fallout from the attack had been instant and chaotic. We’d been lucky that the local police hadn’t been able to figure out that the attack had been anything more than a violent home invasion. But since I’d been involved, theFBI and Secret Service had taken over. At that point, I’d had to call in a few favors to ensure that Reese’s name wasn’t publicly linked to the men. Reese had argued with me that I shouldn’t have used my position to protect him, but I’d put the argument to rest when I’d pointed out that I’d done it to protect our entire family. Too much attention on Reese could potentially lead to attention on Gage and what he did for a living, which could’ve led back to Ronan.
The investigation had died a quick death after that, though the press coverage of a former president being involved in a deadly home invasion had been lengthy. I’d once again had to make the rounds with the press.
The only one still struggling besides Reese was Charlie. Understandably, the girl had been deeply traumatized by the whole thing. Gage had gotten her counseling, which she was still attending. Initially, she’d been afraid to be away from her father for more than a few minutes at a time. Getting her to go back to school had been next to impossible, so Gage had gone with her and had stayed in the classroom the entire time for almost three weeks straight. At that point, glimpses of the old Charlie had started to come out. She’d gotten to the point that, instead of sleeping with us every night like she had for the first month, she only crawled into our bed when she had the occasional nightmare.
We’d waited a couple of weeks to talk to Charlie about Nash and I moving into the main house and sleeping in her father’s room, but the conversation had barely fazed her. She’d merely asked if she could call us Daddy Everett and Daddy Nash, and then she’d gallantly offered to let me and Nash take her and her grandfather’s turns in naming the next animals that joined the Fortier clan.
It hadn’t taken long for Nash and me to make use of the honor. Six weeks after the attack, Phillipe had brought home two mixed-breed puppies he’d found abandoned in a field near our house. Nash had christened one puppy Dorfmeyer, a name he’d been very happy to let Vincent know about, and I’d named the other puppy Chance for the chance my men and I had taken on one another. The puppies had been welcomed into the family by an all-healed Medusa and the two mastiffs, though Happy wasn’t willing to shareNash with them. It wasn’t a big problem, though, because the puppies had latched onto Zeus and followed the temperamental dog wherever he went.
After the aftermath of the attack had died down and Nash and I had gotten settled into our new home, I’d dealt with the last issue that had been holding me back from fully enjoying my new life with my men.
Coming out.
Predictably, it had caused a myriad of reactions. I’d chosen to do an interview with a single reporter who I trusted to tell my story the way I told it to her. I was both condemned and applauded, but I didn’t care about any of that. I was mostly worried about my family, since they’d have to deal with the haters. But they’d accepted that having a former president in their lives meant that there’d never truly be an escape from the spotlight. It was a fact I just couldn’t change, no matter how badly I wanted to sometimes. I hadn’t done the rounds with the press after my announcement, but I knew that would change when I started to use the power that I did have to do some good. I’d been the voice of millions of Americans for years, but as important as that had been, being the voice for those who were still struggling to be heard was something I was actually looking forward to.
But first, I wanted to see my son getting back to his normal routine. After my coming out, Reese had been inundated with questions about what it was like to have a father who was gay. He’d shot down the questions with one of his own.
I don’t know, what’s it like having a father who’s straight?
A few of the more ballsy reporters had asked Reese about his own sexuality, but fortunately, those had been few and far between. Reese hadn’t answered them, of course, but he’d made it clear to anyone and everyone who asked that who his father, or anyone for that matter, loved didn’t matter one bit to him.
There’d been lots of speculation about my relationship with Nash and Gage, but that was one of a handful of questions that I would absolutely refuse to answer when I did start talking to the press about topics of importance to the LGBTQ community. Myfamily was off-limits and any reporter who didn’t respect that would learn pretty quickly that they and the media outlet they worked for would lose any and all access to me. They might have owned me when I’d been a public servant, but I owed them nothing anymore.
“So tell me about this straightforward job,” I said as I watched Reese put a couple of guns in his duffel bag.
“You remember Vincent’s friends, Ethan and Cain?”
I nodded. I’d met them briefly when they’d come up from San Francisco for Vincent and Nathan’s official wedding reception. Ethan and Cain had actually been scheduled to marry before Vincent and Nathan, but some kind of family emergency with Ethan’s family had forced them to postpone the wedding. Whatever had caused the delay was all resolved now, so the men were planning to marry in the very near future.
“Ethan’s the doctor and Cain works for Ronan,” I said.
“Yeah. Well, I guess Ethan had a patient come through the ER yesterday that he was worried about. The guy was beaten pretty badly, but wouldn’t tell anyone who did it. Wouldn’t tell anyone his name, either. Ethan had a bad feeling about the whole thing, so he told Cain, who talked to Ronan about it. Cain’s already working a job down there, so Ronan asked me to go check it out and sit on the guy when he gets discharged.”
“The guy doesn’t have family or anything?” I asked.
Reese shook his head. “They didn’t find any ID on him. But Ethan got him to tell him his name last night – guess the pain pills kicked in or something,” Reese said with a shrug. “He said the guy’s name was Ben and that he said the name George a few times before he passed out.”
