"I love you too, kiddo."
She steps forward and hugs me, hard. I wrap my arms around her and hold on, and for a moment she's thirteen years old again, crying on my shoulder because some kid at school said something cruel about her mother being dead.
When she pulls back, she swipes at her eyes. "God. I'm going to have to redo my makeup before dinner."
"You look beautiful."
"You have to say that."
"I really don't."
She smiles at me. A real smile, the first one I've gotten from her since this whole mess started. Then she heads for the door.
"Kelsey?"
She turns, hand on the knob.
"Thank you. For talking to him. And for…” I gesture vaguely at the space between us. "This."
"Yeah, well." She shrugs. "You're my dads. Both of you. I don't want to lose either of you."
She's gone before I can respond.
I stand in the middle of the room for a long moment, feeling lighter than I have in days.
Twenty-Six
Victor
Dinner is a lot lighter than the last few meals. We toast the happy couple on the eve of their nuptials, and Kelsey and Adrienne blush and giggle at the innuendos made.
Jason has this small half-smile on his face the whole evening and the stress lines between his brows have smoothed out. It’s good to see.
I notice—because I guess I notice everything about him now—that he only has one glass of wine with dinner and skips his usual post-dinner whiskey. I’m taking it a little easier tonight, too, since I think it was me who drank the lion’s share of our three bottles of wine last night. Don’t really need a repeat of this morning’s hangover while I’m performing my ministerial duties during the wedding tomorrow.
Not that I’ve never performed a marriage ceremony hungover before. There was this epic party week on Fire Island right after same-sex marriage became legal in New York and I performed marriage ceremonies for any couple who wanted to get married right then and there.
Jason distracts me from the memory of being thrilled by participating in such an historic event while also feeling like an icepick was jammed over my left eye. He stands, gives one more toast to our daughter and soon-to-be daughter-in-law, then announces, “I’m hitting the hay.”
He kisses the tops of Kelsey’s and Adrienne’s heads, and salutes Logan and Silas across the table. As he passes me, he lifts an eyebrow and flicks his eyes toward the restaurant’s exit, a wordless invitation to follow him.
As if I needed an invitation.
I linger for a couple more minutes, so it’s not grossly obvious what we’re up to, then say my own goodnights. The girls and their friends are fizzing with rum-infused pre-wedding excitement, so they barely notice me leaving.
I quicken my pace along the path to our casita. The curtains across the big window through which Silas saw us—was that really a few days ago?—are drawn, and there’s a soft yellow glow of lamplight behind the thin fabric. When I open the door to our casita, there’s one small lamp lit on a table near the door, but the rest of the living area is quiet and dim. Jason’s left the curtains to the balcony open, though, and I can see the lights from houses in the valley twinkling below. A fat, round, nearly-full moon hangs in the dark sky.
I’ve left my shoes outside the casita and cross the living area, the smooth wood planks of the floor cool under my bare feet. On my way, I unbutton my shirt. It’s presumptuous, maybe, but I’m expecting, hoping, really, that Jason is in the bedroom, naked.
He’s standing at the side of the bed, looking down at it, his thumb tapping his bottom lip. He looks like he’s about to make the pillows sit up and bark. My dick stiffens in anticipation.
“Do you travel with condoms and lubricant?” His voice carries this low, quiet authority, the prelude to making demands of me, I hope.
“I do,” I answer. “Never know when you might need ‘em.”
“Get them,” he says.
“Yes, sir,” I say smartly. It’s a joke, or at least I say it in a joking way, but it kind of does something to me when the words fall from my mouth.
