“...hey, babe?” Damon asked, just a little too innocently. “How do you feel about kids?”
Epilogue
The football field smelled like fresh-cut grass and adrenaline, as Damon joined the others in the stands in rising, clapping, shouting their excitement up to the bright blue sky.
But it wasn’t a game playing out on the field below the stands.
Instead the broad, grassy green was a sea of chairs—and robes in the school’s deep violet colors, accented with gray. Over a hundred graduating seniors rose in a billowing wave of voluminous fabric, tossing up their purple caps, the silky silver-gray tassels flying as they cried out their excitement—whooping, cheering, some of them on the verge of rioting as they thrashed around like they were in a damned mosh pit.
And right in the middle of them, Chris Northcote grinned, pumping his fist in the air before nearly throwing himself against his roommate Luke, the two of them chest-bumping and then shouting, knocking their clenched fists together.
He’d made it.
And Damon wasn’t the only one watching Chris with a sense of pride swelling his chest. Several rows down he caught sight of Mr. and Mrs. Northcote, their smiles warm, their eyes wet, both of them clapping so hard they looked like they had to be hurting their hands. He couldn’t blame them; Chris had fought his way through to earn every credit, every additional merit scholarship, and now...now he was graduating with a scholarship to a university program for young creative writers. Chris had earned his parents’ applause, and more.
While right at Damon’s side...
His husband wasn’t clapping, no.
For all of Rian’s grand gestures and occasional theatrics, dramatics, engaging whimsy...
He was amazingly quiet about the deep things. The powerful things.
And he looked down at the field with a certain stillness that said the only way he could keep his emotions inside was to hold himself in place, barely even breathing and his hazel eyes glistening damply as he watched those billowing, fluttering figures move across the field.
Damon wanted to hold his hand, more than anything.
The problem was... Rian’s hands were already taken. A little brown hand in each, the twins clinging to him like tiny burrs; Nina and Nanette each had one hand in Rian’s and the other thumb in their mouths. At six they probably should have stopped sucking their thumbs by now, but at the adoption center during new parent counseling the social workers had told Damon and Rian that they’d likely need a little longer to grow out of certain regressive behaviors, and to not worry for the first few years while they settled into the idea of stability and permanence in their environments.
Damon understood that feeling all too well.
And he also understood their younger brother, little Anton, and how he held himself just a little bit away, but close enough that he could tangle his fingers in the angular, asymmetrical hem of Rian’s loose, off-the-shoulder ombré tunic in mist gray and pale lilac.
Damon didn’t know why he was surprised the children were just as enchanted by Rian as he was. In the six months since they’d come home, all three had taken to following Rian around like puppies, always grasping on to his shirt or long trailing necklaces or tumbling hair or even hooking their pinkies in his, just needing to be in contact. That feeling, too, Damon understood all too well, and for a moment he reached over to grip loosely at Rian’s wrist, feeling the thin fragile skin and the warmth of his pulse on the underside.
Rian sucked in a soft breath, seeming to fall back into himself with a jolt, and glanced at Damon with a small smile that said a thousand things without a word. Leaning toward Damon, he bumped their shoulders against each other, then lingered with his slight weight resting warm and familiar against Damon’s side.
“I know they’re all our kids,” he murmured, his voice catching with a thick burr. “But after everything with Chris...”
“I know,” Damon said softly, and slid his fingers down over Rian’s wrist, into his palm; until his fingertips brushed Nanette’s small fingers curled against Rian’s hand, but also...
Until his fingertips brushed against the warm weight of the slim gold band on Rian’s finger.
Rian had been so very still on that day, too.
When they’d stood on the shore of Whitemist Lake at dawn, just them and the priest and Rian’s parents and Damon’s parents and the tiny circle of teachers they called friends, Fox and Summer with their hands linked and their smiles knowing and fond. Damon and Rian had barely seen them, barely seen anyone but each other, and Damon had hardly been able to whisper I do for the swelling of his heart to fill his throat as he’d slid that slender ring of shining light onto Rian’s finger and felt it grow warm with the heat of his flesh.
And they’d pretended not to notice they had an audience, dozens of curious eyes peeking out through dorm room windows, as they’d thrown woven crowns of flowers into the pond and wished to Isabella of the Lake for a dozen, a hundred, an eternity’s years of perfect love.
As Damon looked into Rian’s eyes now, and saw the raw emotion running through him reflected in liquid depths of tawny gold...
He thought, perhaps, Isabella had granted their wish.
He tore away from the captivating depths of Rian’s gaze, though, as a little hand latched onto his shirt and pulled. Damon looked down, into wide brown eyes set into a round, heart-shaped face.
“Lift me up, Daddy!” Nanette lisped, letting go of Rian’s hand and holding both her arms up, rising up on her toes and straining to reach him with little insistent nnh-nhh-nhh sounds. “I can’t see!”
Her sister echoed; they tended to do that twin thing, mirroring each other’s actions and wants, and Nina raised her arms with a little cry of, “Me too!”
“Okay, okay.”
He bent to scoop Nanette up in one arm, her ruffled skirt flaring around her as he hefted her up to perch on his shoulder. She barely weighed as much as one of the flower petals printed on her skirt, and he held her clamped easily in place with his forearm while he bent again to gather up her sister and settle her on the opposite shoulder. Both girls grasped onto his neck and his head with tiny giggles; he got a couple of fingers in one eye, another up his nose, a few more tangled in his hair, but he held still until they wiggled themselves into place, tucking themselves into the crooks of his neck and shoulders and using the top of his head like a pillow.
“Better?” he asked dryly—and got another spate of giggles in response.
Followed by a soft, hesitant, “What about me?”
Anton looked up at them shyly, with that certain reticence that said he was accustomed to asking for things and being told no—no, there wasn’t enough; no, he wasn’t enough. It had taken almost a month to impress on him that it was okay to ask for anything, and he was still so hesitant about it, so tense; once children learned negative programming it was often hardwired in their brains, and it took constant reinforcement to overcome.