Elijah turned his head into my shoulder and whispered, “And you thought this would be difficult.”
“My dad has been studying, Elijah.”
I thought I’d whispered it quietly enough that the old man wouldn’t notice, but he surprised me by having suddenly developed supersonic hearing. “Of course, I studied, you knucklehead. What do you take me for, some kind of ignorant asshole?”
“No,” I hedged. “Of course not. I just … kind of expected you to be a bit more surprised, is all.” Another look passed between my dad, brother, and Calliope. “What?”
Ben ran his hand through his hair. “So, um … a couple of things. You might want to have a conversation with Rob.”
I felt my heart literally stop and then jerk back into working order in my chest cavity, the heavy beat of it pulsing wildly in my ears. “What are you talking about?” I whispered, my knees feeling suddenly weak. Sensing my impending breakdown, Elijah wrapped his arm around my waist in an effort to keep me standing.
Ben’s brows drew down as he looked at me solemnly. “I think he and Calista are having problems. He’s been at Smitty’s a lot, getting shit-faced. But he wasn’t, like, blathering on about it to anyone who would listen or anything. While you’ve been gone, he’s made a couple of offhand comments to me in private about a weekend you three spent together a few years ago. He might have implied that it meant more to him than it had to you.”
“Shit.” This just got worse and worse. I’d never once suspected that Rob had feelings for me. My emotional connection to him—the one I now understood had fueled that weekend—wasn’t the kind that I had with Elijah. Rob and I had been close friends once, cared for each other, but I’d explored my feelings about him a long time ago, and the conclusion I’d shared with Elijah back in L.A. still held true. Now, I hoped to hell that wasn’t why he and Calista were having problems. More than that, if it was, I didn’t think I wanted to know.
My dad pushed to his feet and made his way toward Elijah and me. “Rob was a weak boy who turned into an even weaker man. That shit should have stayed between you and that wife of his.” It was no secret that my dad had never been a fan of Rob. The only times I’d ever gotten in trouble as a kid had been at my one-time best friend’s urging.
When he reached us, he placed his hand on Elijah’s shoulder and stared at him intently. “Did you know about Rob?”
“Yes,” Elijah answered.
My dad nodded. “Okay, good. That means you don’t keep secrets from each other. Next question then: do you love my son? And I only ask because you wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t in love with you.”
Elijah turned to face me, and anyone witnessing the look on his face wouldn’t have needed to hear his answer. It was there in the deep blue eyes that shone with love and devotion and trust. “More than anything.”
My dad patted his shoulder a few times. “Okay, then. Welcome to the family. I’m getting another beer. Anyone want one?”
Once he was out of hearing range, and I stood there feeling as if the world I thought I knew had been knocked on its axis, Calliope said, “Umm … also … I might have dyed Cindy Turner’s hair orange. On purpose. Let’s just say that bitch had it coming.”
Elijah wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into a tight hug as his chest shook with laughter. “I fucking love your family.”
And then we spent the rest of the night making sure that they loved him, too.
By the time we left just after midnight to head to my cabin, I was almost ready to tell them that I was moving to Boston.
Epilogue
Several Months Later
Oliver
* * *
“That’s the last one.” Elijah set the box he’d been carrying down on top of a stack of other larger boxes and swiped his hands together to brush away any lingering dust from the back of the moving van.
I maneuvered my way through the precarious layout of his belongings and pulled him flush against me. “Welcome home,” I said, planting my lips on his.
As of today, Elijah was officially a resident of New Hampshire, the Boston penthouse he had lived in courtesy of his employer having been seized when both the founder and CEO of the auction house where he worked were arrested on charges of international drug smuggling and arms trafficking. As it turned out, priceless antiquities, classic cars, and rare works of art were the perfect cover for importing and exporting stolen goods, not that Elijah had known anything about it. On the same day Elijah and I had suddenly found ourselves being evicted from his condo, he’d also become officially unemployed, although the Feds had informed him that he and most of his coworkers weren’t implicated in any of his former bosses’ actions. He’d been the unsuspecting cover doing legitimate work.
So far a handful of opportunities had come his way, but they’d been located as far south as Newport, Rhode Island, so he’d turned each one of them down. I had high hopes that he’d land a position at a new luxury hotel venture that was breaking ground shortly at the local ski village. In the meantime, we’d be okay. While the high school where I used to teach and coach had replaced me when I’d moved to Boston, a local junior college was more than happy to add me to their coaching staff. I’d had my first meeting with their athletic director a couple of days ago, and I was anxious to start at the end of the summer. They had a young kid on their roster who had a killer arm and a horrible attitude. I was excited to see what I could do with him.
And while he job-hunted, Elijah had been exchanging rapid-fire texts with Ben, the two of them coming up with idea after idea to build on the new-found popularity of Paul’s Diner. I’d likely never live it down, but Ben had been right: me going on Happily Ever After had been good for business.
Back in the here and now, our kiss intensified. We’d been apart for more than a week while Elijah testified in front of officials from various three-letter government organizations, and I came up here to prep the cabin for full-time cohabitation. I’d missed the taste of him. The feel of his lips pressed to mine. Things would have turned even more heated had we not stumbled backward into one of the stacks of boxes, knocking it over and spilling the contents of the one on top out onto the tile floor. We glanced down at the mess and burst out laughing at the same time.
Laying in the middle of my foyer was a thickly-veined realistic looking dildo, two different prostate massagers, a vibrating cock ring, and a couple of bottles of lube. Slowly but surely, Elijah had been introducing me to the world of male-oriented sex toys, and, suffice it to say, the contents of my bedside drawer had become much more adventurous as a result. Not quite as adventurous as his, but I was getting there.
He bent down to toss the toys back inside their box. “Well, at least we know where this box goes,” he chuckled, moving toward the stairs.
Still drunk on our kiss, I started to follow him up to my room, remembering at the last second that I had a pot of pasta boiling on the stove. “I’ll be right behind you,” I called after him, rushing into the kitchen and turning off the flame. Taking the stairs two at a time, I reached the landing and turned toward the master bedroom at the far end of the hall. At the threshold, I halted and quietly observed him circling the room, considering the space not as a visitor, but as his own now, too.