"So, we'll see you tomorrow morning at the hotel?" Lex asked.
"I'll be there," Con said. He gave Lex another hug and then he cast me a glance before he headed in the direction of what I now knew was the kitchen.
"You ready to go?" I asked Lex.
Lex nodded and made his way toward me. He took my hand when I held it out to him and then we walked to the car. "How are the girls?" he asked.
"I don't know, they were too busy doing their nails and braiding each other’s hair to talk to me."
Lex laughed and gave me a hard shove. I chuckled and put my arm around him. "How is Con?" I asked.
"I think he's okay. Or he will be, at least."
"How do you think he'll take the news that we’re going to be staying in Argentina for a while?" I asked.
"I think he already suspects. He said he just wants me to be happy, no matter where I end up."
It was a decision Lex and I had reached in the past few weeks. Even once I got custody of Emma, the last thing I wanted to do was rip her away from the place she’d called home for the past couple of years. She’d simply been through too much at a young age and I wanted her to focus on just being a kid. But while there wasn't anything waiting for me in the States, the situation wasn't the same for Lex. I’d said as much when we’d discussed what the future would bring. Lex had been pretty clear in his response.
"My home is wherever you are. And now, it's wherever Emma is too."
As hard as it would be for Lex to leave his brothers behind, the fact was that the brothers were leading different lives. Vaughn was living in Seattle with Aleks and there was a good chance that Luca would end up there as well. From what Lex had told me, Con called Las Vegas home and King really didn't have any one place that he stayed in for any extended amount of time. As for Lex's company, he’d accepted that he no longer wanted to run the business day-to-day. In fact, he seemed more interested in my career plans than his own.
"Were you serious about what we talked about last night?" I asked as we made our way down the stairs and to the waiting car.
"I can't stop thinking about it," Lex admitted.
"Traveling the world so I can take pictures once Emma is in college?" I clarified. I shook my head because it just seemed like too much to ask for to be able to live my dream so late in my life. And to live it with him, of all people? It was a dream within a dream. How many people got to have that? "You said you wanted to have kids someday."
Once we reached the car, the driver, who’d left the door open for us, discreetly returned to the front of the vehicle and got inside, giving us some privacy. I pulled Lex into my arms because it seemed like he'd been gone from them for too long.
"I think as long as you don't stick them in the overhead bins, kids travel pretty well."
Before I could even respond, Lex was reaching up to touch my face. "Yep, there it is… the eyebrow."
"I don't do a thing with my eyebrow," I said.
"That actor has nothing on your eyebrow," Lex returned.
"Dwayne Johnson," I said. "Don't act like you don't know exactly who he is. You're blind, not dead. And Dwayne is the master of the raised eyebrow."
Lex lowered his hand until he had both of them pressing against my chest. "I want to see the world with you, Gideon. I want to see it through your eyes, and I want to see it through my own. And I want that for our kids. For Emma and for any others we decide to bring into our lives, whether they're our blood or not. My dream hasn't changed. I still want to wake up next to my husband every morning for the rest of my life, but I don't care where I do it. Argentina or Fisher Cove or the Serengeti or the Arctic—"
I covered his mouth with mine to silence him because he’d said more than enough. When he was breathless, I pulled back and said, "I think there are a couple things we need to take care of first."
"My brothers will be okay with it," Lex said.
"Yes, they will, but that's not what I'm talking about." I leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to one corner of his mouth. "First off, we’re going to need a lot bigger bed for all those kids you want climbing into it with us every morning."
Lex smiled beneath my mouth. "Okay, what else?"
"If you have your heart set on waking up next to your husband every morning, then I guess you're just going to have to marry me."
Another smile. "Is that you proposing?" Lex asked softly. He moved his hands up to twine them around my neck. "Because that was either the corniest or the sweetest thing I've ever heard."
"What are you talking about? That was gold," I said.
Lex laughed and then he was stealing a real kiss. "Let's go home, Gideon," he murmured. "Maybe you can use the car ride back to the hotel to convince me that you're the husband I want to wake up next to every morning."
"Lex—" I growled.
"You're doing the eyebrow thing now, aren't you?" Lex asked with a laugh and then he was folding himself into the car. I followed him in and hit the button to put up the partition that would separate us from the driver. The hotel was only a ten-minute ride away and I intended to make use of every one of those minutes.
But it turned out I didn't need them because the second I pulled Lex onto my lap and dragged him down for a scorching kiss, he gave me his answer.
"Yes, Gideon. Absolutely yes."
LEX
I hated Con’s silence.
Hated it with a passion.
Of all of us, Con had always been the most boisterous and fun-loving and, while I knew that his love of life was genuine, he felt just as deeply as my other brothers. While he and King seemed like night and day from the outside, they really weren’t so different. Con might have been better at playing the charming, personable, easygoing brother, but deep down, he was just as scarred as King.
And he was just as good about hiding what exactly had caused those scars.
In the past, I’d at least been able to read my brother’s expressions and know where a conversation might be headed, but that was no longer an option.
The most I could tell was that he was still sitting kitty-corner from me in the living area of the hotel suite Gideon and I were sharing with Emma and Natalia. My fiancé (and yeah, I still couldn’t believe I got to call him that now) had taken the girls out to an early lunch so Con and I could talk.
But Con wasn’t doing much talking.
Or any, for that matter.
“Con,” I said softly.
My brother let out a heavy breath of air and then I heard him get up. The mere fact that he couldn’t sit still was further proof of how upset he was.
“A year, Lex,” he murmured. “A whole fucking year without seeing you and then months of silence.”
I tracked his voice and knew he was somewhere near the window. I climbed to my feet and did my best to move closer to him.
“You’re the last image I have, Con,” I admitted.
There was a long silence before Con asked, “What do you mean?”
“You came to see me right before my birthday last year. Do you remember?”
Another beat of silence, then a soft curse which I assumed went with the head nod he’d probably done but that I could no longer see. I almost smiled because it was something Gideon had done when we’d first met, though I doubted he’d realized it. Con was in that same place now where he had to remind himself not to respond with just visual cues.