Epilogue
“It’s not too late to run away,” River said.
Jem gave him a look that spoke volumes, all in a perfect deadpan. Then he added out loud, “I spend eight hours a day with two dozen five-year-olds. I’m not afraid of your mom.”
“I don’t think you’re afraid of her,” River protested.
Unfortunately, by this point Jem knew him too well.
He hadn’t exactly moved in, but his plants had. Apparently they suffered if left all alone in Jem’s apartment. What did that mean, if Jem didn’t live here but his plants did?
Probably that Jem lived here.
“No, so it’s something else.” He rolled over on the couch in the den, which had become their preferred cuddle spot, and planted his bony chin on River’s sternum. “Come on. Spill.”
River sighed, only about one-third serious.
Maybe a quarter. “She’s going to like you so much.
She’ll never let you out of her clutches.
This is my last chance to keep you to myself.
” She’d spent long enough thinking River’s early exposure to cult living had turned him into a drug-addicted megalomaniac who could only form attachments to Eric and Ward.
Once she met Jem, a handsome, charming man with a petty streak a mile wide and River’s entire heart in his hands—once she ate his dinners—once she clocked the fact that River’d gone up an entire pants size in the past six months because Jem kept feeding him when he wasn’t paying attention—
Well, she’d probably propose marriage, if not on River’s behalf, then on her own.
Jem snorted. “I was going to say there’s plenty of me to go around, but uh….” He wrinkled his nose. “No. ‘Even my kindergarteners know how to share’ is out too.”
“Guess you’ll have to be mine forever.”
“Nothing for it,” Jem agreed easily.
River glanced at his watch and wondered if he had time to beat his mother to the punch. Probably not. These things required a certain amount of drama, even if most of the time River was perfectly content to lie here with Jem and listen to music. Or write it. Or—
“I should buy you something pretty.”
Jem laughed at him flat-out. “The truth comes out.”
Innocently, River fluttered his eyelashes. “What?”
“You just want to dress me up in something you bought and fuck me in it and you’re afraid your mom’s going to cramp your style.”
Oh shit. “I was thinking of another guitar, but you make a good point.” River looked at his watch again. “Do we have time to go shopping?”
“We have to leave for the airport in less than an hour!”
Jem had even volunteered to pick her up—in the same old Subaru River had tracked down and reacquired for twice its value—knowing River’s night vision was dogshit.
River didn’t know what he’d done to earn that.
Then again, Jem was the kind of man who couldn’t be bought for any price, but he’d give his heart away as long as you were willing to trade yours.
Best deal River’d ever made.
“You’re right,” he said, sitting up and pushing Jem with him. “I’ll have to buy the shiny objects later.”
Jem was the only glittery thing River needed.