Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
GAGE
They didn’t end up going to the zoo after seeing Monty.
Fallon begged to go to the lab to get it over with, so Gage held his hand as the tech drew blood, then took care of all the paperwork.
It was different from when he’d done it.
He’d sat in a cold room by himself with his dads waiting for him in the parking lot.
They swabbed his cheek so hard it hurt, and he felt the echo of it for days after.
Then he went home to his cold apartment, curled up in his bed, and ignored everyone for days on end.
Fallon’s mood had shifted, and it carried on for the next week, especially after hearing that it could take a month or longer to get the results back. Not that either of them had any doubt about where Mango had come from.
The problem was that they didn’t know what was supposed to come after.
When Charlie got the results, Gage had a feeling he’d do something absurd, like try to file for custody.
A part of him wished Fallon wanted to marry him because at least they could present a solid, married, stable front to the judge.
But he wasn’t going to push the issue.
Fallon looked like he wanted to pass out when Monty had mentioned it, and Gage had never planned on getting married himself. He’d seen what divorces did to people, and he didn’t need a piece of paper to make him loyal or feel secure.
Fallon was his, no matter what the law said.
But with a baby in the mix…it was different.
He was feeling stressed and needed someone to talk to, and he felt like he’d dumped enough on his dad, so he drove across town to his old neighborhood to see his uncle. It was the middle of the day, so there was almost no traffic, and he was relieved when he saw Bowen’s car in the driveway.
Pressing his ear to the door, he could hear the TV, but not the sounds of his little cousin running around.
It was weird when Lane and Bowen’s house was quiet, but now that Briar was older and in school and in activities, it was happening more and more often. He knocked quickly, then walked in to find his uncle sitting in front of the TV with his leg off and his foot up on the coffee table.
He was wearing a baseball hat and sweats, which told Gage he’d probably been running the track earlier, and he tipped it up to see who was invading his house.
“My favorite nephew!”
“Technically, I’m your only one,” Gage reminded him as he flopped beside the other man and leaned in for a half hug. “Mind if I sit for a while?”
“Never. I’m going to guess this isn’t a social call,” Bowen said, leaning forward to grab the remote so he could pause the TV. “You know Monty talked, right?”
Gage rolled his eyes. “How long did it take him?”
“He held out, I think, about six days,” Bowen said. “New record.”
He figured he should be annoyed, but it was what it was. So long as no one harassed Fallon about it, he was happy to let it go. “We’re still waiting on the results, not that it’s going to change anything.”
Bowen gave him a careful look. “So, you’re really in this?”
Biting his thumbnail, Gage twisted sideways on the sofa and stared at his uncle.
For a brief moment, he wondered what it would be like to stare across at a relative and see himself in their features.
Would it be like that for Mango and him?
When the child he considered his own looked at him and didn’t see anything of themselves in his face?
“Was it a hard choice for you?”
Bowen’s eyes widened. “Was what a hard choice?”
“Briar.”
It took his uncle a second to catch on, and then he laughed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Shit. You know, I still forget sometimes she’s not mine?”
“Yeah?” Gage bit his lip. “You ever think my dad looked at me and thought about how I wasn’t, you know, biologically his?”
“No,” Bowen said. When Gage scoffed, he sat up a little straighter. “I’m being serious, kid. I mean, it could be like that for some people, but that’s not usually a parent thing. They had the choice, you know? You didn’t.”
Gage fiddled with the hem of his sleeve. “So you don’t think it would feel different if you and Lane had a baby together?”
Bowen shrugged. “I mean, Briar was a whisp of a dandelion seed when I met her. She was just figuring out three-word sentences, you know? I don’t think she remembers much about life before I was there. But it was also different for me. I was her nanny.”
“Her manny,” Gage said, knowing how much that term pissed his uncle off.
Bowen narrowed his eyes, but he sidestepped the mocking. “We had a sort of caregiver-child relationship going before Lane and I figured shit out. Are you worried? Are you having second thoughts?”
Gage let out a sigh. “No. Just…when this was happening to me before. You know?”
Bowen’s face darkened. “Yeah.”
“I was feeling all this dread and…and I don’t know, resentment?
Regret for ever setting foot on that fucking campus.
Resentment toward myself for ever giving Jonny the time of day.
I kept thinking that I could probably love my child, even if they came from fucked-up circumstances, but I didn’t want it.
I didn’t want a living, breathing reminder of what happened. ”
Bowen’s hand twitched, and then he lost the war with himself and reached out, squeezing Gage’s shoulder. It was a welcome touch.
“With this baby, I want this so badly. And not just the baby, obviously. I’m so ridiculously in love with Fallon.
It wasn’t how I pictured my twenties going, but this whole idea of making a family with him?
Even if I wasn’t genetically part of it?
” He went quiet for a beat. “I don’t really know how to explain how it feels. ”
Bowen squeezed his shoulder again. “I get it. Trust me. I would do unspeakably dark things to protect my family’s peace. I have never once given a single fuck that I didn’t help Briar get here. She’s still mine.”
Gage stared down at his hands. “I just need to know I’m not some freak. Or, like, displacing my trauma onto this situation. My therapist says I’m not. He says I’m allowed to have trauma and also want all these things. They don’t have to be related.”
“Sounds like a smart guy.”
Gage laughed. “Yeah. He’s pretty good at his job.
But I think I just needed to hear it from someone else who didn’t walk onto the scene where a whole teenager was already living.
I mean, Kash has been around since I was a baby, but he wasn’t really here until right before I was ready to leave the house.
I know he loves me, but I think it’s different. ”
“Yeah,” Bowen breathed out. “I think Kylen probably gets it if you want to ask him too. But I’m fairly sure he feels the same way about Audra as I do about Briar. And you do about…”
“Mango.”
Bowen eyed him. “Please don’t name your baby mango.”
Gage rolled his eyes. “Fallon calls them Mango because they looked like a mango on the first ultrasound.”
“Okay, that’s cute.”
Gage couldn’t help a tiny grin. “He’s gonna be a fucking great dad. I hope I will be too.”
“I’m not going to dignify that with a response. But I am going to hug you.”
Gage let his uncle drag him into a squeeze so tight it stole his breath. “Thanks.”
Bowen ruffled his hair, then sat back with a sigh.
“I think you’ve grown up fantastic. And I do want to set some faces on fire that belong to the people who hurt you because—” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat.
“Not sure if I’ve ever made it clear enough, but I love you a lot, kid. If I’d known—”
“No one knew,” Gage said quietly. He didn’t think Bowen had all the details either. But he wasn’t going to talk about them today. “I didn’t really know how to deal with it, so I didn’t for a while. But, uh…I know I was tough to deal with for a while.”
“You weren’t tough. You were in pain, and we could all see it, but no one knew how to help. And that’s not on you,” Bowen said before Gage could suck in a breath to apologize. “I’m just glad to see you looking happy again.”
Gage stared at him for a second. “I…you think I look happy?”
“Aren’t you?”
He almost laughed. And then he almost cried. The relief of that statement—so thoughtless and unimportant, and yet the most important thing he’d heard all day. “Yeah. I am. I just…didn’t realize people could tell.”
“I can tell,” Bowen told him softly.
Gage settled into the cushions next to him and rested his head against his uncle’s shoulders. “Can I stay for a bit? Fallon’s at a shoot, and I don’t think I want to be alone right now.”
“As long as you want. This place will always be open to you.”
It was one small bit of comfort, but that bit of comfort was everything he needed right then.
Fallon had been working a lot in an effort to distract himself from everything that was going on with the courts, so Gage waited until he sent a text letting him know he was on his way back to jump in his car.
Fallon was forty-five minutes out on his shoot, which was plenty of time for Gage to get into the apartment and get dinner going.
He had been meal-prepping for him and Fallon for after Mango got there, so he threw a tray of homemade frozen lasagne in the oven, then worked through some of his stretches until the door opened. Fallon shuffled inside, and his gaze darted around until it found Gage on the floor.
“What are you doing?”
“Stress has me all tense,” Gage said as he rocked his hips back and forth toward and away from the floor.
Fallon swallowed. “Oh.”
It only took Gage a second to realize he was turned on.
They hadn’t done much. Not for a while. Fallon hadn’t been in the mood, and frankly, Gage hadn’t been either.
Stress was not great for the libido. But things were feeling calmer, and Fallon’s cheeks were all pink the way they got when he was turned on.
“Want to shower with me?”
Fallon groaned. “Yeah. Yes. I have sand in my shoes, and my pant legs are all wet from the ocean.”