Christmas On Cosmic Avenue

Chapter 1

Sab

Life-changing epiphanies are like buses. You bang your head against a brick wall your entire existence and then three come along at once.

The first two are obvious. Taking drugs for fun is bad. So fucking bad. And loving my daughter really did save my life. Number three kind of snuck up on me and now it’s everywhere I turn.

“Give me the baby.” Tam, my brother, holds out his tattooed arms, his fingers stained with different ink, grinning at Esme as she squirms in my hold, already reaching treacherously for her favourite uncle. “Don’t be such a twat.”

I back away from him, shaking my head, dancing around the box of festive paraphernalia I’ve hauled in from the garage for him today, to save him breaking his arm again. “Don’t say dirty words in front of mon petit c?ur. Fairies die when you say shit like that.”

Tam rolls his eyes, advancing on me anyway. “I’d take you more seriously if your own filthy mouth didn’t need an exorcism. Now give her to me and go be somewhere else for a while.”

No.

Absolutely not.

My brother means well. He means the best, for me and for Esme, forever and always. But he can tell me till he’s blue in the face that I need some time to myself, I’m not giving up my daughter for the night.

I keep spinning out of his reach, which doesn’t get me all that far in the rustic house Tam shares with his husband. In fact, it carries me straight into the path of Bhodi Jones-Dubois, and though he’s nicer about it than Tam, his pretty face wears the same relentless let-us-help-you expression.

Help I don’t need or want.

I’m a dad now. It’s what I do—it’s who I am. I don’t need alone time when I go to bed on my jack jones every fucking night.

I jab a finger at Bhodi, knowing it’ll trigger my brother’s mile-wide caveman streak. “Tell your abominable spouse to shut his mouth. He’s annoying.”

Bhodi leans on the kitchen counter in the open-plan room, wiping his hands on a tea towel with a giant snowman printed on it, curtesy of moi last Christmas. “Sab, if you want something from me, you’re going to have to speak English.”

Putain. “Fine. How come you can control the delinquent dog, but not him?”

At Bhodi’s feet, the dog in question gives me the stink eye. But Rudy’s the size of a runt guinea pig, so I’m safe to ignore him.

What I’m not safe from?

The undying love and affection in Bhodi’s eyes as he spares a glance for my brother. Adoration Tam returns tenfold as he crosses the room to be all up in my business again, but finds himself instantly derailed by his one true love.

Merde.

I should be grateful for the reprieve their obsession with each other grants me, but as Tam swoops in to kiss Bhodi’s neck and nuzzle his cheek, all I feel is heart-scraping envy.

And not because I want to bang Bhodi.

Or my brother.

Ew.

No. That’s not what this is.

What is it then? And why are you making it so complicated?

No reason whatsoever. I don’t mind that my sexuality has shifted on the Kinsey scale in the last few years.

Or that my ex laughed in my face when I tried to tell her about it.

My objection right now is rooted in my inability to see my brother so deliriously happy and not resent him for it just the teeniest tiniest bit.

You’re a terrible person.

And a distracted one. As I drift in the land of the bereft and uncharted bisexuals, Bhodi swoops in and takes Esme from me.

Damn it. “Give her back.”

Bhodi smiles. At Esme, not me, and I’m betrayed for the second time this evening as my baby girl throws her tiny arms around her second favourite uncle and buries her sticky face in his chest.

Esme loves Bhodi.

Tam loves Bhodi.

Fuck it, I love Bhodi, and he’s harder to refuse than my grouchy big brother.

“Go home,” he tells me gently. “Hit the gym, or go chat up that girl from the bakery you like. Or even just crash and sleep all night long. Have a night off, yeah? Esme’s safe with us.”

I know that. Even without Tam being the most protective human on earth, Bhodi’s a nurse who can spot a cold coming on before Esme’s so much as sneezed. He knows how to bathe her, feed her. Save her life if she chokes on a biscuit.

And Tam…

That growly shithead is already sloping off to get the books he built from painted wood and his own calligraphy when she was born, and fuck if I don’t love him for that so much it hurts.

A good ache this time, though. One that drowns out the yearning in my heart for something else. The loneliness that eats at my soul every moment I’m not busy at work or caring for Esme. I’m lucky to have what I have, and if there’s nothing else out there for me?

I’ll live, though I might not survive another deep and meaningful with my brother tonight as he follows me out to the van. “Go away. Tu me fais chier.”

You’re pissing me off.

“Fun, isn’t it?” Tam props a shoulder on the icy driver door, taking me hostage while I scrape frost from the windows. “What are you really going to do tonight?”

“Call the police and tell them you’ve kidnapped my daughter.”

“Hilarious. Try again.”

I flick ice at Tam. He lets it happen, and it lands in his dark beard like festive glitter.

Cute.

But it’s not nearly enough to soften his dark stare, and impatience rips through me. “Fous-moi la paix. What? You think I’m going to rock out of here and cop a bag?”

Tam glares, fearsome as fuck to anyone who doesn’t know him. “No, why would I think that?”

“Why else would you be chasing me around out here when you have Bhodi and my baby in there?” I jerk my head at his house, a white-bricked detached beauty on Stardust Lane that’s almost as pretty as Bhodi. “What do you want from me?”

I’m probably the only person on earth who can speak to Tam like this and live to see the next morning. But that’s not always a good thing.

I need a slap upside my head.

Some sense knocking into me.

What I get is empathy for a habit I kicked years ago. Concern and kindness I don’t deserve from a man who’s survived ten times the hurt I have.

Tam straightens and snags the scraper from my hand. He clears the driver-side window of ice, then comes to where I loiter in the shadow of the Crafter that’s seen better days. A plain man-van I can’t afford to get wrapped yet. “What’s really going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ne fais pas genre, mon cher frère.” Don’t bullshit me.

“We used to have Esme every Friday. Now you’re clinging to her like you’ll die without her and you’ve gone from being the chatterbox from Hell to barely speaking.

What’s that all about, eh? I didn’t have relapse on my mind, but if you’re feeling like snow we can talk about it. ”

Snow. The shit kind. Not the sparkly powder the radio’s been warning me about all day, and honestly, I’d rather die than talk to Tam about cocaine cravings. We’re close and I love him. But I’m not over the shame of what I did to myself all those years ago, and I can’t see that ever changing.

Then tell him you’ve been having dreams about getting fucked by a six-foot hunk of—

“You can stay over too.”

I refocus on Tam. He’s still staring at me as if I need an intervention, and despite the coke-fuelled deceptions we’ve lived through, these days I really can’t lie to him. “I don’t want to stay over. Watching you and Bhodi be so perfect together makes me feel like the last turkey in the shop.”

“Turkey?” Tam’s dark brows cinch together.

“What?” I kick a van tyre for something to do with my restless feet. “I’m feeling festive.”

My tone is so sour even I wince, and Tam gives me a look. One that lets me know he’s about done with my flippant bullshit and about to go full parental on me if I don’t make my escape in the next six seconds.

Fix this. “I’m okay.” I speak fast, before he can. “Really. Just fucking tired. Esme didn’t sleep well last night.”

More truth. And it’s all the more reason for me to stay right here.

But Tam doesn’t say that again. He stares deeper.

Steps closer and wraps his ink-stained hand around my chin.

And look, he’s my brother. It’s annoying when he manhandles me like I’m still twelve and half a foot shorter than him.

But I can’t help the longing my third epiphany set in motion when Tam met Bhodi and his whole life changed for the better.

Can’t help wishing his hand was someone else’s, and the energy in that grip was more feral than fraternal—

And man, why did no one in NA ever warn me that craving cocaine could be replaced by something so much crueller?

Something that doesn’t numb me, but splits me open instead, my fragile soul needing in ways that feel far worse than any fucking drug?

“Je t’aime, frangin.”

Tam’s fierce affection breaks into my melodramatic headspace. I blink away my wildly inappropriate imaginings and focus on him. On the dark eyes we share and the Dubois propensity to let our entire lives be ruled by emotion.

“I love you too.”

“Yeah?” Tam grips me harder. “Then stay. I’ll keep my hands off Bhodi, I swear.”

I roll my eyes. “As if you could. But it’s not even about that. You two don’t have to be touching for me to feel that love, bro. And I love to see it, I swear. I’m just…I don’t know.”

“Lonely?”

“Yeah.”

“When did you last get laid?”

“Are you even listening to me?”

Tam flicks my ear. “Course I am. I’m just wondering when you last had some intimacy in your life.”

“Well, you can keep wondering.” I twist free of his grasp. “Or ask Bhodi. I tell him way more shit than you these days.”

Tam snorts, knowing it’s true. Loving that I adore Bhodi as much as he does. “Maybe I will ask him.”

“All right then.” I open the van door and haul myself behind the wheel, already missing Esme babbling in the passenger seat. “Let me know how that turns out. Can I leave now?”

For a moment, it’s touch and go. Then the house next door’s early bird Christmas lights come on, casting him in sparkly blue, and it jars him into motion.