Chapter 23
The morning sun filters through a crack in the curtain, casting a warm glow across Beckett’s face.
He looks wrecked in the most beautiful way, hair all a mess, and a little drool on his pillow.
Never thought I’d think drool and beautiful in the same sentence, but here we are.
I can’t help but let out a soft chuckle as happiness bubbles to the surface and takes up residence in my chest.
His lashes flutter. I lean in and press a kiss to his forehead. “Good morning,” I say, voice still gravelly with sleep.
“Morning.” He smiles without opening his eyes and burrows deeper. The blankets make a cocoon of him.
“Oh no you don’t.” I hook an arm around his waist and haul him onto my chest. He lands with a warm oof and a grin.
“But I’m so cozy,” he groans. “Why are you denying me comfort?”
“Because you said you need to be at the Dragonfly in an hour to open for lunch.”
His head pops up, eyes wide and panicked. “Oh, shit!”
“Hey,” I chuckle, smoothing a hand down his back. “You’ve got time.”
“Mmmm, I haven’t slept that well in a really long time.”
I run my fingers through his hair once, twice, and feel that urgency rise—the good kind, the truth that wants out. “Beckett,” I say. “In case it wasn’t clear last night… I love you.”
A grin breaks over his face and hits me like blinding sunlight, while an equally goofy grin spreads across mine. “I love you too,” he says, voice full and silky. “And I hope you mean it, because now that it’s out in the open… I can’t go back to pretending this isn’t serious.”
“I can’t either.” I touch his jaw, so he knows I’m anchored right here with him. “We’ve been fooling ourselves, because this has never not been serious. I’m madly in love with you, little mouse.”
He lets out a shaky laugh that turns into a kiss, then another. We spend the next ten minutes trading I love yous like we found a new language of moans and declarations.
Eventually, we peel ourselves out of bed. He steals my hoodie, and I watch him swim in it, thinking yep, he’s mine.
While he brushes his teeth, I head downstairs to make coffee. The sound of his singing off-key follows me. When he meets me in the kitchen, I hand him a mug of coffee that he cradles in both hands.
“I’m scared,” he admits suddenly, watching steam lift from his cup. “But the good kind.”
“Me too,” I say. “Good scared is just… new.”
He nods, sets his mug down, and steps into me, forehead to my collarbone. We stand like that for a beat longer than needed before we get ready to walk out the door. We dance around each other in a way that already feels practiced and natural at the same time.
On the drive, he keeps touching my knee like he’s checking to make sure this is all still real, that I’m not going to vanish. I hate that he feels that way. I need to make sure that he understands how all-in I am.
We pull up to the curb outside Dragonfly. It’s dark on the inside, the string of lights off for now, and the chalkboard on the sidewalk is still blank, just waiting for today’s specials. It’s the kind of quiet before the place fills with patrons in desperate need of his bacon.
“Come by later?” he asks. “If you want. Alex sent over his pot roast recipe, and I’m going to try it for our dinner special.”
“I’ll be here.” I thumb the edge of his jaw.
He kisses me once, quick and certain, then again, longer. “Bye, Dom.”
“Bye, little mouse.” I watch him jog to the door, turn back for one last grin, and disappear inside. For a moment, I sit there, hands slack on the wheel, and feel my heart steady itself around the words we finally spoke out loud.
I pull away from the curb and let the city roll by—past the park and the thrift store, out toward the water.
The parole board hearing is next week. My father wants out.
I pull into the gravel parking lot of my thinking spot before getting out of my car and heading down the beaten path to the clearing. Just like every other day, the bench is empty, and all you can hear are the sounds of the crashing waves below.
I sit on the bench and blow out a breath. I haven’t made up my mind about what I’m going to say at the hearing, so I’m going to start with what Beckett said. I’m going to write down all the things I want to say to him, all the things that I’ve been pretending never hurt me.
It seems I’ve been doing a lot of that… pretending.
I used to think that my childhood never affected me, but now I can see it’s where I learned to put on a mask. Pretend. Never show who I really was, because it could be used to hurt me.
When my mother was sick, I didn’t dare show emotion. I knew my father already had inklings I was gay, and showing emotion is not something big strong men do. Which is completely fucked up because now that I’m older I know for sure, big strong men do indeed cry.
He used money as leverage with anyone—neighbors, his business associates…
me. He dressed threats up like jokes. Fear with a smile.
Violence can be the bruise you never see, the kind that makes a kid count every bill in a wallet twice before asking for lunch money.
But more often than not, it left me with bruises.
He has never apologized. Not once, not without a “but.” His letters don’t show remorse, they ask for a favor.
One of the many I apparently owe him. The last time the board convened, he minimized it like he tries to do every time.
“Wrong place, wrong people.” He was always in the wrong place, and he always chose the wrong people.
My mother was beautiful and sad. She lived in fear.
Men came to the house asking for my father.
They talked in low voices and smiled without meaning it.
I was a kid, and learned how to stay out of sight.
Sometimes I’m angry she didn’t leave. Then I remember, he wouldn’t have let her.
She did what she could within a bad situation.
When she got sick, the fear loosened its grip.
She was tired. I sat by her bed and counted her breaths, torn between wanting her pain to end and not wanting to be left alone with him.
One afternoon, she told me about my aunt Sofia, thrown out of the family for being a lesbian, living her own life anyway.
“When the time comes, go to her,” my mother said.
Her hand was light in mine. I said I would.
I went to the library and searched for Sofia on old computers that took forever to load. I found an email address and wrote to her: “I’m your brother’s son. I need help.”
She replied with a simple “come” and an address. Later, I learned she and my mother had been writing for years, trying to find a way to get me out.
Before I left, the house got worse. More men at the door.
My father came home with a black eye and a split lip.
His shirt had someone else’s blood on it.
He told jokes like nothing was wrong. People like to call his crime “nonviolent.” It didn’t feel that way in our home.
Because what he got sentenced for was far less than the crimes he’d committed.
When the FBI showed up, I hid in the yard until they were gone.
I was sixteen, and afraid they’d send me somewhere I didn’t choose.
I took a train with a backpack and the address in my pocket.
Sofia opened her door, said my name, and made space for me.
I slept. I went to school. I started over. I learned what a normal day feels like.
Now I have a life. Ink Me. Friends who show up and keep showing up. Finn and Spencer and Mazie. Jules and Mira. Olly and Jasper. Jaxon and Alex. A home that’s mine. And Beckett, who told me he loves me, and I said it back.
I want to protect this.
I breathe and feel the old panic try to rise—the reflex to make myself smaller, to bargain, to cave.
It passes. I think of Sofia’s first hug.
I think of my mother’s last instructions.
I think of Beckett’s laugh and the way he looked at me when I said I love you, like I’d just come home and didn’t know it yet.
I sit with it until the anger settles into something firmer: a decision. I’m not going to get even. I’m going to keep the life I built intact. Loving Beckett doesn’t change how I see my father; it makes me clearer about what I will and won’t allow near us.
Sending one last wish out into the sea, I head back to my vehicle and home to put my thoughts on paper while it’s all sharp in my mind.
My stomach has been tight for days, a hard knot I can’t stretch out.
And now that it’s standing on my doorstep, I begin to question if I’m making the right call.
Not whether he should get parole, but whether I should even show up.
Am I reopening a can of worms that I almost had sealed?
Am I putting an even bigger target on my head for the day when he finally does get let out?
Arms come around me from behind, steady and warm. Beckett’s chin touches my shoulder. I look at our reflections in the bathroom mirror and smile. “Hey, baby.”
“Hey,” he says, planting a kiss where his chin rests. “Are you ready?”
I nod, because if I try to talk right now, it’ll show too much. I am not ready. I am tired, and I am angry, and underneath that, I am still a sixteen-year-old who learned to hide in the shadows so as not to be seen. I’m so not fucking ready.
“Remember, no matter what, you don’t have to do this. No one will think less of you. Don’t go because you think you should. Go because you choose to.”
I turn in his arms. He doesn’t look away. Everyone jokes about Beckett being chaos in an apron, but there’s something older in him too, like he sees the parts of you you’d rather keep in the junk drawer. I wish he’d trust his own instincts, believe in himself more.
“Thank you for coming today,” I say, leaning in for a gentle kiss.
“You call for me, and I will always be there, however you need me.”
“How about starting with this stupid tie?”
When I hold up the black silk tie for him, I see heat flare in his eyes.
“I’ll try,” he says, voice going low on purpose.
“But if it gets tangled around my wrists, I won’t be able to do anything about it.
You might have to help me out of it, sir,” he says, holding his wrist up, with sad puppy dog eyes.
“You’re ridiculous,” I say, slapping him on the ass. “How about this? Tonight, you can help take it off, and if it so happens to get tangled around your wrists…” I lean in real close and whisper in his ear. “I’ll take advantage of the situation.”
He lets out a shuddering breath and fumbles with the tie before clearing his throat and gathering his wits about him. “Well now, I think that’s a wonderful idea.”
He finishes the tie, pulling it tight against my throat, and I raise a brow. He winks, then loosens it slightly before brushing off my shoulders. Cheeky little mouse.
“Are you ready? Do you know what you’re going to say?”
“I have it written down. I’m ready to put this part of my life behind me for good.” I give him one last kiss, lacing my fingers through the hair at the back of his neck, holding him to me like a lifeline. The only lifeline I’ll ever need.