Chapter 19 #2
“You don’t. You always have a choice, Dirk.” But even as I say the words, I taste the lie. Saying I’d do the right thing and let him go is one thing; actually doing it’s another.
Dirk takes a look around, making sure we’re alone, then back to me, jaw clenched tight enough to grind teeth.
He huffs, throwing his hands up, the baggie of macaroni he was holding slips from his grip and hits the floor with a dull thud. His rage-filled eyes rip me apart in a way only Dirk’s can.
“When are you gonna fucking get it, Trav? You’re it for me,” he hisses. “Me and you, we’re the fucking end. So yeah, if you go to jail, it’s a lifetime of conjugal visits for us.”
Screw it. I grip his face in one hand and catch his lips with mine, sucking all his breath away. When I pull away, he’s panting, gasping for air.
I rest my forehead against his. “You scare the shit out of me, pretty boy.”
“Yeah? Well, right back at you. Jesus Christ, Travis.”
Travis. My whole name. I’m not out of the doghouse yet, but I didn’t expect to be.
All I heard is that he’s not leaving me for anything, though.
My chin tips up slightly, and I can breathe deeply again.
It feels like I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, but maybe there aren’t any shoes dropping this time.
Maybe he accepts me. Me. All of me.
There are footsteps, and we jump away from each other as the kitchen door swings open.
Just another one of the prep cooks, but it’s Penny, and she’s intuitive enough to be onto us.
She rolls her eyes and carries on. She can’t be completely against the idea of me and Dirk if she hasn’t quit or ratted us out, but it’s hard to tell if she’s fully on board.
Not that I care either way what she thinks, but I’m curious—is there any chance that some people won’t be fucking assholes about us?
Even Maxwell judges us, and he’s seen much worse than a twenty-year age gap.
Penny enters the walk-in fridge. Dirk leans over. “I’ve got dinner at my brother’s tonight—just reminding you.”
“Oh, so you just remind me now? Is that how this works?” I’m teasing. He’s already given me all his time off requests, which are less “request” when it’s for Dirk, and more “don’t book me for these dates”. But point is, I’ve blocked all that time off for him.
Penny walks out of the fridge carrying a few liters of whipping cream. This time, she raises a smirky brow as she passes by us into the other area of the kitchen, which is separated into another room.
Yeah, she’s onto us. I might need to do damage control.
“Do you, uh, want me to ask you again?” he says, a full fucking flush painting his cheeks red.
I slide behind him, nipping at his ear. Yeah, I’m being risky, but the gooseflesh that washes over his skin is worth it. “I do want you to, know why?”
“Wh-Why?”
“Makes my dick hard.”
“F-Fuck.” His hand slides back, fingers curl around my neck, and he closes his eyes. Where are we again? I forget. I’m too busy trailing fingers down to his cock. It’s buried under cotton, and I don’t like that. “M-May I, Trav?”
“May you what, pretty boy?”
Whether he’s asking me to come, if he can suck my cock, or go to dinner, they’re the same to my horny little brain. I rub over his cock some more, cupping his balls.
“Dinner. Please may I go to di-dinner?”
My cock throbs, and that nice little ache he seems to put there just by existing simmers. I’ll ache for him all day, but it’s an ache I’m used to living with. It’s an ache I don’t want to live without.
“I don’t love you away from me, or out of my general line of sight.”
“Same, Trav. Fucking same.”
“I guess you can go.” I punctuate that with an aggressive suck of that pretty little pulse point on his neck. “No cutting your hair.”
I release him, and he gasps. There’s a bag of macaroni on the floor that he dropped. I lean over to pick it up, so I can dump the contents in the compost bin for him. When I stand up, his gaze is still locked on me.
“I want you to come to the next Boulder family dinner,” he says.
“You sure?”
“Yes. I mean, okay, it might not be the very next one, but I want you at Hunter’s table with him knowing you’re mine.”
He’s saying a lot without saying it. I didn’t promise him I wouldn’t go after Robin, but he did tell me in no uncertain terms not to.
Would that be called faith? Is he putting faith in me to do the right thing?
But what’s the right thing here? Letting some guy get away with abducting my kid doesn’t feel like the right thing to me.
Turning him into worm food? Sounds like justice.
“Whatever you want, pretty boy, even if he kicks my ass.”
“Huh. Now there’s something hard to predict. Even with Hunter being younger, I’m not so sure he could kick your ass unless you let him. Think I might have to see that fight.”
“I’d rather not fight with my future-brother-in-law.”
“Brother-in-law?”
“Well, yeah. If we’re forever, then he’ll be my brother-in-law someday.” Hopefully, someday soon, if we’re telling people.
It happens again, the flip-flop sensation in my stomach, the “I’m upside down and I don’t know which way is right side up” sensation. The room tilts just enough that my knees almost buckle. Fuck do I want forever with him. I want everything. Impatience has been creeping in for a while now.
Dirk’s eyes light with mischief. “When we get married, I’ll be Dash’s stepdad.”
“Won’t that be weird for you?”
“It’ll be a little weird, sure, but I’m gonna have so much fucking fun with that. Payback’s a bitch.”
Don’t think I’ll touch that one. Some things are better left between friends.
Later, I catch up with Penny. Most of the prep cooks have left, and Dirk’s crashed in my bed where he belongs. I plan on being there with him in a minute, but there’s something I need to know. Penny’s sliding an arm into her jacket, about to leave, too.
It’s hard not to grit my teeth, ready with an offense.
If Penny wanted to, she could blow this up on social media for inappropriateness in the workplace.
Never mind that I’ve never been inappropriate in any way, shape, or form before with an employee.
Details don’t matter on social media, only what gets views and fucking heart emojis.
People don’t stop to learn facts; they ride the wave of hearsay and public opinion.
“I want to apologize, Penny. I haven’t announced my relationship with Dirk, yet.” I clear my throat. Wish I had some damn water. Is there an overabundance of pollen in the air, or something? Just another reason to save the bees.
“And you’re not going to live to do it if you don’t breathe—breathe, Travis.” Most of the people who work in the restaurant industry are younger, somewhere in their twenties, like Dirk. But Penny’s in her thirties. Still young, but closer in age to me.
“Sorry, you’re the first person I’ve told. It’s fucking terrifying.”
“I can understand why.” She analyzes me. “He’s pretty young.”
My stomach swoops again, but this time it’s a bottoming out, a rock falling forever into nothing. She was a hard read. Her actions earlier could have gone either way, but man, was I hoping she found us amusing, maybe even cute. It’s gonna be bad enough hearing what Hunter has to say to me.
“But I’ve worked with Dirk a while, too. The crease between his eyes is gone.”
Huh? I perk up. Now that I think about it, he does smile a helluva lot more, even the past couple of weeks, being mildly pissed at me.
“He told me to have a nice day recently—that man’s as quiet as a rock, and for the first few weeks he worked here, I thought he was non-verbal. The most he’s ever said to me before was a grunt that I’m pretty sure meant ‘sure, Penny’.”
Dirk is the strong, silent type, but only until you get to know him. Then he has lots to say. I want to tell her that. I want to fucking gush about him like he’s my first crush while lying on my bed, kicking my damn feet.
“And you. Fancy facials, new haircuts, that goofy-ass look on your face twenty-four seven—I’ve never seen you work that hard to impress someone, I’ve never seen you this happy, Trav. Every time you take a breath, it’s lighter. Every time he smiles at you, a little bit more of your soul relaxes.”
There’s some kind of weird wetness in the corner of my eye. I wipe it away quickly. “Yeah. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, Penny.” Now, I’m extra confused. Is she okay with us? Or not?
She waits with a hand on her hip. Waits and waits some more. Am I the dumbest man alive? What’s she waiting for me to get?
Finally, she sighs. “I don’t know how your son doesn’t know, he must suspect something.”
Oh.
Oh.
It hits me. All her looks. They weren’t judgments, they were warnings. Okay, maybe some judgment over how totally bad we are at hiding how in love we are, but she was trying to tell me without telling me—probably because I’m her boss—that we’re not fooling anyone.
We can’t.
We’ve already been changed. Whoever we were before has been wiped clean. The longer we’re together, the brighter it shines.
“I respect why you’d want to keep it quiet, but if you’re gonna do that, you’ve got to learn to keep your hands off him for five seconds.”
I’m a grown man who wants to whine that he doesn’t want to. I want my hands all over him. Whenever I want. All the seconds.
How do I make that happen?
“I’ll try.”
“Sure,” she says without an ounce of faith. She slings her work bag over her shoulder. “But you should know, there’s a kitchen bet going on.”
I scowl. “So, everyone knows?”
“Bad. So bad at it, Travis.”
“Yeah, okay, fine. We suck.” But it’s something I don’t mind sucking at—so long as Hunter and Dash don’t know until we tell them.
“If you could make it publicly official before the end of August, that would really help my vacation fund.”
“Alright, alright. Time for you to go, Miss.”
She laughs all the way out the door.
“Kitchen bet,” I mutter. Assholes. All of them.
But the sun’s shining inside of me. They either know or heavily suspect something’s up, and they’re not outside my apartment with torches and pitchforks.
The rest of the world might not get on board, but our corner of the world’s already on the ship waiting for us.