Epilogue
Lake
Three months later
“I should probably take that down.” When Calisto frowned, I jerked my head toward the birthday banner covering the wall of my living room.
Someone’d had the bright idea of crossing out the number twenty-five and changing it to forty-four.
At the time, I’d gone along with it. Now, though, it seemed a little glib, like downplaying a huge and cataclysmic event in my boyfriend’s life. “He might not find it funny.”
Calisto gave me a reassuring smile. “Trust me. He’ll find it funny. Besides, he likes to remind people who give you two funny looks that you’re actually the same age. And what better way to do it than to have it in two-foot-high letters?”
“I suppose.”
“And…” Calisto continued, “it took us an hour to get it up there. We don’t have an hour to get it down.”
“Speaking of which,” Ben called from the other side of the room, where he stood next to Bellamy and John.
“Shouldn’t he be here already?” Griffin had drawn the short straw and had to work, the necromancy department, by nature of its timeline, always needed to have someone on call.
Nearly everyone else was here from the PPB.
Cade, Kendrick, a few people from a different department who I’d met before, but whose names I couldn’t remember.
Hopefully, Baxter would subtly reintroduce me to them when he got here.
Of course, I could just ask him to. There were definite advantages to being able to talk directly to your boyfriend using only the power of thought.
I checked my watch. “He should. Traffic, probably.”
“Probably,” a few people agreed in unison, because it was the polite thing to do.
A few more minutes passed before the front door opened, and everyone immediately crouched down behind furniture like we’d practiced.
It was a good job Baxter had insisted on buying some when he’d moved in, or everyone would have been trying to hide behind one sofa.
Now they had a TV, a table, a new sofa, a bookcase, and two comfortable armchairs.
As hiding went, it wouldn’t win any prizes, the move more of a tradition than an intent truly not to be seen.
Asher wasn’t here yet, and I had to wonder whether that was deliberate to skip this part.
I really couldn’t see him on his knees behind the coffee table. He just wasn’t the hiding type.
“What a bloody day!” Baxter called from the hallway. “Cade was a complete arsehole today. That’s why I’m late. He made me redo paperwork which had absolutely nothing wrong with it.”
Cade had been tasked with keeping Baxter at work for long enough that everyone else could get here and get into position, so I guessed that was the method he’d chosen to do it. I offered the man half-stood behind the bookcase an apologetic smile and mouthed, “He doesn’t mean it.”
“I reckon it’s a power thing,” Baxter continued. Loudly. “Like it gives him warm tingles in his nether regions to lord it over people.”
“He’s your boss,” I called back, doing my best to keep any strain out of my voice.
“Yeah, but he doesn’t have to be so… so boss-like.”
Sudden panic filled me that he might say something worse. His previous suspension had not been that long ago. “Hey, sweetheart, can you come in here?”
“Why? Are you going to make the stresses of the day go away with a blow job? Now that I could get on board with. Are you going to do that thing I love where you—”
“Please come in here,” I pleaded, my cheeks fiery hot.
I didn’t look around, not wanting to see the amused look on people’s faces.
It didn’t matter that almost everyone in the room was gay.
There was a difference between blow jobs in general and mine and Baxter’s blow jobs.
And I hadn’t gotten up this morning intending to share our sex life with all and sundry.
“Shall I take my clothes off first?”
“No!” There was a note of desperation in my voice now.
“Oh, you normally like me to.”
“I do not.” Someone sniggered. Quiet, but unmistakable. “I do not,” I repeated more quietly to the room. They were going to think I was some sort of Dom, when it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Calisto reached up from his position behind the sofa and squeezed my elbow. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “Whatever you two do behind closed doors is no one’s business but yours.”
“I don’t demand he walk around naked,” I whispered back. “I don’t know why he’s saying that.”
Footsteps sounded outside, the door creaking open a moment later. I detected a note of relief in people’s voices as they all stood in unison to shout “surprise,” but it was also possible I was just projecting.
Baxter froze in the doorway, jaw hanging open. “Wow,” he said. “So many people in the living room.” He caught sight of the banner and laughed. “Good one. It’s not everyone who gets to celebrate their twenty-fifth birthday and their forty-fourth on the same day.”
“Told you,” Calisto said from behind me.
The party wasn’t in the house, the garden affording us more space, and the day too nice, even though we were heading into evening, to be cooped up inside.
Everyone seemed to be getting along great.
At Baxter’s urging, I’d let Asher take over the barbecue, the man not seeming to care that he didn’t eat meat as long as he had something to do that stopped him from having to mingle.
I had to admit that food was now being produced with military precision, and probably a lot less chance of giving someone food poisoning than previously.
I pulled Baxter closer to me and kissed the top of his head.
It still filled me with wonder months into our relationship that I could do that.
The gesture made him smile, which made me smile too.
It was a trigger reaction I never grew tired of, made even sweeter by knowing it worked both ways.
My smile lasted until movement at the gate had me looking up to see the woman unlatching it.
“I didn’t invite her.” I said quickly. “It must be a coincidence.”
Baxter shrugged. “We’ve been dancing around each other for months. It’s high time something forced us into the same room together. Or,” he said with a slight smile, “the same garden.”
The couple following Verity was even more concerning, a groan escaping me when I spotted them. “And she brought my parents. I am truly sorry.”
There was no time to say anything else before Verity descended on us. Her gaze drifted to the barbecue first, her eyebrows lifting at the sight of Asher, whose only concession to the menial task was having rolled up the sleeves of his designer suit. “Who’s he? He’s gorgeous.”
“Asher,” I said. “He’s Calisto’s boyfriend.”
I leaned forward to kiss my mum on the cheek, her gaze too focused on the banner to react. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s…” I shook my head. I’d explained the situation with Baxter to them, but it was clear they hadn’t quite comprehended it. “Never mind.” After a few minutes of small talk, they drifted off toward the food. Verity didn’t follow, which left us wallowing in an awkward silence.
“Do you know what day it is today?” I blurted.
I didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s the sixty-fifth anniversary of the first manned spaceflight.
” No reaction. “Yuri Gagarin,” I added. “It was incredibly experimental that first flight. Gagarin had no control of the spacecraft, and the Soviets didn’t know if a human could function in weightlessness.
And then there’s the whole cover-up thing where they hid the fact that, because of partial heat failure of the heat shield, he ejected from the capsule and parachuted to the ground. ”
Baxter took a long swig of his beer. “Nothing to do with France, at least.”
“It’s not May yet.” At Baxter’s frown, I elaborated. “On the 5th of May, it will be two hundred and five years since Napoleon died.”
He nodded. “Of course it will.”
Verity angled her body away from me and toward Baxter. There was a slight pause before she asked, “Did you get that?”
He bit his lip to keep from laughing. “I did. Loud and clear.”
“And am I right?” she asked.
“You’re a hundred percent right,” Baxter agreed. “But what can you do?”
“What?” I asked, confused.
Verity pasted a look of innocence on her face. “Nothing.”
“What?” I asked again, looking between the two of them.
Verity laughed. “I have to admit,” she said to Baxter, “that this could be fun. Like a…”
“An ally,” Baxter finished for her.
She nodded. “An ally.” She gestured between the two of them as if I’d ceased to exist. “We’ll catch up later. We can talk about bands, TV programs, and films. Basically, anything modern.”
“Sure,” Baxter agreed with a smile. “I’ll look forward to it.”
“Just the two of us,” she called back as she sashayed toward the barbecue.
Baxter was still smiling when she was no longer in sight. “What just happened?” I asked. “What did she say?”
“I can’t possibly disclose that. It would break a confidence.” He headed toward the house. Forced to either let the conversation drop or trail after him, I followed, catching up with him in the kitchen.
“So you two are going to gang up against me now. Is that how it is?”
He grinned. “Looks like.”
I considered the scene I’d just witnessed. “I’m guessing she said something about me not being fun at parties.”
Baxter’s lips twitched. “Pretty much.” When I didn’t share his amusement, he dragged me close, looping his arms around my neck to stare into my eyes. “So you spout random historical facts when you get nervous,” he said. “It’s not a crime. In fact, I think it’s adorable.”
“You’re just saying that,” I muttered.
He dropped a kiss on my lips. “I’m not. It’s one of many things I love about you.” I turned the kiss into a proper kiss, the two of us not coming up for air for some time.
“Anyway,” I said once we had, “I don’t know how she knew there was a party going on, but I guess it turned out alright. It looks like you two are going to be friends, united in taking the piss out of me. And I can put up with that.”
Baxter disengaged to go over to the fridge for another beer. “I invited her.”
“That makes no sense. How can you invite someone to a surprise party that’s been thrown for you?”
He turned and leaned against the fridge door, amusement written all over his face.
“Are you for real? You seriously thought you could keep a party a surprise from someone who can read minds.” Baxter pointed the beer bottle at me.
“And even if you could, which… spoiler, you didn’t… what about the rest of them?”
“I didn’t invite them until last week,” I said defensively.
“There are a lot of stray thoughts in a week.”
“Apparently.” Something clicked into place. “So that performance when you came in was deliberate.”
Baxter winked. “Yep.”
“You were playing with fire with Cade.”
“He should have come up with a better excuse for keeping me there than making me rewrite a report that was absolutely fine. He deserved to get shit for it. I could have called him something far worse than an arsehole.”
“And the other bit? The part that made everyone think I’m some sort of deviant.”
“I just couldn’t resist.”
“I got a card today,” Baxter said when everyone had gone home and we sat out on the porch looking at the stars.
“I should think you got quite a few cards.”
“This one was sent to the PPB.”
“Why there?”
“Because… Owen’s probably pretending he never knew where you lived. And I guess, given his limited access to outside information, he can’t be sure we didn’t move somewhere completely different. At least, I hope that’s the case.”
“Right.” I couldn’t pretend to understand what kept Baxter visiting a brother who’d murdered him out of resentment and jealousy, and then tried to make him take part in a suicide pact he hadn’t consented to, but I supported his right to do whatever made him sleep at night.
The important thing was that Owen remained locked up, and Baxter’s nightmares were a thing of the past. So whether it was exposure therapy, a twin thing I could never hope to understand, or something else, it didn’t matter.
“I didn’t send him one.”
“Do you wish you had?”
Baxter shook his head. “I don’t owe him anything.”
“He owes you a debt he can never repay.” I looked around the garden, frowning. “Did you tidy? You shouldn’t have done. I was going to do it tomorrow.”
“I did not.”
“Then why does it look tidier out here than it did before the party?”
Baxter leaned back on his elbows. “Asher.”
“Ah. Did he get the lawnmower out?”
“Probably.”
“We should invite him round more often.”
“We should,” Baxter agreed before tipping his head back and resuming his study of the sky. I didn’t want to look at the sky. I wanted to look at him, a torrent of emotion washing over me. I love you so damn much.
Baxter turned his head to look at me. “I know.”
I rolled my eyes. “Can’t I have any private thoughts?” I was smiling, though. Sometimes it was easier to have a boyfriend who didn’t force you to find the right words.
“Not when they’re about loving me.” He stood and held out his hand. “Seeing as you can’t read my mind, let me take you to bed and show you how much I love you.”
I took his hand and let him pull me up. “Gladly.”
“It might take all night.”
“You, Baxter Stuart Canmore, can take as long as you like. Hours. Years. Decades. I’m here for it.”
The End