Chapter 21 #2
I got to my feet and held out my hands for her to take. She smiled at me and I carefully pulled her up.
“Feeling steady?” I asked, just in case.
Emery looked over at us, smiling.
“Yeah, I think I’m good. Thank you.” She gave me a quick hug and then stepped around me to get to Aria. “Okay, Princess Peach, it’s bathtime, but you get to go sleep in Mommy’s old room, okay?”
For some reason, that worked, and Aria quickly scrambled up with a joyous, “Yay!”
It occurred to me that the little twins weren’t in the room, but that was probably because of lack of space. Since Luke wasn’t there either, maybe the boys were with him playing or already asleep.
Payton put the kids’ game away with Crew’s help, while Mal went to use the bathroom.
Once the boy was ready, he looked at the UNO table almost wistfully. Then he looked around, and his eyes stopped on me.
“Mr. Ville? Do you wanna play UNO with me?” he asked quietly.
Sitting on the floor wouldn’t be super comfortable for me, either, but I shrugged. “Sure.”
He beamed a smile at me. “I’m gonna go pee first.”
“Good idea, little man,” Crew told him.
We watched Payton round the couch and run toward the hallway.
“If y’all would tone it down a little,” Russ told the UNO players. “He asked Ville, because Ville is the calmest person available.”
“Yeah, of course,” Emery said immediately, then patted the spot which Demi had vacated. “Come on, sugar.”
I smiled and went to sit down.
“But no hanky-panky,” Russ said, clearly holding back a smirk.
“You’re just jealous your man isn’t here,” Crew told the old man, making everyone close enough go “ooh.”
Russ rolled his eyes, but I could swear his weathered face blushed ever so slightly.
He clearly had a “friendship” going on with Fern’s girlfriend Ora’s grandfather. It was lovely. I’d heard from Emery that Russ hadn’t had the greatest love life in the past.
Payton soon ran back, and came to stand next to me. He frowned, trying to figure out where to sit.
Since I’d sat cross-legged, I patted one of my thighs. “You can sit here if you feel comfortable doing so.”
He thought for a few seconds, then sat on my lap, kind of halfway in the cradle of my legs, half on my thigh. As long as he wouldn’t squish anything I’d need later tonight with his Uncle Emery, I’d be fine.
Everyone around the table started to play a more civilized version of the game to teach Payton how to play it.
He knew the basics, but as we sped it all up a little, he needed my help.
It felt good to be there for him, and every now and then I caught Emery—while still playing the game hard—looking at us.
When Payton’s bedtime came around, we’d won one round and Mal and Crew were obviously very proud of their kid.
Once they’d left the house to go to their cabin, everyone else gradually wrapped up the other games as well. Instead of the night being over, Gemma went and got out a massive amount of Cards Against Humanity cards and divided them into two piles for two separate games.
I chuckled and shook my head a little. Emery was starting to droop, too, so I raised my brows at him once he had a gap in conversation with Keegan. He nodded at me, nudging his head toward the stairs. I told everyone goodnight and went upstairs, ready to be done with the socializing.
As I got ready for bed, the feeling of needing to have the conversation we’d been putting off kept intensifying. I hadn’t told him I loved him yet, but I felt it and I could see it in his eyes when he looked at me. That had to mean something, right? For the future?
If everything around my work went as it had for a decade now, I’d be gone for a long time. The recording and production of the album would swallow a lot of the pre-tour time. Wren had the routine in his bones by now, and he and his people responsible for all that were efficient as fuck.
Then the tour would start. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that if we counted a handful European concerts, which I knew Wren would want to do especially if he was beginning to think about quitting because he’d want to give the EU fans a last hurrah, we were talking about more than a year.
A year wouldn’t cut it if I wanted to stay by Wren’s side as long as he wanted to keep doing this thing. And that was if he really was quitting.
I could—we could—come back maybe twice during that time, and even if Emery got time off work to come meet me somewhere on the road… it just didn’t seem enough.
The door opened and he stepped in, his smile falling off his beautiful face when he saw my expression.
“What’s wrong, sugar?” he asked. All I had for him was a wavery smile, and he immediately understood. “Ah.”
“Get ready for bed. Then we’ll talk, okay?” I didn’t want interruptions, I just wanted this talk to get to some point where we had even a loose plan. And after that, we’d either make love or sleep, whichever we had the energy for.
Emery gave me a small smile back. “Okay.”
For once, I couldn’t quite read his body language.