Chapter 1 #2
“When are you coming?” Allister asked, anxiety creeping into his tone.
“We’re just waiting for the weather to clear up a bit, then we’ll be on our way.” Lucas softened his voice, hoping it would bleed through the speaker and settle Allister’s nerves.
Allister nodded solemnly. “Grandpa says I can sleep with them again until you get here. Will you come get me when you come?” he asked softly.
“Yeah, baby,” August said. “We’ll come get you.”
Lucas loved how sweet August was with their children but especially their youngest. With Ara and Adi he was nice but firm.
They really couldn’t afford to give them even an inch lest they take a hundred miles.
They were smart, cunning, and had zero remorse when the ends justified the means in their little brains.
When that energy met their cousins’ energy, it was dangerous.
The Mulvaney littles worked like a pack…
a pack of velociraptors, always testing their parameters for weaknesses.
It was impressive and terrifying in equal measure.
All except the youngest Mulvaney…Theo.
Theo was an enigma. He could talk, but often chose not to.
He didn’t like to make eye contact, didn’t like to engage with others.
He preferred electronics to humans and was exceptionally particular about what he ate, drank, and wore.
Lucas suspected Thomas liked having all the grandkids around because they pulled Theo from his inner world.
Allister often stuck with Theo despite the slight age gap.
There was a quiet, unspoken alliance between them.
The two boys were soft, and so August was soft with them.
He never spoke harshly to Allister or Theo, let them get away with things the girls didn’t.
If it wasn’t for his kid gloves with Theo, Lucas would wonder if he treated Allister differently because he was biologically Lucas’s son.
August treated Allister with the same kid gloves he used to handle Lucas when he was feeling particularly fragile.
Lucas saw himself in Allister too. There was something identical in the way they both absorbed the world; every emotion hit twice as hard. And it wasn’t all a side effect of their abilities. Some people were born with thinner skin between them and the world. Allister and Lucas simply felt more.
“Everybody ready to watch Rudolph in the theater room?” Thomas boomed from off camera.
“Can we have hot chocolate?” Jett asked.
Thomas scoffed playfully. “Well, we can’t watch a Christmas movie without it, can we?”
He was greeted by a chorus of ‘no’s’ and Jett shouting, “I need marshmallows,” like he was a doctor calling for a crash cart. They heard Thomas and Aiden chuckle and the other kids laughter.
“Bye, Dads,” Ara said, then disconnected before they could respond.
“We love you, too,” Lucas murmured as he set the phone down, shaking his head. The silence that followed felt soft and oddly huge without the kids’ noise filling it.
“I don’t know who that man is masquerading as my father, but that is not the man who raised me,” August said.
“It’s that grandparent privilege,” Lucas said. “He had to act strict as your father, but now he gets to spoil them rotten, get them all hopped up on sugar, then send them home for us to deal with.”
“It is pretty amusing.”
Lucas scoffed. “Amusing? Watching our children crash out like someone gave a cat cocaine? Hardly.”
August snorted, then added, “I’m surprised Aiden tolerates it as well as he does,” August said thoughtfully. “He was never really a ‘family’ type of guy.”
“It’s hard to be a family guy when you’re actively in love with a member of said family,” Lucas reminded him. “Besides, Aiden would do anything for your dad. Literally. If that means having a hundred kids underfoot 24/7, he will do it. He lives to spoil him.”
Lucas nudged August’s knee with his own, the easy intimacy sliding into place again now that the screen had gone dark. Outside, the storm growled, but inside everything felt warm and familiar even in its newness, it was…theirs.
“It’s bizarre,” August said. “Seeing how vastly different they are since giving in to each other. It’s like they performed an exorcism, not a wedding.”
Lucas shuddered. “Don’t say exorcism. I’m still traumatized from the last one.”
August rose from the floor to the sofa. Hands settled under Lucas’s arms, tugging. He looked back at August over his shoulder, frowning. “What?”
“Come sit in my lap,” he said, patting his leg. “Tell me what you want for Christmas.”
Lucas smirked. “That’s funny. You don’t look like Santa.”
August’s lips twitched. “I feel like I should make a pun about coming down your chimney, but I’ll refrain.”
Lucas chuckled softly, then made his way onto August’s lap, straddling his thighs.
The shift pressed them closer, the warmth of August’s body soaking through Lucas’s clothes.
August settled his hands on his ass, pulling him in so he could feel how he was hardening behind his zipper.
The pressure was insistent, familiar. It made Lucas’s breath catch.
“I hope this isn’t how you sit in Santa’s lap at the mall,” August teased, squeezing the flesh between his fingers.
“Do you think I’m secretly sneaking off to the mall to give Santa a lap dance?” Lucas asked.
“How do I know what you do on your lunch break?” August asked, leaning forward to drop a kiss on Lucas’s Adam’s apple. His lips were warm and soft where they lingered, sending a little shiver down Lucas’s spine.
Lucas tipped his head back, letting August’s mouth explore the column of his neck. “I’m usually doing you on my lunch break, profess— I mean, Santa.”
He felt August’s laugh more than heard it. It rumbled through his chest. “Last time I did you, if I recall correctly.”
“Are you keeping track now?” Lucas asked. “How is it we’ve been kid-free for a week and the only sex we’ve had is a quickie in the shower after the ‘polar vortex incident’?”
August snorted. “Incident? Like Chernobyl?”
“You know what I mean,” he mumbled.
“We’re kid-free, not Cricket-free,” August said.
“We had to unpack, finish the nursery, finish wrapping the family gifts, make an appearance at that abysmal faculty Christmas party, attend that St. Aggie fundraiser, and we had dinner with Adam and Noah and then walked around the neighborhood to get the rundown on our bizarre new neighbors.”
“This place is super weird, right?” Lucas said. “Like a…David Lynch movie.”
“Our very own Twin Peaks,” August mused. “I do appreciate the shrine to Prince though. He doesn’t get nearly enough credit.”
“Are we going to waste our precious alone time talking about our neighbors?” Lucas asked, then looked around at their large but cozy living room. “We haven’t christened the living room yet.”
He’d fallen in love with the warmth of the space, the built-in bookshelves, the fireplace with its old-fashioned mantle, the crown moulding, the soft lighting.
Whoever had owned this house before had painstakingly built it so that it had nostalgic charm with modern, elegant upgrades.
The glow from the fireplace danced across the hardwood floors, throwing amber light over the spines of books and the garland draped along the mantle.
Outside, the storm clawed at the windows, but inside everything was honeyed and soft and safe. They could have built their own place, but Cricket’s due date had been approaching rapidly.
Serenity Grove was a highly sought-after community.
It was half well-established luxury homes and half new-builds.
They’d destroyed a forest to build more homes but Lucas figured that was the builders karma, not the buyers.
Noah called them McMansions and he wasn’t wrong.
Lucas still wasn’t sure whether buying here made them sensible or hypocritical, but the house felt right — cozy and lived-in, a place that softened as soon as his family filled it.
“What are you thinking about?”
Lucas smiled. “Cricket.”
Lucas was grateful to have all of them under one roof finally.
No running back and forth across the hall.
Cricket had her own suite in the walkout basement.
It was essentially her own luxury apartment.
That way she was always close. The kids liked having their mother with them.
The house felt fuller with her living within arms reach—settled, steadier, lived-in.
“Wow, here I am trying to seduce you and you’re thinking about—gasp—a woman?”
“I’m thinking about the heavily pregnant mother of our children. Should we call and make sure she’s okay?”
“She’s with Lola and Calliope. She’s far safer with them than us. Probably a lot less bored, too.”
“Are you implying we’re boring?” Lucas said in mock offense. He nudged his nose against August’s cheek, amusement warming the moment. August’s answering hum vibrated softly against his skin.
He sucked in a breath as he found himself dumped onto his back on the sofa, August crawling over him to settle between his thighs. “I would never call you boring.”
Lucas stared up into August’s perfect face.
He only seemed to get more attractive with age.
His emerald-green eyes studied Lucas’s features as if he hadn’t committed them to memory long ago.
His hand landed behind Lucas’s head. Before he could ask what he was doing, August lifted him to slip a throw pillow behind his head.
“What’s that for?” Lucas asked with a confused smile.
“I thought we might be here awhile, and I know your neck gets wonky when you don’t have some kind of support.”
Lucas’s heart did a complicated little dance behind his ribs. Still, he pretended to swoon. “My hero.”
“I should have gotten you one of those fancy orthopedic pillows,” August said with a sigh.
“Those pillows make me feel like I’m one bad fall away from the nursing home. Besides, you already got me more than enough. ”