Chapter 14
Fourteen
Jason
I wrench out of Victor’s grasp and lunge for the door.
I yank on the doorknob and it turns in my hand but not enough to get the door open. I’m frantically twisting and pulling but the twice-damned door just rattles in its hinges rather than opening.
“Jason,” Victor says behind me. “It’s okay, man. They’re—“
I throw him a look over my shoulder and he’s getting up from his knees, where he was moments away from sucking my cock, and merciful Christ, Kelsey cannot know about this.
“—Gone,” Victor finishes lamely, just as the door finally, blessedly opens.
“Hey,” I call.
Logan and Silas are about a dozen feet down the path to our casita. They stop and turn around. “Um, did you want something?”
Logan has a pair of binoculars in his hand and lifts them as they backtrack closer to the casita. I can practically feel Victor behind me and I step just outside and pull the door almost closed behind me.
“I borrowed these from the front desk,” Logan says. “We came to see if you wanted to join us at the birding platform for a few minutes before dinner.”
Logan stops before he reaches the far edge of the front window of our casita.
He puts a hand out so Silas doesn’t take any more steps forward either.
He’s very carefully and obviously not looking into the casita and preventing Silas from doing so again.
“We can go ourselves and see you at dinner,” Logan says, not adding the obvious if you’re too busy right now engaging in illicit sex with your daughter’s father.
“I, um, I can explain…it’s not what it looks like.” I’m stuttering and flailing and what the hell am I saying? They know exactly what it looks like. It is exactly what it looks like.
“I saw nothing that requires any explanation,” Logan says calmly.
“And neither Silas nor I gossip about things that are none of our business.” Silas’s expression matches Logan’s, pleasant and cheerful.
There’s no unholy glee at catching us in a compromising position.
No expectation of being begged or bribed to keep a secret he shouldn’t know.
“I don’t know Kelsey all that well yet,” Silas says.
“It’s Logan who’s closer friends with Adrienne.
I like her a lot, though. She seems like the kind of person who wants the people she cares about to be happy.
And she obviously loves her dads very much.
” Silas tugs at Logan’s free hand. “We’re gonna go look at birds now. See you later.”
He and Logan go off, hand in hand, and I’m left standing at the door.
Only then do I realize that my pants are still unsnapped, and the zipper is halfway down.
I do my pants up with shaking hands and go back inside the casita.
Victor has gotten to his feet and is standing in the middle of the living area.
“I can’t do this,” I say. My voice shakes, too, and I can barely look at him.
“Why not?” Victor asks. He sounds more curious than disappointed. Mother of God, am I disappointed that he doesn’t sound more disappointed?
I drag my hand down my face. Can I do nothing right here? “Kelsey,” I say.
“What about Kelsey?” Victor says.
“Well, obviously,” I start. I flap my hand between us, then at the door. Victor continues to look at me and damned if I can think of how to explain through the panic thundering in my ears.
“What’s obvious?” Victor’s got this patient expression that immediately rubs me the wrong way, with his arms crossed over his chest and his head tilted to one side.
“Her wedding is on Friday.”
“And?”
“What do you mean, ‘and’?”
“And what does that have to do with us, Jason?”
“She’s your daughter.” It comes out accusatory.
“I’m aware of that,” Victor says. “So?”
“And my stepdaughter. I don’t even think of her as my stepdaughter. I think of her as my daughter. She calls me ‘Dad’, for heaven’s sake. She has for most of her life.”
“And she calls me ‘Daddy,’” Victor retorts. “I’ve never once objected to your position in her life, Jason. Or to her calling you ‘Dad’. I know how much you love her and I know how much of a parent you’ve been to her.”
“So you see why we can’t…” I flap my hand between us again. “No matter how much we—I—want to.”
“But I don’t see,” Victor says. His calm is getting on my nerves. “You and I are not related, Jason. As much as we have a bit of an unconventional family here, it’s a family of circumstance, not blood.”
He’s right, of course, but I can’t shake the feeling that it would be wrong to start anything with Victor. I could never lie to Kelsey, especially about someone as important to her as her father. But how on earth can I tell her, either?
What if she thinks I didn’t love her mother as much as she thought I did? She heard so many teachers and friends’ parents tell us both how strong I was after Leah died, how hard it must be to raise a motherless teenage girl while carrying on the music ministry at Saint Sebastian.
Never once in the years since Leah died have I felt strong, or brave, or any of those words well-meaning people called me.
Victor sighs. “You spend so much time thinking about doing the right thing, Jason. I wonder if you’ve lost track of what would make you happy. Have you ever thought that God might want you to be happy in addition to being good?”
When I don’t answer right away—what in Christ’s name am I supposed to say in response to that?
—Victor turns on his heel. “I’m going to change for dinner and meet Kelsey and Adrienne at the bar.
” There’s no judgment in his tone but it also lacks the soft warmth it had before Logan’s knock interrupted us.
I’m still standing in the middle of the room when Victor emerges from the bedroom in the same slacks he wore to dinner last night and another guayabera, this one a pale pink. He must have washed his face because his hair is damp around his temples. He’s still the handsomest man I’ve ever seen.
He reaches for me when he passes, grasps my shoulder, and squeezes. “Come join us soon,” he says.
I want to grab him and kiss him until he forgets my freakout just now. But I don’t know how to get over myself and bring us back to the closeness we just shared.
I feel out of sorts.
Irritated that Logan and Silas interrupted what probably would have been the kind of mind-blowing sex I haven’t had since…well, since the last time I had sex with Victor.
Angry at myself for letting that casual knock derail everything.
Frustrated at Victor’s patience, at how easily he stepped back from what he said he's been wanting for years, even though I'm the one who said no strings.
But mostly just tired. Bone-deep weary, and afraid that I’ll never get my shit together enough to move on from Leah’s death.
I thought I was ready. And I know that Victor will never push me until I demonstrate to him that I am ready. But now, I’m not at all sure that I am.
I lie down on the bed, just for a minute, and drape an arm over my eyes to shield them from the ceiling fan light. God, give me the strength to face Victor, my daughter, and everyone else at dinner tonight.