Chapter 14
“What do we do first?” Seven asked as they entered Enzo’s office. “Discovery is gonna take weeks. What do we do in the meantime?”
Enzo closed his door, then hung up his coat before addressing Seven. “Well, for starters, we’re not waiting on discovery. I’ll have Drucilla start drafting the motion, but we might as well get a headstart.”
Seven’s brows went up, and he eyed him suspiciously. “What does that mean?” Enzo fell into his office chair, hitting the button on the remote, watching as his blinds began to close. Seven snorted. “That doesn’t look sus at all. The two of us in here alone with the blinds shut and the door closed?”
Enzo grinned at him. “I don’t care what it looks like. I closed the door for your comfort, not mine. Come here.”
Seven frowned but floated closer, gasping when Enzo’s arms went around him, pulling him into the chair until he straddled his hips. His hands instantly fell to his ass like, squeezing appreciatively. Seven lightly slapped at his arm, wiggling in his grasp. Enzo laughed.
“Stop squirming, or this is going to get much more scandalous than intended,” Enzo warned.
Seven went limp in his arms with a huff. “It’s always scandalous with you,” he muttered.
Before Enzo could say anything to counter the claim, Seven dropped his head to Enzo’s shoulder, burrowing his face into his neck before inhaling deeply.
“Whacha doin’?” Enzo asked, hands soothing up and down Seven’s back.
“Sniffing you,” Seven said, voice muffled against his skin.
Enzo chuckled softly. “Why is that, exactly?”
“Makes me feel better,” Seven replied.
It was such a casual statement, but it made Enzo feel like he’d been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer.
His arms tightened around the boy, tilting his head to rest against Seven’s.
His ability to disarm Enzo with a single sentence was dangerous but so incredibly addicting.
He’d never thought it was possible to feel this deeply about another person.
He loved his family; he’d kill or die for them.
But for Seven, he’d cut out his own beating heart and hand it to him if he asked.
Seven had threatened to eat that heart in front of him if he betrayed him ever again, but Enzo was already in way too deep.
Seven owned him, body and soul. He could get Enzo to do just about anything.
All Enzo cared about was keeping Seven happy.
Seven gave another deep sigh.
Enzo’s fingertips slipped beneath Seven’s sweater, tracing the knobs of his spine. “Are you okay, baby?”
He felt Seven shrug. “I’m not gonna, like, swan dive off the roof or anything.”
Enzo laughed softly. “That’s a pretty low bar, brat.”
Seven didn’t answer, just pressed a chaste kiss over Enzo’s pulse point. It was an oddly intimate gesture. But Enzo supposed it all was. When Seven didn’t continue their talk, Enzo just held him, his hands learning the geography of the younger man’s body, noting how soft his skin was.
“Can I ask you a weird question?” Seven asked after a while.
Enzo frowned, unsure where the conversation was going. “You can always ask.”
“Do you feel like a grown-up?”
The question was so far from Enzo’s expectations that he laughed, earning a poke in the ribs that made him grunt. “I’m sorry. I just wasn’t expecting…that.”
It was his use of the word grown-up versus adult that had Enzo chuckling. It made Seven sound even younger than usual.
When Enzo didn’t answer fast enough, Seven prodded. “Well?”
Enzo frowned. “I’m thinking, bossy britches. Give me a second to gather my thoughts.”
“Well, hurry up,” Seven mumbled.
It wasn’t exactly an easy question to answer. Enzo had never really contemplated what it meant to be a grown-up. “Sometimes?”
“Sometimes?” Seven echoed, voice flat. “That’s your answer?”
Enzo huffed another quiet laugh. “You’re so demanding.”
When Seven lifted his head to glower at him, Enzo held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I give up. Don’t look at me like that. It makes me want to bend you over my desk and remind you who you belong to.”
Seven’s pupils blew wide. He trapped his full bottom lip between snowy white teeth, his breaths coming a little faster. When Enzo continued to study him, he buried his face in the older man’s neck again.
Cute.
Finally, Enzo said, “I mean, I pay bills like an adult. I renovated the top two floors of my building like an adult. I work for one of the most prestigious law firms in the country. In another ten years, I’ll probably qualify for senior discounts at restaurants.
So, in that respect, sure. I’m a grown-up. ”
“But…”
“But as soon as I’m with my mother and stepfather, I feel like a kid again.
When my brothers and I are in a room, and we’re hurling insults at each other like nuclear weapons, I feel like a kid.
When my mom is lecturing me about putting too much basil in her sauce, I feel like a kid again.
” Pain stabbed through his chest, knife sharp, his voice wavering a bit when he said, “When my Nona died, I literally crawled into bed with my mom and just hugged her because I didn’t want to be alone.
I was a fully grown adult but I didn’t feel like it that day. Is that weird?”
Seven shook his head from his hiding spot, his cheek brushing Enzo’s shoulder as he did. “No, it’s sweet.”
“I’ve never told another living soul that,” Enzo confided, a little surprised that it had slipped from him so easily. “Not even my brothers know.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, a heaviness hanging between them.
“I used to have sleep paralysis as a kid. I would just lie there, frozen, feeling like I was dying, like there was something sitting on my chest watching me sleep. My mom took me to so many doctors, who all just chalked it up to stress. Eventually, the sleep paralysis stopped, but then it became night terrors. I would wake up screaming, thrashing, convinced I was fighting for my life. It got so bad I started to sleep in my mom’s bed with her. ”
That sounded awful. “That’s a pretty normal thing for kids to do.”
“I did it until I was sixteen,” Seven murmured. “If my friends knew that, they’d probably never let me live it down. I was already helping Jericho patrol the streets, but I would still crawl into bed with my mom just from a nightmare. Is that weird?”
“I don’t think wanting your mom to comfort you is weird.
I don’t think wanting to be near your mom during a crisis is weird.
I think having a crisis and not thinking about your mom is…
not weird, but sad. My brothers and sisters call my mom so often I have no idea how she manages to run a restaurant and a borderline criminal enterprise,” he teased.
“Your mom’s amazing,” Seven said wistfully.
Enzo smiled against Seven’s hair. “Your mom is, too. We’re both lucky in that respect.”
“Unless my mom goes to prison,” Seven countered, the words thick with pent-up emotion.
Enzo sighed, coaxing Seven from his hiding space under his chin.
He cupped his face with both hands, forcing him to meet his gaze.
“Listen, I’ll say this as many times as you need to hear it.
I’m never gonna let that happen. When we get married, your mom will be there sobbing, probably as loudly as mine. ”
Tears welled in Seven’s eyes, but he rapidly blinked them away, clearing his throat and gently knocking Enzo’s hands away. “I can’t believe you told Lourdes we’re engaged.”
“It was either that or go to jail ‘cause if she called you my sugar baby or boy toy one more time I was gonna reconsider my stance on not hitting women,” Enzo promised.
Seven’s laugh unknotted something in Enzo. “Don’t let her hear you say that or we’re gonna have to watch that stupid workplace harassment video again.”
Enzo grinned even as he worried about Seven.
He hated seeing him like this. For all of Seven’s trauma with his father and some of the horrors he’d seen working for Jericho, he was shockingly well adjusted.
But this situation had started to show the cracks in his foundation and he was trusting Enzo to get him through this.
A responsibility Enzo would have run screaming from just eight months ago.
If anyone tried to wrestle that honor away from him now, he’d be the one needing an attorney.
Seven was his. In every conceivable way.
“You know you’re still gonna have to propose, right? And get me a ring. I’m not letting you off the hook for that stuff. And it better be good,” Seven said, nestling his face into his neck once more. “You owe me.”
Enzo did owe him. For the rest of his life. “I’ll make it good. I promise.”
Seven’s phone chimed, letting him know he had a notification. He pulled it free without lifting his head, unlocking it from muscle memory, then thrusting it an inch from Enzo’s face. “What’s it say?”
Enzo had to crane his head back to see the message. “Arsen texted to ask if you’re playing with the rest of the guild tonight,” he read. “The guild? Is this what Jericho was talking about at the police station?”
Seven nodded. “Yeah, it’s…nothing.”
It didn’t sound like nothing. “Tell me about it?”
Seven readjusted a bit, making Enzo painfully aware of just how close their dicks were and how little cloth separated them.
At first, he thought Seven wasn’t going to answer, but finally, he said, “It’s just this stupid thing we started as kids when the game Paladin first launched.
We loved D&D and it was a D&D based video game, so, of course, we were obsessed.
And we were kids, so we made it our whole personality.
We called ourselves the Knights of the Kids’ Table and, as you can imagine, seven queer kids running their own guild caught some people’s attention for a minute. ”