Chapter 27
Lawson
Oakley’s backyard is filled to the brim, his patio furniture accompanied by a couple folding tables and a dozen chairs brought over from the ranch. Everybody is deep into their stew, no one complaining about the hot dish on a still-hot day.
Especially not me.
The stew is perfect. Oakley’s always is, even though he does it on the stove, not in a slow cooker. How he manages to create such tender beef alongside carrots and potatoes with the perfect texture, I’ll never know.
The rosemary from his new windowsill herbs adds a nice touch, as well.
“Gonna propose?” Oakley says under his breath, an amused glint in his eye. He’s clearly teasing me for enjoying my meal so much.
“To you or this stew?” I joke back. “Either way, the answer might be yes.”
Oakley breaks into a sudden coughing fit, and Colton slaps his back. “Wrong pipe,” Oakley manages to tell my brother.
“Did I hear Benson is back in town?” my dad asks no one in particular.
Remi shoves a spoonful of stew in his mouth as my mom nods.
“Got back yesterday,” she says. “Louise is over the moon.”
Louise is my mother’s closest friend. August, Louise’s youngest son, is Remi’s age, and the two have been thick as thieves since they were kids. Benson, her oldest, is the same age as Jackson.
“Didn’t know he was planning to come back,” Jackson says, not that he and Benson were ever all that close. No more than Jackson is close to anyone else in town.
“Don’t think it was planned,” my mom says. “Colton, dear, you lost a carrot.”
“What?” my brother nearly shouts.
Everyone stops to look at him. Colton’s eyes are wide.
“Your carrot,” my mom says slowly, pointing her fork at a piece of carrot lying on the table beside Colton’s bowl.
“Right,” he says, huffing a nervous laugh. “Bell!”
The cow trots over upon hearing her name, her cowbell jingling softly. She snatches the softened carrot from Colton’s palm.
Oakley groans under his breath. “Y’all gotta stop giving my cow a taste for people food.”
“Oakley, you play chess?” Noah’s uncle, Walter, asks from the table next to ours.
Oakley turns his way. “Can’t say I do. Why, you looking to kick my ass?”
Walter chuckles, and the next thing I know, someone is pulling an old chessboard out from the game cupboard in Oakley’s living room.
After that, our impromptu family dinner turns into a game night.
As Colton and Ash duke it out in a rather brutal game of Jenga, I start collecting dishes to bring into Oakley’s kitchen.
My mom finds me before long, her tone gently accusatory. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”
“I’m fine.”
She heaves a sigh, forcefully pulling the plates from my hands to load into the dishwasher. “Go. Sit.”
Not about to get into an argument, I plop down in the living room, tiredness weighing my limbs.
My mom hums softly. “Lawson. You understand why we care, don’t you?”
I turn my head to see her better, my neck stiff still but not terribly so. “Of course I do. Doesn’t make it easier to accept being coddled.”
She huffs, grabbing a cutting board to clean. “You, my son, have always been stubbornly independent. Probably comes with the territory of being firstborn. You’re so set on it, you see everyone here showing up for you and assume it’s because we think you need help.”
“And that’s not it?”
My mom grabs a towel to dry her damp hands before joining me in the living room.
She sits opposite me, expression serious.
“Lawson, dear. It’s because we love you.
Yesterday, we got a call that you’d been in an accident.
That your truck flipped, and Oakley was with you at the hospital.
We’re here because we need to see for ourselves that you’re okay.
It has nothing to do with your capabilities and everything to do with our love for you. ”
I pull in a slow, steadying breath. There’s probably some merit to what my mom is saying.
I have always been independent when it comes to my family.
Partly because I felt a responsibility growing up to look after my brothers, all of whom are younger than me.
And once they were grown themselves, breaking that habit wasn’t easy.
I know my family loves me. That they want to be there for me. And I can’t begrudge them that.
But the Darlings have always been a loud bunch. Not just in volume. But in opinions. In actions. They’re loud with their love.
Telling them when it’s too much has never been an easy thing for me.
Before I can explain that to my mother, the door opens at the back of the house. Remi and Jackson walk in, catching sight of our mom and me in the living room.
“All right?” Jackson asks.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “Would you get Dad and Colt? We gotta talk.”
Jackson’s eyebrow pops up, but he turns back around to do as I asked. Remi’s frown accompanies him into the living room.
“It’s nothing bad,” I assure him, signing simultaneously.
He sits beside me on the couch, eyes pinging our mother’s way.
It doesn’t take long for Jackson to return with Colton and our dad. Everybody settles in the living room, the silence heavy for a moment before I break it.
“First, I want to say I’m sorry. I realize yesterday was scary for all of us. I don’t even want to think about how I’d feel if it were Wendy in my place. That must have been hard for you, and I never meant to scare you like that.”
Remi huffs, his eyes moving from my hands to my face. “As if it was your fault, Law.”
Colton grimaces. “It was mine, wasn’t it? What happened at dinner—”
“What?” I cut in. “Colt, that wasn’t your fault.”
“But if y’all wouldn’t have fought, you wouldn’t have left like that, and—”
“And I might’ve gotten in a car crash anyway,” I point out. “Why is everyone trying to take credit for me driving off the road?”
My mom winces, and I send her a one-handed apology.
“Even so, I am sorry,” Colton says. “I didn’t realize you and Oakley were a thing. You never said anything.”
Remi looks at Colton, incredulous. “You didn’t see how close they’ve been?”
“They were always close,” Colton defends hotly.
“He’s right,” I put in before my brothers can start bickering. “I didn’t say anything about it to anyone.”
“And why is that, dear?” my mom asks, her voice and movements soft.
I puff out a breath. “Because it was mine,” I explain to them.
All of them. “And I was still figuring it out. Am still figuring it out. I know y’all mean well where it concerns my happiness.
You always do. But sometimes a person needs the space to learn on their own.
We’re always learning about ourselves. I don’t think that ever stops.
What I need right now is for y’all to listen when I’m ready to talk about what’s going on in my life.
Not to tell me things I haven’t figured out for my own yet. ”
A beat passes before Jackson mutters, “Well, shit.”
Remi’s hands move swiftly. ‘Sorry, Law, if we haven’t been giving you the space you need.’
“Y’all care,” I answer with a shrug. “I can see that.”
Colton nods slowly. My mom’s eyes look a little wet.
My attention moves to my dad when he sits forward in his seat. “Is there anything you want to tell us now?”
My gaze skips around the room, everybody waiting patiently. “I’ll be staying here for a while. Oakley isn’t just my friend anymore. And I’m gay.”
Another brief silence falls.
“Well,” my mom says, a tiny smile on her face. “I think I speak for everyone when I say I hope you find what it is you’re looking for.”
I give her a nod. But I think I already have.
It’s late when my family leaves. Hugs are passed around, my mother whispering a quiet I love you before she’s out the door. Once every vehicle has disappeared down the short drive, I help Oakley clean up the rest of our mess, putting the last of the apple pie Ash brought over in the fridge.
“Little bit left,” Oakley says of the beef stew. He sets a small container of it on the countertop. “All yours tomorrow.”
I give him an appreciative smile. “It’s my favorite, you know.”
“Oh, I know. You and Wendy both. You’re two peas in a beef stew pod.”
“That makes absolutely no sense, Oak.”
He huffs. “I take it back. That stew is mine. I’m eating it for breakfast.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Maybe not,” he agrees. “But—”
A sound has both of us looking over. The container Oakley set on the counter is now tipped on its side, stew covering Bell’s nose as she uses her long pink tongue to scoop as much of the leftover meal into her mouth as she can before sprinting hurriedly from the kitchen.
The container, following Bell’s momentum, falls to the floor, bits of the leftover stew splattering in an impressive arc as Oakley and I stare on.
“Oak…” I say slowly.
“Belladonna!”
The man jogs to the back door, Bell’s cowbell already quieting, the bovine surely far out of Dodge by now. I can’t stop my laughter as Oakley comes storming back into the kitchen.
He tosses a hand toward the backyard. “Your stew, Law. Your stew. Can we eat her now?”
“We’re not eating the cow.”
Oakley lets out a big huffing breath, sounding a bit like Bell himself. He grabs a towel to clean up the splatter, the sight of the man down on the floor grumbling about my poor stew making my chest ache in the best way.
“Oak,” I say quietly. “I don’t want to date you.”
The man freezes, turning his head up to look at me.
“I already know everything I need to about you. I know your smile and your heart and the fact that you’re a morning person. I know how you sound when you laugh and the way it hurts me when you cry. I know you. I don’t need to date you to know what I want.”
He swallows heavily, leaving the towel on the ground as he stands. His eyes move slowly between my own, the blue and brown so familiar I’m fairly certain I could draw the mottled pattern by heart. “What if I want to take you out? To The Barrel or something?”
I shrug. “Then we’d go.”
“And what would we call it?”
I walk the few steps over to him, tracking the way his breathing picks up. How long has it been like this? Me affecting him this way? “We’d call it a date, I suppose.”
“But we wouldn’t be dating?”
I run a hand up the side of Oakley’s neck, his skin warm, his stubble prickling my thumb. “We’re past that, don’t you think?”
Oakley breathes shallowly through parted lips, the crook in his nose reminding me of pirates and bandana eye patches. Of sunny summer days and pixie dust on the breeze.
We’re not those boys anymore.
No, we’ve grown to be something much greater.
“You made me a promise,” I remind him.
His voice comes quiet. “I didn’t want it to be like this.”
“Like what?” I ask, bringing my other hand up to frame his face.
“Us in my kitchen,” he says roughly. “With beef stew all over the floor. There’s nothing special about this.”
“Oak, I don’t need special or extraordinary. I like ordinary quite a lot. I think this is perfect.”
He doesn’t move an inch, his hands still at his sides. “Law…”
“Are you scared?” I ask him, the panic in his eyes taking me off guard.
“A little bit. This is you.”
“We’ve done this before. Don’t you remember?”
He shakes his head, a slow movement. “Was I conscious?”
I let out a short laugh, my hands sliding to the nape of Oakley’s neck. His shoulders come down some. “You gave me my first kiss when we were eleven.”
I can see the moment he gets it. “The acorn?”
“Mm.”
His face falls, the man surely remembering only yesterday when I lost the acorn he gifted me so many years ago. “I’ll give you another.”
I squeeze the back of his neck, not wanting him to worry about that right now. “Give me your lips, Oak. That’s what I want.”
Oakley’s hands come up slowly, shaking as they settle to either side of my face. His thumb ghosts over my jaw, stroking gently, much as I had done to him. His Adam’s apple bobs, eyes fixated on my mouth as the seconds stretch into many.
When Oakley leans in, it’s on a broken breath.
I meet him in the middle, the first brush of his lips on mine so soft I’m not convinced I didn’t imagine it.
But then he’s there again, cedarwood and warmth, smelling like my childhood and my now, feeling like all the things I’ve been searching for, not realizing they were right here all along.
I don’t let Oakley move away, not that he tries.
He holds me tight, shaking still, his lips urging mine to open and fitting perfectly against me the moment they do.
The snag of his lip on mine, the soft swipe of his tongue like an invitation and promise all its own, even the way his stubble stings like a vow I’ll feel him long after he’s gone…
It’s nothing I’ve felt before. But I know it, like a dream I’ve had many, many times.
One kiss becomes two. And then three. Oakley’s body presses to mine, not in suggestion but simply as if the man can’t hold himself away any longer.
It doesn’t matter that we’re in his kitchen.
It doesn’t matter that there’s stew spread across the floor.
The only thing that exists is him and me in a moment we’re making our own.
I’m breathless by the time our mouths part. Oakley tugs me close, his head pressed against the side of my own, his chest rising and falling like a slowly ticking clock. I run my hands down his back, up again, my lips still tingling, my chest filled with sparks.
Oakley pulls in a breath, his voice soft as he whispers a single word into the air between us.
“Fireworks.”