28. Jake
28
JAKE
I lift my head as I hear a knock at the door, and I glance over to Killian who’s flipping through a book on the other side of the fireplace. He raises his eyebrows at me, as though to tell me that he has as little clue as I do as to who might be out there, and I get to my feet to see who it is.
I figure it’s some lost hiker, given that it’s a beautiful, warm evening. Sometimes, they see the cabin and wander over, just looking for directions before they get totally lost. But instead, when I open the door, my face cracks into a huge grin. It’s Vanessa and Callie.
“Well, what are you doing here?” I ask, leaning against the doorframe. Vanessa is carefully balancing a large pie in her hands—I can smell the sweet crust from here, the warm, welcoming scent of it drifting up to fill the air around us.
“I never got to bring you that pie that I wanted to,” she remarks with a shrug. “And I thought I would finally get around to making it tonight.”
“The pie…?”
“Remember, when we first met?” she replies, brushing past me and into the house, Callie hot on her heels. “There was that pie I burned. It set off the alarm. That’s why you were in my cabin in the first place…”
She makes her way straight to the kitchen, where Killian and Mason have gathered to see what the commotion is all about. She puts the pie down on the counter, and then plants her hands on her hips and looks around at us.
“So? Who’s going to carve it up?”
I can’t help but laugh. She always acts as though she owns the place, strolling in like she belongs here. And maybe she does. She has made herself so at home since she first got here, it’s hard to imagine a time when she wasn’t standing in our kitchen, looking expectantly around at the three of us.
“Well, as good as that looks,” Mason remarks, “I think it’s more a dessert than anything else, right?”
“Which means we need to cook something for our main course first,” Killian agrees. “It’s a beautiful night—you want to have a barbecue?”
Callie’s face lights up, and I can tell that she has already made the desicion for her mother. “A barbecue!” she replies. “Let’s do it, Mom!”
“You know I can’t say no to you,” Vanessa groans, laughing, and turns to the three of us. “You sure it won’t get in the way of…?”
“No, we’ll be close to the alarms,” Killian replies. “We won’t miss anything. Come on, let’s get everything set up…”
It takes Mason and me a hot minute to figure it out, but soon we have the barbecue up and running again. Soon, we’re slapping some corn and vegetables on the grill, and the air is filled with the hot, delicious scent of barbecue.
I grab a few beers from the fridge and distribute them among us—Killian finishes bringing the chairs out just in time to grab the last one. We all settle down as Mason stands over the grill, Callie not far from him, though he makes sure to keep her at a safe distance so he doesn’t accidentally get her burned.
“This is so nice,” Vanessa sighs, tilting her head back and lifting her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. The way the hair tickles her neck as she moves, it takes everything I have not to lean over and plant a kiss against her throat, but I manage to restrain myself.
“Yeah, and we’ve got another few months of this too,” Mason remarks. “Hot nights, long evenings…”
“Though I guess Callie will have to be starting school soon,” I remark, looking over at the little girl. “Right? Back in the city?”
Vanessa flicks her tongue over her lips, a small smile curling them up as though she has a secret she can’t wait to share.
“Well, I thought it was going to be back in the city,” she agrees. “But…my friend, the one who loaned us the cabin, she’s told me that I can live there now. For as long as I want.”
All three of us turn to look at her in shock. For as long as she wants? I figured we had a couple of months left of her company at best, since she was staying for the summer, but now I’m hearing that she’s not going anywhere? That Callie is going to be here with her?
“Which means that we’re going to have to get Callie enrolled in the local school,” she remarks. “I might need help with the school run too, but I have three guys I’m hoping I can call on for that.”
“Anything she needs,” I reply, without thinking twice. “Anything. Just let us know.”
“I will.”
“So that means you’re going to be living here full-time?” Mason adds, and Vanessa nods.
“That’s the idea, yeah.”
“What about work?”
“Oh, yeah, I guess I should tell you about that part too,” she remarks, her lips twitching again. “I spoke to my friend, Lara—she’s the one who edits the Journal. And she told me that the article I submitted about you is too good to leave at just a single story.
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, she wants me to write a book,” she replies.
“Holy…sugar,” Killain exclaims, censoring himself at the last second when he remembers that Callie is there. “She thinks there’s enough for a whole book here?”
“So she says,” she replies. “And hey, if you guys are willing to talk with me a little more…”
“If it means you’ll stay,” Mason replies. “I’ll answer any questions you want. Just say the word.”
“Hey, I wouldn’t go that far,” she teases him. “Who knows what kind of thing I might ask…?”
Mason cooks as we chat, and soon the food is ready. The sun is beginning to set, casting those long golden rays over the ground before me, and as we cluster around a small table we brought out from the living room to eat on, I feel the warmth of it on my back.
But it’s more than the warmth of the sun. No, it’s the warmth of having all these people around me. After so long feeling as though I have nothing, after so long hating myself for everything that happened with my foster parents, I’m finally here, with people who care about me, with people I love. With people who feel like family.
I wish they could have been there to see it, our parents. But I hope that, somewhere, they can, and they can see how happy we are. How well we did, even after everything.
After we’re done, we clear up, and Callie is starting to falter on her feet.
“I guess we should get home,” Vannessa sighs, wrapping a strand of Callie’s hair around her finger. “This one is starting to droop…”
“No, can we stay?” Callie asks, her eyes hopeful.
Vanessa smiles, and glances up at us. “Well, I suppose it’s not up to me,” she remarks. “Guys? Is it okay if we stay?”
“As if you have to ask,” I murmur.
“I’ll go get her bed set up,” Killian replies, and he moves to the stairs, going to get Callie’s bedroom sorted for the evening.
In another half hour, Callie is in bed, and even though she insisted she wanted to stay up, she’s already out for the count by the time her mom goes to check on her. Vanessa tiptoes downstairs to join us, and grabs another beer from the fridge as we all settle in around the fire.
“So, tonight was a lot of fun,” she remarks as she glides her lips over the head of the bottle. My eyes are drawn to the way her mouth looks brushing against the glass, and I am struck, all too clearly, with the memory of what she looked like riding my cock just a few days ago. I push it aside—now is not the time. Well, not quite, anyway.
“It was,” Killian replies, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “And that was some pretty big news you dropped on us.”
“It was,” she replies, pulling an apologetic face. “I’m sorry. I should have thought of a more chill way to drop that into conversation…”
“Why? Because you thought we might not react well to it?” I ask, and she frowns as she glances over at me.
“No, no, nothing like that,” she replies. “Or…I mean, I don’t know. You’ve got your life out here, and I didn’t know if maybe I would be intruding on that in some way. Getting in the middle of something that you wanted to keep to yourselves.”
“I might have felt that way at some point,” I agree. “But not now. Not now I’ve had a chance to get to know the two of you.”
She smiles a little wider. “I know it’s not the most…normal setup in the world,” she admits. “What with me…being involved with all three of you, I guess. But I’ve done normal. Or at least, I tried to. I tried to do normal with Callie’s father, but then he passed. I tried to be a normal single mom, but I wound up bringing the cartel down on our heads. Maybe it’s time for me to just admit that I’m not good at the whole normal thing.”
“Maybe,” I agree. “But I guess we can try being abnormal…together?”
“That’s one hell of a proposal,” she giggles, turning to me. “Not sure that’s exactly how I pictured it, but…” She pauses as she glances between us for a moment. “But I think it works.”
She lifts her beer, holding it out into the middle of the room where we can all reach it.
“Well, I think this calls for a toast to our future.”
“A toast,” Killian agrees, and he taps his bottle against hers. Mason leans in and does the same. And then finally, I join them, touching my bottle to the other three.
“To us,” I announce, and we all take a drink. And in that moment of silence afterward, I know what we’re all thinking—I know we can all feel it. The change. That sensation like nothing will ever be the same again.
But it’s only going to get better from here on out.