CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Watching Alex dress for the award show was a true test for Ian's impulse control, so he tried to focus on something else.
Boo was lying next to him on a play mat, looking up at the animal figurines hanging above him, and Ian was gently shaking the arch with the toys every once in a while so they kept moving.
They were in Alex's bedroom, Boo and Ian on the floor near the window, and Alex standing in front of the closet with a big mirror.
He was dressed in all black, as usual, but this time his pants had a skirt as an additional top layer and his jacket was a cropped one, ending around the bottom line of his ribs.
He was fiddling with his hair now, and the light was playing off of his rings.
"I know you said I shouldn't go with you—"
"And I'm standing by it," Alex cut in with a shake of his head, their gazes meeting in the reflection of the mirror.
"We went over this, and you agreed that the security seems solid.
They're arranging a ride for me before and after, so I won't be on my own at any point of the night.
I also have your watch and didn't complain even once how it doesn't go with my outfit.
" He patted the sleeve of his jacket where the watch was hidden, fastened high above the wrist. "Besides, the room will be swimming with security personnel as it is, and I'm hardly the biggest name on the list, since I'm not even nominated for anything. "
Ian wanted to argue that it only took one insistent person, but he could admit that it was mostly his heightened vigilance talking.
He'd been trying to shake it off since this morning, when he'd accompanied Alex's mother on a walk with Boo as the weather was finally nice enough to leave the house again.
Nothing had happened, and he hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary, either, so he'd tried to reason with himself for the last several hours, but there was also another voice in his head telling him that ignoring a hunch could get someone hurt.
With yesterday's release of the interviews Alex had done for the gala, the news were out that he was presenting the award, which meant everyone knew he was currently in town.
"And you'll be right where I need you." Alex smiled, glancing back and forth between Ian and Boo. "I wouldn't be half as calm about leaving him if you weren't here."
"Oh, we'll have a great time, won't we?" Ian looked down at Boo and found him staring back, his fist half-covering a big grin. "Exactly."
Alex crossed the room and tugged at Ian's hand until he sat up.
"I'll be home late, but I wouldn't mind having some grown-up 'great time' with you once I'm back." Alex leaned in for a kiss but didn't touch him otherwise. "Since I'll be thinking about you most of the evening, anyway."
"Flatterer," Ian murmured against his lips, biting down gently before pulling back. "You'll be busy being glamorous."
"Never too busy to miss you."
At that, Ian could feel his cheeks growing warmer. Ever since they'd decided to be together for real, it was like a dam broke and whenever they were alone, Alex showered him with compliments, and soft touches, and those adoring looks that made Ian's heart melt.
Ian tried to keep up, tried to respond in kind, but he was still taken aback half the time, hardly believing his luck.
Alex turned to Boo and caught his foot gently before dropping a kiss on it. "And you, of course."
"I love you."
The words were out of Ian's mouth before he could stop them, but for once, he didn't want to.
While he'd never said them back to Alex after his confession a few days ago, they were there, in the back of his mind. They'd been there all along.
Alex's eyes widened, and he stilled before slowly turning his head back to Ian, whose heart was now pounding wildly in his chest.
"I'm in love with you," he added, as if there could be any doubt about what he meant. "I thought you should know."
That startled a laugh out of Alex, who put both hands on the sides of Ian's head, at once gentle and firm.
"You thought I should know," he repeated in an awed whisper. "Damn, I wish I could ravish you right now."
Ian licked his lips and reached out to touch Alex, to pull him closer, but when his hands landed on the studded belt, he remembered why they couldn't follow through with that marvelous idea.
"After," he told Alex, who was still staring at him with those wide, bright eyes. "Once you're back."
Alex swallowed hard and nodded. "I can't skip it."
Ian wished they could stop time and escape the outside world for a while—long enough so they would satiate this hunger, the pull to be together and to fall into each other and never leave.
Then again, he wasn't sure if they could ever have enough.
"You can't skip it."
"Yeah."
As Alex leaned in, Ian expected a hard, demanding kiss, but instead it was the softest, the most gentle brush of lips against lips.
"I love you, too. I thought you should know, in case you forgot."
Ian grinned. "Impossible. Still, I don't mind hearing it again and again. As often as you want to tell me, really."
"Oh, we definitely don't have enough time for that." Alex pulled back as he straightened, and he slowly dropped his hands, fingers caressing Ian's jaw and neck. "I'll keep that in mind, though."
"You do that."
"And feel free to do the same. I love hearing those words, as it turns out."
As Alex walked to the dresser and picked up a couple of his bracelets, Ian once again wished he could have the same ease with words as Alex had. He didn't, though, so he vowed to at least be more generous with those three special ones from now on, because the look in Alex's eyes when he heard them…
If Ian could make him feel like this more often, he was going to—as often as possible.
After all, if there was anything better to hear, Ian didn't know what it was.
* * *
It was a quiet dinner—or as quiet as it could be, with a baby present—but while Ian had expected at least some awkwardness given that Edina obviously knew about his relationship with her son by now, there was no trace of it.
"I'm not going to warn you off or anything," she told him even before they'd sat down. "I can tell you've been good to my son."
"I haven't done anything yet," Ian protested as he handed her a bottle for Boo. While he usually ate some solid foods earlier in the day, they stuck to a formula from dinnertime through the night.
"Yeah, that's clearly nothing," she told him dryly, waving around the table. "However, I didn't mean only now. My husband and I have heard quite a lot about you over the years. Much more than could be explained by a solely professional relationship."
Ian opened his mouth to protest, but then again, he couldn't do that, could he? While he'd tried his best to be professional, before, right now, there was very little pretense of it left, if one discounted Ian's regular reporting to Kalei and the heightened vigilance.
"I told him not to let you go this time," Edina added, giving Boo the bottle and smiling as the boy started eating right away. "Hopefully he'll listen."
Ian exhaled slowly. "I'm not planning on leaving."
"Good. I'm glad. Alex mentioned your transfer to New York is actually a promotion. Can you tell me more about that?"
The rest of their dinner was just them talking about Ian's work, then Edina's, then the museums and galleries in both New York and DC. She was well-versed in the New York's art world, so Ian made a case for the local museums, which were unfairly under-appreciated, in his opinion.
Later on, she took Boo upstairs, once again insisting she'd take him to her room for the night, and Ian busied himself with cleaning up. With a cup of tea in hand, he wandered to the living room windows without putting on the lights and stood there, watching the street.
After almost a week, he knew the area like the back of his hand.
The buildings were, of course, familiar, but so were the cars, the working hours of the few businesses around, and finally the people and their habits.
The bald man with his Pomeranian on the nightly walk, the café manager dutifully fixing the chairs of the emptied tables within a minute of his clients leaving, the pair of girls running down the street under the watchful eye of an elder woman in the first floor window two buildings down.
In the visible area of the café, there was the man who spent hours upon hours reading by the window every day, lifting his head once in a while to check his surroundings before going back to his book, and the couple that had drama written all over them, since they managed to start a fight every time Ian saw them in there.
Usually, one of the women would storm off, with the other following right after, and the argument would continue until they disappeared from view down the street.
Suddenly, Ian's phone pinged and he checked it to see a text from Alex.
I'm on my way back, but I'm pretty sure the Connor thing is now a ticking bomb. I got asked about this in the press room backstage, managed to not say anything at all, but it caught me off guard, so who knows what they'll write.
A link to some gossip site followed a second later, with a photo of Emily and Connor at an outdoor café or a restaurant, with him standing and waving his hands and her crushed face and hunched shoulders.
The article—if one could even call it that—said nothing concrete, only offering some basic facts and a bunch of speculations about the apparent "unhappy reunion".
There was also another photo, with Emily rushing after Connor, and the similarity of the scene made him look up at the couple in the café he'd been watching earlier. The women were both still there, but as Ian watched, someone new entered the café, too, and joined the reading man at his table.
The newcomer was dressed in a hooded jacket, but there was something about him that put Ian on high alert.
Then, the man ran a hand through his hair, clearly frustrated by whatever the reading man said, and the hood slipped back.
Fuck it all to hell.
Connor Douglas in the flesh, right fucking there.
While Alex was on his way back home.
Ian turned fast at the quiet sound, only to see Edina coming down the stairs.
"He's asleep, and I wanted to—" She frowned. "What's wrong?"
"I'm not sure, but Alex is on his way back, so I want to go downstairs, just in case. Lock the door behind me and don't open for anyone but me or Alex. And even if you hear my voice, or his, ask us something that no one else should know before you let us in, okay?"
"Shouldn't we call the police?"
"There's nothing to report." Yet, he thought but didn't say, taking his gun from the safe in the nook of the living room.
He tried to call Alex, but it went straight to voicemail.
"It may be nothing, but I'm not taking any chances.
Alex wanted me to protect Boo above all, and you can help me with that by locking the door after me, okay?
I'll let him shout at me once we're all safely back in here. "
Edina ran a hand through her hair—same as Alex—before nodding.
"Okay. Be safe and bring my baby home. If I don't hear from either of you in fifteen minutes, I'm calling the cops."
"My boss, too. His number is on the card I gave you."
With that, Ian left and hurried down the stairs.
He tried dialing Alex's phone again, to no avail, so he did the next best thing.
He ran.