Chapter 32
Jeremiah
The popcorn bowl sat empty on the coffee table, congealing butter pooled at the bottom, while the credits rolled on Moana.
I stretched, preparing to extract myself from the tiny human curled in my lap and head home.
My legs had gone slightly numb from sitting in the same position for nearly two hours, and I could feel that familiar ache in my lower back that came from being too tall for most furniture.
“Well,” I said, starting to shift forward, “I should probably—”
“No!” Debbie’s arms clamped around my waist with surprising strength for someone who’d been half asleep moments before. “You can’t go!”
“Button, Willie Wee needs to go home,” Theo said gently, but I could hear the exhaustion in his voice, too. It had been a long day for all of us.
“But I want you both to tuck me in,” she said, her voice taking on that particular wheedling tone that five-year-olds had perfected over generations, the one that made it clear just how well trained we’d become to her commands. “Please? Just tonight?”
I looked over at Theo, who was running a hand through his hair with the expression of a man trying to calculate whether this was a reasonable request or the beginning of a slippery slope toward complete chaos.
“Debbie,” he started, but she wasn’t finished making her case.
“I never get both my daddies to tuck me in,” she said, and the casual way she said “both my daddies” hit me like a physical blow to the chest.
Theo’s eyes widened, and I watched him swallow hard.
We stared at each other over her head, and I could see the same mixture of panic and overwhelming tenderness that I was feeling reflected in his expression.
Finally, he nodded.
Just once, barely perceptible, but it was enough.
“Okay, Button,” he said softly. “But just this once, and you need to go right to sleep.”
Debbie cheered and immediately launched herself at me, which was impressive considering she was already smothering my lap. “Will you carry me? Like a princess?”
“Of course, m’lady,” I said, scooping her up while she giggled. She was getting bigger—five-year-olds weighed more than they looked—but she still felt small and precious in my arms.
As we stepped inside her bedroom, I realized it was the first time I’d been inside her personal space.
The room was exactly what one might expect from a little girl who’d been given free rein to decorate: pink walls were covered in drawings of dragons and unicorns, a bookshelf overflowed with picture books, and stuffed animals were arranged with the careful precision of someone who had very strong opinions about where Sir Hornsworth belonged in relation to her collection of rainbow ponies.
She insisted on changing into her favorite pajamas—the ones with dinosaurs riding bicycles—and brushing her teeth while both Theo and I stood in the bathroom doorway like nervous bodyguards.
“You have to stay until I fall asleep,” she informed us as we tucked her into her twin bed. “Both of you.”
“Debbie, this bed is barely big enough for you,” Theo pointed out reasonably. “And Willie Wee is kind of a big boy.”
“Hey!” I pretended to protest.
“You can fit,” she said with the absolute confidence of someone who’d clearly thought this through. “Daddy on that side, Willie Wee on this side, and me in the middle.”
Theo and I exchanged another look.
The bed was definitely not designed for three people, especially when one of them was six-foot-two and built like a professional athlete.
But the hope-filled expression on Debbie’s face was impossible to resist.
“All right,” I said with a sigh. “But if I fall out and break something, your daddy will have to explain it to the emergency room doctors.”
She giggled again and pulled my hand until I moved forward.
I carefully lowered myself onto the narrow strip of mattress on Debbie’s right side, immediately realizing that this was going to be an exercise in creative geometry.
My feet hung off the end of the bed, and I had to angle my body sideways to avoid taking up the entire thing.
Theo settled on the other side with considerably more grace, though I noticed he was clinging to the edge of the mattress with the desperation of someone trying not to fall into a tiny, very crowded canyon.
“There,” Debbie said with satisfaction, snuggling between us. “Now tell me the story about the dragon princess.”
“Which dragon princess story?” Theo asked, automatically shifting into his bedtime-story voice.
“The one where she saves the library from the mean wizard.”
I felt rather than saw Theo smile in the night-light’s glow. This was clearly a well-established favorite.
“Once upon a time,” he began, his voice soft and rhythmic, “there was a brave dragon princess who lived in a castle made entirely of books . . .”
As he spoke, his hushed tones between a whisper and mumble, I found myself stroking Debbie’s hair, the silky strands slipping through my fingers as her breathing gradually slowed and deepened.
The story was clearly one he’d told her many times—something about a princess who could breathe rainbow fire and whose best friend was a talking bookworm named Professor Peapod Greenbeaningham.
Theo’s voice grew softer as the story progressed, and I could feel Debbie’s tiny body relaxing between us. Her breathing became deep and even, punctuated by the occasional soft sigh that indicated she was well on her way to sleep.
“And the dragon princess and Professor Greenbeaningham lived happily ever after in their library castle, where every book had a happy ending,” Theo whispered.
“The end,” Debbie mumbled, then turned toward me and burrowed her face in my shoulder.
We lay there in the quiet darkness, listening to her breathe, neither of us wanting to move and risk waking her. My arm was starting to go numb, and I was pretty sure Theo was going to have permanent indentations from the mattress edge, but I wouldn’t have moved for anything.
This was what family felt like, I realized.
It wasn’t just the big moments or vacations or celebrations, but this—lying in a too-small bed, listening to a child breathe, feeling like every uncomfortable, awkward, perfect moment was exactly where I belonged.
Where we belonged.
After what felt like forever, Theo carefully extracted himself from the bed, moving with the stealth of a ninja who’d had years of practice navigating sleeping children.
I followed his lead, carefully moving Debbie’s head from my shoulder to her pillow before easing myself up and off the mattress with pretzel-like dexterity that would have made a Cirque du Soleil performer proud.
We crept out of her room, Theo closing her door behind him, and stood in the hallway, both of us probably looking like we’d just completed some kind of elaborate heist.
“Well,” Theo whispered, “that was . . .”
“Heaven,” I finished, and meant it with every fiber of my being.
He smiled, and in the dim light from the hallway, I saw the same contentment in his expression that I was feeling.
“She called us both her daddies,” he said quietly.
“Yeah, I heard that, too.” I wasn’t sure how Theo would react to that.
I mean, neither of us went there. That was all Debbie.
And she was five. We certainly couldn’t be held to her unattainable standard, not at this point in our relationship—if you could even call something so young a word that implied so much.
Hell, I didn’t even know what to call us.
But she had.
My daddies.
I gulped down my terror and asked, “How do you feel about that?”
He thought for a moment and smiled. “I like the sound of it. I’d hoped . . . someday . . . someone might . . . you know?”
“For a man whose life work is immersed in words, you sure struggle with yours.”
He chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Fine then. Your turn, big boy. How does being called a little girl’s daddy make you feel?”
Now it was my turn to retreat into my thoughts, to struggle with the weight of that word and everything it implied, about responsibility and commitment and the terrifyingly wonderful prospect of being someone’s father.
“Honored,” I said finally. “Petrified, but my heart is full, and I feel . . . a little overwhelmed.”
Theo nodded thoughtfully. “You just summed up fatherhood.”
We stood there for a moment longer, just staring at each other in the quiet hallway, neither of us able to—or wanting to—move.
“I should probably actually go home now,” I said reluctantly. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but Theo had made it clear that it was too soon to stay at his house with Debbie sleeping at the other end of the hallway.
“Probably,” he agreed, but neither of us moved. The wiggle room of that word, rather than the definitive he’d used every other time we’d reached this bridge, made my breath catch.
“Okay, um, I’ll see you tomorrow?”
He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He just stared up at me for the longest moment ever—then leaned back against the wall and said, “Or . . .”
I raised a brow. “Or?”“You could stay. You have to feed Cuddles tomorrow morning anyway. It would be a lot more convenient to be here.”
“Right . . . for the dog.”
He grinned. “Exactly. It’s for the dog.”
“Do you want me to sleep on the couch?”
Theo actually laughed at that. Then he leaned forward, planted a deep, sexy kiss on my mouth, and muttered, “I want you to sleep beside me . . . and inside me . . . if you can handle it.”
I nearly lost my balance.
Then I kissed him harder, deeper, with every ounce of desire I could muster. When we parted, breathless, I whispered, “After you, Daddy.”