Chapter Twelve
Stone
Too late to back out now.
After a restless night at Payden’s, during which it had been my turn to lay awake most of the night being thinky and going over plans in my head, we sat outside a house with a lawn full of flowers and an assortment of garden gnomes.
At least the fence was wooden instead of white, with hanging baskets of blue and yellow flowers adoring the porch, where his parents were already waiting.
Shit.
Yeah, no chance of telling him to turn around at this point.
There was nothing left to do but reach for the door handle and accept my fate.
I prepared myself as best as I could for what I was certain I’d hear, What makes you think you’re good enough for our son?
How do you expect to take care of him when you couldn’t take care of yourself?
Both were fair questions. Both of which I laid awake repeatedly asking myself just last night.
I doubted my answers were going to be good enough, but they were the truth which was all I had.
Payden had insisted that we get up extra early this morning to get new jeans and a shirt that didn’t have metal bands all over it, which I refused to let him pay for, even if it took every crumpled bill I had left on me after the unicorn castle I’d surprised him with at the last toy store of our trip.
I sat on the floor last night and built it, too, so we could play with it while we got settled after our vacation.
There was just no way I could leave it there, not when I knew the moment I laid eyes on it that it belonged to him.
Seeing those other Bigs spoiling the hell out of their littles had left me feeling lower than dogshit, especially after Payden had to put my new phone on his bill. Even if it wasn’t rational, since neither the trip, nor having a little in the first place, had been part of my five-year plan.
I’d never had a plan. Ever. For anything.
And now that was going to show.
“Stone?”
Payden’s voice sounded cautious, scared, like he was afraid I was going to take off running down the road and leave him there to face his parents alone.
No chance in hell, but I did need to reassure him of that, because there was real sadness in his voice now.
“We um, have to get out.”
“I know little unicorn,” I said, covering his hand with mine and keeping it there as I swiveled to face him.
As soon as our eyes met, he looked away, so I framed his face with my hands and gently raised his head until our eyes were level again.
“I’m just afraid of messing this up for us,” I told him.
“Sweetheart, you know there is a very real chance that they are not going to like me, right? And that your dad might order me to stay the hell away from you, which he’d be in his rights to do, so if he asks me to leave, I’m gonna go, okay, and I don’t want you to follow me.
I’ll go back to the apartment, I promise.
But your folks will want to hear about your trip.
They’ll want to talk to you and make sure you’re okay, and I doubt they’ll like you leaving before they can see for themselves. ”
“No.”
Screech.
Wait. That wasn’t the way this was supposed to go. “W-what?”
“No,” He repeated, covering my hands with his now.
“They are going to love you. No one is going to ask you to leave, and no way in hell would I let you walk all the way home after bringing you here if they did. You’re my Daddy.
For the first time in my life, I got to pick, and I picked good!
I didn’t wait around to see who decided to take a liking to me.
I found you and I don’t want to let you go. ”
“Aw, little uni, I’m not asking you to. I just want to start off on the right foot with your parents.”
“Then we’d better go because Mom’s starting to get antsy, and she’s waiting on the bottom step now instead of the porch the way she used to do when one of my dates brought me home late after she’d expressly told him what time to have me back here.”
Oh shit. Well, that wasn’t good. I was getting off to the wrong start already. Go Stone. That should have been the whole damned mantra for my old band and the theme song too. Getting off on the wrong foot. Every damned time. Never failed.
Okay. I was getting spun out, which wasn’t going to help matters either.
“Then we’d better not keep her waiting any longer than we already have,” I said, kissing him on the nose. “I love you, my sweet unicorn bestie.”
“I love you too, my Daddy and unicorn bestie until the end of time.”
The end of my time might very well lie on the other side of that door, but I kissed him again, on the lips this time, and got out before I could talk myself out of moving.
He scrambled out the other side and met me in front of the car, grabbed my hand, and held it in a death grip as we headed up the walk to where his mother waited.
I could certainly see where he got his smaller stature and delicate looks from.
Even standing on the bottom step, the top of his mother’s head barely came up to my shoulder, whereas his father looked imposing from where he stood on the porch, arms crossed as he leaned against a pillar, appraising me.
“Mom, Dad, this is Stone,” Payden said as soon as we reached them, eager to get the introductions out of the way. “And Stone, these are my parents, Callen and Elise…oof.”
He was immediately folded into a hug, not that he let go of my hand so I could shuffle so much as an inch away from his side while she clung to him before she stepped back to study his face.
“Well, you certainly look happier than when you left, and he looks tamer than he did in all the videos I saw of him up on stage,” his mother declared before finally letting him go and turning to face me. “And bigger too.”
“Um, it’s nice to meet you, ma’am,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck and feeling my face heat up. “Those videos are from years ago. Sorry you had to see all of that.”
“All of what?” she asked, lips twitching like she was fighting back a smile, then she tsked and glanced up at her husband.
“The strutting, the cocky smirk, or that teasing wink when you signaled out someone in the crowd? Please, after some of the shows we went to when we were younger than Payden is now, I was almost disappointed until I saw your stage dives. Now those were impressive.”
“Umm, thanks?” I said, completely thrown off guard now.
“No, thank you,” she said, before hugging me so tight that for a moment, I did fear a bit of fluff and stuffing was going to come tumbling out of my ear.
“You brought him home looking way happier than when he left, and you didn’t let him spend his whole vacation brooding over a weasel who didn’t deserve him. ”
Then she lowered her voice, and the next words she spoke sent a shiver down my spine.
“You make sure to keep it there too, or you won’t like the mama bear who shows up on your doorstep, because I guarantee it will be claws, not hugs, I greet you with.”
Oh shit.
That was a shovel talk, wasn’t it? Or did I have to wait for the threat to involve actually putting me in the ground?
When she let go, a shadow loomed over me, and I had just enough time to get my hand out to shake his father’s before appearing rude.
His lips were smiling, but his eyes said to take whatever his wife had just threatened me with and multiply it by levels of pain that would rival mistiming one of those stage dives she’d just brought up.
Yeah, fucking this up was not an option.
“It’s nice to meet you too, sir,” I said, shaking his hand firmly.
“It's such a beautiful day out that we thought we’d eat on the deck while we got to know one another,” Elise said.
“I’m afraid I might have overdone it a bit, but we’ve been eager to hear about Payden’s first train ride.
It was all he could talk about before he left, and our brief phone calls weren’t enough to fill in the details. ”
She shot him a pointed look when she said it, and he grinned and got that sassy look on his face I was coming to know rather well.
“Sorry, Mom,” he declared, which I knew really meant sorry not sorry. “There were so many activities that by the time we’d finished fitting as many into our day as we possibly could, I was worn out and ready to fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.”
“Uh-huh, save it, mister, and get your butt inside,” she tsked, shaking her head at him.
Yet the smile never left her face, like she was not only used to his antics but also fond of them and missed them when he wasn’t around being his exuberant self. Was that what a parent’s love looked like? If so, then it was easy to see why he was close to them.
“Whoa, is this all of you?” I asked Payden as we stepped inside a foyer lined with photographs.
I hoped we weren’t in a rush to get to the meal, because I couldn't take my eyes off what I saw proudly displayed there.
In one image, Payden stood in a leaf pile, a stick held aloft in his hand, pointed at a nearby tree like he was commanding the rest of the leaves to come down and join their friends on the ground.
In another, he sat in a bright green plastic VW Bug with stickers all over it, gripping the wheel, the slight blur around his feet suggesting he’d been making it move as fast as possible.
In another, just his tiny head and face peeked out from beneath the blankets as he lay tucked under his castle bed, the blankets twisted up and dangling over the side, like he’d crawled out of it and decided to sleep in the moat.
“Pretty much,” Payden admitted.
He had a hold of my hand again.
“Some of them are me and my cousins.”
“What in the world?” I asked, cocking my head to look at one of Payden’s arms windmilling, a bag with what looked to be half a loaf of bread in one hand, and a sliver of bread in the other, running, “Are you being chased by a goose?”