Chapter 9 The Mouse Hole #3
“You know you ask me that about once every two or three months, and the answer never changes. The only thing I regret is not marrying you sooner.”
Zane felt like someone had dropkicked his heart. Asa was so casually romantic, so devastatingly convicted in every choice he made.
“Even if I’m pathetic forever?”
Asa frowned. “Who are you calling pathetic? If anyone else dared say that about you, this would turn into a conjugal visit and we’d be having this conversation with a pane of glass between us. You’re not pathetic. You’re soft.”
Zane scoffed. “How is that different?”
“Nobody wants their kids to grow up hard, cruel, or worse, indifferent,” Asa said. “Avi and I, we’re the mistakes. Not you. Not Felix. You’re the reason Oscar and West will grow up knowing they have parents who love them. Avi and I have to be intentional about showing love.”
“You mean you have to fake it.”
Asa studied him. His eyes didn’t flash with anger or insult, just a quiet kind of patience Zane still wasn’t used to. “Do you think I’m faking this?”
Zane deflated, gaze darting away. “No. Not really. I just know it doesn’t feel the same for you.”
“But isn’t this better?” Asa asked softly.
Zane frowned. “How do you mean?”
“I mean, I wake up every day and choose to love you. I choose to love Felix. I choose to love the boys. I have to be intentional with my actions because this stuff doesn’t come easy to me. It’s the same with August. Would you say he doesn’t love Lucas? Or their kids?”
Zane gave a jerky shake of his head, fixating on the cartoonish chair leg of the tiny table beside them. “No.”
“Don’t we have an amazing life?” Asa asked.
Zane hesitated, his chest rising and falling against Asa’s. He could feel the slow thud of Asa’s heart beneath him, steady, deliberate, the kind of rhythm you built a life around.
Tears threatened again as Zane nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
Asa sighed, stroking his cheek with his thumb.
“Don’t apologize, Lois. I’ll say it every day if that’s what you need from me.
But you have to know by now I didn’t just ‘get stuck’ with you.
I don’t secretly wish for a different life.
I don’t secretly wish for a different person…
or people, I guess. I wake up every fucking day smug because I have a life most people would kill for.
And a big part of that—no, the biggest part of that—is you.
Not Felix, not the boys…Hell, not even Avi. But you.”
He dipped his head, connecting their lips. Zane opened for him immediately, letting Asa consume him for a moment, soaking in the attention, the low simmer of heat pooling in his belly. It wasn’t going anywhere. They didn’t have the time or even the inclination. Zane was tired in his bones.
Maybe later—when the house was quiet, when Felix’s warmth pressed against his front, when exhaustion blurred the edges of everything—then Asa would use him. Carefully. Patiently. Like someone needing to prove something with more than words Zane refused to believe.
He was always so careful then, like he didn’t want to disturb him but couldn’t wait for a better time.
Like he just had to be inside him right then.
He wasn’t apologetic about it. While their public vows had been simple, Zane had promised Asa years ago that he could always take what he wanted, that even if he said no, Asa didn’t have to stop.
They had a safeword for a reason, but it was Asa who used it more often than Zane ever had.
There was nothing he wouldn’t let Asa do to him.
No lengths he wouldn’t go to please him.
He’d push his body past its limits a thousand times over if it made him happy.
He’d probably let Asa run him over with a car if he just asked in that tone, the one that left no room for argument, the one that made Zane feel safe and loved and protected.
Asa brushed a hand down Zane’s spine, grounding him again. The attic was quiet except for the sound of their breathing, the world outside a distant hum. For a moment, he wanted to stay like this forever.
Then his comm crackled in his ear, the sharp sound splintering the silence, loud enough to startle them both.
“Thomas is calling it,” Calliope’s voice came, low and wry but edged with something grim. “She doesn’t have much fight left in her. We’re ready for you in the shed.”
Asa exhaled through his nose, the sound more sigh than growl. “Copy that,” he said, voice steady even as his hand lingered at the back of Zane’s neck.
Zane blinked, slow and heavy, like the words had to swim through fog to reach him. “This doesn’t feel real.”
“I know, baby.” Asa kissed his forehead.
He helped Zane sit up, smoothing the wrinkles in his costume, the motions practiced and tender.
For one heartbeat more, they stayed there—two silhouettes in a secret mouse hole—before Asa reached for the latch.
The light from the hallway spilled in, thin and cold, chasing away the warmth they’d made.
Before they left, Asa gave him another soul-searing kiss. “It’s almost over now.”
Zane wanted to believe him but he wasn’t sure he could until he saw her dead with his own eyes.