Chapter 12 #3
“Why don’t you go and have a nice, relaxing morning with Steven. I suspect you both could use a little grown-up attention. Of whatever kind,” she added when Myles’s eyes bugged a little. “Shelly is safe enough here, and maybe talking to someone less invested is just what she needs right now.”
“She can be—”
Tiffany squeezed his fingers. “You let me worry about her for just a few hours.”
“Lucky’s probably going to kill me for inconveniencing one of his guests.”
She laughed out loud. “I’m hardly a guest at this point, honey.”
“True story,” Lucky said from Myles’s side, having silently appeared there, out of nowhere. “Here’s your coffee and some scones this morning, Tiff. Anything else you need?”
“Do you think you could be a dear and run up and get my tablet from my room, Lucky?” She patted Shelly’s shoulder. “Once Emma tires of the attention, Shelly and I are going to write a story together.”
“About Mommy.” Shelly beamed at Myles. “So I can read it to her when she gets home.”
“Jesus,” Myles whispered, but he forced a smile onto his face for Shelly’s sake. “Maybe you can read it to me and Jet first?”
Shelly nodded, all enthusiasm and sunshine.
“Great.” If he didn’t leave now, she was going to see him collapse.
“Go,” Tiffany told him, releasing his hand with another powerful squeeze.
Lucky grabbed his hand as soon as she let go and pulled him away. He followed, thankful for Lucky’s lead, because navigating the maze of furniture was beyond him.
“You okay?” Lucky asked as they neared the front door.
“Just when I think I am…” Myles shuddered.
“What do you need?”
Myles stared at the floor, willing the patterned rug not to go blurry, and trying to find an answer for that question that wasn’t impossible.
“Sit.” Lucky pushed him into a nearby chair. “Wait. I’ll have breakfast and coffee for you and Steven in a jiff.”
Myles sat, at once grateful to be alone and missing Lucky’s hand in his.
By the time he got his erratic breathing and stinging eyes under control, Lucky was back with his usual basket.
“Go across,” Lucky said in an oddly soft voice for him.
“Shelly is in good hands. I’ll let Jet know where she is, but Tiff loves kids and comes here for the company, so I promise, it’s all good, okay? ”
“You sure?” He glanced over to where Shelly was chatting animatedly with Tiffany.
“Positive.”
Myles nodded as he stood. “Sorry about that, I—”
Lucky dropped the basket onto the chair to throw his arms around Myles. “Don’t be,” he said into Myles’s chest. The hug lasted barely long enough for Myles to register it before Lucky was stepping back again. “This is exactly why you’re here. Family.”
Myles glanced up at movement in the pass-through window.
Ozzy stood there, Tris by his side, gazing at him.
Family. “I’m not running away from them,” he said.
“No one thinks you are.” Lucky rubbed a hand up and down his arm. “I promise.”
Jet’s voice filtered through Myles’s fog, coming from the kitchen behind Ozzy.
Ozzy turned to look over his shoulder. He smiled, something Myles hadn’t seen him do, probably in a hundred years, and kissed Tris’s temple before leaving the window, saying something, presumably to Jet, that Myles couldn’t hear.
“You okay with that?” Lucky asked.
“Yeah.” Myles shook himself and picked up the basket. “Sure.”
“Myles?”
Myles forced his attention away from the now-empty pass-through. “I’m good. Really. This is good.”
“You two will get there, you know.”
“Maybe.” He hefted the basket. “Right now…”
Lucky grinned. “I’m sure he’s wondering where you are.”
“I sort of hope so,” Myles said. “Not that I like keeping him waiting, but I sort of hope he’s, you know…”
“I know.”
The thought of Steven just one street-crossing away, waiting for him, buoyed Myles partway out of his momentary puddle of feelings. By the time he was climbing the bookstore’s front steps, he could breathe again.
When the front door popped open, with almost an impatient squawk of hinges, he found himself smiling. If he was pushing the kids and their problems to the back of his mind, it wasn’t forever. Just for a moment. Just so he could breathe.
“Well, hello to you, too,” he told the building. “Coming out of our funk, are we?”
The door creaked on its hinges as he went through, then closed gently behind him.
“Who’s in a funk?” Steven asked from the main room where he was flattening a dusty old box.
“Not me,” Myles lied a little and pulled Steven into a bear hug. He breathed in Steven’s scent, nuzzled his nose in his hair and squeezed before letting out a sigh, and some of the unsettled chaos with it. “Not anymore.” He closed his eyes and rested his cheek against Steven’s hair.
“This is different,” Steven whispered against his ear. He nuzzled as he did, pushing Myles’s face away a bit to peck a few kisses down the side of his neck. That effortlessly, he took control of the entire situation while Myles melted into him.
“Kid-heavy morning,” Myles agreed into his hair.
“Everyone okay?”
“Yes. Well. They’re fine.”
“You’re not?”
Myles held him tighter. “I am now.” And wasn’t that a bit of a scary thought, that just a few minutes in Steven’s arms could right his entire world? Too scary to dwell on just then, maybe.
“You’re a bit late,” Steven said when he finally backed off, that crooked grin on his face. He knew exactly how knee-weak he’d made Myles.
“Sorry about that.” He glanced at the pile of books on the coffee table. “Are we not done with those romances yet? How many did you acquire?” He narrowed his eyes at Steven. “Please tell me you haven’t snuck any more in here. I don’t want to have to lie to your sister.”
Steven laughed and kissed his nose. “No. Only you’ve proven to be a very distracting helper. I don’t remember anyone ever explaining that inventory required so much make-out time.”
“Have to keep things from getting too boring. Plus, I need to rest my typing finger.” He held up his first finger.
“You could use more than one.”
“You have a lot of faith in me.”
Steven grinned the crooked, wonderful expression Myles was beginning to crave. “After all the weeks we’ve been working on it, I guess I thought your typing skills might have improved.”
“What you said about being distracted.” Myles bent to kiss him, and Steven allowed it, returned it, and before Myles thought to stop him, Steven dominated it.
When they finally parted, Myles found himself less off-balance, even humming along with the faint strains of a half-remembered Lionel Richie song.
He brought their breakfast to the table where Steven had piled the books and carefully shoved a stack of the dusty paperbacks aside with the basket, then took out their coffee cups, holding Steven’s just out of reach.
“What?”
“Sit,” Myles demanded.
“I’ll eat while I work.”
“Not how this works.” He pointed at the other chair. “Sit.”
“You know I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself.”
“Yes.” He grinned as Steven sat, and he handed over the coveted coffee. “However, you do have a tendency to get sidetracked. Your diet is abysmal.”
“It is not.”
“You forget.” Myles handed over one of the Tupperware boxes from the basket. “I’ve been in your kitchen and seen what’s in your blue box.”
Steven made some appreciative noises as he peered into his container. “You’ve been talking to my sister, haven’t you.” He pulled out the scone, egg and cheese sandwich. “I love these.”
“She may have told me, when she was picking up her coffee this morning, that you ate the ends of three boxes of cereal for supper last night.”
“Waste not, want not?”
“All in one bowl.”
“Saves dishes.”
“At the same time.”
“Saves time.”
“Froot Loops, shredded wheat and bran.”
“Zero out of ten. Do not recommend.” He sipped his coffee for a moment, then sighed. “It wasn’t my best ever idea. I really didn’t think adding a bit of water to supplement the milk would be that bad.”
Myles cringed. “Do you even know how to cook?”
“Coming from you?”
“I know I can’t cook. But I am taking lessons.”
“I put in a grocery order while I was waiting for you this morning. I’ll have my full complement of TV dinners stocked again by the end of the day.”
“You hate your arteries, don’t you.”
“At least I can avoid any further cereal debacles. And I’ll have you know I was only short because you’ve eaten three of them this week.”
“Which I regret.”
“They are not that bad.”
Myles handed him a container of fruit salad and a fork. “They are that bad. If you ate more of Kreed’s cooking, you would know.”
“Believe me, I tried, but this—” He waved his sandwich. “—is the closest I could manage to getting them to deliver.” He did accept the fruit, however, and made a decadent sound when he put some of it into his mouth. “How does he make fruit taste so good?”
“It’s the contrast to the watered-down cereal and salt bombs you’re used to. Eat it all.”
“Are you being the boss of me right now?”
“Is that what it will take to get you to eat?”
“No. I’ll eat.” He suited actions to words and took a huge bite of his sandwich. For a few minutes Myles had to suffer listening to him moan over how good it was.
“For the record,” he said in an effort to drown out the decadent sounds Steven was making, “I’m not being the boss of you, I’m being the guy who cares about you.”
Steven stopped chewing abruptly, staring at him like he’d just spouted state secrets. After a heartbeat, he chewed hard and swallowed. “You do?”
“Do you really have to ask that?”
“I mean, I know you’re interested. You’ve been here every day, but…”
“But what?”
Steven fiddled with the paper wrapper around his scone, not looking at Myles. “This is just a spring fling, right?”
“It was.” Myles put his own food down.
“Was? Has it changed?”
“It’s past the twenty-first of June, so technically, this is summer now.”
“But you’re still leaving in two weeks. Which I knew,” he said hastily, finally looking up. “So don’t worry. I knew that going in.”
“That was the plan,” Myles said.
“And now?”
“What would you say if I told you I was thinking of staying longer?”