Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
COSIMO
“How long was it before I stopped royally fucking up with you all the time?”
Cosimo startled, looking down at his husband who had his head pillowed on his thigh. Emmett had been in the living room with a pillow mostly over his face when Cosimo had gotten home. It was an early day for him which was both unexpected and incredibly welcome.
Home was different now. Not better. Not worse. But being there as much as he could to settle into whatever their new routine was becoming felt…important, he supposed. He wasn’t used to seeing Emmett like this, though.
He’d whispered he had a headache and crawled up to Cosimo the moment he sat down, curling against him.
Seeing him like this was rare, and he wondered if it was more than just work stress.
He was also surprised Miles wasn’t there taking care of him, but after a long beat of silence, Emmett simply said that Miles was on a long meeting with his advisor and would join them when he was done.
That had been an hour ago, and Emmett hadn’t spoken again until that question.
“I don’t know what you mean, amore.”
Emmett looked up at him. “I know I fucked up a lot when we first, you know, started exploring what you need. I didn’t get it right much. Not at first.”
Ah.
“What happened?”
“I hurt him. I didn’t mean to. But he’s settled in here so well I think I forgot that he’s going to need way more than you ever did. Battling his childhood demons is bad enough, but everything Selene put him through…”
Cosimo stiffened. He was struggling worse than he ever had with her behavior.
He could no longer deny the truth. He was in love with Miles.
For him, it always happened both quick and sudden.
He woke up several days before with a small gasp, looking down at Miles who had his face mashed against Cosimo’s chest, and that was the moment he knew: this was going to be another part of their forever.
And that made what Selene did feel more intense and more powerful. Their child, the daughter they’d created and raised, had turned into such a monster she caused lasting trauma in a man they’d fallen for. How did he reconcile that?
It felt a bit like the documentaries Emmett was always watching about people who didn’t realize they were living with serial killers until they were caught. How do you love a killer? Most of them never had answers.
And neither did he.
She would always be his daughter, and he would never, ever stop hoping that she’d do better, but how could he cross that divide now knowing what she did?
“I found him on the beach,” Emmett went on, dragging Cosimo from his internal crisis. “He was talking to one of his best friends, thinking that my short tone meant I was getting tired of him.”
“You were short with him?” Cosimo asked, fighting off a smile but failing. That must have gutted his poor husband. He was only ever like that when he was engrossed in a work problem, and he always felt like shit about it after. Even with Cosimo who didn’t give two flying fucks about Emmett’s tone.
“Stop,” Emmett said, covering his face and rolling toward Cosimo’s stomach. “It was awful.”
“I’m sure it was nothing.” He ran soothing fingers through the man’s hair. “Miles is sensitive.”
Emmett groaned. “I know. And I didn’t even think about that when he was talking to me. I just wanted to finish what I was doing, and he totally thought I was going to leave him?—”
“Amore. My love,” Cosimo said. He wasn’t used to seeing Emmett like this.
He stroked a touch down his temple and along his jaw until Emmett finally opened his eyes again.
“All of us—all three of us—are going to fuck up from time to time. You weren’t as bad as you seem to think you were when we first started exploring the things I needed.
Most of the time, when I would be affected, it was because I wasn’t listening to myself. It wasn’t you.”
“Sometimes it was me,” Emmett muttered.
Cosimo chuckled. “Okay, yes. Sometimes it was you, and look. I’m still here.”
“I don’t want to lose him because I was being careless. He literally thought about fleeing to his friend’s house before I could break it off.”
“He’s going to need us to be more careful,” Cosimo told him. “You get that. I get that. And if anyone is going to screw that to high heaven, it’s going to be me. Not you.”
Emmett let out a small sigh. “I’m his Daddy. I’m this big, important role. A title, you know? That comes with more responsibility than just a partner.”
Cosimo wondered if maybe he should be insulted, but he knew his husband wasn’t implying that his role was any less important to Miles. Just different, the way they all needed. And he understood. It was the same way he felt at work most days.
He was just a man. A flawed, tired, aging man who had to play God several times a week in hopes of repairing broken hearts in tiny chests and preventing parents from feeling the worst pain a human could feel.
In the quiet darkness of his bedroom at night, that weight was suffocating. It was unbearable.
But with his husband, he could handle it. He could be strong when he needed to be strong, because Emmett allowed him to let go any time it was getting to be too much.
And he realized then he could be that for Emmett. Not in the same ways, but he’d find a way to figure it out. He stroked a touch over Emmett’s neck and looked down at him.
“I think you should go to the bedroom.”
Emmett blinked at him.
“Let me help you with the stress.”
Sucking in a breath, Emmett opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Yeah. Okay.”
“I’m going to go check on Miles. Is he in his room?”
Emmett looked a little torn. “Pool house. He said he’s only going to use it for when he needs space to write or speak to his advisor.”
Cosimo didn’t think that was the crisis Emmett did, but he understood his husband’s worry. Smiling just a little, he urged Emmett to sit up, then he kissed him long and slow and very, very thorough.
“Get yourself started,” he murmured. “Get slick for me. Get out whatever toy you want me to make you see God with.”
Emmett groaned and kissed him harder, then slipped off the couch and hurried out of the room.
Cosimo would have laughed if he hadn’t felt so terrible.
Obviously, this was just one drop in the bucket of things stressing him out, and Cosimo hadn’t noticed how bad it was getting.
He hadn’t realized that Emmett might bend a little under the weight of his new role in their marriage.
Yes, it was what he’d always wanted, but as Emmett had learned very early on, wanting and having were two very different things.
He made his way outside. The day was hot and humid with fat clouds hanging out over the water. It promised another storm which he didn’t mind. It meant keeping his men close to him tonight. It meant playing protector a bit because neither one of them particularly liked storms.
He enjoyed being that for them.
He realized having Miles around had changed him.
He didn’t need to twist himself into uncomfortable shapes for Emmett anymore, and while he would never regret doing that for the man he loved, watching Emmett get what he needed without someone having to compromise themselves finally gave him the feeling that they were doing something right.
Reaching the pool house, Cosimo knocked softly, then poked his head in. Miles was on the bed with his laptop, and it was obvious he hadn’t heard him or noticed the door opening. For a moment, Cosimo thought about turning around and leaving, but then he heard a familiar voice coming from the screen.
It was not Miles’s advisor.
“…and I don’t know why I did. I was just so angry.” It was Selene. “At them. At you. I don’t know.”
His heart started skittering around in his chest. This sounded like an apology.
Miles sighed. “I mean, if anyone gets trauma, you know it’s me. But I don’t know why I was such an easy target. Or why you seemed to enjoy it so much.”
There was another long beat of silence, then she said, “I didn’t. It felt good for a second, you know? Like this rush of power? Then I felt like shit. I didn’t love you.”
Cosimo saw anguish flood across Miles’s face, but it wasn’t heartbreak. It was more like having a painful truth confirmed.
“I know you didn’t.”
“You were easy. You stuck around and let me get away with my bullshit. You didn’t try to use guilt to stop me from being that way. Even my dads…you know…they were always trying to make me see it their way.”
Miles let out a bitter laugh. “I would have killed for that family when I was little. And you treated them like they were freaks.”
“It was embarrassing, okay? Like, you know me, Miles. You know I’m not ashamed of who they are. But trying to explain that a man gave birth to you to a bunch of middle school kids…?”
Cosimo winced. He understood, but he also knew that it left Emmett emotionally bleeding out every time Selene pretended to be adopted.
“…not fair to them,” Miles was saying when Cosimo tuned back in. “They love you so fucking much.”
“They love you more now.”
Miles laughed. “They love me different.”
God, she knew. Had he told her? Or had she figured it out?
“Yeah. I mean, thank God because then that would be really disgusting.” She was quiet for a beat. “Do you think they’d forgive me?”
At that, Miles looked up at him and met his gaze. He’d known. He’d known Cosimo was there the whole time. “That’s up to them. But you’ll never know until you try.”
“You forgave me,” she said.
Miles laughed and shook his head. “I’m nicer than them. Like you said, I’m a pushover?—”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“You did. And I can be. I get it. I’m a traumatized people pleaser with a mountain of childhood trauma and an abusive relationship to heal from. I’ll get better.” He bit his lip, then touched his chin with his fingers and signed, ‘Thank you.’
“For what?”
“I guess for being with me, because without you, I wouldn’t have met them.”