Epilogue
Ghost
Three weeks after I handed over a fat check for our new place, we were finally able to move in. Sure, we could have moved in sooner, but I wanted to make sure the place was up to standard.
I expected it to be easier than it was, but the longer I was with Pip, the higher my standards got. I wanted him to have everything. Absolutely all of it.
“Are you sure the kids are happy with their new space? Harlod Jr. needs indirect sunlight. Too much will fry his delicate vines,” Rett asked nervously as we rode up in the elevator.
“He loves it. Told me himself.” I confirmed.
He squinted all suspicious-like. “What about Hercules and Spike?”
I wondered if there would ever come a time when I didn’t think he was the most adorable thing I’d ever seen. “You can see for yourself in about five minutes.”
“It’s about time,” Rett murmured.
I laughed under my breath. Definitely not.
“It’s not funny, Hiro,” Rett lamented. “You’ve kept me out of that room since you bought the place. I’ve never even seen it!”
He loved the suspense, and he loved pretending he didn’t. Mm-hmm, I got his number.
“You like the rest of the place, though, don’t you? Been all over it.”
“Don’t tell Kieran this, but I think our place is even nicer than his.” He confirmed. “Plus, I’m not afraid to touch anything.”
I laughed. After Pip healed up from his head wound, I took him out shopping so we could decorate the place together. He was shy at first, walking around like a kid in a candy store but not saying a word. I’d point at something I’d see him staring at, and he’d shrug and say, “If you like it.”
Blasphemy.
The stuff he stared at most? Bookshelves.
I mean, I knew he was a little pipgeek, but in the last month we’d been living together, he’d read more books than I had in my entire life. No wonder he needed glasses. Those peepers be worn out.
I saw him scrolling some app with a bunch of webcomics on it and asked him which one he was reading. Apparently, he’d started like a hundred but only read so far because, after a certain chapter, you have to pay.
The audacity.
So I hooked my credit card up to his account and told him to start downloading. He refused at first, but after I convinced him to get one… well, it was a gateway drug.
Turned out Kieran was right. Rett was an addict.
He was just addicted to books, not drugs.
Amen.
The elevator dinged, and we got out at the end of the hall. Partway to the door, I noticed he wasn’t beside me anymore and glanced over my shoulder. He was standing there in the middle of the hall with the purple backpack over his shoulders.
“Pip?” I called, turning back.
His chest rose and fell with a deep breath as his hands wrung in front of him.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, folding his worrying hands into mine.
“Thank you,” he burst out. My lips parted to ask what for, but his words just kept on flowing. “Thank you for helping me in that alley two years ago. Thank you for pulling me out of that box and nursing me back to health.”
“Pip, I—”
“Let me say this, Hiro.”
I nodded.
“I really love our new place and all the things you let me put inside it. I’m grateful to be seeing a doctor now, and even though I have a long way to go before I’m feeling better, I’m grateful for the chance.
My shoes are comfortable. My clothes are soft.
And I can see in so much detail. You changed my whole life, Hiro.
You made it better than I could have ever hoped. ”
Listen, we don’t cry here. Hell no.
“But I wanted to tell you that, above all the things you’ve been able to buy, what I am grateful for most are the things you’ve given me for free. Love. Safety. A place to belong. Thank you for living for me. For us.”
Anyone got a tissue?
Forget it, I’ll use him.
With a gruff sound, I yanked him off his feet and into my arms, squishing him against me, and rubbed my damp eyes against his T-shirt. After sniffling and another swipe, I raised my head. “You know how I feel about crying.”
“Does that mean you liked what I said?”
“If I liked it any more, it would be indecent.”
He smiled.
He even looked cute blurry.
“I really mean it,” he whispered.
I crushed him to me again, banding my arms around him as tight as I dared while swaying a little on my feet.
Against his ear, I whispered, “I don’t read all those books like you.
I’m not good with words or saying how I feel.
Hell, I ran when we met. But it didn’t matter how far I ran or how close to death I got. ”
Rett gasped and pulled back, balancing his hands on my shoulders. “What?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, remembering the mission I’d left him for. I was so fucked up about it that I was sloppy and nearly died. “Because it taught me something.”
“What did it teach you?” he asked softly.
“That maybe I wasn’t born to die after all. I was born to live. With you.”
His chin wobbled. “That’s better than anything I’ve ever read in a book.”
“Let’s go home,” I whispered, pressing a soft kiss to his lips.
He nodded, and I tossed him over my shoulder, anchoring my hand right on his jean-covered ass.
“Hiro!”
“I’ve got to carry you over the threshold. It’s tradition.”
“We’ve been in there a thousand times,” he pointed out.
“This is different. This time it’s to stay.”
At the door, I flipped him into a bridal-style hold and unlocked the deadbolt. “You ready?”
He nodded.
I went into our new home, across the small entryway where Rett put racks for shoes and hooks for our jackets, to step into the large great room with a solid wall of windows.
The place was warm and homey, not at all bare like my last place.
The huge sectional in the center of the room looked like a cloud and had way too many pillows.
There were throw blankets on the back and one on the ottoman from when we were snuggled up the previous night.
The coffee table in the middle was the same material as the sectional, and when you pushed it close, it turned the whole thing into a bed. A large console sat across from it, and with one click of a button, the TV would rise out of the top.
There was a braided rug that, according to Pip, was in the colors of summer. There was art on the walls, picture frames he wanted to fill, and some floating shelves for knick-knacks that didn’t match or make any sense. But he loved them, and that was all that mattered.
“Welcome home,” he said, staring at the place we’d built.
I carried him into the kitchen and set him on the huge white marble island so I could open the fridge disguised behind light wooden cabinet doors to pull out a bottle of champagne.
“You can’t be drinking on your meds,” I told him. “But a couple sips won’t hurt.”
The cork flew up into the ceiling. I nearly lost an eye, and the bubbly fizzed out and dripped all over the floor. We didn’t bother with glasses, just drank it right from the bottle.
“Can I see my surprise now?” he asked.
“Only if you promise not to love it more than you love me,” I bargained.
“That’s impossible.”
After lifting him off the island, I threaded our fingers and tugged him down the hall to a door that had remained closed since the moment I’d written the check.
I pulled the key from my pocket. “You wanna do the honors?”
He shook his head. “You do it.”
I slid the key into the lock and turned the handle, pausing one last time to look over my shoulder.
“Welcome home, baby,” I said, echoing his words from before, and swung the door in.
I expected him to barge right in, but he didn’t do that.
He froze right there in the doorway, eyes moving around the room as though he couldn’t quite comprehend what he saw. And then his eyes moved to me, and he burst into tears.
Well, that wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for.
“Pip…”
He slammed into me, arms winding around my waist as he cried into my shirt. I patted his back as worry squirmed through me. He hates it.
“I can take it all out,” I said, just wanting to stop the tears.
Rett gasped and pulled away. His glasses were fogged up and tear-stained, and I watched as he slid his hands beneath them to rub his eyes.
“You made this for me?” he asked, voice watery.
“A library for my little pipgeek.”
His chin wobbled again, but he stopped it and walked farther into the room. “Hiro, you built me a library,” he said, voice slightly awed as he wandered over to the wall of light wooden bookshelves, which were only half full.
“I picked out some books. Brought some of yours over here already. But I figured you could fill the rest with whatever you wanted.”
“Harold Jr.,” Pip called, reaching up to one of the shelves where the pothos was perched on a shelf, his vines and leaves draping down to the ledge below it. “This is a perfect spot.”
“I’m a good dad.”
His fingers trailed along the wood, and he stopped in front of the large rectangular fish tank that I had to reinforce the entire unit to hold.
“Ghost, Jr.!” he exclaimed, turning back to look at me in shock. “I thought he was still at Neon Reef.”
“I had Haz bring him over.”
Light filtered softly through the large framed windows as the gray sky beyond them spattered them with rain.
I watched Pip rise to his tiptoes to study the tank Haz had filled with plants, rock, and substrate.
The second Rett appeared, Ghost Jr. came out from between the plants, his fins and tail waggling all around in excitement.
“Hi, Ghost Jr., I’m so glad you’re home. You look so pretty in your new home. I hope you like it.”
After a few more moments of talking to my newest son and namesake, Rett turned to the shelves on the other side where my other sons, Hercules and Spike, now resided.
“This is the perfect spot for them too! They’ll get a little more sun than Harold Jr.,” he said, turning to face the windows, which had new plants on the windowsill and white curtains on each side.
Under his feet was a carpet in red and gold, something I’d picked because it was soft. He bent and fingered the fringe before seeing the ghost plush perched beside a picture of yours truly.
Couldn’t have him forgetting to whom he belongs.