Epilogue
Silas
Three Years Later
Tampa, Florida
“ W hen was the last time you checked the app?” Graham asks as I grab two more sandbags from my trunk.
“Two seconds ago. You wanna check yourself?”
“If we need to evacuate, I’d like to know as soon as possible.”
“It’s still optional,” I assure him. The path of the hurricane is pointed at Naples, well south of us. They’re under evacuation orders, but here by the bay, it’s only a flood watch. Hence the sandbags. I would have skipped them, but Graham wants to do this by the book.
It’s his first hurricane, not mine. He’s stocked the fridge and bought enough candles to burn down the house along with a comical amount of lube.
Fish, our one-eyed rescue Golden Doodle, named in honor of Graham’s celebrity crush and the guy who wrote the prize-winning article that set the empowering tone of our coming out to the senate and the country, barks at the window, demanding to be let out.
I learned Fish can’t be trusted around sandbags the last time I had to do this.
“Hiya boys.”
We turn at the voice of one of our neighbors, another former New Yorker, Claudia. She’s in her forties, has big blonde hair, a leathery tan, and a love affair with floral prints. Her husband isn’t with her, but Deano—as he likes to be called—is a police detective and works odd hours. He reminds me of Joe Pesci in every mob movie the guy was ever in.
“Do you have an iPad charger I can borrow for a few hours.” she asks. “Mine up and quit on me.”
“Sure,” Graham says. “I’ll grab it. Need anything else? We have a lot of lighters.”
“I’m all set. I just want to download some shows in case we lose power.”
The wind is picking up, and she has to pull a strand of hair out of her mouth. When Graham goes inside, she sidles up to me. “He looks jumpy.”
“He’s already researching storm cellars for next time.”
She laughs. “What’s it been now? Two—three weeks? How’s it going?”
Graham just moved in full-time a few weeks ago, and how it’s going is fucking amazing.
She chuckles when my cheeks flush. “Honeymoon’s still on, huh? Good. Enjoy it. One day you’ll be sitting there, and he’ll breathe too loud, and you’ll want to smack him. These are the good times.”
Graham returns promptly with one of the iPad chargers and hands it over.
These are the good times for sure. In his white t-shirt and pale, yellow linen shorts, his tan is glowing. He’s let his hair grow out some, and it falls in careless waves around his face. He looks both younger, wiser, and happier than I’ve ever seen him. Not to mention more beautiful than anyone I’ve ever known.
The universe couldn’t have picked a better soulmate for me. Such a pretty package. Such an infinite surprise.
“Thanks boys,” Claudia says. “Time to go make the hurricane chili.”
I raise a brow. “I haven’t heard about this.”
“Oh, I make it every time a storm comes through. It’s good luck.”
“Can he get that recipe?” Graham asks.
I grin.
“Sure, sugar. I’ll text you. Or better yet—come by for a bowl later.”
Graham looks horrified at the idea of braving the wind and rain for a treacherous journey next door .
“Thanks,” I tell her as she starts back to her house. “Let us know when it’s ready.”
Graham walks up to me, close enough to brush arms. “You’re not really considering walking in the storm. A power line could?—”
I kiss him to shut him up. One loud smack that makes my point. I’m not meaning for it to lead to anything, but his grip on my shirt tells me it gave him ideas. I’d tell him to chill, but I like him like this. “Go make the margaritas,” I tell him. “I’ll be ten more minutes.”
“I need to call my dad,” he says, unfurling his fist. “He’s been blowing up my phone with storm warnings. Actually, maybe you should talk to him.”
“Margaritas. I’ll call him when I come in. I’ll let you decide whether I do that before or after I fuck you.”
“Hurry up, then.”
He leaves me to finish unloading the sandbags. I stack them at the front door where water is most likely to enter the house. Once I’m satisfied that the barrier is sufficient, I head around back and enter the house through the sliding doors on the raised deck. The backyard has a downward slope and isn’t likely to flood. The glass doors themselves are specifically designed to withstand wind and impact.
This is all shit I never had to think about before I moved here but was a major selling point of the house—how weatherproof it is. It’s fifteen years old, so it’s seen its fair share of Gulf weather. What Graham and his father are freaking out about are tornadoes. There’s nothing I can say to make either of them feel any better about those.
Fish jumps at me when I come inside. I put my arms around his thick neck and kiss his curly head. “Is daddy making you nervous, bud?” I switch my focus to Graham. “You’ve got him all worked up.”
“It’s not that many margaritas,” he’s saying into his phone. “Here’s Silas.”
I take the phone from Graham and put it up to my ear. “Hey, Dad.”
Paul starts right in on me. “If you leave in an hour, I can fly you here. You can even bring the dog.”
“I think we’re gonna be good,” I try to assure him.
“If you get an evacuation order, can you get to the airport?”
“If we get the order, we’ve got a route all mapped out,” I tell him.
Graham’s dad lasted less than forty-eight hours before reaching out to his son and apologizing profusely for ever making him think he wasn’t welcome in his own home. Little did Graham know, he’d done the same with Theresa, which she told us that night after we left the Eastmoor, but her rebel streak was a mile wide, and she’d told him to fuck off, never looking back.
Graham, however, daddy’s boy that he is, dissolved into a puddle of relieved tears, which told me he’d been bluffing about how well he was holding up. In my defense, I suspected it, but once I knew for sure, I did everything I could to make sure the co-dependent father-son pair were reconciled. They talk every day. Usually more than once. It’s as adorable as it is annoying.
Now that I know what they mean to each other, I realize what Graham was risking when he told Paul he wanted to be with me.
His mother is a different story. I’ve met her, but she’s a cool customer and is happy to pretend I don’t exist. The feeling is mutual.
Paul is suffering some separation anxiety as well as hurricane stress. “Can you text me the route?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say, filling Fish’s water bowl at the sink. Graham is next to me, squeezing a can of concentrated lime juice into a large plastic pitcher. “You want me to send you our margarita recipe? It might help you get through the night.”
He laughs. “Okay, okay. I’ll let you go finish your prep .”
“I’ll keep him safe. Promise. We’ll update you.”
“Thanks, son. Be safe.”
“We will.”
I hand the phone back to Graham who says his goodbye and hangs up. “You two are ridiculous,” I tell him. “I hope we never have a son.”
“Ouch.”
“Just saying. I need attention, too.”
“In two minutes, you’ll have my full attention,” Graham promises. “Do what you will with that.”
“I say we build a fort and have a sword fight.”
He laughs, but a thunderclap sounds, and he stops abruptly. The power flickers but stays on. I rub his back as he stirs a bottle of beer into the pitcher. “Or I could give you a massage.”
“Your massages hurt.”
“They’re meant to be therapeutic.”
“They leave bruises.”
“They do not,” I argue .
“Feels like it,” he mumbles.
“I’m not studying to be a masseuse. I’m studying to be a physical therapist.” And I only have two years left to go. College takes forever even when you don’t have to work full-time. Or at all.
Gibson Hayes’s final paycheck to me was larger, all right. Two point five million dollars more than I expected. I’d cried when it hit my bank account, and then, of course, I immediately wanted him to take all of it back.
Christian talked me out of it, explaining it wasn’t charity—or an insult to my pride—it was what I deserved for what Gibson and his ex-wife put me through. Damages.
Graham had balked at the amount, too, but ultimately supported my accepting the money. It’s given us the fresh start we wanted, and infinite opportunities to build a future that makes sense for us .
Right now, Graham is working with the ACLU of all places, practicing his passion—constitutional law. The pay isn’t much for a lawyer, but my man is all about rights. Civil rights, equal rights, the Bill of Rights. All the rights.
I was asked about a year after Graham came out whether I thought I influenced his supposedly “stark” position changes in the senate. Fischer was doing another piece for a different magazine, which was a series of profiles in courage in politics. I said I didn’t think it was me that did it. Not directly.
Growing up as a gay kid in the Catholic church in a very public Catholic family had Graham questioning everything at a young age. He’s about as moderate a person as the citizens of New York voted for. The party wielded a sizable amount of influence in shaping him a certain way once he was running for the senate, and his father’s vested interests played no small part, but as he explained to Fischer for the article, once Graham’s empathy was tapped—through knowing and falling in love with me—he began to see injustices he couldn’t unsee.
If he’d actually wanted to be a career politician, I seriously doubt he could have done it without changing party affiliation, but as good as he was at publicity, he doesn’t like dealing with the press. Also, having people comment about him online seriously fucked with his mental health.
He served out his term but retreated from the public eye as much as he could, no longer doing television interviews or speaking with reporters in the halls of the Capitol. His father ensured he had more than enough people around him to keep him in a bubble at all times.
His senate accomplishment he’s most proud of is revoking his support for the human trafficking/anti-sex worker bill and working with Miles and a few other more moderate-minded senators to modify and pass the bipartisan legislation, the final version of which provides more federal funding for homeless children and leaves sex work to the states.
Paul Lawther was all over it—moving quickly to snap up grants and put his name on some Catholic shelters in New York and New Jersey. He plans to expand all across the East Coast.
Apparently, charity can be lucrative when rich people are involved. Whatever.
I try to focus on the good they’re doing and not the salaries they pay themselves to do it. Everybody got a little something and lost a little something, which, in my opinion, is the way government is supposed to work.
It’s nice to not be involved in it anymore, but I still love sparring with Graham about the issues of the day. My addiction to the news hasn’t gone anywhere, and Graham, with his abiding love for the constitution, never takes a side he can’t back up with the original texts. My patriotic puppy.
“Tell me if it needs more beer,” he says, holding a spoon up to my mouth.
I sip it, looking into his eyes. “It’s perfect.” I lick the spoon.
He lets out a soft whimper. “You should get started on that fort.”
We don’t have enough furniture to make a proper pillow fort, but we do have a two-person tent. I pitch it in the living room over an air mattress after moving the furniture against the walls. I string some battery-operated white lights along the top and bring a bluetooth speaker inside along with blankets, pillows, and lube, of course.
The storm has made landfall, and the electricity is still deciding whether it’s going to stay on when we crawl in with the margaritas and the dog.
“I don’t know why a sheet of nylon makes me feel better,” Graham says, “but it does. And I love what you’ve done with the place.”
“Thank you. The naked rule was my idea, too.”
“Yes, I was pretty sure Fish didn’t come up with it.”
I laugh, tackling Graham onto the mattress and giving him a long, greedy kiss meant to make him hard as a steel rod.
He grunts beneath me, adjusting to my aggressive pace and quickly catching up. He gropes at the back of my thighs while I devour his neck, which he offers to me like a sacrifice. I glance at poor Fish who stares balefully back at me from his loll alongside the mattress. He knows from experience no one’s going to pay any attention to him for a while. I love the fuzzy guy, but nothing compares to how I feel about the guy between my legs.
“I thought there was gonna be music,” Graham says, out of breath already.
“Forgot. You want me to stop and pick something out?”
“No,” he says quickly, his hands tightening on my ass. “No.”
“Good, ‘cause I wanna hear all your slutty sounds.”
“ Mmph …”
There’s just enough room to roll us over, and I take advantage of it. With him now on top, I wrap my hands around both our cocks and tug them together. “Oh, God,” he groans.
“Give me your ass, puppy.”
His eyes open and his head tilts, not clear on what I’m asking. I make it obvious. “Sit on my face.”
His cheeks flush dark as I help him reposition. He straddles my chest, facing away from me. I plump his cheeks with my hands, enjoying their size, substance and weight. Best. Ass. Ever. Wasting no time, I run my tongue from his balls to his hole, sucking him to me and growling at how fucking good he tastes.
“Silas— Jesus .” He rolls his hips, taking his pleasure as surely as I’m taking mine. I lick his rim and slide inside him, making him cry out. Fish sighs heavily beside us, but safety first. He’s gotta be wherever we are. It’s a hurricane, after all.
“I wanna suck your cock,” Graham says, like it’s not there and waiting for him—leaking for him.
I nod into his ass, hoping he takes that as permission to get his sloppy mouth down there already.
“It’s not gonna be good,” he says, hips still moving, still seeking out my tongue. I give it to him, along with grinds of my stubble on his sensitive taint.
“It’s gonna be great,” I take a break to say. “Now put my dick in your mouth.”
“Fuck…” He bends down, his hole opening wide for me, and I go feral. His hot, wet tongue licking up my precum has me eating him out with a passion I’ve never shown anyone before—even him.
He moans around my length as he draws his tight lips up and down.
I was right. It’s beyond good. It’s sensation overload. I massage his balls with my thumbs as I fuck him with my tongue, stretching and plundering his tight, sweet hole, trying to hold back the orgasm slowly building with a satisfying ache in my groin .
With a pop, the electricity shuts off. No flicker this time. More thunder rolls. Lightning bangs, illuminating the green walls of the tent.
Graham must not notice because he surely would have said something. He just keeps sucking my cock like the best fucking boy in the whole wide world.
I lick his inner walls in appreciation and give his balls a light tug.
He pops off my cock and gasps. “I think I’m gonna come.”
He thinks? I smile as I keep at him. Lifting my hips, I indicate he should keep going. Sex telepathy.
“Don’t want to hurt you,” he pants.
I lift them again and make an insistent noise.
“Fuck…” He bends over me again and swallows me to his throat.
An emergency alert blares from both our phones, and he whimpers. I know he wants to check it, but I hold him in place because I’m already past the point of no return.
At my dick’s first throb, he moves his lips up my shaft to receive my cum on his tongue where he likes it. At the first taste, he groans loud, and his body jolts. I feel the burst of his first gush on my chest and abs. Taking my mouth off him to breathe through the release he continues to suck out of me, I slide a hand between his legs and milk his never-ending supply of cum.
We’re both shaking, panting, whining messes as our orgasms have their way with us.
When he can’t take any more touching, he crawls off me, grabbing for his phone and flopping back down next to me. I run my fingers through his cum on my chest and suck them into my mouth. He glances at me, and his eyes hood like he’s never seen anything so hot.
“It’s not a tornado,” he says, diving for my mouth.
I give him my tongue and gather some more of his cum to shove between his lips. We trade the taste for several minutes in the soft glow of white lights as rain pounds the house.
“I think we’re gonna make it,” I tell him, when I’m more or less cleaned up.
“We should stay in here for the night, though, don’t you think? Just to be safe.”
“Yeah, definitely,” I agree. “We’ve got everything we need right here.”
“We could probably use a towel.”
I kiss him again, combing my fingers through his thick, wavy hair. “If we die in here without a towel, I think I’m okay with that.”
His vivid green eyes meet mine and hold them in their grip. “Look at us,” he says with the soft, adoring smile he saves just for me. “We made it to the end of the world.”
THE END