12. Clyde
CLYDE
As they set the table, I stirred the tomato soup, going very old school with lunch. We were having grilled cheese sandwiches cut into strips and soup. It was easy, quick, and had always been one of Posy’s favorites.
“She really likes the buttons.” It had been such a thoughtful gift.
“I’m glad. I wanted to do something that was nice, but not too nice and personal. You know?”
I stopped to face him fully.
“You’re doing great. You don’t need to worry about being perfect with Posy. She wants the people in her life to care about her, and you’re already there.”
He gave a nod and finished rinsing off his hands.
As I flipped the sandwiches and stirred the soup, I kept peeking over my shoulder at them, loving how they worked together, like they’d always been part of the same team. One doing the napkins while the other did spoons, neither getting under each other’s feet.
We’d agreed to go at Posy’s pace, and at the time, I’d assumed that meant we were going to slow down. But based on what I was seeing today, her pace was feeling faster than ours.
Stephen plated the sandwiches while I ladled out the soup, and Posy got the chips. It was so domestic. I loved it.
“Are your buttons having lunch too?” I teased as I set her bowl of soup in front of her.
“What if we get bored and we need a conversation starter?” Her teacher this year was big into “conversation starters” and explained that they were what big people called it when they had important things to discuss.
That wasn’t at all what conversation starters were, but Posy had latched onto it and used it as an excuse for things like this often.
“But what if soup gets in there?” I countered.
And Stephen added, “Collectors always keep their treasures safe, even though we want to keep them real close.” Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out the button she gave him.
She beamed and then moved her buttons to the shelf where the cookbooks lived.
“Stephen and I are twinsies. We both collect buttons now.” She grabbed a piece of grilled cheese and dunked it in her soup.
I watched as she ate, babbling on about buttons, Stephen encouraging the conversation. It was nice like this—the three of us sharing a meal.
“What’s wrong, Daddy?”
“What? Nothing.”
“You can’t tell me nothing’s wrong. You haven’t even eaten.”
“Oh, I was just distracted.” I picked up a chip and popped it in my mouth.
“Are you in trouble with Stephen?”
“No, I’m not.” Where did that come from?
“You’re not looking at him like you wanna kiss him anymore. Do you still like him?” She wasn’t going to let this go. If I asked her to, she’d drop it, but if we were going at her pace, that meant allowing her to feel free to discuss what she needed to talk about.
“I do still like him. I was just spacing out and thinking about how nice lunch was. I promise.” I was not going to talk about kissing now, and his cheeks were pink, so I didn’t think he wanted to either.
“And I like your daddy too.” Stephen reached over and took my hand. “Is that okay with you?”
“Depends. Do you like him like you want to be part of our family?”
“Yeah, I do,” Stephen assured her. “But part of the family includes you too.”
“I know. I was here first.” Childhood logic was fascinating. “But this is going to be a problem.”
My stomach sank.
“How so?” It was the first time I’d heard Stephen sound so unsure.
“Well, Daddy is Daddy, what do I call you? I can’t have two daddies. I mean, I can have two daddies, but I can’t call you both Daddy because I’ll say, ‘Hey, Daddy,’ and you’re both going to turn around.”
I’d been worried that we were going too fast, and she was worried about names.
“Well, Posy, I think we can come up with something that’s not Daddy.”
“And not Father either.”
“Why?” She had never had anyone called Father in her life.
“Father sounds like one of the stories in my reading book, and they’re so boring. I don’t want Stephen to become boring,”
“It’s a name in a reading book, honey. It won’t suddenly turn him boring.””
“I don’t know…” She squinted at him. “We can scratch that off the list just in case.”
“That works.” Stephen’s entire attention was on Posy.
“But you are going to be my other daddy no matter what I call you, right?”
“Yes, but in the way Clyde is your daddy.
“I know. Not my daddy like the daddies who had to leave soon to be with the goddess. They left me with Daddy and now with you.”
I had to blink back tears.
“Hey, I have an idea.” She ran to her room and came back and handed her Goldilocks book to Stephen. “And here it’s Papa Bear, and you’re not a bear, you’re a fox, but bears have dens, foxes have dens. Maybe you could be Papa.”
And I went from worrying about this lunch to knowing this was going to work.
She was going full speed ahead, taking Stephen and me with her for the ride.
Lunch was over and cleaned up, and Stephen said it was time to go. I didn’t want him to, but in the beginning, we’d said it would be only for lunch today and that we weren’t going to push too much.
“Wait a second. Don’t you live here now? Where are you going?” She’d gone even further ahead than we realized.
“Being mates doesn’t mean you automatically move into someone’s house,” I said. But even when I did, it didn’t feel right, and she called me out on it.
“Mates are family. Families live together. I can’t believe you two are the grown-ups.”
“Our house only has this tiny space, and sometimes Papa needs to work from home. He doesn’t have enough room here.” I’d thought about this a lot, and there was no way we could all fit in either one of our places.
“He can sleep in your room.” She turned to him. “Or if you wanted to, you could be a fox and sleep in my room.” In some ways, she understood this better than we did, and in other ways, not so much.
“Grown-ups need their own spaces.”
“Then what do we do?” She looked heartbroken.
“Maybe we buy a house?” Stephen suggested.
“But then Miss Caitlin will be far away. She’s family too.”
And that was why her being so far ahead of us wasn’t as great as it should be. There were so many logistics to figure out.
“How about you leave all of this conversation to the grown-ups, and we’ll figure it out.” It was a lot to consider. We needed outdoor space. We needed a study. We needed bedrooms. We needed places we could shift, and Posy was right—we needed to be not too far from Miss Caitlin.
“Fine. I’ll let Daddy and Papa talk about it. But don’t leave without saying goodbye.” She raced to her bedroom.
“She kinda runs things around here, doesn’t she?” he teased.
“I’m glad she does. We were on a train that was pretty much at a stop, and she has us headed toward the future that we want.”
He picked up my hand and kissed it.
Stephen and I talked about the grown-up side of mating such as money, mortgages, and locations. It wasn’t the fun part of this, but a necessary step.
Twenty minutes later, Posy came out with a drawing of a house she said we should buy, one I doubted existed.
It had a turret, because apparently all good houses needed one, and a backyard with trees and flowers and a dog.
Both my wolf and Stephen’s fox were running there, and a smaller wolf representing herself was by our sides.
She also had our human forms standing in front of the house. Apparently, we’d split into two beings each in her little imagination land.
“I don’t know if we’re gonna be able to find a house just like this.”
“It can be a different house, but it needs the turret.”
“How do you know that’s what that’s called?” Stephen asked, obviously impressed.
“Because my teacher reads books, and the turrets are always where the interesting things happen.”
It made sense.
“Papa.” She stood in front of him, her eyes wide. “I know you can’t live here now, but maybe could you have a sleepover?”
“Okay. But I have to go home and get some things first.”
“That’s okay. Just promise you’ll come back soon.”
“I promise.” And he left and came back an hour later, true to his word.
We ate dinner together, and it felt so much like we really were a family already, and not just because we’d deemed it so but because we were.
I made sure that Posy was already asleep and then walked into my bedroom, where, for the first time since we’d moved in, I would be sleeping with someone.
There had been countless times when I’d taken my wolf form and slept in Posy’s room when she was sick or having a rough time, but never once had I brought an omega to my bed, because never once had any omega been as important as Stephen.