The Complete Series Boxed Set (49 page)

The hair on his arms stood at attention, the ripple traveling up over his shoulders and between the blades under his neck, down to his sacrum, a chill and fire settling there as if waiting for what was about to come.

Waiting for orders to know what to do next.

Dylan looked at Alex, who was bending down to sit, Josie having shoved Laura over against the booth’s wall. “You two have something you want to share.”

Blood drained out of Josie’s face like a vampire had just exsanguinate
d
her.

Alex chuckled, but Mike knew it was laughter without amusement. Could tell it was a touchy subject and wished Dylan hadn’t made the joke. But he had, and now the issue hung over them like a stinky fart.

“Uh, no. Not yet.” He gave Josie’s hand an obvious squeeze, but she might as well have been a plastic blow-up sex doll. Her expression said she would have been happier with that right now.

“‘Yet’? Not ‘
yet
’? You just moved in!”

“Two months ago.”

“I swear it’s only been two hours.”

“Time flies when you’re having fun.”

“Actually, time flies when you’re having sex. Otherwise, time doesn’t fly. It crawls with agonizing slowness, as evidenced by this conversation,”
Dylan said dryly.
 

“We need to talk about marriage,” Laura said softly. Mike hated being across the table from her, and reached reflexively for her hand.

Dylan beat him to it.

“Whose marriage?” He exchanged a look with Mike that made Mike’s heart explode. They’d had endless private conversations about this—ok
ay
, not
endless
. Maybe three or so, which felt endless in manspeak. He and Dylan didn’t really talk about their feelings the way Laura did with each of them. They just…
were
. A decision between them took two or three sentences. Not two or three days and thousands of blabbered words.

This decision, though…who could Laura marry?

You only get one spouse, right?

“Um, yours, actually,” Josie said. Alex gave Mike a look that didn’t make sense, until it suddenly did. Gotcha. Alex knew something they didn’t, and it was about to be revealed.

“Why am I here, again?” Alex asked.

“Decoration,” Josie replied.

“Moral support,” Laura added.

The gooseflesh on
Mike’s
arms spread to his entire body, and
his
eyes narrowed involuntarily. “Support?”

“We have a plan,” Laura and Josie said simultaneously.

Dylan, Mike, and Alex all groaned in reply just as Madge appeared.

“Did you guys order before we got here?” Alex asked, incredulous as Madge unloaded plate after plate of fried green tomatoes, pistachio crepes, and ah—lobster cakes.

“A
s
if you need to order when I know my sweet Alex is coming,” Madge said.

“We have the bat signal for you,” Laura said with a smile.

Alex stuffed a cake in his mouth and wisely said nothing. Mike’s appetite disappeared the second the talk of marriage erupted.

He thought it was about to overflow, too. Who would Laura choose? Society and law only permitted a person to marry one other person. Forcing her to choose could irreparably damage their threesome. Then again, it could also strengthen the paternity issue.

Frank’s sudden appearance complicated everything. His subtle threat to take Jillian should something happen to Laura had plagued her and it was painful to have their loving construct fraying at the edges because of the combination of Frank and a society that didn’t have a word—much less legal protections—for their kind of love.

“Here’s what we pieced together,” Josie mumbled through a mouthful of crepe. “We know who Jillian’s biological father is—”

Alex began choking on his cake. “We do?” he gasped.

“We can look it up on a birth certificate. And a lawyer will have to,” she added, pointedly looking at both Dylan and Mike. Appetite went from zero to negative ten, and Mike’s mouth quirked at one side as he watched Dylan drop his fork, leaving a half-eaten fried green tomato.

“Okay, so…what does that have to do with marriage?” Dylan challenged.

“In theory,” Laura said quietly, “if I married the man who isn’t Jillie’s father, then he gets stepfather protection if something happens to me.”

A cold rush flushed through Mike. He’
d
suspected Jillie’s lighter complexion meant…

“But that won’t work,” Alex said mildly, recovering from his choke. “If you’re planning on more kids, I mean.”

Josie nodded. Mike’s skin began to feel like cotton, the conversation bizarre and surreal, as if they were talking about cross-pollinating garden flowers,
or
deciding where to add a deck to the cabin.

His family’s fate was being deconstructed over coconut shrimp and peanut butter cup sundaes.

“Pull back and explain it to me like I’m stupid,” Dylan said.

“We. Already. Are,” Josie said slowly. “That’s my default mode with you.”

Dylan shot her a nasty look and made a rolling motion with his hand, urging her to continue.

“If you have another child and that child is by the same father, then you’re fine. But what if Laura has children by both of you? Then if she di—were gone,” Josie said, catching herself, “the non-biological father of the kids wouldn’t have any legal rights whatsoever to visitation or custody. Imagine if Laura and
one
of you died.”

“Why are we imagining all this death?” Mike asked, his voice a chilly whisper, like a cold finger sliding down the spine.

Everyone stopped mid-bite.

“It’s Fr
an
k, isn’t it?” he asked. “Not that you think he’s going on a killing spree,” he said with a derisive snort. “
I
t’s more…estate planning got moved up a few notches on the list of Stuff We S
h
ould Do Someday.”

Laura’s mournful eyes told him he’d hit the nail on the head. The urge to hold her, raw and needful, tingled inside him and would not go away.

He drained his now-tepid cup of coffee and started to push Dylan out of the booth, thumbing toward the bathroom.

The rush of cold blood racing through his body pumped into his thighs, his calves, through his abs, and up to his throat as he moved past Dylan, walking numbly to the bathroom, wher
e
he found the men’s room empty. Tha
n
k God. Mike slumped against the wall and stared at his own reflection.

What the
f
uck?
he mouthed to himself. He looked like Mike—blonde, tall, lanky, a little hunched over from being the tallest guy in the room most of his life. His shirt looked like it had the day he bought it at the mall, his jeans were old and well worn, a relic from college. Most of what he saw in the mirror had been part of who he was for most of his life—body, clothes, emotional state—and yet he felt like he was experiencing a metamorphosis right now, second by second.

Word by word.

Marriage. Jealousy flared within. If he were Jillian’s biological father, then it made sense for Dylan to marry Laura. Made perfect sense. Couldn’t argue wit
h
it.

So why did he feel like smashing his fist through that mirror?

The door creaked and Mike straightened himself, walking to the urinal and unzipping as someone entered the bathroom.

“Come here often?” asked a familiar voice. Dylan stood in front of the urinal next to him, unzipped, and they voided their bladders in unison.

Mike started laughing, his stream jumping up in concert with his amusement.

“Dude, aim!” Dylan said, alarmed. “I don’t need your pee all over me. Get enough of that already from changing the baby.”

“Can’t help it,” Mike said, finishing up quickly. “I just…I can’t believe we’re in here peeing together while they talk about our future like we’re playing Barbie and Ken.”

“And Ken. You forgot. Two Kens.” Dylan shook off, zipped up, and began washing his hands. Mike joined him at the second sink and caught his eye in the mirror.

“I never forget there are two Kens.”

Dylan’s turn to laugh. “And now we’re describing our intimate relationships in terms of
plastic
dolls.” He sighed heavily. “When did we reach this new kind of low?”

“When Frank appeared and threatened everything.”

Dylan made a sour face. “I don’t… That guy hasn’t technically threatened anything. Not really. And you know—and I know—we could hand him six figures and he’d go away.”

Mike wiped his hands and tossed the crumpled tow
e
l in the trash. “Three points!” he whi
sp
ered, then turned to Dylan, serious. “And he’d be ba
c
k again after blowing it.”

“So? Big fucking deal. We have plenty of money.”

“We don’t have enough to make his re-entry stop freaking her out.” Mike sighed. “Plus, as much as I hate the guy, Frank’s appearance forces us to look at all this. We’ve been living in a bubble of our own creation. We need some legal protections.”

“We have that! We set up our wills and trusts so Laura and Jillian are taken care of forever.”

“Financially. Sure—we did. But legally…these custody issues are serious. And we want more kids.”

Mike looked at Dylan evenly, watching carefully. He’d expected an argument there. “You do want more after all, don’t you?” Mike tried to keep his surprise out of his voice.

Dylan smiled without showing teeth. “Yeah…just on a different timetable than you and Laura. Maybe wait a few more years. But…yeah. I mean, Jillie’s probably…”

Don’t say it
, Mike thought. No one had said it, and as long as none of them did, it was somehow easier to live in the bubble. Having their perfect little life intruded upon by external forces was one thing.

Undermining it from within was another.

“Jillian,” Mike said as Dylan finished cleaning up and headed toward the door, “is
our
daughter. Ours.” He halted D
y
lan’s progress with a firm hand on his shoulder.

Dylan turned around, eyes hooded and closed off. “You and I know that within the emotional reality of our relationship at h
o
me, with Laura and Jillie. But out here?” Dylan let out a harsh snort. “Out here in the real world we have genetics. Biology. Law. Societal norms.”

Mike closed his eyes, the hand on Dylan’s shoulder less fierce.
W
arm
er
. His
p
artner’s neck muscles were steel bands.

“I know.”

“I know, too. And now we have to face that. If Laura has kids by both of us, it causes legal issues. I think Laura and Josie talked about this—”

“You think?” Mike laughed.

Dylan gave him an amused look, and the bands of steel loosened microscopically. “And they’ve analyzed all the possibilities and decided our fate.”

“It should be you,” Mike blurted out, the words like a dagg
e
r stabbing his heart.
T
hey were the right words.

“And then what, Mike?” Dylan spat. “If I died and Laura died, then any kid I had with Laura wouldn’t be yours. Y
ou’
d have no claim. They’d be split up.
I mean, if they had long enough together you might have a tiny chance claiming they were bonded, but…
”

Mike’s throat closed off. Just puckered closed. He was right. Dylan’s parents would legally have the strongest claim to Dylan’s kids, and Mike’s parents—

Oh, shit.

The stricken look he sent Dylan’s way was reflected in his eyes. “Yeah, Mike. That’s what they’re out there saying. We have to figure out a way around all this.”

“Josie and Alex? Can we leave our kids to them?” Mike rasped as his throat pried open, muscle by muscle.

Dylan shrugged. “Who knows?” An evil g
r
in spread across his face. “Did you see Josie pale when we talked about her and Alex getting married?”

“Yeah?”

“I think she’ll shit her pants if we go out there and tell her we want to leave our kids to them.”

Mike’s laughed felt tinny, like it was coming from three dimensions away, but it was real. It warmed him.

“
You know,” he said quietly, “we never talked about getting married with Jill.’
 

Dylan jolted, as if zapped by a small current. “Jesus,” he said with a slight hiss. “You’re right. The topic never came up. Not even at the end.”

Mike nodded. “She never brought it up.”

“Neither did we.”

“Then why now, with Laura? It’s not just because of the baby,” Mike rushed to comment, but he could tell Dylan understood. Dylan always understood.

With a series of rapid blinks, Dylan thought for a moment, then said, “Because it’s different with Laura.”

Mike’s throat tightened, not with grief for Jill, but with
love
for Laura. “It
is
different, isn’t it? Wanting to marry Laura doesn’t diminish Jill, and yet...”

The concerned look Dylan gave him made Mike flash back to two years ago, to the unremitting grief after Jill’s death, to how hopeless it all seemed right before they’d met Laura.

She had brought them so much more than love.

Laura was pure joy.

Dylan clasped his arm and looked deep into his eyes. “It’ll be okay. I think you’re feeling like Laura’s felt
since Frank appeared
.
Unmoored. Unsure.
”

A sinking feeling floated from throat to belly. Damn if Dylan wasn’t right.

“God, I…I had no idea it felt like this.” He ran his hand through his hair. “You feel like this, too?”

Blinking rapidly, Dylan gave Mike a sheepish look. “Not as bad, I think, be
c
ause I do have my parents. You and Laura don’t. Mom and Dad have a relationship with Jillie and they will with future kids. If wors
e
came to worst and we died, they’d come through. I have that. You and Laura don’t.”

That gave Mike pause. Never thought
o
f it that way before. And while Dylan’s mom and dad were perfectly fine, they weren’t exactly over the moon about Mike.