Page 26 of Finding You

Kylen felt his chest get hot. “What the fuck? Is that what he said?”

Frey shrugged. “In so many words. He was a dickhead. He’s still a dickhead, but at least he stayed away and didn’t fuck with us after he decided he was done.” Frey rubbed his fingers together, almost like a nervous habit. “Renato didn’t want kids. He was a widower and kind of done with the whole dating thing. But with us, it just…worked. He’s going to adopt Rex after we get married, and neither of us want more or anything like that, but I didn’t have to wade through some pool of weirdos to find the one unicorn who was both queer and wanted an immediate family. It happened in the weirdest circumstance.”

Kylen glanced over at his gran. “I think that might be one of those once-in-a-lifetime deals.”

“Maybe. I’m not a woo-woo kind of guy. I don’t believe in fate. I believe in working your ass off to get what you want. But there’s no logical explanation for Renato.”

“I hope you say that to his face,” Kylen said.

Frey burst into laughter. “I do. All the time.” He sobered after a beat. “We have a group for single dads. I told you that, right?”

He might have, but Kylen had been so worn and exhausted he couldn’t remember. He nodded anyway.

Frey’s grin widened. “Good. Yeah. Look, you should come join us. I don’t know if it’ll be weird with Dallas being there and the whole…relationship?—”

“Fake relationship,” Kylen said. He didn’t want Frey to think he was delusional or holding on to some fantasy that this would become real.

Frey nodded and let out a puff of air. “Right. Fake relationship. And you can wait until your family thing is over. But it’s a good group. The guys are like family. They help when it feels like you’re drowning. I think they saved my life, even when I wasn’t being honest with them.”

Kylen wanted to ask what Frey had lied about. The man seemed almost disastrously honest. But then there was a buzzing sound, and Frey hopped up.

“Duty calls. Don’t leave before you get my number, okay?”

Kylen nodded, then waited for Frey to disappear. He couldn’t make any promises right then. The offer was tempting, but right now, he just wanted to get his grandmother home, get life back on track, and deal with the mess he’d created with Dallas. The rest could come after.

If he didn’t destroy himself in the process.

“…and then we had some crowns, and we maked this…this thing. With a hand. And some eyes. But it’s on the wall now.”

Kylen stirred his spaghetti over his plate as he listened to Flora talk. “Crowns?” He mimed putting one on his head.

She rolled her eyes. “No, with…with colors.”

“Cray-ohns,” he repeated. “You’re spending too much time with Auntie, and her accent is ugly.”

Flora blinked at him. “Accent?”

“Never mind. Her accent isn’t ugly. I didn’t mean that. She’s being ugly right now.” He stopped himself immediately. He did not need to dump that shit on his daughter. “Ignore me. Daddy’s having a bad day.”

Flora immediately hopped off her chair and crawled into his lap, patting the side of his head the way he did with her when she was having a meltdown. His heart softened, and he wrapped his arms around her.

“How did I get so lucky?”

“Like a cat?” she asked. She was referring to her maneki-neko that her mom had brought back from her trip to Kyoto two years ago. She kept it on her dresser in spite of the fact that it was worn and the mechanics on the waving arm had long since burnt out.

“Something like that, yeah.” He didn’t have words to describe how he was feeling to his five-year-old. Not that he wanted to. He wanted her to remain as unburdened as possible for as long as he could shield her. “Go finish your dinner.”

“Tastes funny,” she muttered.

Her plate was half-touched, and he sighed. Her eating habits had always been…difficult, to say the least, but he was starting to suspect it was more than being picky. She was fussy about everything and a creature of almost obsessive habit. But just when he thought he had her preferences figured out, she’d change them.

It was a moving target and just one more in his long list of things he had to figure out. He just wished they weren’t hitting him all at once. He wanted to get out of this funk and back to the man he used to be. He was tired of being a shell made of insomnia and stress.

“Daddy?”

He kissed her temple. “I’m fine, sweetpea. Do you want something else to eat right now?”

“Fish.”

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