Page 11 of Loving You

He didn’t want to start that journey by having his brother’s friends set him up on blind dates that were definitely going to end in disaster. Hell, he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to date again, if he was being honest with himself. He wasn’t opposed to a friends-with-benefits sort of thing. It had been too many years since he’d been involved in hookup culture, but that sounded a hell of a lot nicer than giving his heart away again.

The problem was he felt a little too old to be playing those games. And frankly, who was going to want some washed-up man with slightly saggy nipples, grey chest hair, and a teenage kid?

The answer to that: no one.

“What’s that look?”

Lucas lifted his face. “What look? Describe it in so much detail he wants to fling himself into the ocean.”

“It’s almost like you get a sick enjoyment from tormenting me,” Bronx complained. “I just—” His words were interrupted when Flora began to bang her fork on the plate.

“Enough,” Kylen warned her.

Flora’s face went flush around her cheeks. Bronx knew that look. He hadn’t seen it in years, but he knew what was coming. He braced himself.

“I want…to…play…drums!” she screamed.

Lucas winced. He’d always been more sensitive to noise—a combination of an autistic thing and a blind thing. He used to melt down at the sound of slightly raised voices, and it had taken him years to cope with people being really loud.

Luckily, they didn’t live with toddlers, or he would’ve been screwed.

Bronx took a breath to try and distract Flora, but Lucas pushed away from the table and stood up. “Hey, princess. Wanna go show me that Rapunzel game you have?”

Flora’s jaw snapped shut, and she looked at Kylen, whose face was torn. Bronx knew he didn’t want to reward her screaming, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to die on this hill tonight.

“Go for it,” Kylen said. “But no screaming. Remember, it hurts people’s ears.”

“Okay,” Flora whispered. She shifted off her chair and seized Lucas’s hand. “I could show you.”

Kylen sat back with a heavy breath and rubbed a handdown his face. “I need to be paying him a fucking salary for being able to calm her down.”

Bronx waved him off. “He’s always been a kid whisperer.”

“Does he want any of his own?” Kylen asked.

Dallas and Bronx both laughed. “So far, he says not anytime soon, if ever.” Bronx pushed his plate away, then stood and stretched his back. “I wouldn’t mind being a gramps, but I’m hoping he waits until I feel like a grandpa instead of just looking like one.”

“You’re notthatold,” Dallas pointed out.

His back begged to differ. He’d pulled something rolling out of bed that morning. And yes, he wasn’t that old. He’d gone grey early, which he was pretty sure was thanks to the stress of caring for his little brother when he was meant to be a teenager, but he’d never actually blame Dallas for that. He just felt a little like the world had passed him by while he was stuck, and now it was too late for him.

He’d had his chance at happily ever after, and it had blown up in his face.

It was time to move on to other things, and frankly, he didn’t mind the idea of setting up a little bungalow near the water once Lucas went off to college. He could get a dog, maybe a couple of cats, a few birds. He’d set himself up a little menagerie, and he had a feeling it would be the happiest he’d ever been.

Animals loved more purely and unconditionally than humans. That was all he really wanted. To come home and be welcome. To not have to walk on eggshells, trying to think of anything that might have pissed his partner off.

He hadn’t realized just how bad it had gotten until Jules left. Until the house was quiet and he no longer had to pause before letting out a breath for fear of beingaccused of sighing. He could sit around in silence and not worry that his partner thought he was being passive-aggressive.

He could just…be.

That was the life he wanted to live.

“Let me help with dishes,” he said, shaking his head out of his thoughts. Dallas was grabbing all the plates in his arms.

“If you want to get the cups, that’ll help. But we have a dishwasher. It’s not like when we were kids.”

Bronx snorted. They’d grown up with a dishwasher, but neither of them had been allowed to use it. It sat there like some kitchen ornament, and it was the one thing he’d indulged in when he and Jules had been picking out a house. His had been state-of-the-art, and when he’d seen Dallas’s, he knew his brother had walked away with that same trauma.

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