Page 13 of Xavier

“Do you have a flight already picked out?”

“Kind of. I have some that are available but I wanted to ask you first before I made anything solid.”

“Oh.” Came her quiet response.

That was how it always went for us back in the day. I made the plans but she was the one with the final say. We worked thatway, it gave her a sense of control that her upbringing never had. I’d recognized that early on—seen it in the way her parents treated her when we’d gone over for Sunday dinners.

It always made her happy in the end and was never any skin off my nose. Mostly because she usually agreed with me. Despite our differences, we, at one point, had made a pretty good team.

“All right. I’ll let you know,” she finally said.

“Thanks. You know how to reach me.”

Ending the call, I let out a long sigh before running my hands over my face. I knew going into this it was going to be a monumental task, I just never accounted for how much it would take out of me in the end.

It would be worth it, though.

Dexterwas worth it.

So long as Kate agreed to letting me have him for the weekend, we’d finally get that father-son bonding time that I’d been desperate for over the past fifteen years.

Hopefully, luck was on my side this time around.

CHAPTER 6

Gage

“You really thinkshe’s not going to let you take him?”

“I’m not sure.” Xavier sounded exhausted on the other end of the line. “I’m hoping she does. That’s all I can really do since she has full custody.”

“I thought that shit didn’t really matter once they turned sixteen? Can’t they choose who to live with?”

Wasn’t that how it worked?

Maybe I was being a dumbass in guessing. It wasn’t like I ever had any experience with the system aside from CPS coming around that one time after my parents died.

“It’s complicated. Dexter doesn’t really know me so I don’t exactly have a case.”

Damn.

“He seems to be warming up to you, though.”

“Barely,” he mumbled. “But it’s better than nothing.”

“True.”

I felt bad for Xavier. He was clearly trying. To no fault of his own, his son was being rather difficult. To a certain extent, I could understand the situation from both ends. Xavier had always wanted to be a father to Dexter but with his drinking, he’d made that pretty hard on the kid. So it wasn’t exactly out of the blue that his kid was giving him the cold shoulder.

The past few months hadn’t been as bad with Dexter agreeing to the occasional sit down dinner with Xavier. The sad thing was that it was nowhere near the level of closeness he wanted to have with his son.

On my end, I always felt guilty whenever Greyson and Asher were brought up in conversation. My brothers were close with me, even if sometimes they were little shits about it. When push came to shove, we were a family unit and nothing could break us apart. I’d been a whiny bastard with them leaving, but only out of sheer love for them.

Which is what made me hesitate in bringing anything up to Xavier about them. I didn’t want to rub it in my boyfriend’s face that I had a relationship with the kids I’d raised while he didn’t. Sure, his drinking and his highly erratic job hadn’t done him any favors in that department—that didn’t mean he had given up because he’d found his relationship with his son to be too hard to deal with.

“I told her to think about it,” Xavier said. “So, now I just need to wait for her decision.”

I wrinkled my nose at that.

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