Page 41 of The Forbidden Summer
His throat bobs. He nods once. “Yeah.”
“You don’t have to say it,” I add. “I just want you to feel safe enough to.”
“I’ve never been afraid to tell you I love you, Van.”
“Yeah, but it means something different now.”
He leans back against the swing, eyes fixed on the tree line like it holds answers. “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone anything the way Harold did in that letter,” he admits.
“You could,” I whisper. “You could start now.”
He turns toward me slowly, like he’s been holding his breath for decades and just remembered how to let it go. His gaze skims across my face, lingering at my lips, my eyes, my cheek where a mosquito’s left a tiny red welt. Something about the way he looks at me makes my skin buzz like static.
“You’re not just my grandson,” he says finally, voice raw. “You’re… you’ve become something else entirely. Something I don’t have a name for yet.”
My heart stumbles. “You don’t have to name it.”
But God, I want him to. I want to hear it from his lips. I want to know he sees this for what it is.
He moves, his shoulders turning toward me fully. “Do you remember the first summer you stopped calling me Grandpère?”
I blink, surprised by the shift. “Yeah. I was… what, fourteen?”
“You said it sounded too old. Made me feel like a relic,” he chuckles.
I grin. “I remember. I called you ‘Père’ instead, like it was some kind of French honorific I made up.”
He smiles, eyes softening. “It always made me feel like something different to you. Something... special. Someone just yours.”
“You were,” I say. “You are.”
He’s quiet again. Then: “I think the shift started then. I realized you wanted me to be something other, something more, and I wanted to be your everything. I just didn’t know being everything could meanthis.”
My breath catches.
Père reaches up, his fingers brushing a curl off my forehead, and I lean into the touch like I’ve been waiting for it my whole life.
“I didn’t want it to,” he murmurs. “Didn’tletit, not for a long time. But here we are.”
“Yeah,” I whisper, my voice barely there. “Here we are.”
And when he leans in, when our lips meet for the softest, most tentative kiss, there’s no thunderstorm this time, no desperate breathlessness. Just warmth. Just quiet. Just the solid press of his mouth against mine and the fireflies blinking lazily around us, like they’ve been waiting for this too.
The swing creaks beneath us again, slow and rhythmic. Père's arm is warm around my shoulders, his thumb still brushing soft arcs against the curve of my bicep like he’s memorizing me by feel.
I settle deeper into his side, letting my head rest against him, and I swear I can feel his heartbeat.
“You always smell like cedar and coffee,” I murmur, not even trying to filter myself.
He huffs a laugh, low and fond. “You always say that.”
“Because it’s always true.” I tilt my head to look up at him. “It’s like… comfort and home, all in one.”
He doesn’t say anything at first, just shifts slightly to press a kiss into my hair. The kind of kiss that doesn’t need anything back. One that’s given freely, like breath.
The night air is thick with summer smells—damp grass, the smokey trail of a dying fire in the pit, a whiff of old pine from the trees lining the lake.
Crickets trill. The wind stirs the wind chimes on the eaves, and their delicate clinking fills the pause between us.
