Page 75 of Tender
“I hurt him. I didn’t mean to. But he’s settled in here so well I think I forgot that he’s going to need way more than you ever did. Battling his childhood demons is bad enough, but everything Selene put him through…”
Cosimo stiffened. He was struggling worse than he ever had with her behavior. He could no longer deny the truth. He was in love with Miles. For him, it always happened both quick and sudden. He woke up several days before with a small gasp, looking down at Miles who had his face mashed against Cosimo’s chest, and that was the moment he knew: this was going to be another part of their forever.
And that made what Selene did feel more intense and more powerful. Their child, the daughter they’d created and raised, had turned into such a monster she caused lasting trauma in a man they’d fallen for. How did he reconcile that?
It felt a bit like the documentaries Emmett was always watching about people who didn’t realize they were living with serial killers until they were caught. How do you love a killer? Most of them never had answers.
And neither did he.
She would always be his daughter, and he would never, ever stop hoping that she’d do better, but how could he cross that divide now knowing what she did?
“I found him on the beach,” Emmett went on, dragging Cosimo from his internal crisis. “He was talking to one of his best friends, thinking that my short tone meant I was getting tired of him.”
“You were short with him?” Cosimo asked, fighting off a smile but failing. That must have gutted his poor husband. He was only ever like that when he was engrossed in a work problem, and he always felt like shit about it after. Even with Cosimo who didn’t give two flying fucks about Emmett’s tone.
“Stop,” Emmett said, covering his face and rolling toward Cosimo’s stomach. “It was awful.”
“I’m sure it was nothing.” He ran soothing fingers through the man’s hair. “Miles is sensitive.”
Emmett groaned. “I know. And I didn’t even think about that when he was talking to me. I just wanted to finish what I was doing, and he totally thought I was going to leave him?—”
“Amore. My love,” Cosimo said. He wasn’t used to seeing Emmett like this. He stroked a touch down his temple and along his jaw until Emmett finally opened his eyes again. “All of us—all three of us—are going to fuck up from time to time. You weren’t as bad as you seem to think you were when we first started exploring the things I needed. Most of the time, when I would be affected, it was because I wasn’t listening to myself. It wasn’t you.”
“Sometimes it was me,” Emmett muttered.
Cosimo chuckled. “Okay, yes. Sometimes it was you, and look. I’m still here.”
“I don’t want to lose him because I was being careless. He literally thought about fleeing to his friend’s house before I could break it off.”
“He’s going to need us to be more careful,” Cosimo told him. “You get that. I get that. And if anyone is going to screw that to high heaven, it’s going to be me. Not you.”
Emmett let out a small sigh. “I’m his Daddy. I’m this big, important role. A title, you know? That comes with more responsibility than just a partner.”
Cosimo wondered if maybe he should be insulted, but he knew his husband wasn’t implying that his role was any less important to Miles. Just different, the way they all needed. And he understood. It was the same way he felt at work most days.
He was just a man. A flawed, tired, aging man who had to play God several times a week in hopes of repairing broken hearts in tiny chests and preventing parents from feeling the worst pain a human could feel. In the quiet darkness of his bedroom at night, that weight was suffocating. It was unbearable.
But with his husband, he could handle it. He could be strong when he needed to be strong, because Emmett allowed him to let go any time it was getting to be too much.
And he realized then he could be that for Emmett. Not in the same ways, but he’d find a way to figure it out. He stroked a touch over Emmett’s neck and looked down at him.
“I think you should go to the bedroom.”
Emmett blinked at him.
“Let me help you with the stress.”
Sucking in a breath, Emmett opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Yeah. Okay.”
“I’m going to go check on Miles. Is he in his room?”
Emmett looked a little torn. “Pool house. He said he’s only going to use it for when he needs space to write or speak to his advisor.”
Cosimo didn’t think that was the crisis Emmett did, but he understood his husband’s worry. Smiling just a little, he urged Emmett to sit up, then he kissed him long and slow and very, very thorough.
“Get yourself started,” he murmured. “Get slick for me. Get out whatever toy you want me to make you see God with.”
Emmett groaned and kissed him harder, then slipped off the couch and hurried out of the room. Cosimo would have laughedif he hadn’t felt so terrible. Obviously, this was just one drop in the bucket of things stressing him out, and Cosimo hadn’t noticed how bad it was getting. He hadn’t realized that Emmett might bend a little under the weight of his new role in their marriage.
