Page 54 of Damian & Jun, Episodes 13-16
Damian shook his head. “We can do better. How do you feel about a low-cut neckline and a big skirt?”
“Oh, all look, no touch?” Jun quirked an eyebrow. “That will drive Gigi crazy.”
Family dinner was scheduled for six. Everyone but Mi Hi and Gigi were going to be there, and they were only missing because Gigi had a red carpet to walk. Jun finished up the press releases with Mi Hi and sent her off to get ready. The Parsonage filled with people and food. This was their last hurrah before half of them left for Seoul and the first concert of the tour. Cedric arrived first with Ann, Kimbo, and Rue. They brought their Belgium Malinois pup with them. Cedric was training her to patrol the grounds with him. The kids had named her Daisy. Not the most fitting name, but she answered to it and adored the kids.
May, Ruby, and Betti arrived right after, bringing a large casserole dish that Ruby shyly admitting to baking. Betti had cut her hair down to almost nothing and was wearing cargo pants and a high neck tank top. She followed Ruby like a shadow around the house. May took a load off in the nearest seat and fanned herself with a flyer someone had handed her on her way in, announcing, “There’s some new energy out there, for sure.”
Richard and Émeric arrived next, Émeric with a bag of baked goods and finger snacks. Richard put some wine up on the top of the refrigerators for the adults. Collin arrived a while later, looking flushed. He dropped into the seat across from May and dropped his head back, groaning.
“What now?” May asked.
Collin shook his head, eyes closed. “Some people…can’t read contracts. Or work orders.” He launched into a full saga about the floor that was being installed in the basement and how he was going to have to threaten to sue the contractor if he didn’t tear it up and do it right, because they’d skipped a basic water sealing step in the sub-floor. “At least the sanctuary is going beautifully,” Collin concluded, sitting up a bit. “And we’ve signed two more investors. The botanical gardens finished their partnership with us last week.”
May looked lost, but she followed along bravely. Jun left them to it, moving through the rest of the house. Geun was holding court in the front room with Rue and Kimbo and a rubber band helicopter. Su-jin and Yohei were in the practice space with Hypatia and Matthew setting up a game of Chinese checkers for later. “We could have two more,” Hypatia smiled at Jun.
“Maybe,” Jun said. “I think Ash wanted to play.”
“Is he here yet?”
Jun checked his phone. Alice, Collin’s sister, had just texted the big group chat. “They’re five minutes away. There was a fender-bender. Not them.”
Sure enough, Linda, Alice, Ash, and Dana poured through the front door a few minutes later. Some of those that had been hanging out in the kitchen went out to the porch instead. In the end, most of them ended on the generous front steps, the only place with enough room for almost all of them to be in one place. Geun’s idea to make indoor/outdoor window seats in the front windows had been brilliant.
Jun leaned against Collin, eating a profiterole stuffed with caramel ice cream. It was slightly melted from sitting on his plate, but Émeric had frozen them all, so they could be enjoyed in the heat. He caught Damian’s eye. His alpha was pressed up on the wooden support for the porch roof, standing on the uppermost stair. Ash sat next to him, crouched like a strange bird on the railing. Damian smiled at Jun. Jun’s eyes blinked slowly, and he smiled in return.
Less than a year ago, he’d been alone, and now there was this. All of this.
The Merchari might do their worst, but he was going to fight for this.
Damian
The next morning Damian, Jun, Thomas, and Jamal—who’d taken Cedric’s place—boarded a commercial flight to LAX in California and jumped on a small flight from there to the city where Jun’s two sisters and their mother were still living. Courts were slow and Jun’s request for good conscience action towards his half siblings had been taken into account. It was time, however, to work out a long-term solution. Bak Sakyuk’s wife had asked for an in-person meeting at the house. Carving out a stop before crossing the Pacific had been the easiest solution to Jun’s packed schedule.
As they left the small regional airport in a rented SUV, Jun’s leg vibrated beside Damian’s. Damian placed a hand on Jun’s knee.
“I know. I know.” Jun made a fist and closed his eyes, visibly calming himself. “I don’t want this.”
“Neither do I.”
“Now I get more of what you were feeling when we got that call.”
Damian grimaced.
Jun blew out a breath and forced his body to unclench. “I don’t want to keep cleaning up our parents’ messes.”
“No one deserves to be someone’s mess.” Damian’s thoughts slid back to Howser. Last he’d heard, the courts had remanded him to a distant uncle by marriage on his father’s side in Oklahoma who owned a ranch. That no one had been shot and that the phone had proven Thaddeus had threatened him had worked in his favor. Damian could only hope that, far from Thaddeus’s influence, Howser might find the better parts of his character.
They pulled up to a cookie-cutter house with white trim and pale gray siding looking out over the ocean inside a developed neighborhood. Whatever was running the HOA was obviously anxious, anal, or a robot. Every yard looked the same, plus or minus some flowers, the grass was all the same height and color. Without the numbers on the mailboxes, all perfect replicas of each other, it would have been hard to distinguish between one residence over another.
“Creepy.”
Jun looked around and nodded.
The door opened and a woman of Korean descent stepped through. She wore a double-breasted white dress with a full skirt and ballet flats. With her hair and makeup, she would have fit in as a fashionable house-wife from the 1950s.
“Mr. Sathers, Mr. Gang,” she said in English.
“Mrs. Bak,” Damian answered, staying with the language she’d chosen.
