Page 31 of Forgotten Promise

John looked over when Benjamin put a hand on his shoulder.

“Can I have a tour?” Benjamin asked.

“Yeah. I’m mean, sure.” John cleared his throat, trying to overcome the awkwardness he felt.

He took a breath and turned to the living room. All those architectural tours he’d taken came in handy because he soon relaxed as he showed off the significant Craftsman elements of the home. He pointed out the details in the hand-glazed green tiles around the fireplace. He talked about the half wall of built-in bookshelves that separated the living room from the dining area, an open-concept style that was wildly unique when the house was originally built. He took Benjamin into the kitchen, with its original cabinets, the upper inside with imperfect handblown glass.

From the room that was probably meant to be a bedroom in the back of the house, he pointed out the large oak tree that dominated his backyard, that the bedroom’s small fireplace was a miniature of the larger one in the living room.

It shouldn’t matter if Benjamin liked his house, but for some reason, John needed him to love it as much as he did.

In the hall that connected the two bedrooms and bathroom, they met Kailani, who must have gone exploring, looking for them.

“John,” Kailani said softly. “It’s a lovely house, it’s just…”

“Empty,” Benjamin finished in his forthright way. “It is lovely. But it’s empty. Did you just move in? Is your stuff in storage?”

John looked around. True, there wasn’t much here. He shook his head.

“How long have you lived here?” Kailani asked.

“Three years.”

Benjamin’s eyes widened and Kailani bit her lower lip, he suspected to keep from blurting out her own surprise.

John wasn’t offended. “I know the place is…sparsely decorated.”

Benjamin raised his brow as he snorted. “One of my parents’ houses has a minimalist aesthetic—Mom went through a phase. It was like living in a modern art museum. And even that had more furniture than this.”

John let the other man’s comments roll off his back. After all, he’d just put the billionaire in the back of a police cruiser.

Regardless, when Kailani and Benjamin stared at him, he realized they expected some sort of explanation, so he forced himself to come up with one. “Work keeps me busy,” he lied.

“What does that mean?” Benjamin asked, calling him on it instantly. “You know you can buy furniture online and get it delivered, right?”

“I’m aware,” John said sarcastically. “But the truth is I don’t need much.”

Kailani looked around again and frowned. “Yeah, but…you need more than this.”

“You have one chair,” Benjamin said, stabbing his finger toward the dining room, where a single chair sat positioned near the half wall. He didn’t have a table, so if he wasn’t eating on the couch, he usually used the wide top of the half wall as a table, either standing or sitting beside it.

From the first moment he met Benjamin and Kailani, he’d felt the Grand Canyon-sized divide between him and his future spouses. He’d spent more than a few restless nights wondering if the differences between them would cause problems somewhere down the line, because the hard truth was he didn’t see the world the same way they did. They were used to looking at life from the windows of luxury hotels, private jets, and limousines. His view came through the dust-covered windshield of a cop car.

Kailani and Benjamin had grown up with loving parents and wealth beyond anything he could imagine, legacies to the secret society John was still trying to figure out. They’d never known a single second of hunger or homelessness, while those two states had been second nature to him growing up.

“I have a bed, a couch, a—”

Benjamin cut him off mid-list. “We’re not counting those as two things. You have a futon, for God’s sake. That’s one piece of furniture. Plus, it looks like you’ve got a coffee table that’s seen better days, doubling as your dining table, and—”

It was John’s turn to interject. “I also eat there,” he pointed to the half wall, “and at the kitchen counter sometimes.”

Kailani looked like she wanted to argue that point.

Benjamin rolled his eyes. “You live like a frat boy.”

“I don’t like clutter,” John said stubbornly.

“A couch isn’t clutter,” Benjamin announced. “I’m getting you a couch.”

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