Page 3 of Forever We Embrace: The Later Years
“I told him to go to hell, Blake,” Luther says, and I can almost hear him pacing in his office. “But it wasn’t just the request.His voice... he sounded frayed. Less polished. Like a man whose employer is losing patience.”
The call ends, leaving the room feeling colder than before.
Employer. The word catches, though I don’t know why. Victor has always presented himself as the person directing the attack, and nothing Luther heard proves otherwise. Still, the word remains with me after the call ends.
By the time we get home, the corporate world feels like a distant, gray memory. The house smells like Grayson’s slow-cooker stew and the chaotic, high-energy scent of children who’ve been outside for too long. James and Samuel are in the living room, surrounded by a mountain of pillows and a very confused-looking plush dragon. I glance around, looking for my heart to find Luca curled up on the couch, passed out with Rosalie in his lap, Luther gently stroking his fingers through our Omega’s hair.
I settle a little just as the twins perk up at my arrival.
“Papa!” Samuel shouts, sprinting toward me. He stops just short of a collision, his eyes going to my cane. He’s learned to be careful, a fact that breaks my heart a little more every day. “I take the rings! I chose me!”
“Did you now?” I say, letting Maceo take my coat as I sink into the armchair.
Samuel nods and picks up a small decorative bowl. “I can walk slow.”
He moves across the rug with exaggerated care, holding the bowl in both hands.
James sits on the floor with a page in his lap, drawing a deep dip in the middle of the ring pad. “The rings go here so they don’t roll off if Sam falls.”
Samuel hugs the bowl to his chest and frowns. “I can walk slow.”
“Then walk slow,” I say. “And James can make the dip.”
Both boys nod, satisfied with the plan as I look between Samuel’s careful practice route and James’s increasingly elaborate cushion plans. The children have approached this wedding with more preparation and seriousness than any of the adults. To them, it isn’t a complicated public declaration or another decision waiting to be finalized. It’s happening, and they intend to be ready.
3
Grayson
The kitchen has settled into the comfortable mess after dinner. Plates crowd the counter, a pot soaking beside the sink, and the children’s voices carrying in from the living room while Maceo dries each dish I hand him. We’re close enough that our arms brush every few minutes, neither of us bothering to make more space as his scent overwhelms me.
I snort as he easily places one of the dishes away without asking me where it goes. Luca has a bad habit with rearranging parts of the house, especially when the outside world makes him antsy. One of those parts includes the kitchen, though he hasn’t touched it in almost a year. Maceo reaches past me for the serving-spoon drawer, nudges it shut with his hip, and takes the next plate from the rack before I can pass it to him.
I rinse another dish and glance toward him. “You missed a spot.”
Maceo inspects the clean plate, then dips one corner of the towel into the sink and draws it across my wrist. Water seeps beneath my cuff before I can pull away.
He catches my hand when I flick the suds back at him, holding my wrist while the beginning of a smile softens his mouth. “You’re holding a wet plate. Think this through.”
“You’re the one who put soap on me, Gamma.”
“You told me there was a spot.”
His thumb brushes over my pulse before he releases me. I lean against his shoulder as I return the plate to the water, and he presses a kiss to my temple while we finish the last few dishes. The exchange is easy, the kind of small moment I used to watch the others share while Maceo stood near the edge of the room.
His purr starts up in his chest as he continues and I have to smile at the soft chaos spreading through the house. Behind us, the children have turned most of the living room into a castle. James has arranged the couch cushions into two uneven walls, Rosalie sitting between them with her plastic crown tilted over one eye, and Samuel holding Blake’s cane upright as the gate.
Blake is stretched along the couch with Luca tucked against his side, one of Blake’s hands resting beneath the back of Luca’s shirt while Luca kisses the edge of his jaw between quiet pieces of conversation. They’ve been attached since dinner, shifting only enough to let the children pull cushions from around them.
Maceo sets the final plate in the cabinet and follows my gaze as Samuel crawls beneath the cane with a toy dragon clutched in one hand, moving carefully so he doesn’t knock it from James’s grip.
“Don’t hit it,” James warns. “Papa needs it.”
“I know. I’m going slow.”
Rosalie points toward the gap between the cushion walls. “Put my door by my chair.”
Samuel reaches the other side and places the dragon beside her before crawling back the same way. I suppress a chuckle as James then moves toward Blake and sets it down beside him.
