Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair (19 page)

Aiden’s chest loosened, and for a moment, in the grease and wood stained garage, he smelled sunshine and hay and bunny things. “We’ve got everything she needs,” Aiden soothed, even though he knew the grocery store list was going to be long and pricey.

“Should I ask your sister now?” His voice had relaxed a little, but Aiden wasn’t fooled.

“Five minutes,” he said into the quiet garage. “Elaine’ll tell us when dinner is ready. We can ask her over the table.”

Jeremy nodded like he was gearing up for another battle, but this time, Aiden was pretty sure he’d win.

J
EREMY
PROBABLY
could have clutched that puppy for the entire evening, but he did eventually give it up and go back inside. He resumed conversation like he’d never freaked the hell out, and Aiden’s mom and sister obliged him. His mom tried to make intimidating eye contact over Jeremy’s bent head as he finished helping with the table, but Aiden smiled blandly and went to get the little kids ready to eat.

It was funny about little kids—sometimes he wondered if they even knew he’d moved out, and sometimes they acted like they hadn’t seen him three days before, when he’d come to drop off something for his mom. Tonight they completely ignored the fact that he’d moved out and focused on why Jeremy was eating with them. They all knew Jeremy from the store, and they’d been worried when he’d been hurt, but the idea that he was Aiden’s roommate was apparently a sticking point.

“Why are you living together again?” This from Ford, who was ten years old and perhaps the only other Rhodes child destined for college.

“Because I love him,” Aiden said gruffly, watching Jeremy’s charm come back as he chatted in the kitchen.

“Does he love you?” Ford asked.

Aiden grunted. “Very much,” he said, thinking about how much this simple day terrified Jeremy. “Enough to come here and meet all of you, so be nice.”

“We are nice,” said Carlene, who was eight. “He should want to meet us all because we’re nice.”

Aiden refrained from telling her that it was the niceness that scared the piss out of Jeremy, and pulled a “Daddy” then, responding with a nod and a grunt and urging them all to go wash up and get to the table.

Aiden’s dad came in to do just that as they were all sitting down. He didn’t say much, just extended his hands, and everyone at the table joined together while he said grace. Jeremy’s hand in Aiden’s went from cool and dry to cold and sticky during the course of the prayer, and Aiden looked up to see what had scared him.

He was staring big-eyed at John Rhodes like he was the incarnation of Hell’s left toe.

Prayer wrapped up and people started passing food bowls around the table, and for a moment there was good-natured chatter and the bickering of children. Jeremy had just settled down to a plate that was mostly mashed potatoes and gravy (he liked simple foods—comfort foods—and outside of bacon and eggs, he didn’t know what to do with too much protein) when Aiden’s father actually asked him a question.

Oh, yeah, sure, Jeremy stared down a mobster with a gun with complete aplomb and acceptance, but a “nice” man talks to him out of the blue and he almost craps his pants.

“So, Jeremy, it’s taken you a while to come by.”

Aiden squeezed his thigh and tried to breathe with him through the panic.

“Yes, sir. It has. An oversight on my part, I assure you.”

Aiden’s dad grunted and took a bite of chicken. “I understand you have a bit of a colorful past, am I right?”

Jeremy gave Aiden look of absolute betrayal and spoke into the void. “Yes, sir, but not anymore. My present is as plain as worsted yarn, I can assure you.”

Aiden masked a yelp of indignation with a cough, which was probably the worst thing he could have done, bar none.

“Not that your son is plain none,” Jeremy corrected. “He is, in fact, the prettiest boy I’ve ever seen. The moment I laid eyes on him—I mean, you know, not that way, ’cause he was still in high school, but he was surely a nice combination plate of genetic perfection if you—I mean, you and your wife surely do make pretty chil—I mean….”

The look he sent Aiden was tortured, as though his mouth was moving independently of his brain and he couldn’t do anything to stop it.

“Jeremy,” Aiden said, after forking some food in his mouth and swallowing like Jeremy wasn’t just living his worst nightmare here, “you may want to stop talking. Dad, give him a breather. He’s spent three years building this up as a big-assed deal, and he’s about ready to torpedo his own ship.”

Aiden heard what sounded like a snort, and he looked up to see his father’s wide chest rocking in what seemed to be his habitual gentle laughter. His hair was going salt and pepper, but it was still curly like Aiden’s, and his eyes were the same murky green. He had a bolder nose and broader features, but what Aiden always remembered when he thought of his dad was his ruminative silences and the way he seemed to watch over his children with sort of a vast amusement. Aiden always thought that for his dad, the children were just a delightful surprise, and every morning he woke up with them surprised him even more.

Jeremy let out a little breath at John Rhodes’s laughter, and looked down at his potatoes. Aiden could tell by the slope of his shoulders and his neck that he was done.

Aiden—who talked less than his dad and had his mother’s temper—was suddenly in charge of leading the conversation.

He looked at his little brothers and sisters, who were regarding him with unbridled amusement.

“Ford?” he barked.

His brother sat to attention. “Yessir!”

“How’re your grades?”

“Way worse than Elaine’s and not anywhere near yours.”

“Carlene?”

“Yessir!”

Oh Jesus. He narrowed his eyes at her. “You still taking dance classes?”

“No, Aiden. Mama said it’s like teaching a cow to sing the blues. No one wants to see it, no one wants to hear it, and it’s embarrassing to the cow.”

“
Mom
!” Aiden and Elaine both turned to their mom, horrified, and she was looking at her youngest, equally horrified.

“I never said that!”

“You did too—you were talking to Daddy!”

The argument waged at the table then was epic, full of recriminations and “Nuh-uh, I did too!” statements, and Aiden took a deep breath.

“Well done,” Jeremy murmured under the chaos of the table. “Thanks for having my back.”

“Well, it worked better than I expected,” Aiden confessed as Elaine threw a bun at Nathaniel for impugning her own dance prowess. Nathaniel was about to retaliate with a spoonful of potatoes when Aiden’s father cleared his throat.

“Hrm-hrm.”

And that was all it took.

The table went suddenly quiet again and the topic moved on to other things. Nobody mentioned dance, cows, or pretty children again—and praise Jesus, nobody talked directly to Jeremy.

Finally, finally, dessert was over, they’d managed to bolt their coffee, and they were on their way out the front door with promises to be back, oh for fuck’s sake, next week.

Once they were gone, Jeremy collapsed bonelessly in the front seat of the car and closed his eyes.

Aiden drove for a few moments in silence and wondered what to
say.

“Boy?”

“Yeah?”

“You think our coffee place is open?”

“Yeah!”

“I want a real big dessert coffee. With a giant piece of someone else’s pie.” He hadn’t touched his own dessert—or hardly his own dinner.

“Yeah, Jer. I’ll take care of you.”

“Thanks, Aiden. I’m damned grateful. Are we really doing that again?”

“I’m afraid so.” Aiden sighed. His parents weren’t going to let them off the hook either.

“Maybe I’ll get hit by a car or something. It might be less painful than that.”

Aiden barely kept himself from jerking the wheel. “Shut up,” he muttered. “Nothing’s more painful than watching you hurt, you hear me?”

Jeremy let out another breath. “But Aiden—you saw what I was like. Man, it was just like when I met you, except… except
worse
. It was like everything I ever remembered about how to talk to people, that just… just took a dump and
that’s
what was coming out of my mouth!”

“That’s a good thing,” Aiden said, forcing himself to keep it easy on the gas.

“How in the hell was
that
a good thing?” Jeremy sounded near tears, and Aiden had to make it right. Using words. Which had
never
been his strength.

“Because you sucked at it, Jer. It was talking, and you
sucked
at it. Which means you weren’t scamming or conning or fucking around. You were nervous as hell and it was important to you. When you were beat the fuck up, you tried to charm me through broken teeth. If you are losing your ability to bullshit at the dinner table, then you are doing something with your heart.”

“Wonderful,” Jeremy said bitterly. “So I’m all set to use my one fucking skill set to help Ariadne, and it turns out that losing that thing is proof that I’m finally honest. I think that is a big fucking kick in the ’nads, that’s what I think!” He scrubbed fruitlessly at his face, distraught and disheartened, and Aiden had just exhausted his best words.

At that point he spotted a driveway with the gate already pulled shut for the night. With a jerk of the wheel that had the car fishtailing, chains or no chains, he pulled off into the cleared part on the side of the road. He left the motor running and yanked up the parking brake, then turned sideways.

“Jeremy, look at me.”

It wasn’t a look, it was an out-and-out glare. “Looking,” he muttered.

Aiden grasped his chin firmly between his thumb and fingers and kissed him. At first Jeremy kept his lips tightly pursed, but then Aiden tickled them with his tongue and he softened and let Aiden in.

Wild and sweet. That was what he’d tasted like the first time Aiden had kissed him, and it hadn’t gone away.

Jeremy opened his mouth and started to respond coyly to Aiden’s boldness as he thrust his way into the wet and the heat. Aiden swept in, pushing him back against the seat and dominating, battling in the kiss to make him see reason, literally kissing him until he lolled against the headrest, addled and limp, before backing off.

He leaned his head against the steering wheel then and gulped big lungfuls of air, conscious that Jeremy had closed his eyes and was doing the same.

“Done?” Jeremy asked.

“For the moment.”

“Can we get dessert coffee now?” Poor Jeremy. He sounded plaintive and at the end of his rope.

“Sure. Next time make an extra pie. We’ll have it when we get home.”

“Yeah, okay.” He didn’t sound thrilled, but he didn’t sound like he was going to bolt either.

“We’ll practice before next time,” Aiden reassured him.

“Practice what?”

“All the dumbass things people say in conversation that you don’t want to answer.”

Jeremy gusted out a sigh. “Yeah, okay. God. Make sure the moon stays white and doesn’t turn to blood or anything, okay? ’Cause the day I need to take lessons on how to talk is the day the world might really come to an end.”

“You don’t need lessons,” Aiden muttered, starting the car and pulling out. “You need practice. It’s just like being honest. You know how to do it, you just gotta do it until it feels natural, that’s all.”

“Okay,” Jeremy conceded. “Let’s do that. Tomorrow.”

Aiden felt Jeremy’s hand, covered in one of the many pairs of mittens Aiden had made him over the years, resting on his knee.

“Tomorrow’s fine,” Aiden agreed. “What do you want to do after dessert coffee?”

He heard a soft laugh then, something low and sensual and a little bit dirty. “I don’t know, boy. I was sort of hoping we could continue with where that kiss left off.”

Oh thank God. “Jer, I think our night is looking up.”

T
HEIR
KISSES
that night tasted like coffee and caramel and the pecan pie that was on special at the coffee house. Aiden took Jeremy from behind, sheathing his cock between his thighs, as they lay side by side, and framed his throat with one hand while wrapping the other around his cock.

Jeremy responded to his touch, to his command, to his need, without any words between them. When they were done and Aiden’s spend dripped from Jeremy’s legs and Jeremy himself lay limp and obedient in Aiden’s arms, they could finally breathe easy.

Aiden pulled up the covers while they were still naked, figuring he would clean them off when he got up in a little while to pee. As soon as they were situated, huddling under the covers and safe in their cocoon, he heard it.

Jeremy’s voice, a little rusty, a lot wandering, singing their song.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night….

Next time, Aiden thought. Or maybe the time after that. One of these times, he would take Jeremy to his parents and he would shine. They would see what a good man he’d brought home, and what a good heart Jeremy had.

Aiden wrapped his arms around his good man and held tight while Jeremy sang them both to sleep.

T
HEY
HAD
maybe an hour’s notice to feed the animals, pack their bag, and get on the plane. Aiden had to call his mom so Elaine and Ford could come by and make sure the animals were fed over the next two days, and for once they all thanked God for Rich, who could tend the stock at Craw’s.

The entire plane trip over the mountain, the four of them stared out the window and prayed.

“Please let them be okay, please let them be okay, please let them be okay.”

Ariadne had finally gone into labor.

“If she’d waited another week, we could have driven,” Craw muttered, looking at the slushy roads under the plane as they flew.

“If she’d waited another week, she would have killed someone,” Aiden said practically, and Jeremy met his eyes and nodded fiercely.

Poor Ariadne. She’d been
so
tired of being pregnant by the end. The last time Jeremy had visited, she’d been introverted and snappish, and Jeremy missed the friend who had been there while he’d been recovering.