I was not marryingLuke Williams. For many, many reasons.
I brought my ax down on an unsuspecting log—whack—and the bisected halves fell into the snow—thud.
First and foremost, I was not gay.
I picked up half of a log and put it back on the chopping block.
Whack. Thud.
I was pretty sure I wasn’t even bisexual.
Whack. Thud.
It wasn’t that I would mind being bi, if I was. Not even a little.
Whack. Thud.
Or okay, maybe alittle, but only because it would prove Van and certain other busybodies in town right, and that would be annoying.
Whack. Thud.
But not because I thought there was anythingwrongwith liking guys. I mean, once Knox finally stopped dicking around and asked Gage to marry him, I was gonna groomsman the hell out of one or both of them. And if Aiden came to me tomorrow and said he was marrying a man, I’d… well, okay, I’d tell himhe was seven and to go do his fucking homework before he considered matrimony, but I’d be supportive.
Whack. Thud.
It was just that I wouldknowif I were into guys, the same way I knew I had brown hair and loved ice cream and hated talking about my feelings. The same way I knew I was a Capricorn… or a Cancer, whichever was the January one. Because a person could hide a lot of things from himself, sure, but not something this enormous and monumental. Not if he already had three gay brothers and one bisexual one, for fuck’s sake,anda gay uncle and had grown up in an environment where lube preferences were sometimes discussed at the dinner table.
Whack. Thud.
And of all the guys in the world who could possibly unlock my latent bisexuality, was it really likely to be shy, slightly nerdy, golly-gosh-darn Luke Williams, with his Pollyanna manners, baggy khaki pants, and sweater vests, when I hadn’t even liked the guy until our paths happened to collide at the Bugle the night before?
I tightened my grip on the ax and firmly did not think about his deep blue eyes or his swirling freckles, the way his smile got caught on his incisor sometimes when he laughed or the way my stomach writhed and dropped every time I caught sight of him.
Whack. Thud.
I did not think about where he was, right at that moment, or what he might be doing.
Whack. Thud.
I also did not think about the way my cock had responded to the woodsmoke smell of him since that was entirely due to being drunk. Drunk and confused.
Some people’s dicks stopped working when they were drunk, but clearly mine was the opposite.
Whack. Thud.
And, okay, even if Iwasbisexual—which the jury was still out on—andattracted to Luke Williams—which I super was not—it didn’t matter at all, practically speaking, because I was not going to act on any of it.
Fuck no. Me and Luke Williams?Pfft. That was a complicated disaster waiting to happen.
We couldn’t even get drunk without getting accidentally handfasted, for God’s sake. Plus, he was my son’s teacher, which seemed… weird.
And, most importantly, a guy like Luke Williams practically had the wordrelationshipstamped on his forehead, which was a hard limit for me.
My previous relationship had drained me dry emotionally and financially three years ago when Amanda left me and our son to go off and chase rainbows.
And then, just when I’d started to think things might be okay, Amanda had reappeared and decided she wanted back in Aiden’s life, first by freakin’kidnappinghim after school one day—an incident she dismissed as an “oversight” but which still gave me nightmares—and then by taking me to court to challenge our previous custody agreement so she could see him more often.
And the trickiest part of all that was, I was going to have to set my fears aside and work with her, because even if it killed me, I would do what I had to for Aiden?—
