Page 46 of Jorhee

I nodded silently.

“Thank you. I’m not against it. It’s just I never gave it much thought. I never saw myself meeting someone who’d move out to rural Oklahoma and help me run the ranch, and I didn’t want to raise a kid alone. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I kinda thought I’d be the uncle who showed my sister’s kids how to ride, feed a rejected calf, and all that stuff and that someday, they’d be the ones to inherit the ranch from me.”

He gave a sardonic laugh.

“Now they will anyway, once she gets around to popping out any babies, but it won’t be me teachin’ ’em a damn thing.”

He let out an angry huff.

“I wonder what they all thought about the whole royal wedding thing?”

Fethri and Kiprr exchanged uneasy glances.

“What?” Jesse demanded, noticing the looks. “You’ve seen or heard something, haven’t you?”

“Xeranos and Bob keep tabs on news and social media that have to do with you in case of potential threats and such things. There’s a clip where a reporter tracked down your father and his new wife and ambushed them at a rest stop in Arizona.”

“What?!”

I winced at the high pitch of his shout.

“Show me!”

Kiprr wordlessly picked up the tablet on the small table between the two rocking chairs, tapped the screen a few times, and handed it over.

Jesse stared down at it for a moment, licking his lips as he hesitated.

“You don’t have to see it unless you wish to,” I reminded him gently.

“No, I want to!”

He jabbed his finger hard against the screen to get the vid to play.

“Today we have an interesting bit of footage sent by the reporter on scene after their employer declined to air it, allegedly citing that it was gossip fodder and not actual news, upon which they emailed me immediately here at Team Jesse and Johree,” a woman’s voice said over a still image of a rest-stop building. She then began to play the shared clip.

“Why was your son Jesse living in a long-stay motel, having to clean offices at night instead of working back on the ranch?” a reporter from a national news channel shouted at them as they emerged from the covered area where the restrooms and vending machines were. They each held a can of pop and several snacks. Dad and Susie had the deer-in-the-headlights look.

“He didn’t have to!” Dad shouted at them.

“There was a miscommunication,” Susie said. “Something I said was repeated completely wrong to his father, and Jesse took it hard and left before his dad could get it straightened out.”

“And I couldn’t because I couldn’t find where he’d gone! Our own wedding day came, and I missed having my son stand there with me, which cut deep. We didn’t leave on our own honeymoon until we saw the news that he’d gotten himself mate-matched and had left Earth.”

They managed to gain enough ground to reach their RV’s passenger-side door.

“When you found out, why didn’t you reach out so you could fix things? Were you angry that he married an alien? A male alien, at that, even if he is a prince?”

My father looked stricken then.

“I might not have been a rainbow-flag-waving supporter, but no, I could never be angry about him finding his soul mate,’cause that’s what the Mylos do by all accounts. If your soul mate is in the database, they find ’em for you.”

“Him getting mate-matched made us re-evaluate a lot of things we’d thought about the Mylos and Dragonii, as well as LGBT matters,” Susie said, taking Dad’s can of Dr Pepper from him so he could open her door for her. She got in as quickly as she could and, after setting down the things in her hands, closed the door while Dad made a break for the driver’s side. They followed him.

“What does that mean?” the reporter pressed.

“It means we both reckon it’s not a case of love the sinner and hate the sin, as God doesn’t make mistakes!” Dad replied angrily, reaching his door and slamming it closed.

The cameraman turned to show the driveway behind the RV. A Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office patrol car pulled in behind them, having come in through the exit, and a deputy got out.