Page 12 of Boyfriend on Parole: The Care of Broken Things Extended Epilogue

Hailey’s arms went back around him. “Cute, cute, cute! Maybe I should be your boyfriend instead.”

“No way.” Eli tried to be adamant despite his laugh. “There’s no way I could compete. I’d be out of the running for sure.”

“That’s true. I’d make an unfairly good boyfriend, I think. Samuel, will you be very lonely once I leave? Maybe you should just come with us. I bet Jemma will shit herself once she sees what pretty eye candy I have.”

“Language,” Eli said, and handed over a bagged lunch to Darren along with Hailey’s school bag.

Jenny stepped out of the car to hug him. “I’ve got a couple of errands to run once I drop Hailey off, but nothing so urgent I can’t drop it to come to you. Here.”

She pushed a phone into his hand. What he noticed first was the charm on it, a resin heart like a locket with a picture of his new family all squashed together inside.

“It’s already got everyone’s contact numbers in it, and your phone wallet is set up. The Amex is mine, but Eli’s toxic masculinity insists you use his instead. That’s the MasterCard you’ll see beside it. The visa belongs to your checking account. That’s for if you need cash for anything. Eli has the card in an envelope at home. It’s in your room with the rest of your stuff.”

He barely took that in, too much to account for. His eyes instead were on the phone’s screensaver. That was a picture of a younger Hailey with a gap-toothed grin flashing a double peace sign. He was briefly distracted by one of the phone apps. “I’ve got three hundred and forty-four messages?”

Nathaniel laughed, leaning in to check. “Is it that many? How embarrassing. We added you to the group chats when we got your phone a few days ago. We’re not usually that chatty, but I guess there were a lot of preparations happening. Most of it’s probably just dorky excitement though.”

He’d thought it was just a glitch, but there really were that many messages. The most active group chat was the one at the top titled BIG CHAOS but there were others too. One was a chat with just him, Nathaniel and Eli called Cootie Boyz. But there were individual messages too. One came in even as he was staring at the phone. A message from his father that said, Your mother wants to have a dinner once you’re settled in.

He blanched and heard Jenny click her tongue. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Take care of what?” Hailey asked.

“A nightmare,” Jenny said, taking her hand.

“Do you mean Auntie Eliana?”

Never in a million years had he thought he’d find his mother’s name in Hailey’s mouth, never mind with an ‘auntie’ in front of it.

Hailey gave him a final hug using her free hand. “I’ll be back by three, but I can come earlier if you need rescuing. Just let Jenny know, and she’ll come get me.”

It was still too hard to let go. “Okay.”

“I love you,” she reminded him, “More than Daddy does.”

Eli cleared his throat. “A bold claim.”

But she wasn’t listening, already climbing into the Porsche, waving and waving, that big smile of hers like a miniature sun.

Nathaniel’s arm was a secure hold around his waist as he watched them pull away. “Sucks, doesn’t it?” he said. “Eli still cries every time she goes to Marie’s.”

“Not every time,” Eli said.

“Forgive me, every time so far.”

Eli laughed, or maybe he didn’t. Maybe the sound came from something or someone else entirely. He didn’t see. His back met the side of Eli’s car, and Nathaniel was kissing him. Not like at the start of their visits. Not like he had in the lobby of the prison. Kissing him like the man had only ever kissed him in his dreams—like he wasn’t going to stop.

Like he was going to fuck him.

He gasped, unprepared and overstimulated, and it became clear very quickly that whatever worries he’d had about Mr. Edwards and trauma and his body not working were laughably defunct. Nathaniel pressed in close, stepping in to take up all of the space, their bodies flushed entirely together as that mouth opened and opened to him, taking him in and demanding he come to him, and he did, pushing into it and rushing forward, his hands grabbing at Nathaniel before he could think to make them work, the pressure hard, the bones and force of it hard, but the skin and flesh yielding, eager to be taken up, smooth and accommodating and so warm.

He made a sound half-outrage and half-alarm as the seal between their mouths broke, not finding the tradeoff between oxygen and Nathaniel at all appealing. But it wasn’t a trade between oxygen and Nathaniel, it was a trade between Nathaniel and Eli, and as that second mouth re-formed the seal, he found he hadn’t lost that first mouth at all, Nathaniel’s lips and teeth were at work on his neck, ears, jaw—anything they could reach, really, ripping into him with a wonderful and savage destruction.

“Take me.” He didn’t even hear himself asking it—a good thing as it would have severely embarrassed him. “Please—”

“Right here on their doorstep, should I?” Eli’s voice was a rumbling storm. But Samuel didn’t hear that either—only the power and promise in it, and he whimpered, pressing himself against it, groaning as that mouth took him again.

“Sinful puppy,” Eli said, breaking it off again too soon.