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Soon enough, all three emerged from the tent, hungry and ready for story time, and Gray was prepared. With Cass on one side and their cooler on the other, he kept an eye on their girl while he finished their dinner setup. Ketchup was a must for the little ones, Darius had his favorite mustard, Gray had another, relish, pre-chopped onion, homemade hot dog buns, and a ton of napkins and wet wipes.
Oh, and juice boxes.
“Juice box!” Justin’s eyes lit up, and he plopped down on his pajama-clad butt on the blanket. “It’s so warm and cozy by the fire, Daddy.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Gray smiled and splayed a napkin across Justin’s lap.
Over the next few minutes, their priority was to get the kids their food. Darius helped the boys while Gray turned Cassidy’s dinner into mush. Or close to it. They didn’t buy the regular hot dogs at the store; they went to their personal butcher, Nelson, so there was skin to remove, and the sausage had to be diced onto a bright-pink plastic plate.
“Spowk!” Cass pointed at her spork next to Gray’s lap.
He handed it to her, then set her plate on his leg. He was quick to fasten her bib around her neck too, ’cause it got messy real fast. That’d definitely been a new experience when Cass joined them. Diapers, pacifiers, bibs, and onesies. Unfortunately, she didn’t use the latter anymore.
“There you go, baby. Come closer—you can use my leg as a table.”
She scooted closer and leaned against him, spork in hand, so she could dip the sausage in way too much ketchup and squeeze the hell out of the hot dog bun.
“Fuck, this is it. This is the life.” Darius bit into his hot dog with an obscene amount of mustard, and he could not look more at peace.
The sight flooded Gray with contentment and pure love, and he reached into the cooler to grab a beer, which he handed to Jayden. “Pass that to Daddy, please.”
“Can I try?” he asked Darius.
Who delivered his usual response. “Can I see some ID?”
Gray smirked and chewed on a mouthful of food, and he grabbed a bottle of water for himself.
“I wanna hear a story now,” Justin said. With ketchup all around his mouth.
“The somewhere-else story,” Jayden added quickly.
Gray exchanged a soft grin with Darius. “Go on, storyteller.”
The man claimed he couldn’t find his words easily, but he’d turned out to be the best storyteller in their family. Gray loved to listen just as much as the boys did. But yeah, this was a heavy story, so he hurried to finish his hot dog before he’d lose his appetite.
“All right, let’s see. The somewhere-else story.” Darius took another bite of his hot dog, and he chased it down with a swig of beer. “You remember how your father and I met?”
Justin was too cute; he raised his hand eagerly as if he’d started school already. “I remember, I remember! You were in a bad place, and you were scared.”
Darius nodded with a dip of his chin. “That’s right. We were a long way from home. Long way from our families, long, long way from the cabin. And we were out at sea, surrounded by people who weren’t nice.”
That was one way of putting it.
Gray took a deep breath and met Darius’s stare over the dancing flames of the fire, tiny embers climbing skyward as the last light of the day faded between the trees.
He would never forget. He’d never forget the yacht, period, but he’d never forget that particular night on the top deck. When hope had mingled with dread, when determination came and went, when strengths and weaknesses battled. When he’d found his comfort in Darius’s arms.
“I wanted to protect that knucklehead from every danger,” Darius murmured. He flicked a glance at the boys. “Just like I feel about you two and your sister.”
Gray’s heart clenched.
Darius finished his hot dog and started preparing a new one. “One night, Gray and I got a moment alone. We just wanted to go home and see our families again, but we couldn’t yet.”
“And you pretended,” Justin supplied helpfully.
“We did.” Darius looked back to Gray. “We squeezed each other tightly and pretended we weren’t on that boat—that we were somewhere else. I remember thinking I wished I could grow wings and fly him outta there. Just cut through the clouds and fly all the way home to our mountain. And that became my pretend heaven—right here. These mountains, these trees, all the fresh air. This is where I pretended we were. This is my somewhere else, and…somehow, Daddy and I managed to turn that dream into reality.”
Gray swallowed hard, unable to describe how much he loved that man. And what their journey together had done to them both. How it’d forged them together and shaped their future.
