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“Could what be?” The man next to him, Jimmy Dale, gazed toward him with wondering hazel eyes.
“Could we have finally hit upon one of those rare, perfect moments? The kind we wish we could freeze and just remain in forever?”
Jimmy smiled. “Could we be like Jim Croce and put time in a bottle?” He laughed and nudged Connor. “I know you’re old enough to get the reference.”
“Yes, I am. No shame in that though. I’m just glad to be here. It’s moments like these that make me realize just how fortunate I am, despite all that’s happened. And plus, it also just brings home the fact that the happiest moments are often the smallest ones.”
The landscape before him blurred a little, becoming a collage of blue, green, brown, white, and gray as he reflected on the last few months of his life.
Glad, though, didn’t begin to describe his gratitude at being where he was right now, next to this new man who may or may not hold the key to future romantic bliss. Even more, he was simply grateful he still had a life to hold on to, to fill with hopes, dreams, joy. He was amazingly thankful that he had a daughter to hug and joke with, who was, at this very moment, inside the house, doing her own creative thing.
Miranda had found her way.
Jimmy moved closer, and Connor slipped an arm around his shoulders. Two plastic wine glasses with a nice sauvignon blanc rested on the cedar border of the tub.
Jimmy Dale wasn’t someone with whom Connor thought he’d ever be a match. And who knew? Maybe he wouldn’t. They’d only been seeing each other for a couple of weeks, and, shocker alert, they’d met online, something that for both of them would have seemed too nightmarish to even contemplate as recently as a few months ago.
But Connor was a great believer in intuition. And while Jimmy wasn’t exactlyGQcover model material, neither was Connor. Jimmy was bearish, balding, perhaps a bit too hairy for most. At first glance, one wouldn’t thinkhunk. But Connor had allowed himself a second and then a third look—and so on—and had found the man to be remarkably easy on the eyes. There was something about Jimmy—the twinkle in those eyes, the way his lips turned up just a bit more on the right side when he smiled, the small gap between his front teeth he hated but that Connor thought made an interesting face even more so. He looked good to Connor, and that was all that mattered.
So what if he was a little heavy? As the saying went, there was just more of him to love.
If Connor had learned anything from the horrors he’d just lived through, it was that he should peer deeper than the surface when encountering someone new.
And, as much as it seemed to go against the grain, he realized he needed to try to return to trusting his heart as much as, if not more than, his head.
That was why Jimmy was here now at Connor’s simple but sufficient cabin on Orcas Island, a place Connor refused to let bad memories spoil. Yes, he’d agreed to marry Trey here and they’d had an amazing and romantic time before it all went so horribly bad. And yes, he knew even that good time had been all a ruse. But the place didn’t belong to Trey or Bruno or whatever name had ended up on that demon’s tombstone. It belonged to no one, not really.
When Connor, after grieving the loss of his home in Seattle, thought about where he might now live, the first thought that came was Orcas Island. It was quiet, stunningly gorgeous. Peaceful. Untroubled and unspoiled.
He’d been more than ready to put the hustle and bustle of a big city behind. It seemed like, more and more, Seattle was becoming a smaller version of San Francisco, with its outrageous prices, traffic, and crowds. Connor realized he no longer needed that kind of excitement.
Orcas Island was a dream come true—a safe haven, even if it did have some bad associations. But life was all about what one focuses on. He could whine about one weekend here with Trey and let it spoil everything for him. Or he could accept that bad things happened no matter where we were.
Orcas represented serenity.
He’d shared a lot of his past trauma with Jimmy. When he first told Miranda about meeting him her reaction had been “Are you out of your fucking mind, Daddy? You’re going out with someone you hooked up with online? Have you not learned a thing?”
Ah, dear daughter. Never one to mince words…
But the truth was the thing he and Jimmy shared—the man who called himself Trey Goodall but whom the world now knew as Bruno Purdy—was the impetus for bringing them together rather than keeping them apart.
Sometimes shared heartache and fear could be unifying rather than divisive. Jimmy had, just like Connor, aligned himself with the madman, and had also barely escaped with his life. Both of their brushes with mortality, their own and that of their loved ones, created a bond in the pair that no one else could duplicate. This was one of the main reasons Connor was confident their union just might be a lasting one.
After the initial shock of discovering what the main thing they had in common was, and wanting to flee that commonality, they realized that no one else could truly comprehend them the way they could each other.
Rather than a barrier, their relationship with the evil force who went by multiple names and identities was strengthening and actually life-affirming.
But Connor wasn’t rushing into anything. Not this time. Not ever again. He and Jimmy hadn’t even done more than kiss.
There would be plenty of hours and days to savor the humor and kindness of Jimmy Dale. If things continued as well as they had initially, those hours and days could morph into weeks and years.
He turned and kissed Jimmy’s warm lips, dueled a bit with his tongue. The touch erased so much bad—it was a bit of a miracle. In its place, there was goodness, hope, and maybe, just maybe, real joy.
And the possibility of love.
Somewhere, Connor felt, Steve watched them. He was not jealous because he would have left such pettiness behind when he’d exited the mortal coil. No, he’d share in Connor’s passion and excitement and would definitely approve. Connor believed that with all his heart.
Miranda? She would come around. Right now, she was cordial and cool toward Jimmy, but he’d made her laugh a few times, and Connor knew laughter was the key to worming one’s way into her heart.
