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Ryder’s son, Clint, was only seven.
They’d agreed to Yvonne’s plan, and the next few hours had felt like a decade. He’d stayed with Ryder and the boys that night, Vince begging him to share his single bed. He’d held his son all night as he cried.
Leo spent the next week at Ryder’s place, neither man feeling prepared to deal with Denise’s funeral or their sons alone. The old saying proclaimed there was safety in numbers, but in this case, there was comfort too.
At the end of the week, he and Ryder had returned to Pat’s Pub, to Yvonne, neither of them sure where to go from there. While he and Ryder loved their sons, and were fully capable and prepared to raise them, a new concern had arisen the previous night when they’d realized the boys, who’d grown up as true brothers—closer than any two boys Leo had ever seen—tearfully asked if they were going to be split up.
“What are we going to do?” Ryder asked.
Leo shrugged. He’d spent the entire week trying to adjust his work schedule to accommodate Vince’s, but there were lots of overlapping parts unaccounted for. Ryder had mentioned the same thing. Truth was, the boys’ lives were going to change drastically. Leo lived in a different school district, and Ryder confessed Clint would now have to spend a great deal of time in childcare, given his long work hours.
“The answer is simple,” Yvonne said, as if they were missing something entirely obvious. “Leo moves in with you and the boys.”
Leo frowned and started to shake his head.
“Think about it,” Yvonne continued. “Your job has you out of bed at the ass-crack of dawn every day, while Ryder works bankers’ hours. I realize that means a bit of a commute for you, Leo, but it’s not completely undoable. Ryder will handle the morning shift—making breakfast, packing lunches and getting the boys to school, while you’re the evening shift. You can rearrange your deliveries so that you can pick up Clint and Vince from school, then you handle dinner, homework, bath and bedtime. This way, the boys get to stay together with loving parents, and Vince doesn’t have to change schools. They’ve suffered a huge loss. I think the best thing you can do for your sons right now is keep the rest of their lives as close to normal as possible. At least for the time being anyway. Do a six-month trial run, then reevaluate.”
* * *
Leo grimaced at the memory. Yvonne had thrown that “normal” word at him twice in his life, using it to describe things that were far from normal.
And yet, she’d been right.
Or at least, he’d thought so. Until Ryder got that big promotion last month at work. It required him to be out of town several days a week for training, and Leo was dying on the vine, trying to do it all until Ryder could settle into his new position. The fact the boys were out of school for summer only exasperated things. Instead of just keeping them occupied in the evening hours, he was dropping them off at day camps or putting them to work at the farm or dragging them around on his delivery runs. They were almost always with him, and each other. Which meant the noise level and ridiculous brotherly squabbles were at an all-time high.
If he had a nickel for every time one of them bitched about the other one touching him or hogging the controller or turning the channel, he’d be drinking piña coladas on his own private island by now.
He glanced around, spotting the mountain of dirty clothes that had started creeping out of the laundry room and into the hallway. There was a layer of dust on every piece of furniture in the living room, and he didn’t have to see the kitchen to know that if their dinner hadn’t been scorched, they would have been eating on paper plates because the rest of the dishes were in the sink.
Typically, he could handle real life shit better than this. But with Ryder gone so much and the constant distraction of the boys, and the fact he’d had to extend his own work hours because his dad had pulled a muscle in his back, he simply couldn’t do it.
He stood from the floor and walked back to the kitchen, dumping the shards of glass in the trash can.
“You guys need to clean your room. The smell is getting pretty unbearable,” he called from the kitchen, when he realized the two boys had started wrestling. They were giggling now, but past experience had proven that would turn to crying or true fighting before long.
“We already cleaned it,” Vince called out.
Leo knew that was a lie. He’d had a hell of a time getting his son to do anything this summer. He wasn’t sure if it was puberty or laziness, but he’d had enough.
“You realize I can confirm that lie in about five seconds.”
Vince mumbled something incoherent, which was a good thing. Leo had a feeling if he’d heard it, he’d flip out.
He closed his eyes and groaned when there was a knock on the door. The last thing Leo needed to deal with was someone trying to sell him something. He stomped to the front door, ready to use whoever was on the other end as a whipping boy.
He was fucking done with today.
With this week.
This life.
He swung the door open—then pulled up short when he saw Yvonne standing there, smiling and holding a picnic basket in her hands.
“What’s that?” he barked, feeling instantly guilty at his rudeness.
Of course, it was Yvonne, which meant she merely lifted one eyebrow, silently chastising, even as she gave him a classic smartass response. “You clearly never watched Yogi Bear. This is called a picnic basket,” she said slowly, as if he wouldn’t understand the words.
He narrowed his eyes. “I can see that. What are you doing here?”
