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“No, Dad. I’m about to leave, and I’m happy for you guys, I am, but I also need to worry about Colby. You guys won’t even kiss when he’s in the room, and I get it, you don’t want him to think things about Kan before you’re both sure, but Kan’s living here now. He moved out of the guesthouse a month ago. What are you guys planning? I want to know before I can leave.”
Rick stared at me, like I would have the words, but I only shrugged. “Chandler,” I did manage to say. “We haven’t spoken about it a lot yet. I mean, we love each other and want to be together, but we don’t want to let Colby think things yet. We’re very new.”
“That’s bullshit, Kanan.”
“Chandler, that’s enough!” Rick stood, angry, but his anger never overcame his better sense. “We are new, like Kan said, and we are adults. We will know when it’s time to speak to Colby, we will decide what works for this family. You pushed us here, and I’m glad for it, but still, that gives you no right to grill us about our intentions.”
“Dad, I’m not pushing. I’m worried.”
“I know,” he said and hugged Chandler to him. “We all are. A new relationship is scary enough without kids involved. I’m terrified because I’ve already hurt you with thinking you had a new mom and that turned out…badly.”
Chandler pushed Rick away and hollered, “I never blamed you for that! Not once! I never liked her. You may have thought she was like a mom, but she wasn’t. She hated me.”
“Chandler, you never told me that. Did she…?”
“No. She never hurt me physically, but kids can tell. Like, the way Colby is with Kan. Colby loves Kan. That’s the problem.”
I didn’t understand, but Rick did. “You’re worried we’re not gonna make it and that will hurt your brother. And you.”
Chandler’s eyes moved to me, and he said, “Yeah,” to answer his dad’s question.
“I’m…totally in love with your dad, Chandler. You know I am. I’m not going anywhere.”
Rick agreed, “It’s scary and new and I’ve never been happier in my life.”
Chandler glowed at the two of us. “Okay. I can leave and not worry as much.”
Once he got his snack and left to his room, I whispered, “That was very adult of him.”
“Yeah,” Rick said as he sat back on the stool. “I hate it.”
“Me too, but you should be proud of him.”
“I am. I still hate it.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Okay,”Ricksaidwithhis voice full of excitement, “I’ll let you get dressed. We’re going to have a great night.”
“Go check on Colby,” I told him, pushing him out of the bedroom door. “I need some privacy. I want to wow you.”
“You do that every day,” he chided me, but left me after a fast kiss.
I sat on the bed a moment in the room I’d come to think of as mine as much as Rick’s.
The flutter of fear through my stomach at that thought was less than it was a month before, and that was less than the first time I slept in his bed. The room was Rick, simple but elegant, smart but quiet. There was little art on the walls, but what was there were lines and shapes, linear and logical.
There were more books on the shelf to the left of the bed and a dresser with a big mirror over the top. On the dresser there was a plant, a hairbrush, and a folded shirt. The shirt, I assumed, was one Rick had thought of wearing for the evening.
The cover on the bed was a white cotton, simple duvet but five pillows of earthen colors were at the top. Simple, some color and some logic. Rick.
I went to the window to look out at the mountains, wondering how I’d gotten there. I was in paradise with a man who dominated my heart equally only to his amazing kids. From a brokenhearted man to one happier than I thought imaginable.
My friends all loved Rick, my family back home had heard all about him, and were dying to meet him. Everything seemed perfect, but what Chandler had brought up scared me too.
If Rick ever did decide he wasn’t really bisexual, that it was an experiment and he lost interest in me in those ways…
Then I saw him and Chandler, walking across the field behind the house. Rick’s arm loosely laid over Chandler’s shoulder. The love Rick had for his kids was maybe one of the first things I fell for.
