Complete We (A Her Billionaires Novella #4) (15 page)

Dylan smiled without showing teeth. “Yeah…just on a different timetable than you and Laura. Maybe wait a few more years. But…yeah. I mean, Jillie’s probably…”

Don’t say it
, Mike thought. No one had said it, and as long as none of them did, it was somehow easier to live in the bubble. Having their perfect little life intruded upon by external forces was one thing.

Undermining it from within was another.

“Jillian,” Mike said as Dylan finished cleaning up and headed toward the door, “is
our
daughter. Ours.” He halted Dylan’s progress with a firm hand on his shoulder.

Dylan turned around, eyes hooded and closed off. “You and I know that within the emotional reality of our relationship at home, with Laura and Jillie. But out here?” Dylan let out a harsh snort. “Out here in the real world we have genetics. Biology. Law. Societal norms.”

Mike closed his eyes, the hand on Dylan’s shoulder less fierce. Warmer. His partner’s neck muscles were steel bands.

“I know.”

“I know, too. And now we have to face that. If Laura has kids by both of us, it causes legal issues. I think Laura and Josie talked about this—”

“You think?” Mike laughed.

Dylan gave him an amused look, and the bands of steel loosened microscopically. “And they’ve analyzed all the possibilities and decided our fate.”

“It should be you,” Mike blurted out, the words like a dagger stabbing his heart. They were the right words.

“And then what, Mike?” Dylan spat. “If I died and Laura died, then any kid I had with Laura wouldn’t be yours. You’d have no claim. They’d be split up. I mean, if they had long enough together you might have a tiny chance claiming they were bonded, but…”

Mike’s throat closed off. Just puckered closed. He was right. Dylan’s parents would legally have the strongest claim to Dylan’s kids, and Mike’s parents—

Oh, shit.

The stricken look he sent Dylan’s way was reflected in his eyes. “Yeah, Mike. That’s what they’re out there saying. We have to figure out a way around all this.”

“Josie and Alex? Can we leave our kids to them?” Mike rasped as his throat pried open, muscle by muscle.

Dylan shrugged. “Who knows?” An evil grin spread across his face. “Did you see Josie pale when we talked about her and Alex getting married?”

“Yeah?”

“I think she’ll shit her pants if we go out there and tell her we want to leave our kids to them.”

Mike’s laughed felt tinny, like it was coming from three dimensions away, but it was real. It warmed him.

“You know,” he said quietly, “we never talked about getting married with Jill.’

Dylan jolted, as if zapped by a small current. “Jesus,” he said with a slight hiss. “You’re right. The topic never came up. Not even at the end.”

Mike nodded. “She never brought it up.”

“Neither did we.”

“Then why now, with Laura? It’s not just because of the baby,” Mike rushed to comment, but he could tell Dylan understood. Dylan always understood.

With a series of rapid blinks, Dylan thought for a moment, then said, “Because it’s different with Laura.”

Mike’s throat tightened, not with grief for Jill, but with love for Laura. “It
is
different, isn’t it? Wanting to marry Laura doesn’t diminish Jill, and yet...”

The concerned look Dylan gave him made Mike flash back to two years ago, to the unremitting grief after Jill’s death, to how hopeless it all seemed right before they’d met Laura.

She had brought them so much more than love.

Laura was pure joy.

Dylan clasped his arm and looked deep into his eyes. “It’ll be okay. I think you’re feeling like Laura’s felt since Frank appeared. Unmoored. Unsure.”

A sinking feeling floated from throat to belly. Damn if Dylan wasn’t right.

“God, I…I had no idea it felt like this.” He ran his hand through his hair. “You feel like this, too?”

Blinking rapidly, Dylan gave Mike a sheepish look. “Not as bad, I think, because I do have my parents. You and Laura don’t. Mom and Dad have a relationship with Jillie and they will with future kids. If worse came to worst and we died, they’d come through. I have that. You and Laura don’t.”

That gave Mike pause. Never thought of it that way before. And while Dylan’s mom and dad were perfectly fine, they weren’t exactly over the moon about Mike.

Would they let him continue to have a relationship with a child who turned out to be Dylan’s biologically, unless compelled to do so by a court?

“My head hurts,” Mike confessed.

“Mine too. And not just from listening to Josie’s yammering.” Dylan pushed the bathroom door opened and motioned for Mike to exit. “Let’s go face whatever scheme they’ve concocted.”

“You want them to do
what
?” Alex hissed at Josie as Dylan reached the table, unnerved from his conversation with Mike but grimly determined to face this mess head-on. He didn’t like any of it. Not one bit, but fuck if this wasn’t the way life worked, right?

You couldn’t plan for it. It just all happened at once.

“What does someone want us to do? Sorry, Josie,” Dylan said with mischief, “we’re a threesome. Not a fivesome. No experiments with you two.” He gave Alex an over-the-top lascivious wink just as Madge came over to clear the empty plates.

Alex looked like he was having a stroke. Madge just howled with laughter and said, “Five pieces of cheesecake coming up.”

No one argued, though Laura gave her empty sundae glass a guilty look. It made Dylan smile. She felt as if her body post-baby was less attractive, but Dylan felt otherwise. More to hold. More to love. More to feel, hot flesh and curves so voluptuous and enveloping when her legs were tight around his hips, or slung over his shoulders, open and—

“…so we think you and Mike should get married.” Laura’s words rang out, whispered as she leaned across the table.

We. You. Mike. Laura was saying the words, so she didn’t mean that she and Mike should get married. She didn’t say
you
and
me
, so she didn’t mean Dylan and Laura should get married.

Who the fuck was getting married, then?

“WHAT?” Mike thundered. “You want me to marry DYLAN?”

That cleared things up.

All conversation in the half-full diner came to a deadly halt. The muffled sounds of food sizzling on the grill came through, the pneumatic wheeze of a bus’s brakes outside, the sound of a crosswalk beeping…

Not even an inhale could be detected from the fifty-plus people in the restaurant.

“Well, that’s discreet,” Alex mumbled.

“Fuck discretion,” Mike roared, and stood, shoving Dylan out of the booth, making his hip twist and his thigh scream, and he was roughly manhandled, nearly poured out onto the floor, Mike’s body outside before Dylan could register what had just happened.

“He took that well,” Josie said, slinging an arm around Laura’s shoulders.

Laura stared at the scratched tabletop, just blinking silently. Madge appeared and threw five plates of varying cheesecakes on the table, plunked down a pile of chilled forks, and said nothing.

Nothing.

Ah, fuck
, Dylan thought.
This is bad.

Everyone ignored the sweets in front of them. Alex tried hard to look everywhere but at Dylan, finally twisting in his seat as if he could catch a glimpse of Mike, who was long out of sight of the restaurant’s window.

“He okay?”

“Would you be okay if your girlfriend suggested you marry a man?”

“No.” The word came out of Alex like a gunshot.

“There’s your answer.” Dylan was spinning on the inside. Absolutely spinning. Of all the scenarios he’d imagined since the topic of custody and what-ifs came up, marrying Mike had been—well, not dead last. Just…not. Not at all. Never an option, never a thought, nope, nada.

Fin
.

Stunned, he looked at Laura, who was doing her best Alex imitation and staring so hard at the salt shaker Dylan thought she might animate it via pure telekinetic will.

“What,” he finally said, looking right at the person he knew was responsible for this hare-brained idea, “made Josie think of this whopper?”

Alex gave him a hard look, the kind you have when you’re watching someone you’re not sure about.

Smart man.

Josie looked like she was holding her breath, eyes wide with something less than terror, but more than apprehension. She plunged a long-handled spoon into a wet sundae and stirred the soupy mess.

But said nothing.

Laura reached across the table for Dylan’s hand, turning simultaneously backwards, toward the door, as if connecting in the flesh with Dylan would make their third magically appear. The look on her face as she twisted back to look at Dylan made it clear she really expected…something.

This was Mike, though. Dylan sighed, letting a little of the tension in his chest release. Mike was long gone by now, a mile down the road, running his heart out. Pounding out the confusion and pain.

Not that Dylan didn’t have his fair share, but running off like that wasn’t how he handled conflict. He faced it, head-on.

Laura leaned across the table and gave him a hard look. “It was my idea.”

“Yours?” His own explosion was more contained than Mike’s, but no less emotional. Her face was hard, eyes narrowed, the skin underneath pulled high and tight, like she dared him to question her.

He took the dare.

“You think me and Mike are gay?”

Her face crinkled in a look of utter disbelief. “What? No! Of course not.”

“Well,” he said slowly, like he was explaining this to their one year old, “when two men get married legally, it’s gay marriage.”

“The label doesn’t make you gay,” Josie said, interrupting.

“
Nothing
makes me gay.”

“Why are you so touchy about the gay label?” Josie asked mildly, head tilted like she was questioning an experiment volunteer.

“Because it’s not the right word to describe my sexuality. Why are you so touchy about letting Alex marry you?”

That shut her up.

“Explain,” he growled at Laura, who jumped slightly in her seat, startled, as he squeezed her hand hard and pulled his own back. Right now, touching her felt like a violation. A sick feeling filled the back of his throat, coating his stomach, burying deep in his bones. He didn’t like any of this. Not Frank, not Mike’s reaction, not the talk about custody of Jillie, his parents, biological fathers—

None of it.

And certainly not the idea that
neither
he nor Mike would marry Laura, but instead that they would—

“No,” he whispered.

Laura’s confusion filled her flushed cheeks, eyes wild with panic, calming periodically and ramping back up to something just shy of anxiety. “No? You don’t want me to explain?”

“No, I don’t want to marry Mike.”

Closing her eyes, Laura took a deep sigh, then said, “If we go on and have more kids, and I have kids by both of you, legally I’m their mother, and legally the biological father is their father. But—”

He felt like this was
d
éjà v
u
, like Laura, Josie, and Alex had been eavesdropping on his conversation with Mike just minutes ago in the bathroom. When did legalities become so important?

When Frank showed his fucking face in their goddamn house.

“I know,” he said. “The non-biological father would have no legal rights over the other children if you and one of us died.”

“Yes,” Laura and Josie said in unison. Alex just stared dumbly at Dylan and gave a single-shoulder shrug, as if to say,
Sorry, bro
.

Yeah. Right. Sorry.

He had let himself imagine marrying Laura, and had tortured himself by thinking about Mike not marrying Laura. Pretzeling his mind in every contorted way you could imagine, he’d tried to think of a way to have a long-term show of commitment to her and one that protected custody of Jillian and their future kids.

He had never—not once—thought about marrying Mike.

“My parents will pass out. We’re Catholic!” he groaned.

“Your parents are Catholic. You’re lapsed,” Josie pointed out.

He gave her a look that made her mouth snap shut like a coin purse.

“You know, for once could you just shut it? We’re talking about my life here. Not your helpful little sarcastic do-bee mouth.”

“Dylan.” Alex’s voice was calm but firm. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“I don’t—”

Alex stood, then splayed his hands across the spare end of the table. “I think you need some air.”

The room felt like it was on fire, the oxygen seeping out, his internal sense of self gasping for air, stifled and unable to think. Like he was caught in a raging house fire without any equipment. Attacking Josie would be easy. Comforting, even. But Alex wasn’t about to let that happen, and from the way Laura was looking at him, maybe stepping away from the epicenter of this seismic shift was a good thing.