and foolish and optimistic. When things like bills didn’t matter, when he didn’t worry about every time his husband’s knees popped or his back twinged because he was getting old.
But it wasn’t enough to want to give up what they had, and he basked in it as he sank his teeth into the pastry and savored the first bite. “Marry me.”
“A real wedding to you would be too expensive,” Sebastion said. He bussed a kiss against Luca’s cheek, then began to methodically strip out of his office clothes right there in the kitchen the way he did most nights.
There was a pair of sweats and a t-shirt waiting for him on his sitting chair a few feet away in the living room, and Luca gathered up his discarded clothes with his free arm as he watched Sebastion saunter away. “What’s the point in marrying a doctor if he won’t loosen the purse strings for a fancy white dress?” he called out, leaning into the laundry room to drop the clothes on the dryer.
Sebastion turned and gave him a wicked grin when he appeared in the doorway. “My love, I have seen to it you could never even think about touching a white dress. Every hole in your body has been filled at least once.”
Luca felt a shiver of desire race up his spine, even if his cock wasn’t gonna get with the picture yet. He set his half-eaten pastry down, far enough away Ivy couldn’t snag it off the counter, then he pulled the meat out of the bag and smiled at how red and spiced and tender it already looked.
“Tell me about your day, babe,” he said as he dug around for a pot.
He heard Sebastion sigh, then heard him directly behind him as he fished in their little wine cooler for the white he always had on taco nights. “Nothing special. Well,” he stopped, and when Luca looked back at him, he was grimacing. “I had to send a kid to a specialist today. The kid’s dad was a massive asshole too.”
“How bad?” Luca asked quietly.
Sebastion let out a small sigh. “Bad. I could see the look on his face like he knew the biggest uphill climb wasn’t losing his vision—it was dealing with his parents. I wish I could have done more, you know? But I’m the last person in the world who should be giving parenting advice.”
Sebastion’s childhood couldn’t have been more different from Luca’s. He was the child of Deaf parents, and he’d never really spent much time in the hearing world until he decided to become a doctor.
His parents were also old when he was born and deeply religious. He came out only when he had no choice—when he was seen—and the fragile relationship between them was shattered. Sebastion had swallowed his pride once—and only once—when he asked them for help getting away from his ex, but they told him he’d made his bed. ‘You want to live in sin, so be it. Live in sin with all the consequences it comes with.’ During one of his more vulnerable moments, Sebastion told Luca that was his father’s last words to him before he passed.
They both died estranged from their son without knowing how strong he was or the incredible steps he took to find himself again. They never got to see Sebastion fall in love with someone who would spend the rest of his life trying to do everything in his power to keep him from feeling any real pain—but he wasn’t sure it would have mattered to them.
Standing in the kitchen right then, he felt how weary Sebastion was—which always happened every time he thought about his parents—so he quickly changed the subject. “Anything else happen? Does Dara have any gossip this week?”
Sebastion snorted at the sound of his secretary’s name. “None. She and Charlie are on again—their seventeenth honeymoon phase. She baked all weekend though, so I made the staff eat everything before I left.” He kissed the side of Luca’s neck, then removed his hands and walked around to sit at the breakfast bar. “Anyway, she ain’t got shit on you.”
“Don’t use slang to be cool,” Luca ordered, pointing the spatula at him before returning to the meat. He grabbed a lid, then turned it on low to let it simmer before he began to pull the vegetables and tortilla dough out of the fridge.
“You know I wouldn’t dare.” Sebastion let out a quiet hum of pleasure as he took a