he got my new address. I never did ask what he did with my stuff, but it didn’t matter.”
Luca’s eyes drifted down to the sleeping man between them, and Sebastion shoved away all feelings of rightness and belonging. There might be time for it later, but he needed to put Xan’s recovery first.
“I think those journals matter,” Luca eventually said.
Sebastion’s heart twisted because his husband was probably right. These weren’t just collected books—it was his grief recovery after his parents died. It was four long years of existing and coping, and half of them were burnt to ash in an apartment bathtub.
He felt a sudden ache in his body, a restlessness that he needed to work out. He had to get away for a few minutes, and Luca seemed to sense it, because he let go of his hand. “I’m going to get him in bed. Do you want to run to the store?”
Sebastion shot him a grateful smile and nodded, easing himself out from the curl of Xan’s legs. “Text me what we need.”
“Okay, but kiss me first.” There was a sort of vulnerability in Luca’s tone that he knew came from his husband’s inability to do anything to fix the situation. It was a tone he’d heard before when he confessed what he’d gone through with his ex. It was a tone he had in his voice whenever his friends were in pain and there was nothing he could do to help.
Leaning over Xan’s body, Sebastion cupped Luca’s face with both hands and kissed him slow and deep, pouring every ounce of love he had into it, reminding this man he was everything. “I’ll be back soon. If anything comes up while I’m gone…”
“It won’t,” Luca breathed against his mouth, then kissed him one last time. “But if you want to pamper my arm when you get back, I won’t say no.”
Sebastion chuckled, then dragged a feather-light touch over the sling and frowned. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
“You showed up when it mattered,” Luca said, and the absolute truth of his words burned behind his ribs where his heart beat.
He showed up when it mattered.
This was something. This thing between the three of them—this feeling he’d experienced only once before, when a man had stormed his office and declared his intent like some Victorian Duke in love with a commoner. And Sebastion wished he’d made it easier on Luca in the beginning, but his trauma lived under his skin, too close to the surface to ignore.
It took patience and understanding and a lot of starts and stops. Their fights were loud and epic, and Sebastion knew he pushed Luca to his limits simply because he wanted to break him early and get the pain over with before he could fall too deep. He just hadn’t expected this man with a stubborn streak the size of the known universe and more love in his heart than any one man should ever possess.
He cherished him and hoarded him—even when he shared his body with others. But this was something new with Xan. Something bigger and encompassing, and he was feeling just a little bit desperate to see where it could go.
And that feeling was so unlike him. Luca was the man who barreled forward, his heart refusing to ever be denied, and it was up to Sebastion to gently guide him into patience. He had to remember his place in all this if he didn’t want it to crash and burn.
Sebastion didn’t hang around to watch Luca ease Xan up from his sleep and get him into bed. If he did, he would have made the wrong suggestion of putting him in the master bedroom with them—which was what he wanted, but he knew wasn’t the right choice. So, he palmed his keys and got into his car, then turned up the music as he made his way to the supermarket.
The one he shopped at was far from the house—a twenty-minute drive, but it was a small boutique shop in a neighborhood that was almost all retired couples. He wondered when he started actually fitting in there—with the way his temples were greying, and the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes etched deeper and deeper each week.
Luca would kiss them sometimes, on the rare moments Sebastion complained. “It means you smiled a lot and loved a lot,” he murmured.
A lie, but one Sebastion swallowed down and kept inside him for moments when he doubted himself and his worthiness