“You haven’t been in a relationship with anyone for years. I don’t think I’ve even seen you get excited about a date when they did happen. Everything was all… cursory.”
“Well.” I took a sip of the whiskey, savoring the warm, familiar burn. “I guess I just haven’t met anyone that made me want to put in that kind of energy to getting to know someone.” I thought back to the little crack I made to Priest about my longest relationship being with my bike—at the time it’d just been a joke, but now that I thought about it, it didn’t feel so funny. “It has been a while, hasn’t it?”
Funny how time just slips by when you’re not looking.
“Yeah,” Dante said. “Really has been.”
“It’s kind of sad, isn’t it?” I asked.
Tru opened his mouth, and Dante swatted him on the thigh before he said anything. They exchanged a look that was just as plain as if Tru had said whatever was on the tip of his tongue.
“Dad, it’s been thirty-four years since Mom bailed,” Dante said. “Is that really still holding you back?”
“Of course not,” I said, then took another sip of whiskey, savoring it so I wouldn’t have to say any anything more. It was easy to say that Melanie leaving me high and dry after Dante’s birth wasn’t the reason I was hesitant to commit again—but I knew that it was.
Melanie and I had been high school sweethearts, and we hadn’t been paragons of safe sex when we’d gotten together. We were both only nineteen when I got her pregnant, but we decided—together, I’d thought—to keep the baby and start our lives together as parents, despite the challenges.
But after Dante was born, Melanie had had a change of heart. As soon as she’d been discharged and we took Dante home, she packed her things and bolted. Disappeared off the face of the earth. She’d only gotten in touch to confirm that she wanted nothing to do with Dante, and she’d paid child support dutifully, and that was that. Gone.
I’d been shocked—and devastated. I’d never felt so betrayed and abandoned. I’d thought I’d known her. I’d loved her, and I was excited to start a family together with her. And then suddenly, the family was just Dante and me.
Of course, I loved him more than life itself, and throwing myself into raising him helped me get over Melanie’s cut-and-run. I could even admit to myself that I’d done a pretty damn good job. Dante had grown into a hell of a man, and a hell of a vice president. But that didn’t mean it had been easy to do all on my own.
Dante peered at me, still unconvinced. “Really?”
“Really,” I said. “It hurt, obviously, but it was a long time ago. And I wouldn’t change a thing about the way I raised you, son.”
Dante sighed, unconvinced but placated. “We all just want to see you happy, you know that, right?”
“I am happy,” I repeated. “Don’t worry about an old man like me.”
I hadn’t met anyone in the intervening years that made me interested in opening my heart again. The feelings I had for Priest were new, certainly, but they weren’t anything I could act on. And not out of any misguided sense of self-preservation, leftover from Melanie’s abandonment.
No, it was because Priest was my friend—my family. He was a grieving widower. I hadn’t desired him when he’d been with Ankh besides the recognition of his general attractiveness—I wasn’t blind—and it definitely wasn’t appropriate for me to want him now. There was no way I was going to put a friendship of three decades at risk because I was horny. There were other ways to take care of that.
Dante was about to say something, but my phone ringing noisily in my pocket dragged my attention away.
Maybe it was because I was already on edge from the conversation I was having with Dante and Tru, but seeing the unfamiliar number on my screen pissed me off more than it usually did. This was going from annoying to really fucking obnoxious, and I was sick of it. In a fit of frustration—and maybe with some help from the whiskey—I answered the phone, turning my back to Dante and Tru.
“Stop fucking calling,” I spat into the phone. “Or I’ll be paying you a visit myself.”
“Oh,” Stefan said at the other end of the line, his low and unfortunately familiar voice sounding surprised, like he hadn’t expected me to answer. Then it dropped to