Page 13 of Boyfriend on Parole: The Care of Broken Things Extended Epilogue (Breaking Free #2)

Not a bedroom. That was what Nathaniel had made clear.

Not a relegation. Not made to be alone if he didn’t want to be.

And Samuel was sure he wouldn’t want to be.

Nathaniel had tried to tell him about the foldaway cot in the closet just in case all the years in prison had him reacting to new proximity—but Samuel had cut him off.

Even if sleeping with others kept him awake, even if he went crazy with a case of perpetual insomnia, he would choose their bed every time.

He’d already done a lifetime’s worth of sleeping alone—finished with it.

So there was no bed in the room. Instead there was a desk, and one he knew must have cost a fortune despite whatever bargain Nathaniel claimed to have gotten at an It was a writer’s desk.

A real writer’s desk. Not just the classic hardwood and rolltop, but all the little drawers and intricate shelving.

The wraparound carvings and hidden secrets like drawers with false bottoms and the notes Nathaniel had secreted away into every nook and cranny for him to find later.

And yes, later being the operative word, because when he stepped into the room and saw the art on the walls he wasn’t thinking of anything else.

“Do you like it?”

Liked it? He was prepared to go to war for it. “You painted this?”

“Me and Jenny, mostly. But everyone helped. That bit in the corner there is Darren’s contribution.”

It was a crudely drawn stick figure with an oversized hand flipping him the bird and a speech bubble that read, I hope your dick falls off.

Samuel smiled. Or maybe he was just smiling already.

The mural—if it was even proper to call something a mural when it took up every bit of wall space—was the most extraordinary story ever told.

He recognized bits of it right away. The story of Eli’s head being attacked by licky-baby (No one knew WHY the kid liked licking his head so much, but it was the only way to keep him calm during his vaccines.) The story of Nathaniel accidentally buying a hundred and twenty pounds of candy (“I wondered why it was so expensive”).

Hailey’s epic showdown with the garbage rat (a worthy nemesis and unsuccessful pet acquisition).

And the time Darren set fire to the house of one of Nathaniel’s old ex-boyfriends (“You see?” Nathaniel had told him with the story, “You’re not the only one.

Crime runs in the family.”) But there were plenty of stories Samuel didn’t recognize.

It was incredible. And not just because the art was so engaging, and not even because it had clearly taken an absurdly long— insanely long—time to make, but because of what it implied. That all his most important people had done this and all while thinking about him.

“This must have taken you months .”

“Try years,” Hailey corrected. “I started when Daddy was convicted, a rebellion, I guess. It was Daddy’s office at first, and I came in here and just started painting, maybe hoping that Thaniel, who was in a stupor of shock, would wake up enough to come yell at me for it.

But he didn’t. Instead he sat with me. He couldn’t do any painting himself.

Or much of anything at all. But he’d come while I was in here and lie down.

Sometimes to watch me. Mostly just to be here.

Maybe he thought I’d hurt myself if I was alone.

That it was bad for me, and it was, but probably not as bad as it was for him.

I’m always missing someone, split between two homes, but Thaniel only has one home, and it’s Daddy.

Well, I guess Uncle Darren was his home first, but Uncle Darren is here too.

He moved in when Thaniel did, so really that makes this place doubly his home.

Daddy says Thaniel is the strongest person in the family, so that’s probably why, when it finally became too much—he shattered. ”

Hailey touched one of the Nathaniel’s on the wall. There were a lot of them. More of him than anyone else. It seemed that even if Nathaniel hadn’t been alive during the time Eli had been gone, there clearly had still been more than enough of him to be filling all of everyone’s thoughts.

“I never saw Uncle Darren so frustrated,” Hailey continued. “Well, he’s always frustrated, so I guess I mean panicked. I’ve never seen Uncle Darren panic. But he was so scared for Thaniel. We were all scared.”

Hailey looked up at him. “Thaniel loves me more than he does Daddy, and I don’t think it’s even close.

Isn’t that impossible? To love someone so much when you’re not related to them—when you don’t even see them half the time.

So you have to love him extra much. Ten thousand percent extra more than you do anyone else.

Because otherwise you’ll never catch up to how much he loves you. ”

Samuel realized they were alone. Jenny had slipped out.

Perhaps to check that Darren wasn’t really scraping all of Nathaniel’s skin off, or maybe just to give him this.

Hailey’s…instructions? He didn’t know what to call it except that it was another wound inside him.

The kind this family had continuously inflicted since the moment they’d forced themselves into his life.

Samuel had to make three attempts before he could make the words come out, and even then they were a toad-like croak. “Thank you.”

It was a baffling kind of response, especially when he half-expected to look down and see his chest bleeding out onto the floor, but it was a good pain. Could pain be good?

Hailey took hold of his hand.

Eli couldn’t make himself stop cooking. Some people were emotional eaters, Nathaniel explained, and some (very few) were emotional cooks, and Eli was feeling very emotional.

When Samuel returned to the kitchen, he saw the shock of tear tracks on that face and immediately bellowed for the only person he thought might help.

“NAT!” It was the kind of roar that would have immediately set the CO’s on his ass with the taser. “ NAT!”

Nathaniel came running, still streaming soap to find a sheepish Eli trying to calm his boyfriend. “It’s nothing,” Eli said. “Really. Though I like your outfit.”

Nathaniel was in nothing but a towel—and the hand towel at that. Darren, coming up behind at a leisurely sort of pace, took one look at Eli and clicked his tongue. “With that kind of scream, I was hoping you’d been raptured.”

Eli wasn’t raptured, but he did apologize for the scare. “I’m just having a lot of big feelings today,” he said.

“More like every day,” Hailey said. “You’ve cried every day this week. Well, almost.”

Every day since hearing about his partner’s release, is what she meant. “Though he cried most of the rest of the time too,” she amended. “He cries about everything. You shouldn’t watch movies with him. It’s the worst.”

But Eli didn’t feel like the worst. He felt incredibly warm and sweet, even more than he had in prison. “I know why your house smells so good,” Samuel found himself saying. “Because it smells like you.”

“You can have it,” Eli said. “What do I need a house for? If you ever try to leave, I’m locking you up.”

Samuel was no stranger to being locked up. He just hadn’t known he could look forward to it so much. “Please do.”

It was hard to eat, and not just because his stomach was already filled with so many other people.

(Big feelings were the theme of the day, it seemed.) But also because there were so many more interesting distractions now.

When he expressed an interest in the pictures on the walls, Nathaniel went and brought out a fat stack of albums and kept bringing more out until there was a pile nearly as tall as Hailey.

“Eli’s obsession,” Nathaniel said. “I think he wants to make one of those flipbooks that will encompass every moment of Hailey’s life. ”

There certainly were a lot of pictures of Hailey, her baby pictures showing the same cheeky smile she still wore most of the time.

But there were pictures of everyone else too.

A shit ton of Nathaniel, and an only slightly less shit ton of Darren, who was making rude gestures in most of them, but there were also an astonishing number of Samuel himself.

Albums worth—as in, more than one. “When did you take all these?”

“When didn’t he take them?” Darren said. He was going through one of the albums and steadily removing every picture that featured Eli. “Nathaniel could have starved to death with how preoccupied his husband was with his shiny new toy.”

“Husband?” Eli asked. “I’m husband now?” He was ascending, completing his transformation into an enlightened being. “What happened to ‘the sentient couch cushion?”

Samuel had to ask. “Couch cushion?”

“I take up a lot of space, apparently. But wow, what a promotion. If I’m ‘Husband’ today, who knows what I’ll be tomorrow. Quite the character arc for someone who started as ‘The emotional tapeworm.’ Or was it, ‘Hymenopteran Homewrecker?’ I needed a dictionary for at least half of them.”

“You haven’t been promoted,” Darren snapped. He seemed upset to have made Eli smile—even accidentally. “It’s just that someone else is even lower than you are now.”

“In that case, Samuel, please allow me to trod on your corpse a little longer.”

When Samuel laughed, Jenny used the opportunity to push another spoonful of soup into his mouth.

She, like him, didn’t seem to realize that every act—every meal—wasn’t life or death now.

Feeling guilty, he tried to push in a few more spoonfuls himself, but then Hailey dropped into his lap with a fresh treasure—the most recent Dr. Smolder charity fundraiser calendar Eli had been featuring in since his residency days.

And not just featuring—he was the cover .

“Always is,” Hailey said. “Maybe they think Nathaniel will riot if he isn’t. He’s their best customer of course.”

“It’s not a customer if it’s charity,” Nathaniel said. “And I wouldn’t have to buy so many if Darren didn’t keep burning them.”

Samuel didn’t care for explanations, already burning up with righteous fury. “How could you keep this from me?”

Eli was Dr. July, of course. “The hottest month,” Nathaniel said, as if that needed any explaining.

Ten years. There were ten years worth of calendars and he’d never even HEARD of them until now. If he’d been less offended, he might have cried. “I thought you loved me.”

Eli’s smile was a little hesitant, unsure whether Samuel was joking. He wasn’t. “Puppy—”

Nine months. Nine months of being without Eli and they’d been hoarding a golden goose. To think he could have had his husband, the model, hanging from his bunk the whole time.

“And you ,” he said, turning on Nathaniel with a tone colder than he’d used in over a year. “Are so greedy.”

Hailey’s laugh was the final betrayal. Samuel couldn’t quite make himself spill her from his lap, but the thought did cross his mind.

She poked at his scowl. “Don’t be sad. Daddy never lets anyone see. He’s the one that sneaks them to Darren to burn.”

“Not that I need his help,” Darren put in.

“He’s so embarrassed. Especially for the early ones where they got him to take off his shirt. They tricked him by saying it was the rule. He was fuming when he learned he was the only half-naked one.”

The one Samuel was looking at didn’t have a shirtless Eli, but the way the shoulders on his shirt stained made it hardly necessary.

Pre-prison Eli’s smile didn’t have the faint creases by his eyes, and of course there was no prison-weight loss either.

The man was holding not one, but three babies—triplets, it seemed, with the caption, "Dr. Eli ‘The Baby Whisperer’ Thompson– Pediatrics. "

He heard Eli’s tsk from over his shoulder. “How many times do I have to tell them not to mess that up? Than, if they don’t add you and Samuel to my name this year, you’d better boycott.”

“Going to be difficult to do when I already put in a pre-order. Maybe Samuel could pose too. I’ll buy out the whole printing if you can get Samuel in a hospital gown. The kind that has your whole ass out.”

“That’s all hospital gowns.”

“Even better.”

Hailey pushed at her father’s head. “Go away. Samuel can’t breathe around you.”

“He can breathe later. Right now, he has very important dessert tasting responsibilities.”

Samuel wasn’t sure where the day went, so he didn’t realize, as he followed Hailey to her room and sat down on her bed, that he wouldn’t be getting up again.

(Prisoners had early bedtimes, and he’d been too excited to sleep the night before.) He didn’t remember closing his eyes.

Hailey had ducked into the bathroom, and when she came out they’d return to the living room where Eli was setting up the projector for the family vacation to Iceland.

But Samuel never made it to Iceland. He never even made it to wondering what time Hailey would need to leave for school the next morning.

He took in the quiet, the scent of her on the pillow, and was asleep.