Page 8 of Boyfriend on Parole: The Care of Broken Things Extended Epilogue (Breaking Free #2)

Darren was just outside, kneeling in front of a cat with two black feet and two white feet. He stood when he saw them. “Shouldn’t we do an exchange, at least?” the boy said. “Leave Eli behind this time.”

Eli laughed, and the sound was closer than he thought it would be, right at his back. Samuel turned, and the man was holding his bag, a little bulky because of his typewriter. He got a kiss just behind his ear, making him flush hot. Had he looked like he’d turned just for that?

Hailey was still in his arms. It should have been more awkward to carry her, but she still wasn’t that big yet, and she was wrapped up well, her arms tight around him as she chattered to him, or maybe at him.

He had yet to contribute anything to the conversation.

Had he spoken at all after those few words to Mathews?

He wasn’t sure. It wasn’t that he was so overwhelmed.

Strangely, his head was clear. It was just—he was taking it in.

Everything. There were just so many things.

His sister’s hand in his. Nathaniel’s smile and his bobbing ponytail.

Eli at his back. Hailey’s arms around his neck, her words so close he could feel the closeness of them.

Don’t cry . They wouldn’t be angry if he did. Maybe they were even expecting it. But he didn’t want to. He didn’t want anything that would interfere with looking and seeing and feeling them.

They arrived at the car—Eli’s car. And it was Eli who stepped around him after dropping another kiss—to the side of his head this time—and a “be right with you, puppy” as he stepped around him to put the bag in the trunk, but he found himself following the man anyway, as if glued to him, and was rewarded with the blinding flash of that too-white smile, the full power of it catching him at point blank range.

“Cute,” Eli said, and leaned in for a proper kiss.

He both saw and felt it coming, his heart rate spiking as he felt the rushing swoop of it in his stomach, but Hailey caught her father’s face with a full-spread palm and an annoyed, “Can’t you wait until I’m gone to be gross?”

“Nathaniel got to.”

“Nathaniel’s got fewer cooties, and anyway you’re too much.”

“Abuse of power,” Eli declared, kissing the hand over his mouth.

But only one part of that exchange registered with Samuel. “Gone?” His arms tightened automatically, his hands pressing her flat against him as if he might merge her body with his.

Hailey liked that, forgetting her father entirely to give him a smacking kiss of her own. “Do you hate that? Should we run away together?”

She was radiant, his tiniest, prettiest friend. He hugged her close. “Yes, let’s go. I have money.”

“How much you got?”

“They gave me $200 with my paperwork. And I happen to know about another $200 buried in a yard somewhere.”

Her smile was even more blinding than Eli’s was. “Buried treasure!”

But she’d meant it about leaving, a plot revealed when Jenny pulled up her Porsche and put the top down. He was aghast. “Where are you going?”

He didn’t want to let her climb down, trying to grasp at her even as she did. How could she be smiling so wide as she pushed the knife into his chest?

She squished his face like a fish. “To school. It was part of the deal.”

“Deal?” It was strange to speak with his lips like that.

“I knew daddy and Thaniel were going to be super gross when I saw you. And you know, I think they might have even asked me to sleep at mom’s if they thought they could get away with it.

Can you imagine the audacity? Then again, I guess I feel a little bad for them.

It’s not like they have any chance of fighting for your attention while I’m around.

So I agreed to leave you in their hands and go to school if they promised I’d be yours once I got back. ”

Fighting for his attention. He had never imagined he could be so lucky as to have anyone—never mind them— compete for his attention. He pressed his face into her small shoulder and thought that as much as he wanted to live, dying just then, right in that moment, wouldn’t have been so bad.

Hailey’s arms went back around him. “Cute, cute, cute! Maybe I should be your boyfriend instead.”

“No way.” Eli tried to be adamant despite his laugh. “There’s no way I could compete. I’d be out of the running for sure.”

“That’s true. I’d make an unfairly good boyfriend, I think. Samuel, will you be very lonely once I leave? Maybe you should just come with us. I bet Jemma will shit herself once she sees what pretty eye candy I have.”

“Language,” Eli said, and handed over a bagged lunch to Darren along with Hailey’s school bag.

Jenny stepped out of the car to hug him. “I’ve got a couple of errands to run once I drop Hailey off, but nothing so urgent I can’t drop it to come to you. Here.”

She pushed a phone into his hand. What he noticed first was the charm on it, a resin heart like a locket with a picture of his new family all squashed together inside.

“It’s already got everyone’s contact numbers in it, and your phone wallet is set up.

The Amex is mine, but Eli’s toxic masculinity insists you use his instead.

That’s the MasterCard you’ll see beside it.

The visa belongs to your checking account.

That’s for if you need cash for anything.

Eli has the card in an envelope at home.

It’s in your room with the rest of your stuff. ”

He barely took that in, too much to account for. His eyes instead were on the phone’s screensaver. That was a picture of a younger Hailey with a gap-toothed grin flashing a double peace sign. He was briefly distracted by one of the phone apps. “I’ve got three hundred and forty-four messages?”

Nathaniel laughed, leaning in to check. “Is it that many? How embarrassing. We added you to the group chats when we got your phone a few days ago. We’re not usually that chatty, but I guess there were a lot of preparations happening. Most of it’s probably just dorky excitement though.”

He’d thought it was just a glitch, but there really were that many messages.

The most active group chat was the one at the top titled BIG CHAOS but there were others too.

One was a chat with just him, Nathaniel and Eli called Cootie Boyz.

But there were individual messages too. One came in even as he was staring at the phone.

A message from his father that said, Your mother wants to have a dinner once you’re settled in.

He blanched and heard Jenny click her tongue. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Take care of what?” Hailey asked.

“A nightmare,” Jenny said, taking her hand.

“Do you mean Auntie Eliana?”

Never in a million years had he thought he’d find his mother’s name in Hailey’s mouth, never mind with an ‘auntie’ in front of it.

Hailey gave him a final hug using her free hand. “I’ll be back by three, but I can come earlier if you need rescuing. Just let Jenny know, and she’ll come get me.”

It was still too hard to let go. “Okay.”

“I love you,” she reminded him, “More than Daddy does.”

Eli cleared his throat. “A bold claim.”

But she wasn’t listening, already climbing into the Porsche, waving and waving, that big smile of hers like a miniature sun.

Nathaniel’s arm was a secure hold around his waist as he watched them pull away. “Sucks, doesn’t it?” he said. “Eli still cries every time she goes to Marie’s.”

“Not every time,” Eli said.

“Forgive me, every time so far .”

Eli laughed, or maybe he didn’t. Maybe the sound came from something or someone else entirely.

He didn’t see. His back met the side of Eli’s car, and Nathaniel was kissing him.

Not like at the start of their visits. Not like he had in the lobby of the prison.

Kissing him like the man had only ever kissed him in his dreams—like he wasn’t going to stop.

Like he was going to fuck him.

He gasped, unprepared and overstimulated, and it became clear very quickly that whatever worries he’d had about Mr. Edwards and trauma and his body not working were laughably defunct.

Nathaniel pressed in close, stepping in to take up all of the space, their bodies flushed entirely together as that mouth opened and opened to him, taking him in and demanding he come to him, and he did, pushing into it and rushing forward, his hands grabbing at Nathaniel before he could think to make them work, the pressure hard, the bones and force of it hard, but the skin and flesh yielding, eager to be taken up, smooth and accommodating and so warm.

He made a sound half-outrage and half-alarm as the seal between their mouths broke, not finding the tradeoff between oxygen and Nathaniel at all appealing.

But it wasn’t a trade between oxygen and Nathaniel, it was a trade between Nathaniel and Eli, and as that second mouth re-formed the seal, he found he hadn’t lost that first mouth at all, Nathaniel’s lips and teeth were at work on his neck, ears, jaw—anything they could reach, really, ripping into him with a wonderful and savage destruction.

“Take me.” He didn’t even hear himself asking it—a good thing as it would have severely embarrassed him. “Please—”

“Right here on their doorstep, should I?” Eli’s voice was a rumbling storm. But Samuel didn’t hear that either—only the power and promise in it, and he whimpered, pressing himself against it, groaning as that mouth took him again.

“Sinful puppy,” Eli said, breaking it off again too soon.

He tried to lunge for it, to get that mouth back, but Eli caught him by the chin, full mischief in his face. “Riling me up before a long drive. Do you want us to get into an accident?”

“Want you.” And it was obnoxious how he said it, angry, even accusing, though in his defense, he was unfathomably desperate. “ Want you .”