Page 20 of Hot Chicken (Sunday Brothers #6)
Drew chuckled to himself, then turned his attention back to the rooster…
exactly where I didn’t want it. If he looked hard enough at that thing, he was going to realize that this rooster had a distinctive chip in its wing precisely where Drew had knocked his rooster against the sink one day while cleaning it…
and then I was going to be in serious trouble.
“You know, I don’t think it’s fair to imply that you won a wrestling match to get the rooster,” I said, casually walking over to him. I took the rooster from his hands just as casually and set it on the sideboard. “I let you have it. It was a chivalrous gesture.”
As I’d known he would, Drew narrowed his eyes and set his hands on his hips. “Chivalry? Is that what we’re calling it? I call it blatant flirtation, Marco Vanzetti. You wanted my cock… and I don’t just mean the rooster.”
I laughed genuinely. “Hardly. I didn’t know how to flirt with a hot guy then.
I’d barely admitted to myself that I was attracted to men at all.
But then suddenly, there was this beauty—” I gripped his chin with one hand as I repeated his words from earlier.
“Gleaming in the sunlight like the Universe was saying This! This is what you didn’t know you needed, Marco . ” I winked. “And I had to have him.”
Drew snorted, waving my words away, but his face softened, like he was remembering that day, too. The warmth of the sun and the buzzing of the crowds and how it had all faded to a blurry, gray background noise the minute his hand touched mine.
Drew Sunday was like a prism, crystal-bright and multifaceted, making me see rainbows where none had been before. I’d had a life before him, sure—a failed marriage, a grown daughter, a stable job—but I hadn’t known how to live .
I looped my arms around his waist and pulled him in for a kiss. “I still feel that way, you know,” I said. “Meeting you changed my life.”
Drew’s eyes met mine, and he blushed just a little, even after all these years. “I admit, it impressed the hell out of me that you managed to track me down after that.”
“When all I knew was that you were wearing a shirt that said ORCHARD STAFF, with Drew embroidered on the pocket?” I shook my head.
“I think I spent the whole next week making phone calls at my desk when I was supposed to be handling insurance claims. I didn’t realize just how many orchards there were in Vermont. ”
He laughed. “And I like to imagine you calling all of them and choking out, ‘Excuse me, ma’am, I’m looking for a man named Drew who took my cock…’”
“Hush.” I slapped his ass lightly. “I’m spouting sentimental shit here.”
“Yes, you are.” Drew frowned suspiciously. “And that’s very unlike you.”
“Hey! I can be sentimental.”
“You can,” he agreed, still frowning. “But usually much more subtly and rarely out loud. What gives?”
I chuckled uncomfortably, while the rooster on the sideboard pulsed behind us like a telltale heart, and tried to sidestep. “Do you remember our first date?”
Drew’s expression cleared. “When we decided to meet for coffee partway between your place and mine and wound up in that weird little town with the store that was all about pickles? Of course. It was amazing.”
Personally, I didn’t think anyone who was from the Hollow had standing to call another town weird, but I didn’t argue.
“I fell in love with you that day,” I told him, though he already knew it.
“Didn’t matter that I’d never been with a man before, or that you lived nearly three hours away in cow country, or that I had a bad track record with relationships.
” Hadn’t mattered, either, when Drew told me he wouldn’t leave the niece and nephews he’d agreed to help raise.
“I was all in. I’d recognized what I couldn’t live without, and then it was just a matter of doing whatever it took to win your heart and keep it. ”
“Winning my heart was easy, handsome charmer that you are.” Drew touched my cheek gently. “Keeping it, though…” He rolled his eyes .
I smiled ruefully. “I hadn’t been anyone’s partner in years. I was a bit bossy back then, I know?—”
“A bit?” Drew hooted. “Back then?”
I’d swear I could feel that damn rooster’s eyes on me. “Possibly a little now, too,” I admitted, rubbing at the back of my neck. “I don’t mean to be.”
“Eh. Some may say I have an opinion or two of my own.” Drew patted the front of my shirt, smoothing invisible wrinkles there. “I’ve always known that you loved and appreciated me for exactly who I was. Dramatic and loud and opinionated?—”
“And vivacious and beautiful and strong.”
Drew beamed. “Every partnership has road bumps, but we learned how to navigate them in a way that brought us closer, right? And we learned how to make up.” He wiggled his eyebrows.
“Remember how you’d buy me those ceramic birds as peace offerings?
By the end of our first year together, I had a whole flock of geese and chickens and ducks, and I’d started associating poultry with makeup sex. ”
We both laughed.
The familiar hum of the old refrigerator took over while our laughter faded.
I looked around at the farmhouse kitchen, the faded pencil marks from Drew’s insistence on measuring the kids’ heights over the years, even after they’d become adults.
The quirky mushroom-shaped sponge holder that was missing its matching gnome hand soap dispenser after the thing had fallen into the garbage disposal one night when Emma was learning how to clean up after dinner.
The faded spot on the floor where I’d spun Drew around every March fourth in celebration of International Waltz Day. Like many things in the Sunday family, it had started out as a joke. And quickly became family tradition.
“You blew the doors off my world, Drew,” I said softly.
“You showed me how to be more open-minded. More open-hearted. How beautiful life can be when you’re honest about who you are and who you love.
You taught me to dream again when I’d forgotten how.
And that’s why I’m so excited for us to have this next chapter together.
Getting to see all of these new places through your eyes…
it’s going to be phenomenal. And there’s no one in the whole world I’d rather experience it with. ”
Drew kissed me—a kiss filled with love, and memories, and no small amount of the mischief Porter had inherited.
“That’s beautiful, honey.” Drew’s mouth tipped up at one corner, and he pressed a hand to his heart right over Bea Arthur’s caftan-face. “Truly beautiful. And I can’t tell you how much it means to me to know that I have a partner who values openness and honesty so highly.”
“Well, I?—”
“Which is why I have to wonder…” Drew peered at me over the tops of his red-framed glasses. “When exactly you planned to tell me that you gave away my cock.”