Page 48 of Manny Included

“I’ll try not to wake you again,” Bay murmured softly as he got out of bed.Then he bent and gave Pete a hard kiss before putting on his pajama bottoms and slipping from the room.

“You could, if you wanted to…”

Bay was gone, though, and Pete didn’t know if the man had heard him.

It didn’t really matter.It happened and it was good, and he needed to sleep.

Hopefully he could.

ChapterEleven

It had been a relatively quiet night after he’d… gone back to bed.Although Merida had been up pretty early, coming into his room and crawling into bed with him for cuddles.

And then there’d been the whole business of feeding everyone and getting everyone off to school.Bay had managed to make eye contact with Pete once or twice and had done his best not to make it weird.He thought maybe he’d done an okay job.

Now it was just him and Merida and Flynn, waiting on Pete to get back from delivering the kids.He’d mentioned something about needing to do groceries today and Bay had offered to go with him.He figured that would prove he wasn’t making things weird, right?He sure hoped so.

He also hoped there was going to be a repeat of last night because that had been really good.He wasn’t going to assume anything, though.This was down to Pete and his comfort levels.

Flynn was lying on a blanket on his back, playing with the little halfmoon thing that had toys hanging over him.His little legs were going and he was talking away in mostly gibberish as he chewed alternately on a teething ring and his fist.Merida was in Bay’s lap, telling him all about her princess and how she was getting ready to go slay the dragon in the woods.

“But what if it’s a friendly dragon?”he asked her.

She tilted her head, and her eyes went wide.“A fwendwy dwagon?It’s a fwendwy one?”

“Sure, why not?”He liked dragons.Surely there was an animated movie where dragons were friendly.He just had no clue; this is where Pete would have the knowledge to help him out with an example.

She lit up and nodded.“The princess and the dwagon can be friends!Like you and me, Unca!”

“There you go, that would be perfect.”He raised his hands and roared, but not too loudly.He didn’t want to scare her or Flynn.

She giggled, and then she roared for him.“Can the princess be a dragon?Can we both be dragons?”

She looked at him as if he held all the answers to every question in the world.And it was amazing and terrifying all at the same time.

“Oh, that would be awesome.Yes, everyone can be dragons.”

“Yay!”She cheered, throwing her arms up and almost falling off his lap.

He caught her before she did and pulled her back to his chest.“I’ve got you!”

“My Bay!”She kissed him happily.“Love you!”

“I love you too, honey.”He hugged her tight.

She beamed at him like he was absolutely the center of the world, and he didn’t quite know what to feel about that.Part of him was honored, part of him was tickled, and part of him was devastated because this wasn’t supposed to be his.This was supposed to be his brother’s.

He wrapped her tight, blinking hard.She wasn’t going to understand it if he started crying, but the grief had come out of nowhere and it hit him hard.

She hugged him tight and then started patting him.“There, there.There, there.Merida loves you.There, there.”

“Thank you, sweetie.I love you too.”He kissed her cheek and let her go, smiling, feeling more composed.“So we’re all friendly dragons, right?”

“Yup, we’re friendly dragons and we breathe…” She squinched her face up as she thought.“…cotton candy!”

“Oh, I like that.The pink airy stuff.”He roared a little again and breathed out, pretending it was cotton candy.

Pete walked in the house, face wreathed in a smile.“Are we roaring?”