Page 40 of Take a Chance (Blue Creek Ranch #1)

Malachi

“ D addy, is your back hurting?” Payton asked as I shifted to get more comfortable on the couch next to him.

“Yeah, bud. Not bad though. I’ll be better in a day or two.”

Back. Backside. Same difference. I snorted softly.

“So, now that you know all about my day, what did you do today?” he asked seriously, turning to sit sideways so he could look at me expectantly.

“Well I went with Crew to pick up an order from the feed store, and we had lunch at the diner.”

“Oh! The one we wanna go to sometime?” He looked so hopeful that it made me smile.

“Yeah, bud. It was nice.” If you didn’t take into account the librarian, damn it. “We should go when we have our next library day, because it’s close.”

He nodded rapidly. “Okay! What else?”

“Pretty much all the regular work stuff. But I do have something we should start tonight. A project of sorts,” I told him as I reached for the iPad and a notepad with the pen stuck through the spiral so I wouldn’t lose it.

“Ooh!” Payton’s eyes grew big and the enthusiasm was radiating off him. “Like when we were about to move?”

“Yeah, exactly like that. Except this time we’re not moving.” I smiled as I gave him the iPad. “I’ve bookmarked a few sites, if you want to open the first one.”

“Okay, okay….” With his tongue sticking out a little, he navigated to the browser and scrolled up and down the page. “What am I looking at?”

The tone was such an adult one that I almost burst out laughing. This kid, I swear.

“So you know how Crew came here and we had that movie night?” At his nod, I continued, “Well I thought of that kind of like a family date.”

Payton looked at me and nodded slowly. “Like… like you two are dating and then…?”

“Well there’s this thing that happens when someone who has a kid like I do starts to date someone new,” I explained slowly so he could keep up.

Despite being the smartest four-year-old I’d ever met, he was still only four.

“If you meet someone you really like, then you got to think about the future, right?”

He squinted at me, then brightened. “Oh like getting married and stuff?”

I chuckled. “Yeah, buddy. That might or might not happen though, because not all people who want to be together get married. But either way, if it’s a relationship where the people stick together for a longer time, then when one or both of them have kids, that’s a bit different from if they don’t.”

“How come?”

And this was the tricky part to explain, but I felt like I could maybe do a decent job about it. I hoped. “Let’s say I really like Crew, which I do, and he really likes me. And we want to be together.” Again, Payton nodded. “But what if you didn’t like him, or he didn’t like you?”

“But I do like him!” he exclaimed, then looked worried for a second. “Does he not like me?”

“He does, buddy, and that’s a great thing. We all like each other. But we need to be sure about that before we can say we want to become a family.” We’d had conversations about family and what it meant before, so his next words didn’t really surprise me.

“If we’ll be a family, does that mean he’ll be my other daddy?”

“Yeah, buddy. And we’ve also talked about how serious it is to be someone’s parent, right?”

“Right, like how Vera didn’t want to be a mommy, so she left me with you because you wanted to be my daddy and that’s serious business.”

Grinning, I nodded. That was close enough. “So to be sure that we all want to be a family, we can get to know each other better, right? And to get to know someone, you go on dates.”

“Family dates!” And there he was, my smart as hell kid, making all the right conclusions.

“Yes, exactly.” I lifted the notepad. “For the movie date night, Crew did all the work, right? He planned the whole thing for us. So what do you think we should do now?”

“We need to plan a date!”

“That’s right.” I leaned to him to smooch the top of his head. “So on that website, there’s a list of places that are fun for both kids and adults. I want us to think about what we might want to do with Crew one day soon when we all have a day off, okay?”

“Okay!” He immediately concentrated on the photos.

“There’s only one rule for starters: it needs to be about an hour and a half away, okay? We can’t make it an overnight trip and if we leave early, we’ll be back for dinnertime, because it’s likely that you’ll have daycare the next day and we’ll have work.”

“Okay!” he repeated. “What’s this one about?” He pointed at a picture with some neon lights on it.

“Let me see….”

In the end, I projected the iPad to the TV screen, and operated the iPad while we chatted.

It took us about an hour to get to a point where we had some ideas, but we still needed to narrow it all down.

“Okay, bud, it’s bathtime and then bed. We can continue this tomorrow.”

I also needed to go see Jenn, because I needed a co-conspirator especially if we were to go on a hike like Payton suggested as one of our options.

A couple of days later, Payton and I had a solid plan. I’d also instructed him that this was a surprise, which meant no telling Crew in advance. He’d zipped his lips and snickered, and then snickered again the next time he saw Crew in person.

Payton was at daycare when I finally had a moment to talk to Jenn.

I was late coming in to lunch, which was partially by accident, but mostly because I needed the house a bit emptier.

“Hey, are there any scraps left for a straggler?” I asked as I walked into her kitchen.

She grinned. “I wondered where you were. Of course there is. Take a seat.”

Soon, I had some quesadillas with guacamole and red salsa. I sipped my coffee and then took the first bite. I might’ve whimpered, which was definitely better than moaning, because holy shit.

Jenn took a seat across from me with her own coffee and grinned knowingly. “Good, huh?”

“This is all so damn good. Oh wow.”

“Thanks. I tend to think cooking for this family for thirty plus years has given me some solid skills.” She dusted off her shoulders, and I laughed.

“Hey, want to be my co-conspirator?” I asked, and as I’d known would happen, her eyes lit up.

“Ooh, what do you have for me?”

She sounded so much like Payton at that moment, that I chuckled. “Well, Payton and I have planned a family date for us and Crew.”

Jenn let out a squeaky sound, then nodded rapidly, again reminding me of Payton. “Uh-huh. Tell me more?”

I outlined our plan, and she checked the schedule for the whole family she kept more or less organized. Of course, everyone had their own systems and calendars, and she didn’t control every minutia, but she still kept an eye on things and overruled anything that needed it.

We coordinated, and she marked Crew’s schedule with a big “Mom needs you” tag for the whole day on Tuesday after the coming weekend.

“Thank you.” I smiled as I finished my lunch.

“I’m going to make you guys a nice picnic lunch to take with you,” she announced, and I decided it was for the best to not try to object.

“And I’ll be eternally grateful,” I said instead.

“Good man. I like that you know how to pick your battles.”

I had another mug of coffee and we chatted about Payton and his daycare adventures until it was time for me to get back to work.

With how both Crew and I worked and lived on the ranch, it made settling into a relationship tricky in some ways and easy in others.

Technically, we were never far from each other, especially at the beginning and the end of the day. But we both also worked hard as hell, and then there was Payton and the Harringtons and… yeah. There wasn’t that much time to be just us, together.

We had help, of course. If we needed a babysitter for Payton for some alone time, there was almost always more than one person who would gladly spend time with him.

The decision to not spend nights together was tricky, because I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep and wake up next to Crew now that I knew, hoped, he was my person.

It felt like Crew was waiting for me to tell him it was okay to show Payton we were together to that extent, which I appreciated. Unbeknownst to him, I was waiting, too. For what? I wasn’t sure. I hoped there’d be a definite moment where everything would click into place and I’d just know .

Either way, on Monday night, Payton and I went to bed early. To my surprise, Payton’s excitement didn’t keep him from falling asleep easily, but that might’ve just been that it was a daycare day, and he was always a bit more tired in the evenings after he’d needed to leave the ranch.

It would get better over time, I was sure, but the tiredness was enough for me to see how clearly he’d needed this new routine. He would’ve been a wreck at school if I’d kept him at home until it started without a transitional period.

I texted Crew once I was under the covers.

Have you figured out what your mom wants tomorrow?

I smiled as I waited for him to reply. So far, Crew had no idea.

No, but it could be anything. She’s a woman who doesn’t always feel like explanations are necessary. I’m just glad I got a head’s up this time.

I laughed. He wasn’t wrong. I was pretty sure that all of her kids had gotten the same summons at some point.

Hell, my own mother had done it to me a few times while we still had the farm.

Whether it was something like helping her with the trellises for the vines she loved, or just going on a mother and son date in town because we hadn’t caught up in a while without disruptions.

I felt like it was always a good thing in life to remember: if you have a good relationship with your mother, if she calls, you come running.

It was different for everyone, of course.

I knew very well not all people had great relationships with their parents.

Vera had been one such person. She’d told me it was a big part of the reason for her not to want to parent Payton in the end.