Page 60 of Up In Smoke

I shrug, not as comfortable talking about me. “Yeah, but I did fuck up. A lot. I own that, now.”

Rico shakes his head and looks into my eyes with such intensity that I can’t turn away. “You’re their son,” he says fiercely. “Their love shouldn’t be conditional. Fuck them.”

I laugh, startled by his ferocity. He’s never criticized them out loud before, although I always suspected he felt like that. It’s nice to hear, even if I don’t entirely agree with him.

Except…they’ve never made me feel like I was worth fighting for. That’s the whole reason they sent me off to acting classes and auditions in the first place. They didn’t know how to handle all my energy and crazy ideas, so they hoped I’d become someone else’s problem.

Rico doesn’t treat me like that. Ever.

My heart sings, gazing at him as we lay in each other’s arms. “Are we done talking about the sad stuff now?” I murmur, ghosting my fingertips across his cheek. “Can we talk about the nice things?”

He nuzzles his nose against mine. “We can talk about whatever you want, Jesse.”

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, grateful that I just brushed my teeth seeing how close our faces are. “Okay, cards onthe table. I like you so fucking much, but I never thought you’d like me back.”

“I do,” he interjects, and my heart somersaults.

“Yay,” I say with a grin, making him laugh. “And if that’s the case, I don’t want your sense of responsibility or my self-doubt to sabotage us anymore than they already have. I realize we’re already married, but…Rico?” He hums. “Would you like to go on a date with me?”

He laughs again before capturing my mouth and kissing me sensually. My toes curl and my skin tingles in delight. “I’d love to go on a date with you, Jesse,” he murmurs against my lips. Considering all we’ve been through, him sounding excited to date me shouldn’t really be a surprise by this point. But it still feels like fireworks going off in my chest.

The moment might have led to something more, except that’s when Klaus decides to crash the party by jumping on the bed and then stomping all over us as well. We’re laughing too much to be mad, and a sensible part of my brain realizes it’s almost certainly a good idea to take things slowly between Rico and I when it comes to sex. That always makes things more complicated, and our situation has been low-key insane from the moment we reunited in my apartment mere months ago.

But as we snuggle to try sleeping again—cuddling intentionally this time—Klaus hunkers down at our feet and a strong sense of rightness settles over me like a comforting, weighted blanket. This feels like home. It feels like family. I want to hold onto it and never let it go. Given my track record, I’m not sure how likely that is.

But I’m damn well going to try.

CHAPTER 18

Rico

“How about that one?”I ask.

What a whirlwind twenty-four hours it’s been. Yesterday, Jesse basically got a job he’s super excited about, we discovered that my insurance company is investigating us, so we tried sharing a bed…

Then immediately made out, speed ran through a bunch of past trauma, and pretty much agreed to try dating.

Now we’re shopping for wedding rings.

If someone wrote this in a TV show, people would say it was completely ridiculous. But I guess that’s our lives these days.

I can’t say I’m mad about it. Admittedly, talking about Emmy was as awful as I’d expect it to be. However, sharing the story with Jesse also gave me a bit of unexpected closure. I’d kind of assumed during our time together recently that he couldn’t know or had forgotten about what happened. He clearly missed that horrendous time in my life completely, and I’m kind of grateful to Adam for sparing him that. But opening up about it now, at the moment we took the plunge and committed to going from being friends to something more, feels comforting in a bizarre way.

If Jesse and I are going to try being together as a real couple, I don’t want it to be under some picture-perfect illusion. I’ve seen some of the ugliest facets of his life and he deserves to understand mine in return. Being honest with him in that way not only felt cathartic, but intimate in a way I never managed with boyfriends I was with for years.

Could it be any clearer how special Jesse is to me?

I don’t want to jump into thoughts like that too fast, though. Shifting the nature of our relationship like this is a huge step. It’s going to take time to work out if this is what we really want or if it’s some kind of high-pressure co-dependency thing.

So, yeah. Of course for our first date, I’ve taken Jesse wedding ring shopping. No big deal.

And there’s definitely something going on. He seems reluctant to have an opinion about anything we’ve browsed so far at the jewelry shop I’ve brought him to. Luckily, the sales assistant is giving us space. But it’s as if since we got here, Jesse’s disappeared into a shell.

“Hey,” I say softly after yet another half-hearted shrug from him. “Are you okay? We don’t have to do this now if you’re not feeling up to it.”

“No,” he says quickly. “We need to make sure we’re prepared, right? That lady could spring up at any moment. There are too many other suspicious things about our, um, marriage. We should tick this off the list right now, so we don’t have to worry about it.”

I nod in agreement, but he still looks uncomfortable, his gaze skirting over the display cabinet and his body tensed, like he’s ready to sprint away at any second now. I frown, not wanting to push the issue. But then I realize that if I don’t, who will?