Page 30 of Walking on Broken Paths

THREE YEARS LATER — JULY

“You’re sure about this?”

Standing on the docks at Peakes Quay, Parker side-eyed Joel Penny. “We signed the paperwork months ago. Yes, I’m sure. She’s yours.”

The Willis Dinner Cruises yacht—now rebranded with the Island Dinner and Sightseeing Cruises logo—looked the same as she always had. But she no longer belonged to Parker.

It had taken him a couple of years, but he’d eventually sold it to Joel. Two more years of running the business had finally convinced him that if he had to run it for even just one more, he might drown in entrepreneurial misery.

Dad had loved it.

But it wasn’t Parker’s thing.

So he’d called Joel over the winter, and they’d negotiated a price that Jesse kept telling him was too low.

Parker didn’t care. He just wanted to get rid of the thing.

It was bittersweet, of course. The yacht had been Dad’s pride and joy, and Parker had practically grown up on it. But it had gotten to the point where it didn’t make sense for Parker to hang on to it, not when the thought of returning to PEI for the summer filled him with a sense of dread.

Anticipation too—he loved the island.

But also dread.

“What do you think, Dad?” he’d muttered on a whim after a phone call with Joel and their lawyers in January.

He’d been sitting in his office in his and Jesse’s house in West Vancouver—which they’d bought, together, after Jesse had sold his downtown condo, so they could have something that was theirs—staring into the middle distance as he’d rotated his office chair back and forth.

“Any objection to me selling your second child?”

The lamp in the hallway outside his office had clicked on.

Wide-eyed, Parker had jerked out of his chair. Whipped his head around, peering into every sunlit corner and shadowy crevice. “Dad?” he’d whispered.

But there’d been nothing else.

A timer. That was the obvious answer. The lamp was on a timer.

It wasn’t, he’d discovered a few days later when he’d remembered to check.

So there was that.

Parker had decided to take it as a sign of Dad’s approval.

The one thing he’d kept from Dad’s ship was the wheel. Joel had overseen its removal, then he’d packed it up and shipped it to Parker. It now hung in his and Jesse’s living room, between two of Mikey’s sketches.

On the wheel’s left, the sketch of Jesse and Mikey on the hillside.

On the wheel’s right, the sketch of Jesse and Parker holding hands on The Windblown.

It made Parker both happy and sad to look at that wall, and judging by Jesse’s expression when he looked at it, it made him both happy and sad too. But that was okay. That was life. Happiness and sadness were just two sides of the same coin. One couldn’t exist without the other.

“You must have a shit-ton of staff,” Parker said to Joel now, “to be able to run two cruises out of Charlottetown.”

“Sure do.” Joel bounced on his toes, clearly delighted. “Most of my new employees used to be yours.”

Joel, it turned out, came from money, and the dinner cruises were his summer hobby.

“To each his own,” Parker murmured.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.” Parker clapped him on the shoulder. “Have a good cruise tonight.”

“Do you and Jesse want to come? We’re sold out, but I can make sure you have a nice table.”

“Maybe next week?”

“Anytime.”

Parker said his goodbyes and began the short walk to the indie bookstore on Queen Street.

Three summers ago, Parker had been working two jobs he hadn’t enjoyed. This summer, neither was on his plate—the Willis Dinner Cruises business was officially no more, and his work with the fundraising agency had come to an end a few months after Parker had arrived in Vancouver to live with Jesse.

It was Jesse’s fault that he no longer worked for them—he’d forced Parker to quit after finding Parker drowning his annoyance in a bottle of wine.

Not that force was the right word. Honestly, it hadn’t taken that much strong-arming.

Parker had had savings from his time at the Montreal Gazette , but he’d been extremely frugal during the few weeks he’d been out of work. Relying on Jesse for financial support had been strange at first, until Jesse had shown him his bank balance.

“You could buy me an island,” Parker had whispered in awe, staring at all that money tied up in investment accounts. “You could buy me all the islands.”

Jesse had laughed until he’d toppled sideways onto the couch, holding his stomach. “I’m a hockey player, not a baseball player. I think an island is a touch out of my range.”

A couple of months after that, one of Parker’s contacts had come through—they’d forwarded his information to someone at Van U, the Vancouver United Football Club, who’d been looking for help with their monthly newsletter.

That had snowballed into freelance writing gigs with several sports clubs across the country—and a couple in the States.

And because he worked for himself, he could pick and choose which projects he said yes to.

He was even in preliminary talks with the vice president of media relations for an NHL organization in Canada who was interested in hiring him on a part-time consultant basis to help with their content development.

Life was busy, but it was good.

Inside the indie bookstore, he spotted Jesse before Jesse spotted him.

Jesse wore shorts and a T-shirt, and his sunglasses were hooked in the collar of his T-shirt in a way that was both prim and sexy.

He carried a stack of Parker’s books despite the skepticism one of the employees kept shooting his way.

“Sir,” the thirty-something said from behind the checkout counter. “Do you plan on buying all of those?”

“No. My fiancé’s coming to sign them.”

Parker’s heart gave a jolt every time Jesse used that word. Fiancé . They were planning on getting married in Charlottetown next summer after almost a year and a half of being engaged. They hadn’t had enough time to plan it for this summer, so next summer it was.

Jesse’s parents had squealed with happiness when Jesse and Parker had called them from Vancouver to tell them the news.

“Who popped the question?” Jesse’s mom had asked.

“Uh.” Jesse had shrugged. “No one? We talked about it and decided to get married.”

Parker had winked at her. “It was super romantic.”

She’d been about as impressed with them as the day she’d discovered that they’d accidentally murdered her baby plants.

Jesse’s gaze caught his, and his slow grin nearly had Parker melting into a puddle.

“Check this out.” Jesse placed his stack of Playing the OUTfield: A Twenty-Year Chronicle of LGBTQ+ Acceptance in Professional Sports onto the checkout counter. “I found you in nonfiction bestsellers, local authors, Canadian authors to read, and on a shelf of books recommended by the staff.”

“Oh, wow.” Parker sidled up to him. “Really?”

The first was cool, the second two weren’t anything new, but the last? Having his book recommended by other readers was pretty much the coolest thing ever.

“You’re Parker Willis,” the guy behind the counter said. “I recognize you from your dust jacket. I’m Sean. This is my shop.”

Parker held his hand out. “Nice to meet you. This is my fiancé, Jesse.”

“Are you a writer too?”

Jesse shook his head. “I play hockey.”

“Oh. Uh.” Sean smiled sheepishly. “I don’t really do sports.” He held up a copy of Playing the OUTfield . “Except in books.” He turned back to Parker with an expression of hope. “Are you really going to sign these?”

“Yeah, if you don’t mind. I even brought these little signed by the author labels.” Parker removed them from his pocket. “Figured I’d take some photos and post them to Instagram. Maybe you’ll see a little uptick in sales.”

Sean was beyond enthusiastic and cleared away a section of a display table for Parker to sign his books. Customers came and went as he did so, some of them craning their necks to see who was in their midst, others ignoring him entirely.

Given that Parker’s book was for a very niche market, he’d been surprised when he’d hit the bestsellers list. He didn’t think that would’ve happened without the backing of his publisher—the same one who’d published Mitch Greyson’s husband’s book years ago.

Parker had intended to self-publish, but he’d been offered a very nice contract, so he’d figured.

.. why not? The book had been widely well received, and although it wasn’t something he’d ever make the big bucks from, he was proud as fuck over publishing it.

After two and a half years of interviews and research and seven—or was it eight?

—drafts, seeing it on bookshelves gave him the same feeling as when Parker had seen Jesse sitting alone at a picnic table three years ago, gazing mournfully out at The Windblown.

It was the same feeling he got when he walked into their house and found Jesse in the kitchen. Or when Jesse returned home from a lengthy road trip, snuck quietly into bed, and pulled a half-awake Parker close.

Jesse’s wasn’t one of the stories Parker had featured in Playing the OUTfield . Including it reeked of bias, and Parker didn’t want to be accused of favouritism. Plus, even if he’d wanted to include it, he wouldn’t have been able to weave it in organically.

Jesse hadn’t seemed bothered by that. “I never expected to be in your book, Parks,” he’d said with a lazy shrug.

“Besides, what would you write about me anyway? That I was a bully for years because I couldn’t find my way out of my own grief?

Maybe it’s selfish or, I don’t know, vain, but I’m not sure I want people to know that about me. ”

Jesse had been hinting lately that he was a season away from retirement. He was still trying to figure out what he’d do afterwards, but in the meantime, he coached at youth hockey camps in Charlottetown in the summers.

He was also a staunch advocate for better mental health education and resources in schools.

Mikey was never far from his thoughts, and even though he’d admitted that it hurt to talk about him sometimes, telling Mikey’s story to kids and teenagers was also cathartic in a way and helped him feel closer to Mikey.

It was Jesse’s way of remembering him. Of doing good in the face of tragedy.

Of making up for, in Jesse’s words, “the complete douchebag I was for the first few years after Mikey died.”

Parker had once jokingly asked if he planned on DIYing any other home renos, and Jesse had pretended not to hear him. He’d ended up hiring a contractor to finish the rest of the house on Gerald Street, so Parker suspected the answer to his question was a resounding fuck no .

It had turned out beautifully, though, and he’d rented it out for cheap to a widow who’d relocated to Charlottetown from Halifax with her twin girls after the death of her husband. Jesse had given them carte blanche to decorate as they wanted.

“Holes in walls can be patched,” Jesse had once explained to Parker. “Holes in souls? Not fully.”

Parker had hugged the crap out of him after that.

He was halfway through signing his stack of books when Sean appeared with a dozen more. “We had extra stock in the back. Do you mind?”

So Parker signed those too, and as he was closing the final book, a customer entered the store, letting in a breeze that ruffled its pages until they settled on the dedication.

For Andrew Willis—the man who taught me to live, to love, and to dream.

My dad.

Forever missed. Forever loved. Never gone.

Parker didn’t linger on the grief. Not today.

Today he chose happiness, so he thrust his phone at Jesse and made him take his photo with the books in every corner of the store.

Jesse never once complained, not when Parker said, “Take a picture of me reading my book,” or “Take a picture of me pretending to be a book.”

That photo was funnier than it had any right to be, and Parker nearly fell over laughing. Jesse’s smile at Parker’s amusement was so fond that Parker had to kiss him just for being Jesse. Fuck, he loved this man. Loved how Jesse looked at him as if he was better than a Stanley Cup.

This man who’d claimed he was too broken, that he had nothing to offer...

He had so much to give—a well of love just looking for a soft place to land—and that he’d chosen Parker to give it to sometimes made Parker feel like he was in a dream.

“What do you want to do for the rest of the day?” Parker asked him, still within the circle of Jesse’s arms at the back of the bookstore.

“Get Cows and take The Windblown out?”

“It’s like you read my mind.”

Parker kissed him again, light and quick, before they headed out with a wave for Sean.

And thanked the forces that had dropped them into the same time and place three years ago.

Neither of them had walked their broken path alone since.

* * *

THE END