Sloan sighed a curse and bumped his forehead to mine. “Don’t go too far, Corey.” He cupped the back of my neck. “I think attraction is a great place to anchor yourself right now. Of course you know who and what you’re attracted to. It’s chemistry, it’s a quick spark of desire, it’s instinctual. Yeah?” He waited till I’d nodded in agreement. “Start there. Trust yourself there. Just be careful not to plan too far into the future. Give yourself time to adjust and entertain ideas before you jump into anything. Does that make sense?”
Well, tragically, yes.
“I guess,” I mumbled. At Sloan’s evident humor, I couldn’t help but get defensive. “What’s funny?”
“The drivel coming out of my mouth,” he said. “While I’m saying these things to you, I have my own relationship with Shepherd and Archer at the forefront of my mind, and we moved in together before our first date.”
That was weird. Super weird.
“How come you moved so fast?”
He exhaled a chuckle and leaned back a little. “Long story short, Shep’s been trying to get me to move in with him since I divorced my children’s mother. All of a sudden, I was a single dad with four kids every other week, and I could barely make ends meet financially. I lasted three years before I surrendered. I had absolutely no strength left to resist him or his offer. Well, demand.”
I smiled faintly.
“Around the same time, all our underlying feelings about each other poured out,” he went on. “And he met Archer too—or reunited with him. They met five years ago. So I think it was in the span of a week, all our lives changed, and we decided to run with it. We decided to become a team and a family. To take our strengths and weaknesses and throw them together and work it out as a unit.” He smiled fondly to himself, maybe at a memory. “Just last week, Greer said something like, ‘You always hear a story here and there about couples who got married too fast, and then forty years later, they’re still together. My folks are one of those couples. It’s up to us and nobody else if we’re the next love story that idiots wanna bet against.’”
Master Greer was a big softy and a romantic deep down.
I loved that about him.
“You all took a giant leap of faith together,” I said quietly. “If anyone can make it, it’s you. That’s what I think anyway. Because he’s such a hard worker, and I can’t picture him ending up with men who are the opposite.”
Sloan didn’t have to say a word about how much he loved his new life. It was clear as day on his face. He believed in them too. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have moved his children.
“I bet the kids love a farm a lot more than an apartment in the city,” I noted.
He grinned slightly and nodded. “You can say that. More than that, it’s Greer. They’ve loved him for as long as they’ve been alive, and there isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for them.”
Was it okay for me to look forward to meeting them?
Which begged the question… “How will it work when they get here? Will I still be here then?”
“Hmm, I think so. We’ll certainly do our best to make you stay.” He tapped my nose again. “We’re picking up Kyla tomorrow after the munch, but she’s only a year old. Isn’t a whole lot we have to hide from her. Then I pick up my four after school on Thursday. Their mom is moving to Chicago for a year for work, so we decided to let them stay at home on Friday.”
“A whole year? Wow.” That reminded me of when my dad first wanted to take a research trip to his home country. Eight months in El Salvador to study the eating habits of a certain species of leaf frog. I told Sloan about it. “And he couldn’t see the big deal about him being gone, ’cause Mom and I could always visit.” I chuckled at the memory.
Sloan winced and laughed a little. “It hurts my daddy heart, but…I guess we’re all different.”
Different was a good word for it.
“Did you inherit your interest in frogs from him?” he asked.
I nodded. “For being an absent father, he’s always tried to make the most of it. I’m not saying I haven’t been hurt or angry, but I don’t have the energy to be mad at him. To this day, he sends voice messages to me once or twice a month, and they’re like journal entries. He talks about what he’s working on, and he asks me a bunch about my life. And he always wraps up a recording by saying ‘Hope you’ll visit soon, and never froget I love you.’”
Over the years, so many anecdotes from his recordings had gotten stuck that I’d started buying textbooks to learn on my own.