“Your c–”
I’m about to ask about his car when he says, “I did one of those 23 and Me things recently, do you know what they are?”
The name sounds familiar, but I’m not sure. Last time I nodded along with something I wasn’t clear on, I ended up with a kiln full of mini-penis salt and pepper shakers. Never again.
“Sounds familiar, but…”
“It’s DNA. Like the tests you sync up to your ancestry profile online. To find out more about your family and heritage.”
“Oh, what made you want to do that?” I adjust Jett by uncurling his fists from my skin, but he just sinks them back into me when I let go.
Beau shoves his hand through his hair, leaning back again. “Right before he passed, my dad told me that he wasn’t actually my birth father.”
Oh shit. I rub the back of Jett’s fuzzy little head but I don’t stop looking at Beau. His eyes are wide but dark, and I realize now that all of his pain… it wasn’t just death related. He suffered two unimaginable losses; his father, then himself. Who he thought he was before he knew essentially died. And I get that. I so fucking get that.
“Oh Beau,” I murmur, wishing I could draw him in for a long, tight hug.
“I’ve been battling my identity since the day he died.” He takes a beat, studying his hands to avoid what I assume is an emotional rush. “I knew it would be hard when he died. We were so close. I knew I’d be lost for a while.” With one hand, he smooths his finger over his knuckles. “But when he told me I’m not even his… I went from thinking I’d be lost to not really even knowing who I was anymore.”
Jett has drifted off, but I don’t want to move.
My focus is only on Beau when he lifts his head, slowly bringing his wide eyes to mine. “Until I met you, Beck. I felt lost until I met you. And the more I got to know you, the more I remembered part of myself—the part whose existence didn’t hinge on being my father’s son.”
The edges of my vision goes a little blurry at his words. It’s one thing to say you’re falling for someone but quite another to tell someone they’ve lifted you from your darkness.
The truth is he’s done the same for me. But I can’t believe that a boringWheel Get Youdriver would have done that for him. Am I really that exciting?
“I don’t know how I made you feel that way,” I say, not fishing for more but needing more. I never saw it coming with Dustin, even if the signs were there in hindsight. Going forward, I need as much information as possible to keep myself safe.
“You made me want to figure myself out so I could be good enough for you.” Our eyes tangle together, moving back and forth in a silent, weighty dance. “For both of you,” he amends, his voice raspy and raw. A tingle moves through my limbs and goosebumps rise up on the back of my neck.
“Did you figure anything out?” I ask breathlessly, and now Beau’s eyes drift between myself and Jett, since he’s slightly rolled away from me. My breast is now completely exposed but still, he only looks between my eyes and Jett’s sleeping profile.
“I want to move past it, but I can’t until I figure out why he told me.” He shoves a hand through his hair before bringing them back to a nervous tangle between his legs. “I found my birth father and I’m going to go see him.”
Rising, so does Beau, and for some reason, it feels right to meet him halfway across the nursery, so I do. And without asking why, Beau knows and he leans down, giving Jett a kiss on his forehead. He smooths his fingers across the place he kissed and whispers quietly“sweet dreams.”While my lower half is seizing, and if I’m being honest, freaking the fuck out over howturned onit is by Beau, I put Jett down in his crib. With the sound machine on and the baby monitor going, I lead us out of the nursery.
Without warning, Beau pins me to the wall in the hallway and seals his lips to mine, working them fast and frantic down my jaw and neck. With my hands in his soft hair and his lips tracing my collarbone, I murmur, “maybe he was trying to tell you that love is all that matters. Blood isn’t what makes family, but love is.”
He peels off of me, his lips pink from kissing me everywhere, and we make simmering eye contact.
“I’m learning that...” I slightly tip my head back towards Jett’s door. “That love is what matters, and nothing else.”
He doesn’t say anything, and his warm breath flanks my nose as he stares down into my eyes. My hands curl around his shoulders. “We can learn together.”
And those are the last words I speak because he takes my mouth in the most controlling and commanding kiss–all while walking me backward… towardmybedroom.
The world around me becomes cloudy, the only thing I can focus on is him. He bites into the column of my neck before lathing his marks with his tongue. He kisses down my collarbone again before bringing his lips to my mouth in a fast, hot kiss.
“You look sexy as hell in this shirt,” he says against my lips as he tugs the hem of my t-shirt.
“Dustin hated me in t-shirts,” I whisper, wishing I could take it back as soon as the words fly off my tongue. I’m still so quick to bring him up, and I hate that. Beau must hate it, too. I’m about to apologize when he grins, wide and easy.
“Ask me why I like them,” he says with his contagious grin.
This time, I kiss him, using my grip on his shoulders to pull myself to him. Shit his body is solid muscle, like gripping concrete or a freaking boulder.
“Why?” I ask, suddenly drunk off the scent of his skin, his testosterone, his vulnerability. Everything about him from his cologne to his words is making me… wild for him.