He said I had control issues because I’d been made to grow up too young and I’d never been allowed to be a child.
I told him to go fuck himself.
He said he’d see me next week.
I wilt in my seat and wait for the traffic I have no control over to move.
It takes another hour to get home, and I can barely wait for the garage door to open to park the Lexus and get in the damn house.
Only to rush—quietly out of habit from never wanting to wake the twins if they were napping—into the house to find it silent.
I hurry around to all the rooms, then realize I’m foolish for not checking the back bedroom first.
I shove the door open with a whoosh of air—
Only to find my family. Finally together again, safe and sound.
Just like the old days, on the bed are Janus, Hope, and Milo, sandwiched together. Naked bodies with a sheet loosely tucked in at their waists. Fast asleep.
The nostalgia for our time in Italy hits so hard it almost knocks me off my damn feet. Or maybe that’s gratitude. Or relief. I can’t fucking tell. I don’t fucking care.
I just know it’s the happy kind of tears hitting my tear ducts as I sling off my fancy tuxedo jacket and too-tight shoes.
A dim nightlight casts a soft glow over the trio, and even from the doorway, I can see how gaunt Milo looks.
So I slide into bed behind him like we used to on the nights Mom would go on one of her tears. Me and my two brothers snuggling close even on hot California nights. Giving comfort to one another.
Except now there is Hope too.
I wrap my arms around all of them.
My family brought home to me at last, by none of my own doing. All of it out of my control.
And I close my eyes as the tears slide down my cheek.
Chapter 33
MILO
I sleep like the dead.
Of course, I must be dead.
Because when I wake to the warm bodies all around me, what else could it be but… heaven?
Spinning brain, shadow light, left and right, who knows?
Life on earth was never this kind except for those ten months I spent with her and my brothers, a family at last.
But now I feel her soft on my front, those big swollen teats of her leaking sweet milk against my chest hairs. I’m clean. The angels welcomed me past the gates, shaved and bathed me so I might be reborn here.
So, well, if it’s heaven, I’ll take heavenly ambrosia on my lips.
I lean down, and oh so carefully cup my beloved’s breast in my hand and sucker my lips around her nipple.
When I suckle her, her life-giving milk spurts onto my tongue.
And I’m surprised I can get hard in heaven. The silk sheets so soft against my cock.
There really is a heaven for everyone.
Even twisted fucks like me.
My Hope squirms as I suckle her, and her hand comes to the back of my hair. Fingernails at my scalp. My hard-on shifts so I can press against the holiness of her thigh.
“Milo,” she breathes out, and in the morning light of the heavenly host, her hazel eyes sparkle with a thousand bright shades.
I let go of her nipple, milk on my bottom lip that I immediately lick away. Can’t waste a single drop.
She’s luminescent. She always was.
And that’s before she smiles at me. It’s near enough to break my heart.
I shatter into pieces before her. Does this heavenly shade forgive me?
But I don’t know what else to call it when she reaches down and grips my shaft if it’s not forgiveness. Too softly she holds me, though, like the cherubic angel she is.
There are other angels, though. The avenging sort.
Because I don’t deserve this kindness.
I never ought to have ended up in heaven.
I deserved… the other place.
I start to shake my head and she frowns, withdrawing her hand, but I can’t quite stand that so my hand shoots down to catch her wrist.
“Harder,” I hiss out instead. “Make it hurt.”
I’m not sure what I see flash in her eyes, but I’ve learned how low I am in the last two years. I have no pride left and I’m not above begging. “Please.”
A crinkle appears between her eyes. “How? Teach me.”
I suck in air. Hope was always perfect. Even in her anger at me that last day. She was righteous. So I trust this apparition now because I sense in some way, it is her.
Befuddled brain.
“Let them fuck you,” I say, strangled. “While you pull my balls. Hard. Too hard. Use your nails. Slap my dick. Tell me what a bad boy I’ve been.”
Bodies rise around us.
My brothers.
Janus massaging her shoulders from behind. Leander behind me drops off the bed. Then he crawls up between her legs, yanking the sheet down.