by Layla Reyne
“Do you need me there?” Jax asked.
“No, go back to the station and stay on top of things. See if anyone else there is connected.”
“Hawes and Chris are due back this afternoon,” Helena said. “We’ll brief them.”
“MCS?” Mel asked.
“Southside slip will be open for you.”
Once she’d clicked off, Helena rotated toward him. “Family debrief tonight?”
Holt started to nod, then glanced again at the advertised contract. “Morning,” he said instead. He’d secured Brax’s physical safety as best he could. But more than that needed protecting, needed shoring up… and cherishing. “Something else I need to take care of first, and I need your help.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Any hits on the list I—”
Brax rounded the corner into the kitchen, and Holt wished his hands weren’t covered in potato goop so he could grab his phone and snap a picture. He had countless memories of Brax, but he would have loved to have this moment in hard copy, framed and hanging on a wall somewhere. Wide-eyed, brows chasing his hairline, mouth hanging open, Brax had worn a similar expression the first time Holt had pulled off this particular surprise. Now, though, twelve years later, there was a teensy bit of horror in his expression too, probably because of the potato-goop-covered munchkin at Holt’s side.
“Ba-Ba! Ba-Ba!” Lily clapped, flinging more of the latke batter around the kitchen and onto Holt. He’d brought her high chair into the kitchen, next to him at the island, and within seconds, she’d been elbow-deep in the bowl of potato, egg, and onion mixture. And before they’d started on the latkes, she’d also “helped” him hang the blue and silver streamers that crisscrossed the dining and living rooms in no discernible order. It worked, though, in their way, as did the twinkling blue and white lights and the softly glowing menorah with its rainbow candles in the center of the table. He’d only asked Helena to arrange for groceries, a few things from Brax’s place, including his French press, and their go bags, but she and the lieutenants had outdone themselves.
“What is this?” Brax said.
Holt flicked a glob of batter at him. Why the hell not? The shit was everywhere already, including covering his sacrificed flannel in the corner. “What’s it look like?”
“More!” Lily giggled.
Holt kissed her head. “Hanukkah is a tad advanced for toddler speak.”
Shaking off his surprise, and the batter Holt had landed squarely on his T-shirt-covered chest, a dressed-down, barefoot Brax unstuck himself and joined them at the island. “I imagine so,” he said as he wiped batter off Lily’s face.
Holt covered the swells of warmth rippling through him with a splash of sarcasm. “But you notice she knows the word more.”
“More!” Lily proved.
“More latkes are never a bad thing.” Brax laughed, gaze flicking to Holt. “But you might have missed a couple of courses.”
“In the fridge, just need to heat them up. I wanted to make these, though, and those doughnut things you love.” He tilted his head back, toward the ingredients stacked on the countertop next to the stove. “There’s a bag of candies in there to tide you over.”
A touch of worry, of indecision, pinched Brax’s features. “Don’t we need to—”
“We need to celebrate the fact we survived today—hell, the last nine months—and I know it’s months late, but we missed this in December, and I didn’t—”
Brax’s thumb over his lips silenced Holt’s words while amplifying the desire roaring in his ears. It was all Holt could do not to part his lips and suck Brax’s finger into his mouth. The idea both embarrassed and excited him, and he had no doubt Brax felt the outward inferno of Holt’s inner conflict beneath his fingertips. The blush intensified as Brax’s gaze drifted to his mouth, as his trembling thumb skated over his cheek and removed a glop of batter. He flicked it off but didn’t tear his gaze from Holt’s. “Thank you,” he said, voice gravelly.
Holt was still searching for his words when a Lily-created splat—a handful of latke mixture hitting parchment paper—forced them out of the moment.
Brax cleared his throat and shifted his attention to Lily. “Okay, put me to work, Chef.”
She slapped another ball of mush into his hand, and Brax laughed out loud, free and easy, and the sound soothed the hard edge of desire Holt was riding, making it more manageable, more livable. Peace settled in Holt’s belly and chest, and together with the joyful mood, carried him through the rest of dinner prep and dinner itself. He happily played host, serving courses, pouring wine, and removing dishes while Brax played storyteller, sharing with them the origins of each dish, its relevance in Jewish culture and holidays, and why it was special to him. Lily was too young to absorb much, but Holt soaked up every detail Brax dropped, tucking them away for future use.
Lily was still hit or miss with certain foods, but she’d loved the latkes and loved the caramel-filled sufganiyot most of all. “More,” she begged, but any more sugar was a recipe for disaster. Holt sipped his coffee as Brax appeased her by rattling off all the fillings he’d ever had. The mention of strawberry did the distracting trick, Lily begging for her toys instead. Holt cleared dishes while Brax ferried over a few of her plush fruit toys. On his way back to the table, Holt slipped Brax one more doughnut, then filled their mugs up with the rest of the coffee.
“You’ve done a good job with the house,” Brax said.
“There’s still a ways to go. Need to finish the den and bathroom downstairs, the third bedroom up here, and get furniture that matches instead of the leftovers from Hawes’s old condo. But it’s a long way from the falling down wreck it was when we bought it, for a song if I might add.”
“I bet. You do all the work?”
“We had contractors do the structural and plumbing. Some of the mechanical. Same crew who did Chris and Hawes’s reno. I wired the electrical and did most of the interior. It’s been an oasis when I needed it.”
“That why you bought out here?”
He remembered Hawes and Helena—and Rose—being surprised at the location. It was only a half hour to MCS or to the family fort in Pacific Heights, closer even to other parts of the city, but that seemed too far for them. Amelia, however, had backed his play. “In part. I loved growing up in the city, but we wanted something else for Lily.” He glanced toward the west-facing windows. He couldn’t see the ocean from out here in the canyon, but knowing it was right there, on the other side of the fog-shrouded hills, seeing it every time he came and went from the neighborhood, was a sort of peace too, one that even MCS’s waterfront headquarters couldn’t provide. “Living near the water, it meant more—”
“After you got home from the desert.”
Holt’s gaze drifted back and locked with Brax’s. Of course he would get it. Of anyone, Brax understood what it was like to look in every direction and see nothing but miles of sun-hued sand. And like Holt, he’d grown up in a place where you didn’t have to go far in either direction to hit blue-green water.
“I like it,” Brax said.
The pride Holt had felt at Brax’s same words earlier in the day were infused now with the rising wave of peace, of home, of family that had built over the evening, setting off underwater volcanos in his belly and threatening to shake the surface. In a good way. “I’m glad.”
“Yes!” Lily said, palms smacking the tabletop for emphasis. “More!”
“I’ll show you more,” Holt said, pushing to his feet. “More of your new room”—he booped Lily’s nose—“and new bed.” He picked another dried bit of potato goop out of her curls. “But I think you need a bath first.”
She stuck out her bottom lip. “No.”
Brax chuckled. “Good luck, princess. Your daddy is obsessed with making sure we sleep.”
“Hey!” Holt grumbled in mock protest. “No fair.”
“No!” Lily repeated. She tilted back her head and blew a raspberry up at him.
And the
n so did Brax, and a fucking tsunami crashed into Holt, hard enough he had to grasp the back of Brax’s chair for balance. He’d never been so in love as he was with Braxton Kane in that moment.
“Out like a light,” Holt said as he returned to the kitchen. “Between daycare and the great latke-making party, she was zonked.”
Brax glanced over his shoulder from where he was washing dishes at the sink. His eyes cut to the flannel he’d picked up off the floor and hung on the back of Holt’s chair. “Sorry if it killed your flannel.”
Holt squinted playfully. “Are you really?”
Brax cocked a brow before turning back to the sink, his shoulders shaking with quiet laughter. Holt set the baby monitor on the island and slid in beside him, knocking his hip out of the way of the dishtowel drawer. They worked in tandem, Brax washing and Holt drying, and the simple domestic comfort of it did nothing to quiet the storm raging inside Holt. If anything, it made the hurricane that much worse, made the realization of how much Holt wanted this and the man beside him inescapable. Also inescapable, the realization of how close he’d come to losing it all earlier in the day.
“Something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Brax said, jarring Holt from his spiraling thoughts.
“What’s that?”
He stepped closer, his left arm jostling Holt’s tattooed right one. “Tell me about this. I’ve wondered ever since you showed me the design, but I never asked.”
“I wouldn’t have told you then. Fuck, I couldn’t.” Holt wrapped his fist in the towel and shoved it into the mixing bowl, drying the stainless steel. “It’s how I felt about my family then. To some extent, still do. Like, no matter what life I try to lead, no matter if it’s in camo or flannel, the family obligations are always there, clawing at me, peeling back the disguise and exposing what’s underneath. What we really are. Who I really am. We’re trying to do right now, I know, but…”
A warm, sudsy hand landed on his biceps. “This isn’t all you are, Holt.”
“I know.” He pulled down the collar of his tank, exposing the lotus tattoo on his left pec. Lily was the purest part of him.
Brax removed his other hand from the water, gave it a shake, then nudged Holt’s fingers out of the way, covering the lotus tattoo. “She’s not all either.” He moved his hand to the center of Holt’s chest and another realization tore through Holt. That was exactly where Brax existed in his world, straddling the light and the dark, understanding and accepting both parts of him—all of him—better than anyone. “You’re a good man, Holt Madigan. Twelve years ago, you recognized I was hurting, and you did something like this for me.” He released his biceps and gestured around the room. “Same as you have in the years since and today.”
“I missed last year.”
Brax took the bowl, set it aside, and stole Holt’s towel to dry his hands. “Last year was…”
Holt’s chuckle was almost as dark as Scotty’s yesterday. “A clusterfuck of epic proportions. I still shouldn’t have let this slip by.”
Brax pitched the towel onto the counter. “First one since I moved here. After a clusterfuck of a year. Not holding it against you.”
“I didn’t expect you would, but…” With nothing in his hands, Holt flailed, ripples of energy firing in all directions, and into his words, which he couldn’t stop, the storm billowing outward. “I was excited, especially when you came out of the station earlier and smiled, and I thought we had something else to celebrate too, that it would make up for last year, and then you almost got shot, and—”
Brax lightly grasped his outer shoulders. “Breathe, Private.”
Holt hung his head. “That was too close, Brax. After we missed it last year—I missed it—and if that had been the last—”
“Hey, I’m here.” Brax trailed his hands up and over his shoulders, a trail of fire and goosebumps in their wake. His hold around Holt’s neck was gentle but firm enough to force his gaze. “I’m right here, Holt. I’m fine.”
“It was too close to missing this for good, Cap.” He covered Brax’s hands and drew them up to his cheeks, needing to feel their warmth, needing to feel the trembles that were quaking through Brax too. “I don’t want to miss any more of these with you.” He angled his face, kissed one palm then the other, before bringing his gaze back to Brax’s, finding the hazel there on fire. “I don’t want to miss anything else with you.”
Brax’s fingers stilled, his grip on Holt’s face firm. “What are you saying?”
Holt stepped closer, erasing the distance between their bodies. “If you still want—”
Brax erased the distance between their lips, answering Holt’s unfinished question with a strong, sure hold and a tongue demanding entrance. Fuck yeah, he still wanted, and Holt wanted even more. Opening his mouth on a groan, he wrapped his arms around Brax’s torso and curled his fingers into the back of his T-shirt, trust, love and desire knotting tight, cresting, and making his head spin, in that good way. He rotated and rested back against the counter, hauling Brax against his front, everything he wanted in his arms, flooding his senses. Ripples of pleasure zoomed inward, making his heart race and his cock harden.
Fuck, he wanted, like he had at twenty-three, except not, another decade of trust and friendship—of love—sharpening and deepening his feelings, making his need for Brax an imperative, a necessity.
“Fuck, I need you.” He shoved a knee between Brax’s thighs and rocked his hips. “Please, Brax.”
Panting, Brax shifted his legs wider, bringing their bodies impossibly closer.
“Fuck.”
They froze. Neither of them had spoken the word.
“Fuck,” it came again, through the baby monitor, and their lust bubble dissolved with a Lily-sized pop.
What could he do but laugh? And when Brax’s body against his shook with laughter too, Holt’s chest filled to bursting—with happiness, family, and belonging. Feelings he needed to share with Brax before they went any further. He wanted this, these moments, even more than he wanted their ones in bed together, in the past and hopefully to come. Holt was pretty certain Brax was on the same page, but he needed to be sure. He pressed a kiss to Brax’s temple. “I think I need to go handle that.”
Brax pushed off his chest. “Probably a good idea.” He reached around Holt for the towel, muffling another laugh in his shoulder. “I’ll finish cleaning up here.”
Holt lightly grasped his wrist before he moved away. “I want to finish what we started.”
Brax shifted their hands, giving his a squeeze. “Don’t worry, Private. So do I.”
“One other thing,” Holt said. “We don’t tell anyone about this.” His eyes cut to the baby monitor. “Celia will never let me hear the end of it.”
Brax chuckled. “My lips are sealed. Now go see about your daughter’s.”
He blew a raspberry at Brax, Brax blew one back, and Holt laughed all the way to Lily’s room, eager to get her back to sleep so he could get on with the conversation that would hopefully win them many more dinners, many more family nights to come.
Chapter Eighteen
“She good?” Brax asked as Holt pulled shut Lily’s bedroom door.
He held up the strawberry plushie. “For the swear jar.” He shook his head in chastened defeat. “I just hope she gets it.”
Brax, propped against the hallway wall, chuckled, and Holt leaned a shoulder next to his. Their I’m sorrys collided, setting off another round of soft laughter.
“I—” Brax started.
“We need to talk.”
“That’s usually not a good thing.”
“But it always has been with us. And we haven’t done enough of it lately.”
Brax dipped his chin. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” Holt pushed off the wall and snagged Brax’s hand. “But we’re gonna talk now, Cap. We need to so we can get back to fu—what we were doing.”
Brax glanced up through his lashes, one corner of his lips twitching. “Nice save.”
“Better late than never.”
Brax lifted his face the rest of the way, eyes clashing with Holt’s. He understood the double meaning of Holt’s words, and he didn’t resist as Holt tugged him along to the master suite at the end of the hall. Holt closed the door, set the monitor on the side table swiped from Hawes’s condo, added his phone and keys to the pile, and flicked on the likewise rehomed lamp. Again considering the surroundings from Brax’s point of view, Holt cursed himself for not doing more with it. A single table and double-stacked foam mattresses seemed rather pitiful, but as Brax sat on the end of the bed without so much as a creak of wood or squeak of springs, Holt thought maybe inertia had worked in his favor for a change.
“I owe you the rest of the story,” Brax said, snapping him from his thoughts.
He rounded the end of the bed and knelt in front of Brax, between his bent legs. “The reason you were pushing me away?”
Brax nodded. “It wasn’t just Swanson, or the cartel, or IA.”
“Was it about what Chris said last summer?”
Brax stared over his shoulder, toward the window, like he’d stared out the window of his condo the other night. “I didn’t know what to do with that.”
“Because it was true.”
He swung his gaze back to Holt’s. “Because it was true, because I’d do the same, because I didn’t know where that put us as far as my job, your family, us. I didn’t know where that put us after—”
The last piece slotted into place. “After Amelia.”
Brax lifted a hand, fingers lightly cupping his neck, thumb skirting his jaw. “The last thing I want to do is pressure you, Holt. To rush you, and if all you want is to be friends—”
“I think what just happened in the kitchen proves otherwise.”
“The moment—”
The moment was here to lay it all on the line; the moment the past fourteen years had been leading to. “I love you.”
Holt had expected surprise, not the immediate “I love you too” in return. Instinct, he supposed, except… “It’s more now, Cap. Different.”