Come Work For Me

by Weston Parker

Gasping into the silence of the room, I let the thought settle before a smile swept over my lips. Perhaps the scariest thing about it was that I wasn’t scared of knowing that I loved him at all. It was like something I’d known deep down inside my whole life, and letting myself feel it was like finally discovering an integral part of myself.

  When I finally felt safe enough to leave Lincoln to have his nap without me clutching him for the duration of it, I allowed myself to follow the urge to be with Joseph. It had snagged like a hook in my stomach and had been trying to pull me to him since I’d had my realization, but I’d had to prepare myself to let Lincoln nap by himself first.

  Logically, I knew that nothing could or would happen to him here. But I needed to prepare myself mentally first.

  Once I stood up off the bed and draped the red throw at the bottom of it over Lincoln, I went to find Joseph. He was sitting on his couch, his elbow propped on his thighs as he stared out over the city.

  Hearing me padding into the room, he turned to face me. “Is he asleep?”

  I nodded but pointed to my throat. It hurt too much to talk, so I didn’t. I didn’t think I’d need to in order to let him know what I wanted.

  Taking his hand, I led him to the bathroom and stopped beside the tub. After turning on the taps, I faced Joseph again. He was watching me closely, his hazel eyes never leaving mine.

  “We’ve done this before,” he joked, waving his hand at the tub. “You sure you’re up for this?”

  I nodded again, bringing my hands to the top button of his shirt and proceeding to undress us both. Joseph didn’t look convinced that this was a good idea at first, but by the time we were both naked and I was on my knees while he sat on the edge on the bath, he was rock hard and pretty into it.

  Groaning as he tapped my shoulder and lifted my chin off him, I saw the concern in his eyes. “We don’t have to do this, you know.”

  “I know.” But I wanted to. More than that, I needed to. There was something deep inside me, right next to that part of me that had somehow always known that I loved him, that needed my body to become one with his, that needed to feel him inside me before I could accept we were both really okay, that we would stay that way.

  Joseph looked into my eyes as I tried to come up with the right words to explain all that to him. Whatever he saw there must have been all the answer he needed, though. “Don’t worry, baby. I got you.”

  Holding out his hand to help me up, he climbed into the tub and gently pulled me in after him. My legs slid down on either side of his. Eyes burning into mine, he didn’t look away from me for a second. Not as I lowered myself onto him, not as his hips thrust up or mine came down. I felt their intensity and heat on me as I went flying over the edge and practically heard the angels singing. Somehow, he even managed to keep them on me most of the way through his climax before his lids fluttered shut.

  I collapsed against him afterward, my fingers threaded into his hair and his heart hammering against my chest. Mine was throwing itself against my ribs at a pace that made it feel like it was trying to fly out of my chest and into his.

  “We should get dressed,” Joseph murmured in my ear, his hands lazily tracing patterns on either side of my spine. “Alisha’s going to be here soon.”

  I pressed a kiss to his neck before lifting my head out of the crook of his shoulder. “Thank you for calling her.”

  It still hurt to talk, but the moist air in the bathroom had eased the discomfort somewhat. The inside of my throat felt less swollen, and each word didn’t feel like it was squeezing through a too-tight space anymore.

  “You never have to thank me for taking care of you, baby.” He smiled, rested his forehead against mine and kept me there for a beat before giving my ass a light slap. “Go on, unless you want your best friend to stress her ass off about you if we don’t get the door.”

  Just after we were dressed, Alisha arrived. She hugged me so tight I could barely breathe, but I didn’t mind. The two of us went out to the balcony to talk while Joseph insisted on making dinner. Apparently, he felt confident that he couldn’t fuck up the pasta dish he had in mind.

  Alisha asked mostly yes/no questions that I could respond to easily without putting too much strain on my throat. Lincoln woke up some time later and came out to tell me he was going to play video games with Joseph on the big TV.

  Talking to Alisha about what had happened made me cry again. It made her cry too, but eventually, we both got our shit together and went inside to eat. As we walked in the door, she slid an arm around my waist and pulled me in for another hug. “It’s okay now, babe. Kurt won’t bother you anymore. It’s finally over.”

  I nodded, holding on to her and praying that she was right.

  Chapter 39

  Joseph

  When I opened my eyes, both Lilac and Lincoln were curled up next to me. My heart clenched and flopped before warming all the way through. It hit me then just how important these two were to me. I hadn’t voiced the words out loud before but I would, and I’d do it soon. Lilac deserved to know.

  Careful not to move a muscle, I watched both of them sleeping. It was a good thing that Alisha had come over for dinner last night, because I wasn’t leaving the house today.

  Lincoln might miss the park considering that it was Sunday, but we needed a lazy inside day to deal with the horror of yesterday. My breath caught in my lungs when I thought about what had happened—what could have happened.

  I hadn’t cried in a long-ass fucking time, but I’d come close when I heard how raspy Lilac’s voice was. I’d come close when I saw how she winced with pain when she tried to speak for those first couple of hours. I’d come close when I’d stood in that doorway of Lincoln’s bedroom and watched the two of them together.

  I’d come close because losing them now was unimaginable to me. Unfathomable, even. Any pain they felt, I felt it at triple strength in my own heart. Watching them both in tears had nearly driven me to the same because I couldn’t stand seeing them hurt.

  It had made me want to go down to the police station and rip Kurt’s fucking throat out with my bare hands. The only thing that had kept me here was knowing that they needed me to be. I refused to let them down, so I’d stayed put.

  Well, that, and I did have some sense of preservation. Murder in a police station probably wouldn’t end well for me, and I couldn’t do that to myself or to them.

  So, simmer in silence it is. Sighing quietly, I carefully sat up and scooted out from between them. After replacing my body with pillows, I headed to the kitchen. I had to move; do something.

  If all I could do was to get a head start on coffee and French toast, then that had to be enough for now. I’d call the police later to find out what they were going to do with Kurt, but they had better be doing something about him.

  Getting to the kitchen was more effort than it usually required. I had twisted my prosthetic in that fucking fight and I had to lean heavily on my crutch. Grant told me he’d get the paperwork going to either get it fixed or to get a new one.

  The VA moved slowly. It was likely to take some time before I even heard anything, never mind before it actually got fixed or replaced. But that was okay. I could deal with the crutch for a while. I’d done it before I’d gotten the metal leg anyway, so it wasn’t anything new.

  Lilac and Lincoln’s Sunday morning tradition had become a tradition for me too. There was familiarity in my Sunday morning routine now: put on the coffee, fix some for myself and get Lilac’s mug ready, then start on the French toast.

  I was breaking the eggs into a big bowl and trying to decide if I’d added enough black pepper to the mixture when I heard Lilac walk in. “Good morning.”

  She smiled when I turned around and came over to give me a lingering kiss. “Hey. Missed you when I woke up.”

  “Yeah.” I reached for the mug I’d gotten ready for her and filled it, smacking another kiss to her lips after handing it over. “Love you. You know that, right?”

  There
. I’ve told her.

  Fuck. Was I not supposed to have done that on an ordinary Sunday morning while we were both still in our pajamas? It had come out so naturally I hadn’t even had to think about it but now that she was just staring at me, I was starting to wonder if there was some kind of social convention surrounding this kind of thing.

  Too late now. My heart picked up speed in my chest, sweat suddenly coating my palms. I tried not to show what was going on inside, though, steadily staring into her eyes as I waited for her response.

  What felt like an age later, the corners of her lips pulled into a smile and she took a step forward so her chest was pushed up against mine. “Yeah, I thought maybe so. Love you too.”

  Ding. Ding. Ding. We have a winner. My heart soared, pure joy lifting it to heights it had never known before. Making sure not to get any of the scalding hot liquid on either of us, I took the coffee from her again before wrapping my arms around her.

  “Good to know,” I said, my lips moving against her hair. I kissed the side of her head, her temples, her jaw and her cheeks before finally claiming her lips again. After all the times we’d kissed, I hadn’t really expected anything to be different. But it was.

  That time when we kissed, my entire world exploded. I finally understood why people enjoyed kissing and intimacy. It was like the world stopped and we melted together. It wasn’t the longest kiss we’d had and it wasn’t the most passionate, but it made me feel things I never had before.

  When we broke apart, Lilac’s cheeks were flushed and a secret smile played on her lips. “Glad we got that out of the way.”

  “Me too.” I gave her hips a final squeeze, then picked up the spatula and went back to making breakfast.

  Lilac sat down at the counter with her coffee. “I don’t think I’m up for going to the park today.”

  “I thought we could stay home. Have a lazy movie day together or something. Going anywhere just doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

  “No, it really doesn’t.” She sighed. “I don’t think I ever want to leave the condo again.”

  I chuckled. “Yeah. Right. You’ll be climbing the walls by Wednesday, but if you want to give it a try, go for it. Ollie can bring your laptop.”

  “No. I refuse to hide from the world because of the ex-hole. I’m just going to have to force myself for the next few days.”

  “You want to take some time off?” I offered. It was something I’d been thinking about since I told Ollie he could have some vacation time soon, taking Lincoln and Lilac somewhere. “We could go away.”

  “I’d love to go away sometime, but you know as well as I do that we can’t do it now.”

  I flipped a piece of toast over in the pan. “We can do whatever we want. The boss may be a bastard, but I think you might be able to twist his arm.”

  Lilac laughed. “Maybe, but we shouldn’t. We can plan something for the—”

  She stopped talking abruptly. When I looked at her over my shoulder, I smirked. “For the future? You can say it, Lilac. I love you. I’m not going anywhere, promise.”

  “Okay.” She nodded, then flashed me a bright smile. “In that case, let’s look at our schedules and plan to go away somewhere sometime in the not-too-far future.”

  “You got it.” Leaning over, I dropped a kiss on her forehead just as Lincoln came barreling into the kitchen, nearly knocking me over.

  “It’s Sunday,” he said excitedly, looking up at the stove. “Is that French toast?”

  “You know it is.” I grinned at him, then picked him up so he could reach the pan and gave him the spatula. “Want to help me finish it off?”

  “Awesome,” he exclaimed. He grabbed the spatula and turned the piece of toast over every four seconds.

  If everything went according to plan, today was going to be a day of togetherness and healing for us, but I knew Lilac wasn’t going to be able to really focus on that until we knew what was happening with Kurt.

  Leaving her and Lincoln to flip and dish up the toast, I walked into my office and closed the door. Dialing the number the officers had left for us, I followed a series of prompts until I finally reached the detective in charge of the case.

  “Michaels,” he barked into the phone. “What can I do for you, Mr. Matthews?”

  “I’m calling about an update on the Kurt Peterman case.”

  “Of course.” He chuckled. “I gotta say, Mr. Matthews, we owe you a debt of gratitude for helping us bring that one in. Been looking for him for weeks now, but he’s been lying low.”

  “We contacted you some time ago about him. Your people said we couldn’t do anything until he did something to Lilac. Why didn’t your officer tell us you’d been looking for him then? We could have helped.”

  “We’d never use a civilian woman or her child as bait,” he replied gruffly. “I know you probably didn’t mean it that way, but there you have it. We’ve been building a case against him, but he kept slipping through our fingers.”

  “A case for what?” I wasn’t even going to dignify his comment about my offer to help having been a suggestion to use Lilac or Lincoln as bait.

  “List of crimes about as long as my arm. Assault and battery, aggravated assault, robbery. You name it, he’s probably done it or been involved with it in the last year or so. Word on the street was that he got in deeper than he could handle with some pretty bad guys. Drug dealers. Owes them a ton of money, if my understanding is correct.”

  So, Lilac had been right about his motives. At least I could go back to her with that news. Ought to give her some peace of mind. “So now that you have him, what’s going to happen?”

  “He’s going away for a long, long time. Bastard won’t be walking free until he needs a walker.” He paused. “We might need you to testify once his trial comes.”

  “You let us know what you need, we’ll be more than happy to cooperate.” I breathed an internal sigh of relief. Kurt’s reign of terror over my family was finally over, but I hadn’t expected to be so deeply affected by the knowledge.

  Then again, I also hadn’t expected to fall in love with them. I finished up my phone call with Michaels and went back to the kitchen with a broad smile on my face, quickly and quietly filling Lilac in while Lincoln went to the bathroom.

  Breakfast was domestic and perfect and even though I’d almost gotten taken out by the three-year-old, I wouldn’t change anything about it. I’d come to realize that before Lilac, I had been floating. I worked hard, but I’d been lonely and I hadn’t realized how empty my life had been.

  With them, it was anything but empty. We ate our breakfast and planned to watch Disney movies all day, just the three of us in this little cocoon of ours. It was simple enough, but it was my life now.

  And I fucking loved it.

  Epilogue

  Lilac

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  “I can’t believe it’s finally ready for us to move in,” I said as we walked into our new house. Joseph was behind me, Lincoln on his shoulders. “It feels like we’ve been waiting forever.”

  Joseph bent over to let Lincoln down, then scoffed. “If you think it feels like you’ve been waiting forever, can you imagine how I feel? You made me wait a month before you even agreed to move in with me.”

  I shrugged, smiling innocently at him over my shoulder. “Yeah, well, good things come to those who wait.”

  “Can’t argue with that.” He shut the door behind him and grinned at me, holding his hands out. “Welcome home, baby.”

  “I’m going to my room,” Lincoln yelled, running through the living room and down the hall to the room I’d told him was his the last time we were here.

  “Looks like someone likes it,” Joseph said, closing the distance between us before putting his hands on my shoulders and ducking down to look me in the eye. “Thank you for agreeing to move in here with me.”

  “You’d already bought the place. It would have been a shame to let it stand empty.” I winked as I twisted around slightly to mo
tion to the wall of windows behind me. “Besides, it’s a pretty neat place.”

  Turning back to him, I pushed up on my tiptoes to plant a kiss on his nose. “Also, it came with pretty amazing company.”

  He jabbed a thumb at his chest. “This company? Well, I’ll be damned. You just admitted to thinking that I was amazing.”

  Lifting my arms, I wound them around his neck and pressed my body flush to his. “You already knew that I thought that.”

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice so low now that it was almost a whisper. “Right back at you. I don’t know what I would have done if you’d turned me down.”

  “Sold the house?” I suggested.

  Joseph shook his head. “Never. I bought it for you, I’m just lucky you’re going to let me live here with you.”

  I smiled before pressing a chaste, lingering kiss to his lips. “I thought that was how marriage works. You kind of have to let the other person live with you.”

  “I don’t know,” he said against my lips. “There are some pretty unconventional marriages out there. I’m sure you would have found at least one person who would have supported you if you didn’t want to live with your future husband.”

  He reached up for my hands behind his neck, taking the left one in his. My engagement ring sparkled in the light streaming in through the windows. It had been on my finger for a few weeks now, but the sight of it there and knowing what it symbolized still took my breath away.

  The ring itself was breathtaking enough, a fine milgrain band with a pierced pattern that turned the platinum into something that looked more like lace. A large, round center diamond was inlaid into the band. It was an Edwardian style ring, apparently, and it was absolutely perfect.

  But that wasn’t what stole my breath and trapped whatever air was left in my lungs. It was the fact that I was going to get to spend the rest of my life with this man. This incredible man who was as loving as he could be infuriating.