Coming Back

by Lauren Dane

  “I’ll see you around. Happy belated birthday.” He turned and crossed the street, leaving a sputtering, angry Paul on the other corner in his wake.

  But he didn’t head back to the office, instead he found himself driving over to James Franklin’s vet practice over in Maple Valley. The drive enabled him to have himself together by the time he arrived.

  Which was later than he’d thought it would be before he remembered it was nearly three on a Wednesday, so traffic had already started to build and a heavy rain was coming down, which only made everything worse.

  The big guy was in the front drive of the vet clinic as Adam pulled up. As Adam got out of the car, James called his name and came over to give him a hug.

  “You’re an unexpected sight! Come on inside. I was just helping load a horse into a trailer before you got here.”

  Inside, the scent of freshly brewed coffee competed with medical and animal smells. For whatever reason, though, it always made him feel better.

  “You just missed Charlie. She headed over to North Bend to tend an ailing sheep.” James pointed to the coffee pot. “Want a cup?”

  Adam shivered. “Yes, please. Cold and wet out there.”

  “I’ll be surprised if we don’t at least get some wet snow at the higher elevations tonight.” James stared at Adam over the rim of his cup a moment. “What brings you here? Leif isn’t around. He had an eye appointment, so he left about twenty minutes ago. Addie took him because they have to mess with his pupils. So, just me and you.”

  “I just ran into my father downtown. It was as unpleasant as it usually is.” They sat in James’s office, and Adam took a cookie from a plate on the desk.

  “I’m sorry he can’t be what you need in a father. I’m sure he’s probably not too happy about my daughter and Mick being in your life. He might come around in time.”

  That was the thing about the Franklins, they were passionate about what they believed in, but they really did make an effort to be positive, even when things were negative overall.

  “I’m not sure I care.” Adam blew out a breath. “I hate to be that guy, the one who has daddy issues.”

  James waved a hand. “That’s bunk anyway, son. You don’t have daddy issues. You want your father to respect you and be a positive influence in your life. Just because you’re an adult doesn’t mean he’s not still your dad. It’s unfortunate he doesn’t seem to understand that your desire for his affection and acceptance is a good thing. It’s what parents usually want.”

  “So, you’re okay with me and Mick and Jessi? Really?”

  “I have four grown children. They’re all wonderful in their own way. Unique. A joy to me and their mother even when they turned all my hair gray. If Jessi was in a relationship where she was being hurt in some way or not being true to who she was, I’d be unhappy. But I’ve known you and Mick for years, and I know my daughter. She made her choice. She doesn’t make a lot of mistakes when she goes with her heart. Addie and I raised a daughter with a good heart. She helps others and goes out of her way to make life better for pretty much everyone she comes across. That’s what her mom and I care about most. Is she the best person she can be? That she’s in love with two men or one woman or one man, none of that matters to us as long as there’s love, respect, and honesty. You both make her happy and you’ll protect her. That’s why I’m okay with it, yes.”

  “I had to leave the first time. There wasn’t a lot of control when I was growing up. I had all that anger like him. I needed to figure out how to get myself in check and keep myself on an even keel.”

  It was necessary that James understand.

  “Do you have any plans to walk off and hurt her again? Or to be like your father and use your strength to hurt her?”

  “I only want to use my strength to protect and love her. I’m here for good. I don’t know how we’ll configure things eventually as far as legalities. That’s a level of difficulty and complication that I’d want to talk with an attorney about with Mick and Jessi as full participants in the process. But yes, we’re all in this for the long haul. I know this isn’t conventional, but I already made my promise to Jessi and Mick and them to me. I want to love them both the way they deserve to be loved.”

  James nodded and grabbed another cookie so Adam did as well. “That’s all I ask for. For you and them. Tell me about your father. What happened? I imagine you argued about Jessi and Mick?”

  “Pretty much. It wasn’t so much of an argument as him blustering, losing control, and me having the awful realization that this back-and-forth he and I have is ugly and petty and I need to cut it out of my life. To be fair, it’s not like Mick’s situation. My dad’s never done anything to Jessi. He might have tried to get physical with me years ago, but he won’t now.” Not after the last time he’d pulled his father off his mother to stop him from kicking and punching her.

  “What do you mean? John Senior or that wife of his did something to Jessi? When was this? What was this?”

  Oh shit.

  “I assumed you knew. Jessi is going to kill me.” Adam scrubbed his hands over his face. This was what happened when you let emotion get to you and overrule your logic. You got lazy and did something that was going to make his girlfriend, and most likely her mother, really mad at him.

  “Not if I get to you first.”

  Thing was, a violent man like Paul spouted off shit like that all the time. Bravado. But when a peaceful, thoughtful man said something like that, you had better pay attention.

  Adam told James, omitting the burning the house down part because that would be up to Jessi to reveal. He was already going to have enough explaining to do. He also told him about the visit to Twisted Steel the week before.

  “Why am I only learning about this now? I saw John Senior at the grocery store a few days ago. I wish I’d known this then,” James said.

  “She didn’t tell anyone for a number of years. Her reasons aren’t convenient for me or for Mick, but after thinking about them for a while, I’ve come to the conclusion she did the right thing. It would upset her deeply if you went off and did something in reaction to this. She’d be a lot more hesitant to share things, and you know Jessi, she wants to hear what other people think about things.”

  “Addie knew and didn’t tell me.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, Jessi is a lot like her mother,” Adam said, pleased he got to say something wise.

  James growled but sat back once more. “Setting that aside for a moment. We were talking about your father before we got off track.”

  “I don’t plan to make a big deal of it. But I just need to keep some distance between me and my father and his family. I have my mother—who I need to speak with in person when she gets back to Seattle. It’s not a phone-type conversation.” Adam’s mother spent the winter months at her condo in Ventura, a few miles from his sister Lissa and her family.

  “Is this what you want? Truly?” James asked.

  “For a long time I’ve had this relationship with him that’s all reaction. It’s all triage and defensiveness. It’s not healthy for me or for him. They’re never going to accept what I have with Mick and Jessi, and I’m just exhausted by it. Like I said, I don’t want to make a huge thing about it. I just want to drift apart gently and quietly. Do you think that’s cowardly?” What Paul thought was irrelevant. But what James thought about Adam mattered immensely.

  “I was thinking it was compassionate.” James shrugged. “You’re not trying to hurt anyone or be vindictive. It’s absolutely acceptable, in my belief, to only open your life to people who will treat it with respect. Just because someone is responsible for your biology, doesn’t mean you owe them the opportunity to wound you over and over. Despite whatever John Senior wants to say, I do not believe the Lord created any of us to be miserable and hurt by those closest to us. If at a later date you want to come back to this again to see if things have changed, you still can.”

  Adam let it go then. That last bit of energy
he spent trying to adhere to someone else’s ideas of respectable and successful.

  And it felt fantastic.

  “I’m going to talk to Addie about this, but I won’t go off half-cocked. I can’t make promises any further than that. But I’ll do my best to be compassionate too. Even when the thought of that man yelling in my daughter’s face fills me with rage.”

  “You’re not alone,” Adam assured him. “Thank you for listening. And for your advice.”

  James took a bracing breath. “You’re part of our family. I’m grateful that you came to me to share your troubles, and I’m glad I could help.”

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-three

  Jessi bowled a strike and did a little jump that had her jiggling in all the right places. “Life is so fuckin’ good,” Mick said as she approached wearing nothing more than a long-sleeved thermal shirt, underpants, and long socks.

  “This gaming system was the best idea ever,” Adam told Mick, patting Jessi’s ass on the way past.

  “You have to wear pants at most bowling alleys.” Jessi snuggled up to Mick as they watched Adam take his turn.

  “That you do, angel.” Mick kissed her quickly as he got up to take his turn. “I missed the ‘video games are way more fun when your girlfriend plays them in her panties’ memo.”

  “What isn’t more fun when your girlfriend does it in her panties?” Adam asked.

  Jessi snort-laughed, which made Mick laugh too. Before this, before they’d all found their way back to one another, he’d have been out drinking and carousing. Trying to feed his need for sensation and never really succeeding.

  Now he still played hard, but this was the center of his life. This is where he got what he needed.

  “My mom called today,” Jessi said and Adam winced. Mick took his turn, wiped the floor with them both, and then folded his arms and looked to Adam.

  “Oh, don’t look so panicked. She told me you slipped and mentioned the thing with Mick’s dad years ago to my dad, who she hadn’t told yet. She’s not mad at you. I, however, am totally annoyed that she told me instead of you.” Jessi managed a censorious look.

  “I know, I know. I meant to tell you when you got home. But you brought baked goods and then I bent you over the couch and forgot everything. But your dad was a great listener and gave me good advice as usual.” Adam licked his lips and told them about the thing with his father.

  Jessi frowned. “This is terrible.”

  Mick walked past, picked her ass up, and settled on the couch, keeping her in his lap. “You quit right now, Jessi. I can see you’re already making yourself sick with guilt.”

  “Mick is totally right. We knew this would have a bumpy road. And this isn’t about you.” Adam sat across from them on the low table. “This is about me and my father. You had nothing to do with the critical breaks in the foundation of our relationship. I don’t have much to do with him as it is. He’s going to sulk for a while, and maybe at Christmas or around my birthday or Father’s Day, he’ll remember he hasn’t seen me for a while. I’ll handle it then. It’s not negative. I’ve needed this last push for some time. I’m telling you the honest truth, Jess. Cutting this last bit of tie with him isn’t from an angry place. I’m saving myself. And really, him too.”

  Jessi thought awhile as she remained a pleasant, warm weight on Mick’s lap. Her hair smelled like green apple candy. His favorite Jolly Rancher flavor.

  “I’m trying to find a way to be all right with this. But I really hate it.”

  Mick nuzzled her neck a moment before speaking. “It wasn’t as if Adam or I were even close with our families. Not before you, not during, not after, and not now,” Mick said. “I know you hate it. But we already covered the fact that the three of us have our own family. I’m good. That you can take credit for.”

  She frowned, clearly arguing with herself in that head of hers.

  “Haven’t you seen any signs? Or had dreams?” Adam asked. “Hmm?”

  Jessi gave them both a very careful look.

  Adam said, “I’m sorry I’ve made you feel suspicious.”

  His words were so heartfelt he and Jessi both leaned out to be closer.

  “I’m sorry too, angel.” Mick squeezed her and she leaned her head back against him for a moment.

  “Thank you. Mainly I know you both are just teasing, and it’s funny.” Jessi hesitated.

  Adam spoke the rest. “But sometimes we hurt you. And though we didn’t mean to, we did. So we’ll work on it. That’s what couples do.”

  Mick agreed. “Back to the complicated thing. It’s like the toilet seat. Or the way Jessi kicks her sheets free and Adam opens windows even when it’s cold enough to snow.”

  “Not that Mick is bothered by that.” Jessi’s deadpan delivery made them all let go and move forward.

  “Look at us adulting hard-core.” Adam grinned. “I vote we go to the living room so I can start a fire. I like fresh air, but I don’t like you cold.” He stood, bending to kiss Mick and then Jessi. “Jessi was about to tell us something.”

  “Living room is closer to the cheese popcorn Hamish had sent today.” Jessi hopped up and scampered from the room.

  “That fucking guy,” Adam groused.

  Mick snorted. “Suck it up. She loves him, as do Addie and James. For what it’s worth, I believe he loves them too. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt them.”

  Adam headed over to turn on the fireplace, and Jessi came back in with a huge bowl of popcorn. “You want a soda or a beer? I got root beer earlier. It’s that kind you like.”

  Mick was on her in two steps, sweeping her into his arms. “I’m so lucky.” He kissed her until they both were breathless.

  “Wow. Note to self, always remember to buy root beer for Mick,” Jessi said faintly.

  “You think about what makes me happy. It pleases me.” It filled Mick with warmth and a sense of belonging.

  “Oh. That. Well of course. I keep telling you people I love you.” She headed into the kitchen to get drinks for everyone and a package of red licorice ropes for Adam. “I went a little snack food heavy. Hormones. Least you two have each other when my monthlies come. That’s what my grandma Franklin used to called periods. Hilarious that woman. Sort of nutty and mean sometimes too. She had this walking stick, and if anyone gave her lip, it had better have been outside her reach ’cause she’d wield that thing like a ninja.”

  Jessi stopped talking long enough to tuck herself on the couch in between Adam and Mick. They handed her the popcorn and her soda once she got the blanket just how she liked it.

  “So, when I asked you about signs, I meant it,” Adam said, tossing his feet up to the coffee table.

  “Last month when we were up at Duane’s place the stars were so beautiful and bright. You can’t see them as well in the city, of course. So I was sitting there with my friends and my loves and the stars wheeled above our heads, bright and hot.”

  She ate popcorn awhile. Mick had learned years before to just let her tell the story in her own time and her own way. She hated to be rushed.

  “We’re like that.”

  “Stars burn out, though, angel,” Adam said with a frown.

  Jessi shook her head. “After eons. We don’t have eons. We can burn bright and hot as long as we live.”

  Mick saw the moment Adam got it. It changed his face.

  “Okay. I like it. Yeah.” Adam nodded.

  “Oooh!” Jessi jumped up and rushed to the side door, flinging it open. “Snow!”

  She danced out to the deck despite not having pants on. Laughing, Mick and Adam followed her out.

  Big, fat fluffy flakes fell heavily to the ground, a hush of quiet followed. They stayed out for another minute or two before Jessi complained her socks were getting wet and went back in.

  “Seattle snow. The best kind.” Came on a Friday, was gone by Monday. “Still cold, though.” Jessi burrowed back under her blanket.

  Adam jogged from the room, returning shortly after tha
t with a pair of socks. “Change out of the wet ones.”

  She smiled at him. “Thank you.” Jessi managed to switch them over and Adam even took the others into the laundry room.

  “Now.” Adam came back to settle on the couch as they all watched the snow through the windows. “Warm, dry, fed. If you can call popcorn and soda fed.”

  “Which you do unless you’re a grumpy old man,” Jessi said as she tore into the licorice.

  “The last time you called me that you also threw a drink in my face,” Adam said to her.

  “You’re lucky I didn’t run you over with my car.” She shrugged.

  “I missed this story. Enlighten me,” Mick told them.

  “About six months after we broke up we ran into each other at a bar.” Adam’s expression told Mick it wasn’t necessarily a happy memory.

  “He stomps over to me, tells me I’ve had plenty to drink. I told him he was a grumpy old man. I wanted to say more, but the woman he was with came over to rub herself all over him.”

  “So she threw her drink in my face.” Adam shrugged, but there was a ghost of a smile on his mouth.

  “And I had a one-night stand with some rando in that bar and it sucked.”

  Mick couldn’t help his frown and she caught it. “Oh really? You have something to say about how you were totally chaste while we were apart?”

  There was pretty much no safe way to answer the question. So he kept is simple. “Nope, not at all.” Pretty much the opposite. He fucked a lot but felt less than he needed to. Except guilt. That, he wallowed in. “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “Whatever. It’s not like my pussy died when you both took off. A girl likes to come, you know? Also, stop beating yourself up,” she told them both. “I learned a lot about myself.”

  “Like what? What did you learn?” Adam asked Jessi.

  Jessi thought about it a bit before she spoke. “I learned I was capable.”

  She chewed on her licorice and thought. “See, my whole life, people have taken care of things for me. My parents, my siblings, then Mick and Hamish and Adam. When you both left, I couldn’t go to my parents. Hamish was on a world tour, so that was out. My siblings? I talked to Charlie about it a little, but I didn’t have the words to explain it all. I didn’t even know myself.”