by RJ Scott
“I can’t,” she said, and knotted her hands together in her lap.
He reached over and unknotted them, holding her hands in his and squeezing.
“Let’s go back and find your dad, hmm? And then, get Logan over, and talk.”
“He’ll be so angry I didn’t tell him. I’m not sure I can argue or defend myself right now.” She looked so confused, and Jack felt as if he wanted to reach inside her and unknot all her fears as easily as he had her hands. But he couldn’t do that, not any more than he could with Riley. He could just be there to help.
She pulled out her cell, and wrote a text. “I’ve asked Logan to come over, if he still wants to.”
“He’ll want to.”
“I love you, Pappa,” Hayley said. “Dad and me? We’re so lucky to have you.”
Jack smiled, and then considered a way of getting her to smile. “I hope that means I’ll get a kick-ass present for my birthday.”
She glanced sideways and smirked. “I knew I’d forgotten something.”
They rode back to the D, via Legacy, stopping for a coffee and by the time they were back home she appeared better, color in her cheeks and a smile on her face. Of course, the smile slipped a little when she saw Riley waiting for them.
“Hey guys, you have fun?” He followed them into the barn.
Hayley dismounted. “Dad, can I talk to you?”
Riley hugged her and allowed himself to be tugged outside, but Jack could see them, over by the fence. He didn’t have to watch to know that Riley listened, though, and then pulled Hayley close, but he did watch.
Seeing Riley and Hayley like that made his heart feel light.
Now there was just Logan, whose car pulled to a stop next to Riley’s. He stood by the car, probably thinking the worst. If she’d been ignoring his calls, and otherwise avoiding him then he might well have thought she was going to end things. He looked whipped, broken-hearted, and Jack knew at that moment that this was a man deeply in love.
Hayley hugged Riley one last time and they separated, Riley walking over to Jack, Hayley to Logan. He caught Hayley kissing Logan, and then stepping back, talking, but he was distracted when Riley stood next to him. He was sad, blown away, and Jack gripped his shoulder.
“Shit,” Riley murmured.
“You okay?” he asked. “Hayley will be fine; she’s young, she’s learning.”
Everyone was asleep, including Logan, who’d decided he was staying over on the sofa in the living room—even Riley, who had fallen asleep as soon as his head had hit the pillow. Well, after mutual and very quiet pre-birthday blowjobs of course.
Jack was wide awake, his head buzzing with thoughts. Mainly he wondered if they should have broken the no boys in your room rule, given Hayley’s age and the fact that she and Logan were inseparable, but his gut told him that would have been wrong.
So he slept in his comfy bed, and dreamed of birthdays, and horses, and babies who were just like Hayley.
Of course, when he woke up the next morning, heading for the kitchen and coffee he looked into the living room, and Logan was there all right. He was squeezed on the huge sofa. But next to him, clinging tight to Logan in her pajamas, her face smushed into Logan’s shoulder was Hayley.
Now that?
That was love.
Jack’s forty-fifth birthday was loud, and fun, and full of gifts; photos, books, a new saddle that Riley had ordered from a custom leather worker they’d found on a trip to San Antonio, and from the kids, he received a new wallet, comedy socks, and a framed photo of all four of them, even Max, which he hung on the wall of his and Riley’s bedroom, and of course so many hugs and so much love it was hard to keep score.
Definitely his kind of birthday.
Chapter 19
The last year, since his birthday, and that fateful weekend where Hayley had told them about the miscarriage, there had been a new connection with Logan that Jack hadn't appreciated before. He spent a lot of time there on the weekends, talking about life, and the reasons why things happened, and tending to the horses, and maturing before Jack’s eyes. He’d spoken a lot about the time in which he and Hayley might have a baby for real.
That was why it didn’t surprise him when Logan turned up at the barn early one Saturday morning.
“Uncle Jack, do you have a minute?”
Jack backed his way out of the stall at Logan’s voice. The wood was rotted at the back and one good kick from Solo would leave a hole. On his hands and knees, he was applying a temporary mend and adding the full repair to his list of very important things to do. He suspected an armadillo had eaten its way in, and he resolved to do something about that.
“Hold this will you?” he asked Logan, who crouched down next to him and held the board in place while Jack screwed and nailed it so that even the most enterprising armadillo would be hard pressed to break in this way. Armadillo 0, Jack 1.
“You should replace the entire back wall.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Jack said irritably, he couldn’t help it, his to-do list was growing daily, what with Connor and his math wall, Lexie and her ballet medal cabinet, and now Max wanting shelves for his Thomas collection. Today had been designated a family day, but sue him, he’d taken his morning coffee to the new barn, just to check on the horses, nothing too bad, and had found the hole. Or at least Solo, all restless and jumpy in the stall, had found it for him,
“Are you coming into the house now?” Logan asked and sat back on his haunches, staring down at the fixed hole and very definitely not meeting Jack’s gaze.
Jack’s eyes narrowed on his nephew. He seemed tense. He’d been working with his dad now for two years, still back and forth to UT in Austin, but he was in his last year. It seemed like yesterday that Logan had been fighting for the right to leave New York and come home with his dad, and now Campbell and Campbell was getting closer, and Hayley was in her last year in Denver, and Jack was three years older.
He’d found more gray this morning, a whole mess of the fuckers at his temple, but standing and looking at them wouldn’t make them go away.
Anyway, Riley had reassured him there were no signs of gray in his groin, after doing a thorough search and finishing off with one hell of a blowjob.
“Uncle Jack?” Logan said, and Jack took his mind very deliberately away from thoughts of blowjobs and gray hair and back to crouching in a barn with Logan.
“Yep?”
“You coming in for breakfast now?”
“In a bit, why? Is your dad with you?”
Jack peered around Logan, expecting to see Josh standing there; he kind of needed to see his big brother who had way more gray than he did. Teasing him about his hair would make Jack feel way better.
“No, it’s just me.”
“Okay, are you sure you want to be here around breakfast ‘cause you know it’s Riley cooking, right?”
Riley and cooking had hit a few snags; he’d come back from a recent trip to a symposium in Italy armed with what seemed like a list of really awesome—his words not Jack’s—herbs and spices. It was all Italian-this and Italian-that. No doubt breakfast would come with little red, white and green flags sticking out of the biscuits. Riley was known for burning things still; nothing changed there.
“He sent me over here when I asked if you were here, told me to tell you the smoke alarm needs a new battery.”
Jack couldn’t help smiling. Riley plus breakfast always resulted in burned something. Burned bacon Jack could handle, all that crunchy goodness, he didn’t care how he got his daily fix of bacon. Still, burned toast was so not his thing. Never mind; the whole thing was made with love and that was all that mattered.
He stood and rubbed his hands on his jeans, knowing he’d spent way too much time on the floor even to consider sneaking in without washing up with more than a conciliatory hand wash. Logan scrambled to stand as well, and Jack realized, not for the first time, that somehow the damn kid was taller than him now. Seemed as though he was
cursed to be looking up at the men in his life. Not that Logan was a kid, he’d just passed his twenty-sixth birthday, and was now clerking for his dad. Josh was so puffed up with pride that Jack found every chance he got to tease his brother.
According to Josh, Logan was the most amazing son in the history of all sons. Jack agreed for the most part; Logan was one of the good guys, worked hard, knew this family, and really the only cloud on the horizon was the whole dating-Hayley thing. Yes, he’d come to terms with Logan/Hayley, more so than maybe Riley had, but still, it was there whenever they talked about Logan. That hesitation that Hayley could meet someone else and that life wasn’t all about Logan.
After all, right now, there were princes out there waiting to get married. Right? And a dad wanted the best for his daughter in love.
“Is everything okay?” Jack asked as he stretched out the aches from last night’s particularly athletic session in the shower with a very flexible Riley. Well, shower, then bed, then floor, and table, and that reminded him, he said he’d help Riley clear up all the papers. Of course, he’d been fucking him hard at the time and he’d have said anything to get Riley’s head back into sex and away from the oil field maps that tumbled to the floor in chaos.
Last time he’d tried to help Riley sort out paperwork he’d been banned from the office for a month, only allowed in with coffee or cookies in hand. They’d sure got through a lot of cookies in those weeks for Jack to get his near hourly fix of his husband.
“I wanted to talk to you about something really serious, Uncle Jack.”
Uh oh, no conversation that started with that kind of introduction was going to be a good one. Jack braced himself for Logan explaining how he wasn’t working with Josh anymore and that he was done with law, or some sweeping statement about how he wanted to climb mountains, or paddle boat the Amazon. Because that was what Logan’s friends were doing, the ones who sent postcards from exotic locations where they were spending their inheritances. Hayley would be brokenhearted if that happened. It didn’t matter that Logan was steady, strong, certain and positive of what he wanted, Jack was skeptical he was different from the rest of his cohorts that Riley told stories about. Riley got most of it from Logan’s Facebook, but Jack wasn’t one for social media, and Facebook horrified him.
“Okay?”
Logan looked behind, as if he was checking to see if anyone could hear, but when Riley sauntered into the barn, it seemed he’d been waiting for that moment.
“I burned the bacon.” Riley stood next to Jack, bumping shoulders. “Left it in the warmer for you.”
“Mmmm, bacon,” Jack murmured, and they shared a smile.
Logan cleared his throat and shuffled, then did this very obvious thing where he pushed back his shoulders and settled his breathing. He appeared older standing there, more like a young Josh, all kinds of serious and focused.
“Uncle Jack, Riley, I have something very important I want to ask you.”
Jack wondered if Riley felt as weird as he did, standing here at 8 a.m., before breakfast, on a Saturday, with the coolness of a Texas morning all peaceful and quiet around them.
Well, apart from a shuffling sound somewhere in the stalls which Jack bet was that freaking armadillo rooting around for food.
“Okay,” Riley said, and Jack didn’t have to know Riley well to hear the slight hesitation in his voice, the hitch of the word that made Jack want to grab Riley’s hand. Was something wrong? Was Logan ill? Was it Josh? Or Anna, or the kids?
“I wanted to do this properly, even though Hayley says I’m being stupid, and I—” Logan stopped, and his shoulders dipped before he caught himself and stood. “I’m just going to say it, okay, then I’m going to leave, and give you time, okay, and then I’ll wait, in the kitchen, or I’ll drive off and you can call me, or dad. Hayley said I'm old-fashioned, but it’s the way I was brought up, and you know that Uncle Jack, because it’s your fault as well that I’m like this.”
“Logan?” Jack interjected, watching as his now confident nephew stumbled over a mass of words that meant nothing. “Calm down.”
Logan took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Okay,” he began, settling his words. “I wanted to ask you for Hayley’s hand in marriage.”
Jack hadn't been expecting that. Neither had Riley, by the way he stiffened next to him.
“You want to…?” Riley said.
“Marry Hayley.” Logan reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box, opened it to reveal a simple band with a diamond. “I have the ring, and we’ve talked about it, and I think she’d say yes, but it’s important to me that you approve, and that you want this and—”
“Lo, stop.” Jack held up his hand. Logan subsided and took a step back and away from them. His expression had gone from confident and focused to insecure and he moved back again.
“You need time,” he said, and turned to leave.
Jack didn’t think that Logan leaving was a good idea; they needed to talk; a man couldn’t come in here and drop news like this on them and then walk away. He and Riley had questions to ask, things they needed to know about Logan, his prospects, his promise he would love Hayley and look after her, and make her laugh, and dry her tears, and be there just as Jack and Riley had always tried to be.
“Okay, so this is you respecting us and our opinions, Riley, you agree?”
Riley made a small noise of agreement, and his fingers touched Jack’s, and then curled and twisted there to grip hard Jack’s hand. How they handled this was vital; it would be the basis for knowing Logan as something other than nephew and boyfriend, but as a man who could cherish their daughter.
Shit, now I’m using words like cherish.
Logan continued with a nod. “I’m a few years away from partner with Dad, with the office I mean, not Dad, I never meant to mention Dad, I meant…” Logan stopped and closed his eyes briefly. “I’ve saved money, and Hayley’s about to graduate and says she’ll be working with you. I have great career prospects in a firm that will be rooted in family, and I see as thriving and growing annually. Financially, I have a small trust fund that I’ll be inheriting at thirty from Grandma Campbell, and I will look after Hayley and support her.” He looked at Riley. “I am not marrying her for money; I can make my own way in the world.”
“Logan, stop,” this time it was Riley who held up his free hand. “Of course this isn’t about money, but, you tell us all this, but you’re not telling us the most important thing. How do you feel?”
“Freaking nervous,” Logan quipped and then paled, “I mean confident, I mean… I don’t know what you mean.”
“How do you feel about Hayley?”
Jack realized that Riley was picking up on the fact everything Logan had said was all technical detail, all about money and purpose and career. Riley and Jack needed more than this and Logan had one chance to get this right. Not that Hayley would listen to either of her dads if they got all up in themselves and got lost in the fact that to them Hayley was still that little girl that had arrived all those years ago. If she loved Logan, which it was clear she did, then she would marry him whatever. Like Father like daughter.
“Hayley?” Logan said, and then he smiled, his posture relaxed and his smile widened. “I love her more than I could ever explain to her or you. I think about her from the minute I wake up to the moment I fall asleep and then sometimes I dream about her. I promise you I will spend every day making her as happy as I can.” He pressed a hand to his chest, right over his heart, and there was passion written in every line of his expression. “It sometimes hurts, the thought of not being with her. I can’t imagine a life without her.” The words were spoken with such love that it was just like Jack talking about Riley.
“Last week she was making this sandwich,” Logan held his hands in front of him as if he was making one himself, “I wanted just to go over and hold her and never let go. Over a damn sandwich. She looked up at me and smiled and my heart, it hurt with what I felt for her. I didn’t know
I could ever feel like this about another person.”
Riley squeezed Jack’s hand. If they’d had the time they would have made a decision together, that was how they rolled, but this was here and now, and Logan deserved for them to be honest.
“You first,” Jack murmured because, for all the adoption and the fact Hayley was his as much as she was Riley’s, it was Riley who hadn't quite got his head around Logan/Hayley as much as he wanted to.
Now it was Riley’s turn to clear his throat. He loosened his fingers from Jack’s and nodded. Just once, subtle and only caught in Jack’s peripheral vision.
“If you ask Hayley, and she says yes, then I couldn’t be happier to have you as a son-in-law,” Riley said, all serious, extending his hand to shake Logan’s.
Logan gripped Riley’s hand, and they shook, and then Riley tugged him close, and the handshake turned into a hug, but not a bro-hug with backslapping. No, this was a desperate hold from Riley, a need to let Logan know through touch alone just how much this moment meant to him. His eyes were closed, and he held Logan so tightly that Jack imagined that he’d have to get in there to pry them apart when Riley released his hold. His beautiful eyes were bright with emotion, but then Logan’s were as well, and Jack? He had a lump in his throat the size of Texas.
“Uncle Jack?” Logan asked.
Now it was Jack’s turn to pull Logan into a hug, just as desperate and as full of meaning as Riley’s.
“Welcome to the family,” Jack murmured, and couldn’t resist adding. “Again.”
When they parted Logan stumbled back, pocketing the ring, “I have to go,” he said, and left. Just like that. Gone.
For a few moments they stood in silence.
“You think he’s going to ask her now?” Riley asked, and grasped Jack’s hand again.