Page 81 of Hearts of Fairlake

“Both, I was both.”

“Oh.”

“That’s why I wanted to do this. Because I know what some of those families can be like, and if I can give even a few kids stuck in the system a chance to have something better…then that’s what I want to do.”

Gray looked between us and then settled on me. “You?”

I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I decided to start where Felix had. “I had a pretty good childhood. My dad left me and my sisters before I was even born, but I had my sisters, my mom, and the rest of her family. I still have them.”

“So…they’re okay.”

“They’re great, but they’re my family, so I’m bound to be a little biased.”

He looked like he might smile before shrugging. “And they like…you guys?”

“Are you asking if they care that I’m married to a guy?”

“I guess.”

“Well, let’s just say that out of the people we invited to the wedding, they were the loudest bunch there. And before you ask, yeah, they absolutely adore Felix…maybe a little too much for his taste.”

Gray’s question was silent as he wrinkled his nose and looked around in confusion.

Felix chuckled at that. “They’re good people. Very nice, very welcoming, but they can be a bit loud and…well, they’re very huggy and like to know everything about you. I’m not used to that if I’m honest. Not used to having people I barely know care that much about me or wanting toknow so much about me just because they care. It takes a lot of getting used to it, and I’m still trying to get the hang of it.”

“Oh,” Gray said, looking between us again, and I could sense a thousand questions in his head that he didn’t voice. “Sure.”

“And if you ever feel up to it,” I told him, “we can arrange for you to meet them one day. But only if you want…and when.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Now, the most important question of the morning,” Felix said, standing up and looking down at Gray. “What would you like for breakfast?”

“Umm,” Gray began, clearly thrown off by the question. I held back my chuckle as I realized he wasn’t expecting that. On the other hand, it was a little sad that, of all things, the idea that he could choose what to have for a meal threw him.

“We’ve got the stuff for pancakes, waffles, we’ve got fruit for it, some whipped cream, chocolate chips, bacon, sausages, eggs, really if it’s standard breakfast fare, we’ve got it,” Felix said. “Luke is big on making sure I eat proper meals…whatever that means.”

“It means having more than a sugary bowl of cereal and a candy bar for breakfast,” I told him dryly.

“Hey, if it gets me food in my stomach?—”

“And precisely zero nutritional content.”

“It says that cereal is part?—”

“Of a balanced breakfast. A candy bar balances nothing.”

Gray watched us back and forth before wrinkling his nose. “You guysareweird.”

“Trust me, kid, we’ll be taking that as a compliment,” I told him with a laugh. “You have to be a little weird to live the kind of lives we have.”

“See, this is why getting married to a man who was aprofessional adult babysitter can be such a pain in the ass,” Felix said with a sigh. “You don’t get away with much.”

“That’s because you’re not as much of a pain in the ass as Sylas was.”

“Well, yeah, he’s a former actor. There’s no beating out the diva on a fucking actor, for God’s sake.”

A kneejerk reflex rose in me to correct Felix on his language before I tamped it down swiftly. There was no point trying to be ‘proper’ around a kid like Gray, who’d seen and known far worse than some swear words in his short ten years. Honestly, so long as we didn’t start directing it at him, he probably wouldn’t bat an eye at the language.

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