Page 89 of Just A Little Magic

“This feels like a mistake. Jakob, your happy dances seem to come with a lot more flailing.”

“Papa says my expression of joys are my own.”

“Yeah, what else does he say?”

“Well, I mean, it’s not that important.”

“Oh no, Owen and Anders would very much like to know.”Jakob looked over at us, and we nodded in unison. “See? They want to know.”

“Fine,” Jakob said with a roll of his eyes. “Papa says if I don’t pay attention, he’s going to help me find my body parts when he spanks my ass.”

That sent all of us into hoots of laughter. Jakob was ridiculous. His Papa and he played this silly game where he pretended not to like spankings and his Papa pretended it made him sad to give one. All nonsense because they both loved them.

“I’m happy to be a babysitter, but we have the all-day trail ride and picnic early, so we can’t stay up all night eating junk food and watching movies,” Anders said with a wag of his finger. “Barrett said we were supposed to try the room service, though, so maybe we should eat in the room while we watch one movie.”

“Three movies!” shouted Jakob and Rory.

“One movie, and if you give me a hard time, I’m texting all your Daddies.”

“Owen, we’ll let you be the tiebreaker. We should watch three movies, right?” All eyes turned to me and waited for me to answer.

“How about two movies? For the first movie, we’ll order dinner, and for the second movie, we’ll order dessert?”

“Whoop. Whoop.” Jakob did his happy dance, and Rory joined in. Honestly, it looked adorably awful because neither one of them had any rhythm. “Peanut butter jammy time…”

“Hey, hold up,” Anders called as the boys wound up for another mangled verse. “Owen, are you okay with this? You have every right to your boundaries, and we need to respect them.” He cast a stern glance at the other boys. “Isn’t that right, boys?”

“Yes, Anders.” Rory valiantly tried to hold on to his big head space. Jakob stood beside him and nodded too.

I drew a deep breath before I answered him. This was the point, right? To be accepting of my space and kink. More than an entire decade had been wasted without Da in my bed because of misplaced, or at least mismanaged, fear.

If these men, who had been nothing but kind and supportive since the day I’d met them, couldn’t be trusted, then what the fuck was I doing with them? All my efforts have been channeled into protecting myself, but I hadn’t been any happier sitting at home isolated.

And, dammit, every single play date invitation I’d declined was another stab to my heart. “A play date sounds nice. I can go change in my room and come back.”

Anders wrapped me in a tight squeeze. “I’m so damn proud of you,” he whispered. “Thank you for trusting us.”

Rory and Jakob wrapped themselves around us, too, and it was a giant hug, and then the tears came, and then Jakob and Anders and Rory were full-on crying. It was a mess, and once I realized how utterly absurd it was, the giggles started. That created an avalanche in the opposite direction.

Anders, because he was the only one left with some sense, gave us our marching orders. “Boys, go and get changed into your pajamas or onesies or whatever you’re most comfy in. Bring back the toys, babies, blankies, bottles, sippy cups, binkies, and whatever else you need for a sleepover. You’ve got five minutes, or I’m coming to find you. I’ll leave my door open so you don’t have to knock. When you’re back, we’ll pick out our movies and order dinner. Deal?”

Anders ruffled our hair on our way past him out the door. I was last in line and he stopped before I could go. “Owen, in all seriousness, are you okay with this? The boys are adults anddon’t need a babysitter. If you want to bow out, we can go hang out, and they’ll be fine on their own.”

“Anders, I told myself I wouldn’t say anything, but that fuckwit doesn’t deserve you.” I gave him a quick hug and added, “I’m going to try, and if it’s too much, could you call Bear for me?”

“Absolutely, I will,” Anders said when he ruffled my hair again. “I’m proud of you.”

“I kinda am too.”

“Whose idea was it to spend all day on the back of a horse? In hindsight, it seems like a really shitty plan.”

Every single one of us regretted our life choices this morning. Thursday evening had ended as a real sleepover because we were all too tired to move and ended up crashing all over Anders’s room. We’d gorged ourselves on room service burgers and pizza, followed by banana splits with sprinkles. The next morning, we’d dragged our sugar-hungover selves down to the stables for the all-day trail ride and picnic.

None of us particularly enjoyed working out, except Anders with his yoga and spin classes, and I was well on my way to a dad bod. Maybe we should have known how bad it would hurt, but we’d underestimated the impact on our bodies by approximately one thousand percent.

“Are any of us even horse people?” Rory asked.

He’d fallen off so many times that he swore his butt was a solid shade of blue. I took his word for it, but I had no doubt he was telling the truth.

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