Page 53 of Hand Picked
“I’m not sure about that, bud. You and your dad are good teachers, though.Whoa! Crap—” he began, then glanced over his shoulder at Aiden. “Uh, I mean,crapulent toads.”
Aiden snickered, and I shook my head briefly, trying not to laugh. I was usually pretty good about not swearing much in front of my son, but he’d definitely heard the wordcrapa time or ten… probably just that morning alone.
“Um. Hey, Dad? I’m gonna skate offrealfast and just check if Grace and Alix are okay… okay?”
I glanced over at his friends, who were playing a fast-paced game of ice tag. “Hmm. They seem okay to me.”
Luke looked up at me, eyes dancing with humor under his thick wool hat. “It’s nice of you to want to go check, though, Aiden. Very thoughtful.”
“Sure it is.” I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, go ahead. Have fun.”
“Thanks! Hey, call me if you need me, Mr. Williams!” Aiden yelled belatedly as he skated away.
“Sure will,” Luke shouted back. To me, he whispered, “I’m not positive, but I think I may have lost cool points today.” He seemed resigned.
I snorted. “It’s not possible for you to have lost more than me. Remember I told you I had to sit the kid down this morning and tell him a highly sanitized story about the bugle blowing?”
“Oh, I remember.” Luke chuckled sympathetically. “Was explaining handfasting better or worse than discussing the birds and the bees?”
“Infinitely worse. At least sex makessense.”
I might have put off the conversation even longer if Jerry and Ellie Walcott hadn’t sat down for an interview with the mayor’s reporter niece the day before to express their support for me and Luke, but they had.
And then Genevieve had turned that interview into a news segment called “Hand-Fast Watch!” complete with a giant graphic of the mayor’s scroll showing how many tasks had been completed and which were predicted to be completed, with a countdown clock in the upper corner of the screen as if Luke and I were a bomb that might explode at any moment.
And then someone had started making T-shirts with our ship name on them, and other folks had come up to me on the street and told me they’d always suspected Luke and I were meant to be together.
It was ridiculous, but as I’d told Luke last week, if there was one thing the Hollow loved, it waslove.
And clearly Curt had been wrong about this thing blowing over, because this town was just getting started.
Because of all that, I’d woken Aiden up for breakfast a few minutes early this morning and sat him down at the kitchen table to explain the unexplainable… and I was pretty sure the embarrassment of that moment would become one of my core memories.
“So, you and Mr. Williams are, like, half-married?” Aiden had demanded excitedly, eyes shining. “And you’re gonna get whole-married later?”
“No, no. That’s what I’m telling you, kiddo. The bugle blowing was an accident because we didn’t know what it meant.” My face had gone feverishly hot. “We were just having fun and didn’t intend to get handfasted.”
“So…” His face had scrunched up. “So, you’renothandfasted to Mr. Williams.”
“Uh…Well. No. Technically, I am. But as long as we don’t finish the steps, it won’t be legal. We’ll stayfriends, though,” I’d assured him. “Good friends. That part won’t change.”
Aiden had sighed. “Unless Mr. Williams decides he doesn’t wanna be friends with you.”
“That won’t happen. Why would it?”
“Oh, Dad,” Aiden had said sadly, placing his hand on my arm. “You’re kinda boring. But it’ll be okay. I’ll still hang out with you. Sometimes.”
“It could have been worse,” Luke teased, like he knew exactly which part of the story I was dwelling on. “At least he said he’d hang out with you.”
“He saidsometimes,” I grumbled, making Luke laugh harder. I steered him left, around a couple of kids practicing pirouettes. “Let’s go this way. We wanna stay over here where the ice is nice and thick. Nice job.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m incredibly talented at letting you pull me around, huh?” Luke clung to my arm and grinned up at me, his pink cheeks making his freckles stand out.
Jesus fuck, he was gorgeous.
There, I said it.
Luke Williams was the most delectable thing I’d ever seen, and my very confused, formerly straight self wanted to haul him in my arms and kiss him right there in the middle of the frozen pond and not give a single shit who saw us.
