Page 55 of Karma Kitty Christmas
“Oh, baby,” Isaac said softly. “Do you… you’re not hoping for anything, are you?”
“No,” Luca said quickly.
Too quickly.
Isaac just regarded him silently, because Luca wasn’t a child. He knew when he was fooling himself.
“If nothing else,” he said reluctantly, “I’m hoping they give Allegra a second chance.” He shrugged, his heavily muscled shoulders rippling in Isaac’s arms. “I’m pretty sure they’re both homophobic as hell—the flag in front of their house hasn’t changed in the last ten years—but Allegra… I mean, she’s gonna be amom, Isaac. Shouldn’t they love her baby more than their stupid religion or patriotism or whatever?”
“You’d think,” Isaac said. He was remembering that terrible moment with Angel sobbing in his classroom—inthe closetin his room, actually, hidden by the lost-and-found coats—while Isaac got the shit beat out of him. The same sickness infecting Luca’s parents had infected that mob, and they were both old enough to know that while a child’s love, a child’sneedfor love, should have been a cure, it was most obviously not.
Luca sighed. “I like your idea,” he said. “We give Allegra awonderfulday, and then, on Sunday, we hit them after church, and we give them one last chance.”
“And then we go out for pancakes,” Isaac said happily. To his eternal gratitude, Luca laughed shortly.
“That’s your cure? Pancakes?”
“Don’t pancakes cure everything?” Isaac asked innocently. They both knew it wasn’t true, but for this moment, this painful moment, Isaac wanted it so badly to be true.
“Absolutely,” Luca said, grunting as Euclid jumped from the head of the bed to his chest. “So do kittens.”
“Mmm….” Isaac stroked his cat’s ears, loving more and more how the goofy orange thing made his home a better place. “I’m so lucky I have one.”
“A kitten?” Luca asked.
“A hotcake,” Isaac told him pertly.
Luca laughed—quietly, but it was a true, warm laugh, and Isaac felt like maybe he’d returned just a little to Luca and Allegra that they had given to him. That moment with his parents in the restaurant at Disneyland, with the friend who still sent him Christmas cards of his wife and adorable children and called him up six times a year, flowed behind his eyes like water. Family. Those sad, quiet years with Todd, how had he forgotten that this was what family was all about?
“Luca?” he said softly into the sleeping silence.
“Yeah?”
“I want to come with you and Allegra when you see your parents, even if I wait in the car to take you both to ice cream. I mean, pancakes.”
“Aw… Isaac….”
“What?” Isaac rolled to his side, the better to meet Luca’s eyes. “What are you afraid I’ll see?”
Luca glanced away. “I’m…. Allegra and I, we’re gonna be a mess.”
“Luca, remember back in May when I trauma dumped all over you because my dead husband really messed me up?”
Luca huffed out a breath. “You didn’t trauma dump—”
“I so totally fucking did.”
Luca feathered a touch through Isaac’s hair. “You were hurting.”
“And you were practically a stranger, and you… you listened to me. You were kind. Let me be there. Let me hurt with you. Let me drive you both to ice cream—”
“Pancakes.”
“Sure. You believe that. Let me drive you there while you cry in the back. Let me take care of you while you and your sister take care of each other. I-I won’t think less of you for hoping, Luca, just like you didn’t think less of me for being mad at the dead. What do you say?”
Luca breathed out and nuzzled his ear. “Sure,” he murmured. “I always dreamed I’d have a guy who wanted to take care of me.”
“Yeah?” Isaac wouldn’t mind being Luca’s dream guy. “Am I that guy?”
