Page 81 of Cover Up

It allowed this place to fill in those gaps, making it home.

Felix got up and stretched, encouraging some of the blood flow to the rest of his limbs as Rafe cleaned up his station. When he made the second pass around the shop, he caught Tony staring at him, and he offered him as friendly of a smile as he could manage, and Tony took that as immediate permission to walk over and drape an arm over his shoulders.

“I hope you’d have the balls to tell me to fuck off if this was too much for you.”

Felix laughed and shook his head. “Do you wish more people hated you?”

Tony laughed. “I’m way less of a people pleaser since marrying Kat, but I think I’d probably shrivel up and die if that happened.”

Felix grinned at him. “Well, you can chill. We like you a lot. I think most of us here are pretty damn jealous that the Colorado guys had you for so long.” Felix liked the other guys too, but a lot of them had moved on from the shop. They existed on the fringes of the tattoo world—and maybe that would be Felix someday, but he couldn’t picture it.

And Tony was a man who could never really leave it behind.

“You doing okay, though?” Tony asked.

Felix still wasn’t used to having people give a shit about him that way, but he forced himself to nod because yeah, he was. He really, really was. “Better than I have been in years. And I hope Leif likes it here. I kind of ditched him, and I feel like shit about it.”

“You think he fits in?”

“I think he’s been searching for a place like this for a long time,” Felix admitted. “I should have convinced him to come with us.”

“Everyone gets to where they’re going. It just takes time.” Tony squeezed the back of his neck. “Big plans tonight?”

“Meeting my boyfriend’s mom,” Felix said and didn’t give more details than that. Most of the guys knew about her, so it was likely Tony did too, but Felix appreciated when the older man didn’t ask.

“Good luck. I about shit my pants the first time I met Kat’s parents. I cussed at her grandma too. But luckily, she still wanted to marry me.”

Felix laughed and wished more than anything the meeting was going to be more traditional, only because Dei deserved that happiness, but he’d make the best of it. Tony wandered off, and Felix came back to Rafe to get some Saniderm slapped on his leg, and then he slipped out the back door without any more goodbyes because he knew if he let them distract him anymore, he’d give in to his anxiety.

He made his way across the dark parking lot and eventually stepped through Midnight’s front door. There was a small crowd waiting to be sat, but the hostess saw Felix and waved him past, mouthing ‘kitchen’ at him. He gave her a quick salute, then darted into the server station and through a set of swinging doors.

Felix had once asked if it was breaking some kind of health code, him being back there, but Dei had just rolled his eyes and kissed him. It didn’t answer the question at all, but he took it as permission to hang back there when he wasn’t disturbing dinner service, and in that moment, the only person behind the line was Dei.

Felix adored watching him move around his space. He didn’t want to be a dickhead and say that he couldn’t imagine being able to pick back up a career of cooking in a kitchen after losing an arm, a leg, and an eye, but it was true. He could barely function in his shop after losing half his memory and a small chunk of his cognitive abilities.

Felix wouldn’t ever say that Dei did it effortlessly. That felt unfair to all the work Dei put in and all the tools Jeremiah had given him so he could do his job without missing too many beats. But he made it look like he was born for it.

And, of course, watching him was addictive because he really was the most attractive man Felix had ever seen, and he couldn’t believe he was allowed to love him.

He leaned against the counter and watched as Dei threw together the Noods noodle dish—something Dei had made for him repeatedly since they’d come back from LA. He didn’t look up until he finished garnishing the plate, and his face broke out into a huge smile as he slammed the ticket next to the dish and then barreled around the corner.

Felix braced himself to be lifted, pressed into the wall, and kissed within an inch of his life.

“You’re early,” Dei rumbled against his lips.

Felix nodded. “Rafe finished up faster than we planned, so I thought I’d walk over before I lost my nerve.”

Dei sighed and cupped his cheek as Felix’s feet hit the floor. “We’ll be lucky if she even realizes I’m there.”

“It’s still your mom. What if she doesn’t like me?”

“Then it’s probably because she thinks you’re a ghost. She’s always hated ghosts,” Dei told him, giving him another swift kiss. “Give me five, okay? I just need to wipe everything down, and then we can take off.”

Felix wanted to tell him not to rush, but he really wanted to get the evening over with. He didn’t want to hurry through meeting Dei’s mom, but he knew this was a moment of closure for Dei—it wasn’t the beginning of what should have been a relationship between him and his boyfriend’s mom.

And he knew that was killing Dei.

The man had grown up with almost no family, and he didn’t know if he’d ever have a real relationship with his sister, so this was one of the last threads Dei had to hold on to. And there was no way to stop fate from cutting it when it was time.

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