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“I promise a kiss will not scar them. Are you okay?” Oz asked.

  “I knew you had them. I just didn’t realize what it meant. It’s pretty amazing. And terrifying.”

  “The terror I did notice.”

  How could Oz make Jax feel like laughing even while he was close-to-puking anxious?

  Jax met Oz’s searching gaze. “It’s theory versus reality, you know? I guess I spend a lot more time in the nonreality parts of life.”

  “Because of acting?”

  “The judges will accept that as an answer.” They were already so deep into this naked-truth thing today Jax had to add, “And because of me liking it that way.”

  Oz nodded.

  From the dining room, Regan called, “Daddy, I want the cinnamon for my banana.”

  Oz stepped back. “Remember what I told you when you were practicing with the doll?”

  “Don’t drop her?”

  “Okay, that one is still pretty important. But there was something else. And it’s still true. ‘You’re a quick study.’”

  Chapter 17

  OZ SPRINKLED the cinnamon under his daughter’s supervision.

  “This piece too, Daddy.”

  He complied.

  “Is the TV man coming back?”

  “His name is….” There was a stumper. Family friends were Mr. or Ms. like the preschool teachers. But the thought of a Mr. in front of Jax’s name didn’t sit right. “Jax, honey. Call him Jax.”

  “Like the game with the ball or the cheesy puff?”

  “The cheesy puff.” Oz was pretty sure Jax would prefer the connection with the bright orange snack.

  “Okay.”

  Wait a minute. “Regan, where do you get cheesy puffs?” Because they were full of stuff guaranteed to upset her stomach.

  “Grams has them. Can I have dessert now?”

  She’d eaten two of the cinnamoned slices.

  “What’s the rule about breakfast for supper?”

  Regan sighed. “It is dessert. Can I be excused?”

  “Yes. Carry your plate into the kitchen, please. Then half an hour of TV.”

  Jax was washing the bowl and pans by hand when Oz carried the rest of the plates out behind Regan.

  “Jax,” she said loud enough to make him jump. “Here.” She held out the plate.

  “Thank you.” He bent to take it from her, bowing like a character in a fairy tale.

  The guy was a quick study.

  “Do you like Jax, Jax?” She giggled.

  Jax looked over her head at Oz for some help, but he wanted to hear the answer, so he only shrugged.

  “I’m not sure I know—oh.” He smiled. “I do. I especially like licking the orange stuff off my fingers.”

  “Me too.”

  A very quick study.

  After Regan had skipped off to the TV room, Oz leaned on the doorframe. “Thanks for washing up, but you didn’t have to.”

  “Seems fair. You cooked. I ate.”

  “I’m not stalling. I do want to talk to you, about”—had it all just happened today?—“everything, but I’d rather not have interruptions. Let me get the girls to bed, and then we can talk?”

  If Jax said he couldn’t stick around, that would make any need for a conversation pretty pointless anyway.

  Jax nodded, and the weight hanging on every joint in Oz’s body lifted away.

  “Good. Okay. Should take about an hour or so. Feel free to—well, I don’t have any secrets. There’s wine in the cabinet over the fridge. God knows I could use a glass.”

  Oz checked on Regan, set the timer for her, and went upstairs to see Ayla.

  She appeared to be leading an uprising of stuffed animals. They were arranged around her on her bed.

  Oz perched on an edge where there weren’t any. “Are you ready to talk to me instead of throwing books on the floor?”

  The bookshelf was still empty from her earlier tantrum, but Ayla had stacked the contents in front of it.

  She drew her knees up to her chin. “If he’s here, you won’t let Papi come anymore.”

  “I don’t keep Papi from visiting you. We have a schedule, like at school and at home. Remember?” Though Oz no longer put the visitation weekends on the calendar. He was tired of covering by explaining that Papi had to work.

  “But he wasn’t on the schedule.”

  No, Jax hadn’t been on the schedule. Not for any of them. Squeezing him onto it wasn’t going to be easy. Oz wasn’t going to make any moves until he was sure, but in that moment, Oz knew he wanted a life with Jax in it. Maybe it should have come as a surprise, but it felt right.

  “No. Not this time.”

  “Is he sleeping here?” Ayla made a gate in her fence of stuffed animals and inchwormed toward him.

  “I don’t know yet, honey. We didn’t talk about it.”

  “I don’t want him to.” She put her head on his knee.

  He rested a hand on her back. “He’s my friend. So I’m going to be the one who decides that.”

  “That’s not fair.” She kicked a frog in his grinning mouth.

  “I know, sweetheart.”

  She went on to demonstrate a deep commitment to her sulk when she refused his offer to wash her hair. Unlike Regan, who shrieked at the thought, Ayla loved having her hair done.

  “Just a bath, Daddy, and I can do it myself.”

  Then Regan spurned him in favor of having Jax read her a book before bed. Oz hovered in the doorway.

  “He does good voices, Daddy.”

  “I’m glad. Can I listen?”

  Regan waved him in.

  Jax was cross-legged on the floor with one of their library books.

  “You could’ve sat on the bed,” Oz murmured as he knelt next to him.

  Jax gave him a librarian-style look for interrupting the story and kept reading. He was good. There were subtle shifts of emphasis in the narrative, but each character had a different voice when speaking.

  Regan sat as still as she ever was when she wasn’t asleep, her fingers stroking the fur of the panda teddy bear on her lap, eyes fixed on Jax. He didn’t stop to show pictures, but Oz guessed with his voice, it didn’t matter as much.

  It was just a bedtime story. One moment out of all of the ones that made up Oz’s life with the girls. Jax fitting into it didn’t mean he fit everywhere, that he even wanted to be part of Oz’s life beyond phone sex and hookups. A fairy-tale happy ending was good for kids’ books and cartoon movies, but reality didn’t always work that way. For all Oz knew, Jax hated kids and was only playing to his current audience.

  Regan would have gone reverse-Scheherazade on Jax and demanded 1001 stories out of him that night if Oz didn’t intervene and limit her to one. She and her panda were tucked in, Ayla gave him a grudging good-night kiss, and Oz led Jax back downstairs.

  Jax shrugged off the suggestion of wine until Oz poured himself some. After a sheepish apology, Jax accepted a glass, finished half and then topped it off.

  Oz smiled over his glass and brought the bottle with them into the living room. They settled on the couch at opposite ends, backs braced against the sofa arms, their legs meeting to tangle in the middle cushions.

  Oz rubbed his socked foot over Jax’s. “How are your feet?”

  Jax took a long pull on his wine. “Still thawing, thanks.”

  “What were you going to do?”

  Jax studied his glass. “Friend lives in College Point. I was going to call him.”

  “Is this the mind-your-own-business friend?”

  “No, he lives in Manhattan. After Family Daze ended, I went to Columbia. Got a BA. Met these guys there. We’re kind of like family.”

  “Friends like that are good to have.”

  “Yeah.” Jax settled himself deeper, bending a knee. “When we aren’t pissing each other off.”

  “Sounds a lot like family.”

  If Jax was that closeted, maybe his birth family didn’t know much about him. Oz had said that was none of his business, bu
t now that the door was unlocked, there were a million questions.

  He lifted the wine to offer a refill, but Jax shook his head.

  Oz placed the bottle and his empty glass on the end table behind him. “I guess this is the getting-to-know-you conversation we skipped in favor of getting to know other things about each other.”

  Jax’s foot wiggled along Oz’s inseam. “I like what I’ve learned.”

  It would be so easy to fall back into their usual flirtation. Nothing serious. He’d thought he knew everything important about Joaquín, and that hadn’t meant they were good together. So why push it with Jax?

  Because Jax was in Oz’s house, maybe part of the girls’ lives, and Oz wasn’t just making decisions for himself anymore.

  “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” Oz winked.

  “Oh, I’ve seen it. And I really, really like it.”

  “I was thinking vital statistics.”

  Jax’s grin fell away. “Okay.”

  “I turned forty-two three weeks ago.”

  “Happy birthday.”

  “Thanks.” Oz considered what he wanted to know about Jax. “Sister you met. Two nephews—the older one is at Rutgers on a football scholarship. My mom lives about five miles away in the house I grew up in. I told you about my dad. One ex-husband.” Oz rolled his eyes. “Okay, I can see why the other getting-to-know-you was way more exciting.”

  “Was?” Jax arched his brows.

  “Mmm. Still is.”

  “My turn, huh?” Jax sipped his wine. “My birth certificate says Jackson Henry Conlon, and it was issued thirty-five years ago. My birthday is in May. I’m an only child. No ex-husbands.” He grinned. “My dad runs a small chain of auto parts stores north of LA. My mom….” Jax stopped hiding behind his wineglass and looked over at Oz. “She died of cancer when I was seventeen.”

  Only the lamp behind Oz was on, making Jax’s eyes hooded and dark.

  “Wasn’t that how old you were when the show ended?”

  “Yeah. She was gone about four months after we wrapped.”

  Jax might have studied the twitch in the muscle over Oz’s ear, but Oz had been listening to Jax’s voice for months. The quiet grief in that sentence had Oz sliding his legs free to crawl over and kiss him.

  The kiss was short, Jax’s wine-flavored lips soft but closed. But Jax rested his hand on the back of Oz’s neck, their foreheads pressed together.

  Jax whispered, “So then I went to Columbia and met….”

  “Your friends,” Oz finished for him, when it seemed like Jax was struggling to find a name for them.

  “Yeah.”

  Most of Oz’s friends he’d met through a gay parenting group. They were good people and helped each other out. After all these years, Hal felt like the brother Oz had never had, but if they didn’t have kids, would they still keep in touch?

  “Did she know? Does your dad?”

  Jax put his wineglass on the coffee table, another arm around Oz, and they shifted around to find a way to lie there that didn’t involve hard hipbones in soft sacs. The couch was extra long, but not all that wide. Eventually Oz sat between Jax’s legs, leaning back on his chest, head against Jax’s shoulder.

  Jax’s voice vibrated as he spoke, his jaw scraping Oz’s cheek. “Yeah, I think she did. We just didn’t talk about it. She was focused on the business. Not that she was one of those pushy stage moms. I saw enough of them to know the difference. She might have started me modeling when I was little, but I liked it. She made sure I stayed practical about stuff. Being gay wasn’t practical for getting work.”

  When Oz would have turned, Jax held him steady and kept talking. “She didn’t even tell me she was sick. Didn’t want it affecting me during the last season. Last thing she said to me was about my career.”

  Oz rubbed Jax’s hand, interlaced their fingers. “What did she say?”

  Oz counted Jax’s heartbeats in the pause. An intake of breath like he’d start speaking, then he stopped without a sound. After an exhale he said, “You’re going to do amazing things. You’ll change people’s lives.”

  From the softness of the words, Oz knew it was verbatim. What he couldn’t tell was whether it had been meant as encouragement or as a burden. From what he knew about Jax’s hard work with his body and his travel for auditions, Jax had accepted it as a weight to be carried. Oz had regretted that his father’s stroke had taken him so fast, but now he was thinking last words were overrated.

  “She thought a lot of you.” They hadn’t covered religion in the quick exchange of vitals, but Oz risked, “I’m sure she’s proud of who you are.”

  Jax hugged him. “Thanks. I do wonder about it.”

  It seemed like he wanted to say more, but cut himself off.

  Silence settled over them. Not awkward the way it would be on the phone, but easy. Because for once, there was no rush, no need to say good night, no urgency in their bodies. The level of perfection in it, the pleasure without an endgame, should have made an alarm sound in Oz’s head. Because there was always something that needed to be done or said or fixed.

  It was the chime on his phone that broke the mood, the ding to remind him it was ten, time to get everything ready for the morning rush.

  With a last squeeze, Jax’s arms fell away. “I should get going.”

  Oz resisted the urge to drag Jax’s arms back up, settle them again into that hypnotic ebb and flow of breathing and light touch of hands on arms. After untangling, he slid to the far end of the couch. “You don’t have to leave. You’re welcome to spend the night.”

  “As much as I like all the possibilities in that, I think I should go.” Jax stood.

  Oz kept his tone light as he pushed to his feet. “You did get a lot of the Parsons household in one day.”

  Jax caught Oz’s hand and tugged him close enough for a kiss. It started with lips closed, a brush of reassurance, but a taste, a breath, slipped through. Jax cupped Oz’s head and deepened the kiss. Mouths parted, and then the touch of Jax’s tongue reverberated along Oz’s spine, his stomach dropping like he’d never been kissed before, like it was their first time.

  Jax pulled back. “I liked everything I saw.”

  Oz couldn’t help himself. “Even Joaquín?”

  “Well, no. But the rest, yes.”

  “I liked having you here.” Oz must have still been dizzy from that kiss because he slammed forward like a pile driver on a crane. “Having you part of everything. I’m wondering if you think you want the whole-me package or just the… package.”

  Jax’s gaze dropped for an instant. “Is that still an option?”

  Oz told the truth. “I don’t know. I’m not saying we need to decide this now. It was a lot to take in for one day.”

  “As opposed to what you’ve found out about me?”

  Oz wasn’t sure if Jax was referring to the acting or being closeted. Oz didn’t have rainbow stickers on his car or order at the deli saying, I’ll have a half a pound of the Single Gay Dad turkey breast, but he’d always been honest if asked, and the girls had clearly had two fathers when they started school.

  “I like what I see too,” Oz said. “Like I told you before, it’s none of my business whether you’re out or not.”

  Jax nodded. “I need to ask you something.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “What do you want?”

  Oz had quite a list. To have the girls grow up happy and safe and healthy. To have listened to his mother when she told him Joaquín would never grow up. To squeeze enough out of the budget to afford to take the girls on a vacation. And to have shut off his phone earlier so they’d still be on the couch.

  Jax tugged at his ear, rocking on the balls of his feet as he waited for Oz’s answer.

  Oh. Oz brushed a hand across Jax’s cheek. “I’m not going to propose, if that’s what you’re worried about. But as good as the sex is—and damn, it’s good—I like more about you than that. I want to find a way to make this—” Oz gestur
ed between them. “—work.”

  “I’m not sure I really get how to do that.” Jax’s chin jutted then retreated. “But someone told me I’m a quick study.”

  Chapter 18

  JAX TOLD the cab driver who picked him up from Oz’s to head for Marriott at the airport, then called Dane again. Jax had sent a couple texts earlier but hadn’t heard back, which was not like Dane.

  “Hey, Jax.”

  Jax found himself looking at the phone. Yes, he’d called Dane’s cell. “Spencer?”

  “Yeah. Dane’s asleep.”

  West Coast time strikes again? No, it was only quarter of eleven. “Sorry. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “Nah, Dane told me to answer if any of you called. This about Theo?”

  Right. Theo, who was technically the reason why Jax was in New York in the first place. He’d sent the texts, hoping for a spot in their guestroom along with some clothes to wear while he popped his own in the laundry since he’d been wearing these since some time last night when he’d hopped the plane with just his wallet, passport, and phone.

  “Has he heard from Theo?”

  “Not that I know of.” Spencer sounded amused. Their little drama was probably entertaining from the outside.

  “Okay, sorry to bug you.”

  “Not a problem.”

  Jax not being a problem didn’t stop Spencer from hanging up.

  With the excuse of Theo fresh in mind, Jax tried Gideon.

  “No, Theo hasn’t called me. But I did contact someone about getting to work on a prenup for him.”

  Gideon was all about solving problems. If Jax told G about needing fresh clothes, there would be a delivery to the hotel in around an hour.

  It wasn’t as if Jax hadn’t stayed at this hotel before. It was fine. And Jax was fine. In any hotel room. The things he’d planned to say, asking if Dane had looked tired that morning, checking to see if Gideon knew anyone who did real estate in Queens, evaporated on Jax’s tongue.

  The idea of it, that maybe there was something to be explored between him and Oz that wasn’t only about how their bodies fit together, was too new. The last thing it needed was exposure to Gideon’s brand of cynicism.

  “Good idea,” Jax said, though he knew Theo would only accept Gideon’s help if Theo had decided he wanted it.