Five minutes later, Wes was easing down the driveway. Braden stood on the enclosed porch as Jock ran around looking for a place to go to the bathroom. He felt like for the first time all morning, he had time to take a breath. But another part of him, the bigger part, thought that as hectic as it was, the morning had been fun.

***

When Wes got back home, he opened the front door and immediately smelled bacon.

“I’m fucking starved!” Braden yelled from the kitchen, obviously having heard him come in. “Get your ass in here and make the toast. I don’t want the bacon or eggs to burn.”

As if he didn’t have a choice (though, did he want one?), Wes hung up his jacket and went straight for the kitchen. “So you can’t do it all, huh?”

Braden stood in front of the stove, in his jeans and shirt from last night. He turned, looking at Wes over his shoulder with a mischievous smile. Dark hair trickled down his jawline, the muscles in his shoulders flexed. “Oh no. I definitely can. Just didn’t want to show you up.”

Wes stood in the middle of his kitchen, wondering how in the hell they got here. They’d slept together one night and never planned for it to be more than that. It wasn’t like that was something he’d never done, yet now they stood in his house together, making a meal after getting Jessie ready for school.

And he wanted Braden here. That was the kicker. He hadn’t wanted anyone there since Alexander. He’d thought they would spend their lives together, but then Alexander had come home one day and said he was leaving. “Come on, Wes. If you let yourself admit it, you’d realize you don’t really love me.”

But he had. He was just shit for showing it.

“Stop thinking. I don’t like it when you think. Turn your brain off and make the toast.” Braden’s words pulled him out of the past.

“You don’t like it when I think?”

“Nope. I like it when you make toast, though. That’s pretty fucking cool.”

Shaking his head, Wes chuckled. “You’re so damn crazy.”

“I like ‘exciting’ better.”

Yeah, he did. Things were always more exciting when Braden was around. He’d never realized he liked that.

Braden finished up the bacon and eggs while Wes made the damn toast. Afterward, they sat at the table and ate together. It wasn’t until Braden dropped his fork to his plate, pushing it to the center of the table, that Wes finally spoke again. “I need to start packing things away in her room.” Will you help? Will you stay?

Of course, those questions didn’t come out. That would mean he made things too easy, that he could open his mouth and say shit that needed to be said without worry about being vulnerable. Damned if Braden didn’t seem to get it, though; if he didn’t seem to get Wes.

Braden nodded once, pushed to his feet and said, “Let’s do it.”

It wasn’t the first time he surprised Wes, the first time he’d shown Wes he was more than the man you saw on the surface. It wasn’t the first time he thought Braden might be made up of all heart. Well, heart and a big head.

As much as his head tried to tell him he didn’t want that, that he didn’t want anything, for the first time years, his chest told him something different. Made him want to try because he felt good around Braden. He felt like he belonged, and that maybe the man could feel that way about Wes, too. He was honorable, and caring, and Wes couldn’t see him walking away like his father had, or like Alexander had.

So when Braden smiled and cocked his head toward Chelle’s room, Wes took a deep breath, reached out and looped one of his fingers with Braden’s, and led the way into his sister’s room, to pack away her life.

The first thing Braden did was head for the chest at the foot of her bed.

“No. Not that. Not yet. She’s had that since we were kids. It was special to her.” He wasn’t sure why he wasn’t ready for that chest yet.

“Okay.”

So they started elsewhere.

They’d been at it for about two hours when Braden opened the drawer by her bed and pulled out a stack of photo albums. Wes’s palms itched to grab them. His mouth opened and closed, wanting to tell Braden to put them away, that he’d deal with them later, but he did neither.

“Can I?” Braden held one up. When Wes nodded, he sat on Chelle’s bed. “Sit with me.”

Wes found himself getting off the floor where he sat and going back down next to Braden. He opened the first page, and Wes groaned at the picture.

“Didn’t like clothes much as a kid, huh? Maybe we can adopt that attitude now.” Braden nudged him with his elbow as they looked at a picture of Wes running naked when he was about two.