He didn’t have to spell it out. This wasn’t only about whether or not he’d be okay with Bryce marrying her.
This was about whether or not they were going to have to say good-bye.
“I love you, Bryce.”
He choked back the sob trying to struggle free. “I love you, too.”
Dustin rose and walked down the hall, and a moment later Bryce heard them softly talking.
Unable to make his legs move, he sat there, every breath a struggle, every thought in his brain trying to swamp him and drown him in the depths of his grief.
This has to be a nightmare.
He’d awakened to the love of his life in his bed, and his best friend finally coming home.
And now…
Kira saw Dustin out, then walked over and sat next to Bryce. “This’ll be okay,” she quietly said, ever the calm one. “He loves you. He just needs time to process. Have faith in him.”
Bryce laid over, with his head in her lap, and cried.
Chapter Sixteen
The next morning, Dustin sat in his office a little after nine and stared at his laptop screen without really seeing it.
He couldn’t…focus. It was partly due to the fact that he’d slept like utter shit last night.
Thank god he didn’t have any showings today, something he never thought he’d ever say.
He just…couldn’t focus.
Starting with the fact that sleeping alone felt alien now, felt…wrong.
Without Bryce sleeping next to him, cuddled with him, he hadn’t been able to get comfortable. Kept waking up and blindly reaching out into the void to find Bryce, just to remember he was alone in bed.
And why.
In the painfully bright light of day, he hated himself for not accepting Bryce’s request to spend the night with him. He’d texted Bryce good night last night, and remembered to text Bryce good morning, and had received a reply from him not long after both times, but…
Sigh.
Lara passed his office door, froze, backed up, and stared at him. “Dus?”
He wasn’t sure what reaction he gave her, but it made her step in and close the office door behind her, locking it, and hurrying over. Next thing he knew, he was crying and she was standing there next to his chair, holding him.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered. “Are you okay?”
“Kira…” He forced back a sob, trying to stay quiet, and finally managed to choke the story out.
The whole time Lara stood there holding him, pressing tissues into his hand, and it was almost worse because here was an obviously pregnant woman and it only served to remind him what was happening.
“What do I do?” he finally managed. “He said if I say no, he won’t do it. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s right.”
She stared down at him, his grief reflected back to him in her gaze. She ran a hand through his hair and didn’t answer, at first. Then she pulled her cell phone from her back pocket, thumbed through her contacts, and called someone.
“Hey, Tony, this is Lara Jarred, Brad’s wife, from our little…social group. … Yes, exactly. I have a very…delicate situation with a lifestyle friend of mine. You met him at the last munch. Can you please give me Seth Erikkson’s number? I thought I had it, but I don’t. … Well, it’s a similar situation to what Seth and Leah dealt—right. Okay, hold on.”
She grabbed a pen from his desk and jotted a number down on a sticky note. “Ready. … (941) 555-6879. Thanks. Can I tell him you gave me—okay, thanks. I appreciate it.”
She ended the call and then punched the number into her phone, apparently saving it as a contact. “You have any clients or appointments this afternoon? Closings? Showings?”
“No.”
She dialed the number and waited for an answer. Just when Dustin figured it would go to voice mail, he heard a man answer on the other end. “Hey, Seth? This is Lara Jarred…”
Ten minutes later, Dustin was once again alone in his office, and he had a late lunch date with Seth Erikkson at a sports bar not far from their building. He thought he would recognize Seth once Lara told Dustin he’d been at the first munch he’d attended, and had been at Sigalo’s and at the club the first night Bryce flew him.
Lara’s parting wisdom to Dustin was to tell Seth everything, to be completely honest with him, and she promised Seth wouldn’t judge him for any of it.
For the rest of the morning, Dustin desperately tried to focus on work and couldn’t. Finally, he left really early, telling Tawny, their receptionist, that he was out for the rest of the day. He headed to the restaurant and grabbed them a table in a fairly private corner. The place was quiet, dark, the main lunch crowd already dispersed. Once the waitress left him with a menu and took his order for a water and a rum and Coke, he tried to make the menu make sense to him.
Normally, he never drank during the day, unless it was a weekend and he was at a barbecue or something.
Today, he needed it to settle his nerves. He suspected their talk would last more than long enough for the alcohol to work its way out of his system.
Seth texted him when he arrived, and Dustin replied he was inside. Sure enough, he did recognize the man. Dustin stood to shake hands with him, but Seth pulled him in for a long, silent hug that nearly started Dustin crying right there.
Once the waitress took Seth’s drink order—and Dustin noticed Seth went for a vodka and cranberry juice along with his glass of water—and took their food orders, they were left alone.
Seth sadly smiled at him from across the table. “Let’s start with your situation first.”
Dustin did, managing to not break down sobbing as he told it.
Seth sat and quietly listened, hands clasped around his drink. He’d nod occasionally, but didn’t interrupt.
When Dustin finished, he sat back as the waitress brought their food and then left them alone, telling them if they wanted, they could cash out on the little tabletop computer thingy. Dustin hated them, was always worried he was going to screw it up and not pay for his food or something, but at least it meant they’d have relative privacy.
“You and Bryce have only been together, what, less than a month now, right?” There was no mocking or any other kind of “tone” in Seth’s voice, just asking for clarification.
Dustin nodded.
“But you’re in love with him.”
“Yeah. Like, in a way I’ve never been before. Except I don’t want a baby. I’ve never wanted kids. If I leave, I could be walking away from the best thing in my life. But am I being fair to him? To me? I feel like an ass if I walk. I just…need outside perspective.”
Seth nodded again, pinching his glass between his thumb and forefinger and turning it on the circle of condensation dripping from the sides onto the table.
“Let me tell you my story,” he quietly said. “Kaden and I literally were friends our entire lives. I never remembered him not being in my life. When he came to me and told me he was dying, pancreatic cancer, and then dropped the bomb on me about him and Leah being Master and slave—and that he wanted me to take over for him—it…”
He needed a moment, and fortunately that’s when their waitress dropped by to make sure they were doing okay.
“I was terrified,” Seth continued once the waitress departed. “Didn’t think I had it in me. I loved Leah. Was in love with her. Had been for years, but never thought that was something that would ever become reality, right? I didn’t know Leah had been in love with me, too, and Kaden’s original goal before he found out about his cancer was to try to bring me in as their third.
“But…Leah has specific issues from her past, needs that had to be taken care of a certain way for her own safety. That’s not an exaggeration.” He stared down at his drink. “So here’s what happened…”
They ate as they talked. As Seth talked and Dustin listened, really hearing the man, especially the pain still so fresh and raw in his soul as Seth discussed his friend and what he’d forced him
self to do—something that eventually felt more natural, and then perfectly right, as he opened his mind and heart and let go to the situation.
By the time they’d finished, Dustin was giving thanks that he hadn’t known Kira as long as Bryce had. He was an empathetic human being. It would be painful on him watching her decline if he decided to stay, but not nearly as painful as it would be for Bryce.
Except…
There was still the issue of kids.
And the man he loved would be marrying a woman—platonically, but still—and caring for her, raising her baby as his own.
Seth asked him more questions, gently prodding. Then the waitress cleared their plates, leaving them with their drinks. Seth was still nursing his vodka and cranberry while Dustin had finished his second rum and Coke way earlier and had switched to water.
“I don’t want to be a dick,” Dustin said. “Am I rushing this?”
“You love him, though.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not like you’re a kid on your first crush. From what you’re saying, you were pretty sure right off the bat he’s the guy for you. Your friends—his and yours—must have thought so, too, to introduce you to each other.”
Dustin nodded.
Seth smirked. “You were basically paired by the Frightful Five. Well, not them, but same thing. Close enough.”
Dustin nodded again.
“And Bryce flat-out told you if you say no, he won’t marry her?”
Dustin actually felt a little like a dick now, when he thought about it like that. Because Bryce was giving him, a guy he’d literally only known several weeks, an important veto decision over someone Bryce had known most of his life.
Didn’t that show how much Bryce loved him?
“Yeah.”
“That’s…huge. A man doesn’t give someone that kind of veto power if they aren’t ready to spend the rest of their life with them.” Seth sat with both hands clasped around his drink, elbows on the table, hunched over as if the weight of his memories crushed him.
From what Dustin had just learned, he imagined that was a spot-on analogy.
He wished he could say he didn’t empathize with Seth, except he was already starting to feel the first waves of that same weight pressing into his soul.
“I don’t have any good advice for you beyond all of that,” Seth said. “I’m still kind of hoping Kaden left more notes for us.”
“Notes?”
Seth softly snorted. “Fucking control freak, man, do I miss him. He left us video messages on CDs, notecards, letters, cards, even had friends give us some of them on certain anniversaries, right? Like our first wedding anniversary, his birthday, her birthday, mine—” His voice choked a little and he turned his drink, clockwise, then counter-clockwise, the glass lightly floating on the puddle of condensation below it on the table.
Clockwise, counter.
Clockwise, counter.
“Instructions.” Seth drew in a ragged breath, but didn’t meet Dustin’s gaze. “Literally starting from the moment he died. Ed came over when I had the hospice nurse call him and told me then, showed me the first one. I mean, Kade had it planned almost to the minute those first several days. And…I’m glad he did. I don’t think I could have made it without them. Then there were more, spread out the farther we got from the day he died.
“It’s good, though, you know? Like he’s always watching over us. I know this isn’t a problem for you guys, but one of the things I wondered was how he could be so. Goddamned. Calm. Like he was the most chill man ever. Some transcendental level bullshit or something. How he could…how he could be so inviting and giving me his wife.
“And it wasn’t until after he died that I realized it was because, in that time from when he was diagnosed, those first months, he made all the videos. Because I remember what he looked like, and that skeleton in the bed when he finally drew his last breath was not my Kaden. Not anymore. My Kaden, who married me and Leah on that video, had maybe just found out he was dying three or four weeks earlier, at the most. Maybe it hadn’t even sunk in yet, you know?”
Counter, clockwise.
“But later, when I could think about it, I realized he really was at peace, as much as he could be, from the beginning. He’d already said good-bye to us at the funeral at Venture. He’d married us off. It was a done deal, to him. He was dead and gone, a walking, talking ghost. The cards and letters and stuff, he could have written them at any time. But the videos were done early. He wasn’t gaunt. He looked healthy, nothing wrong with him. Long before he died, he was already looking back at us with one foot on the other side, man. He was just waiting for us to say our final good-byes to him after his body gave out.”
Clockwise, counter.
“And I know some people were weirded out when they found out about his plans, but you know what? Fuck them. That was him loving Leah, and him loving me, and him doing the best he could under the worst damn circumstances to hold on to his own sanity. He had to believe I was going to keep Leah alive, or the whole thing fell in on him. It was as much a survival tactic and coping strategy for him during as it was for us after. He admitted that in his journals not long before he died. He left those for me to read, too.”
Counter, clockwise.
Clockwise, counter.
“Best piece of advice I can give you?” he whispered. “Don’t give a shit what others think, man. Fuck them.” Then he threw back the rest of his drink and carefully set the glass on the circle of moisture. “You guys do what you need to do for you two, and for Kira, and for her baby. Kira needs to do what she needs to do to get through it. Don’t fucking worry about what’s right or wrong to anyone else. You love him?”
Dustin nodded.
Seth sadly smiled and shrugged. “Then you do anything for the people you love.”
“I really didn’t want kids.”
“Well, I can’t help you there. Wasn’t a consideration in our case. I didn’t think I could keep my shit together enough to get me and Leah and Kaden through everything to the other side. I did it. It’s amazing what you can do when you think you can’t when you love someone enough. Loves the fear right out of you before you even realize it. One step. Then another. Next thing you know, you’ve been walking for miles and years and you look back and see the whole journey. And this is more him than you. You can see part of this as an outsider since you just met her. You’ll be his rock the way I was Leah’s.”
Seth clasped his hands together on the table, around the empty glass in front of him. “Don’t be a dick, though. If you think you can’t do this, tell him that now. Don’t get to where she’s in hospice and he needs you the most and you freak and bolt. Or plan to stay and help him through it all and wait a long time before walking away after. Not during, though. Don’t do that to him, or her.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“You don’t owe me any fucking promises.” His smile looked sad. “But any you make to Bryce and Kira, keep ’em. Betrayal on top of a massive heartbreak like this will break a man.” He developed a distant stare. “Like I knew if it wasn’t for Leah, Kaden would have suck-started a nine once he confirmed his diagnosis and settled his affairs. He refused to go out like his dad went out. The only reason he stayed until the end was for her and for me, because he knew it would hurt us more, especially her, and he knew he had eternity ahead of him to be free of pain.”
He sniffled and sat back, playing with the glass again. Ice tinkled inside it.
Counter. Clockwise.
Counter. Clockwise.
Clockwise.
Full stop.
Seth stared at his glass. “If you think you can’t do it, though, do me a favor, huh?”
“Yeah?”
“Damn, I guess I am asking you for a promise.” When Seth’s gaze shifted up and met Dustin’s, his eyes looked bright, too bright, red-rimmed now, like he was close to tears.
“If you do need to walk, come tell me first, please? I want to talk to the
gang so we can step in and help. Bryce and Kira might not want a lot of people around, and that’s cool. We’ll respect that. But I saw the way he already looks at you, and it’s the way Kaden looked at Leah. Fuck, probably the way I look at Leah. The fact that he’s asking this of you proves how much he loves you already. Losing you will gut him, but he can get over it. But he’s going to need support when he loses her, especially if she delivers that baby and it survives. He’s going to be a dad, and he’s going to need you. You can find another person to share your life and bed. But it’s nearly impossible to replace a best friend you’ve known that long. Trust me on that one.”
Dustin churned it in his brain while Seth let him.
He did love Bryce.
But…
I’m not ready to be a dad. I never wanted to be a dad. I would be a sucky dad.
Except…the whole dad thing wasn’t even a given. Kira could miscarry, or die before the baby was old enough to deliver. The baby might not even survive.
Was he really willing to be a soulless dick and walk away from the best thing that had ever happened to him on a flimsy what-if? Especially when Bryce needed his emotional support?
Really?
He stared at the ice melting in Seth’s glass, and the answer was there, in his mind. It’d been there the whole time, he’d just needed to pull back his focus and wide-angle that bitch and get some perspective on it so he could see the entirety of it and not just a corner that made no sense without the bigger picture.
No.
He couldn’t be a dick.
What the future would hold for them if the baby was born, and if it survived remained to be seen.
He wouldn’t be the dick who walked out when the man he loved needed him to get through this.
“I should tell him he needs to marry her.” He slowly nodded. “I will tell him that.”
Seth reached over and squeezed his hand. “Attaboy,” he softly said, wiping at his eyes with his other hand. “No kidding, middle of the night, anytime, you call me if you need me. I guess you and I are the official founding members of the unofficial twelve-step support group for kinky people who love people who know they are dying.”