Chapter 2

two

ADELE

He wasn’t an unreasonable man. At least, that’s what he liked to tell himself. He set normal, everyday expectations for both himself and his friends and family. But he did expect to have some answers about what Kash was going through. In spite of both physical and emotional distance between them over the years, Kash was his best friend. No, he was more than his best friend. He was his soulmate. They didn’t keep secrets, so it was killing Adele that he’d been keeping this from him for God only knew how long.

He wanted to push. He wanted to pin Kash down to the couch cushions and dead-eye stare him until he cracked. He could too. That was how he’d wriggled all of Kash’s secrets out of him over the years. But he knew this was too big and too important to fuck around that way.

He’d already screwed up badly enough as it was with the airport thing. He hadn’t told any of the guys what he was planning—which, in hindsight, had bitten him in the ass because all of them would have told him what a bad idea it was to pretend-kidnap someone at an airport .

Or at all, really.

It hadn’t even been the near arrest thing, which was bad. It had been the sheer terror on Kash’s face that made him regret every decision he’d made that day. Maybe if the circumstances had been different, Kash would have found the whole thing hilarious, but he’d been frightened.

And when he calmed down, it was obvious that he was exhausted and in pain, and Adele had only made that worse. He might have still been beating himself up over it, except Kash could sense he’d gone into scolded puppy mode and, over burritos, told him to get his head out of his ass.

“I’ve forgiven you for worse,” Kash reminded him, which was true. “You were a dipshit—nothing new there. It’s over with.”

“And I won’t do it again,” Adele vowed.

Kash snorted, almost choking on his guac, and shook his head. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, darling. We both know who you are.”

And that was true. No matter how much time had passed or how many years apart they’d been living, Kash still knew him better than anyone. Adele could only hope now that the same was still true for him. Kash had been keeping secrets, and Adele knew whatever this was—this whole stiff legs and walking with a cane thing—it was bad.

He just didn’t know how bad. And he had to wait until Kash felt ready to tell him everything he knew.

Unfortunately, Adele learned the next day everything Kash knew wasn’t much.

After a solid twelve hours of rest and recovery from the long flight—and three lower-limb massages that Adele selflessly and with no agenda of his own had given Kash—he finally spilled his guts.

“All I have is weird tightness, stiffness, and weakness in my limbs and no answers at all. It started a few weeks after the incident,” Kash told him quietly the next afternoon as they sat out on the deck. “I thought it was related to the concussion, but the more doctors I saw, the more questions I had, and no one could tell me what was happening. They’ve thrown around a few ideas, but all the tests have been negative. There are a few specialists here—neurological ones—and I have referrals to see them, and hopefully, they can figure it out.”

“And that’s it?”

Kash sighed quietly. “That’s it. For a while, I thought things might heal up on their own. I’d go a week without a single incident, and I thought I was getting better. Then suddenly, I’d wake up with my toes curled, unable to move my feet, and it would last for days.”

“When did you quit?” Adele asked softly.

Kash turned his gaze to the side. “About a week after I got back. I was put on medical leave, but it’s obvious I can’t do the job anymore.” His voice was shaky and thick. “I, uh, I’ve been avoiding retiring. The pension will be good, but I don’t want to risk losing my medical coverage.”

“Yeah,” Adele said very softly. “What did your chief say?”

“To take care, and if shit got sorted out, he’d write me a golden letter of recommendation to you. I laughed myself sick when he said that.”

Adele couldn’t help his grin. “I don’t know. It might be helpful. I’ve gotten strict over the years.”

Kash sipped his iced tea with one hand and flipped Adele off with the other, sending them both into a laughing fit. Swiping his mouth, Kash shrugged. “Anyway, that’s about all I’ve got.”

“A disorder with no name and retirement looming on the horizon,” Adele voiced aloud for the both of them.

“One doctor called it dystonia,” Kash admitted. “But without a root cause, they have no treatments. They gave me a prescription for some orthotics, which I should be better about wearing, and I bought a cane off Amazon to get me around. One guy gave me some really strong muscle relaxers, which are nice, but they leave me in a fog. And yeah, that’s about it.”

Adele had no idea what to say about that, so he said nothing at all. What could he do except be there? At least that was something he was good at. Kash was home, and he was safe, and for the moment, that was all that mattered.

Of course, Adele was also the guy who never let anything go, so at his next single dads meeting a week after Kash showed up, he cornered Renato after dinner to grill him on whether or not he knew about dystonia and if there were any super-secret treatments the doctors weren’t telling Kash about.

“I’ve treated patients with it,” Renato told him, staring at him over a glass of Malbec. “But it’s not something I treat, and to be honest, there’s not a lot that can be done about it.”

Exactly the answers Kash had been given. That wasn’t good enough for Adele, but he also wasn’t going to push the issue. He knew Kash would kill him for going to Renato in the first place. Kash had been adamant that this was his problem to solve, and anytime Adele hinted at getting involved, Kash shut him down .

“You have a life to live and a son to raise. Please let me handle this.”

It was the pleading in his eyes that got Adele to back down. He spent sleepless nights researching on the internet, but most of what he found were bullshit pseudoscience posts on Reddit from people touting random essential oil supplements and MLM tonics. He didn’t think Kash would appreciate turning him on to that.

So he let it go, mostly because he didn’t have a choice.

Kash also banned Adele from going with him to the appointments, which was the thing bothering him most. He expected to be there for his best friend. To fill in as a partner since Kash was currently single and shouldn’t be doing all this alone. But it seemed like with Kash back, he was even more self-isolating than he had been living thousands of miles away.

Adele wanted to push—to force the issue. To make Kash see some goddamn reason. But he knew that would only make things worse.

His biggest worry right now was thinking maybe the distance was his fault. Maybe Kash knew that Adele was in love with him, and this was his way of creating space between them. Adele wasn’t the most subtle guy, after all. He never had been. And all the guys had seen it and called him on it.

Only Kash was playing ignorant, and Adele didn’t know if that was real or if that was for his benefit so they could remain friends with the truth sitting between them, bare and vulnerable to the elements.

Or maybe he was reading into it too much, and the distance was simply that. After all, they’d been apart for so many years. Maybe that was the natural way of things.

Whatever the reason for it though, it hurt. Adele felt more alone than ever, and he was living with the ever-present fear that he might lose the only man he was ever truly in love with.

He didn’t need Kash to love him back. He’d never needed that. He just needed him here, and alive, and safe. But how did he say that without sounding like a complete whacko? He didn’t think practicing what to say at his desk was helping matters, but it was all he had.

“We’re in this together,” he told his stand mirror perched beside his keyboard, leaning toward it. He studied the lines on his face. Christ, when did he get so old? “It’s you and me, okay? You don’t have to do this alone. We’ve always had better luck when we were a team, right?”

“Look, I’m not here to judge, but I’m pretty sure talking to yourself in a mirror is a bad sign.”

Adele’s gaze shot up and fell on his newest employee. Ridge Marks was a transfer from a small Jersey Shore town. He’d arrived four months back with his toddler in tow, and Adele had immediately gotten his hooks into him.

He was a good-looking guy—somewhere around Bowen’s age with kind blue eyes and light brown hair that he wore short and stylish. He wasn’t as big as some of the other guys in the department, but he was deceptively strong, which Adele appreciated on the more difficult jobs. He was also a good guy, which was why Adele had been hounding him to join in with the other guys and commiserate on the woes of parent life.

Like most of the guys, Ridge hadn’t been completely on board with the idea of a Dad Club—name changed now that all of them except Adele and Ridge were happily in love—but after meeting the guys and realizing he had free babysitters for life, he was in.

Frey was particularly excited for Ridge, too, because like Rex, Ridge’s daughter was Deaf. She was younger, and she had cochlear implants, but she hated them, and Ridge had finally accepted that she was allowed to drive when it came to whether or not she wanted to hear.

He was passable in ASL and currently taking classes so he could be fluent in his daughter’s language. Frey was helping—tutoring where he could and making sure that Rex spent plenty of time with Ina, though he was slightly annoyed because he was at the age where toddlers weren’t as fun as his other friends.

But it was working out very well. Ridge fit in like a member of the family exactly the same way the other guys had. It was good.

No, it was better than that.

The only thing wrong was the pit in Adele’s stomach, but none of the guys could help with that.

“Don’t judge me,” Adele said as he sat back. Ridge walked in and took one of the chairs from beside the door, flipping it around and straddling it in front of Adele’s desk. “Is there something you need?”

“Yeah. I need a schedule adjustment. Ina has therapy starting next week, but they could only get her in on Thursdays, and they want me to be there. I could ask one of the guys to fill in and save you the trouble, but I’m the rookie here and?—”

“What? No,” Adele said quickly. He woke up his computer and pulled up the schedule, frowning at the spreadsheet. “Let me talk to the team and see what we can do. I think Chelsea has that day free. She’ll probably swap with you.”

Ridge sighed. “I hate to lose my weekends.”

“You still have Sundays, which means you can still do barbeques at mine,” Adele said .

Ridge rolled his eyes. “I swear to God, brisket is the only thing you care about.”

“And slaw,” Adele said with a sniff.

Ridge laughed, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. It was clear the man had a thousand pounds of stress on his shoulders, but much like Lane had been, he wasn’t ready to open up. The only things personal they knew about him were that Ina was an unconventional adoption and that he hadn’t been in a relationship when he became a single dad.

There was a story there, but Adele knew he and the others could be patient while they waited for him to feel safe enough to open up. That was how it always worked, and it hadn’t steered him wrong yet.

“So,” Ridge said after a long beat, “why exactly were you talking to yourself in your little desk mirror? And why do you have a little desk mirror?”

“Gage hates that I get blackheads, so he bought me one and demanded that I work on them before I come home,” Adele said—the truth. “And I was giving myself a little pep talk.” A lie. It wasn’t a pep talk. It was him practicing ways to get Kash to open up a little more and stop pulling so far away.

Ridge lifted a brow like he didn’t believe him, but he was a decent enough guy not to call him on it. “Well, I hope it’s working. You look a little stressed.”

He was. Not just because of Kash, though that was a big part of it. But also because his son was getting ready to graduate—something he was wholly unprepared for—and life was about to feel very different. Gage had gotten several acceptance letters, and he’d chosen SCAD, which was in Savannah. Not on the other side of the world, but enough hours away that Adele felt like he was sawing off a limb.

But he had to do this. He had to let it happen. In spite of a handful of bad choices Gage had made in his teenage years, he was a good kid, and Adele trusted him. He just didn’t trust the world around him. Gage was also going because of his boyfriend, and that made Adele antsy. Gage had tried to convince Adele to let the two of them move in together off campus, but Adele nipped that one in the bud.

“If you two break up, you’ll be stuck there, and that’s not something you want.”

“We’re not breaking up,” Gage had tried to argue. Adele was too experienced to let his son die on that hill. “And the dorms won’t let us have sleepovers. Please! You know I’m safe.”

Adele wanted to believe that. He didn’t like the thought of his son in a sexual relationship because when he looked at Gage, he saw the tiny little infant, entirely helpless and dependent on him. He couldn’t help but wonder if that would ever change.

He also knew he had to cut the cord, so he made an agreement that Gage could go, and he could live off campus, but by a handful of rules that Adele set. He’d get his own apartment in a building near the school without roommates—Adele would be covering the bills—and he would maintain his grades and avoid partying too much. And his boyfriend could stay over on weekends, but weekdays were school and work only.

Gage agreed a little too readily, but Adele took his wins where he could get them. He was no fool. He knew his son would experiment with his sudden freedom, but he also did trust his son.

This was just…hard. It had been the two of them alone for so long. He’d given up any real semblance of a personal life to raise his boy because he’d fucked up at the beginning, and he refused to fall into that self-pitying pit ever again .

But who was he now?

What did he do with his time?

He was too old to go out and find someone new, and the one person he’d been properly in love with for most of his life didn’t love him back the way he wanted. So what was next? A cat? He was pretty sure Bronx could hook him up with some kind of pet to keep the loneliness at bay, but he wasn’t sure that would be enough.

He’d bide his time, he supposed, until Gage met someone. His son was bi, so any gender was on the table, and there was the possibility of kids. Gage had been saying he wanted to be a dad for years—so someday, Adele might end up a pop pop.

Oh fuck .

“Hey, Cap? Are you going to cry?” Ridge asked.

Adele’s head snapped up, a defensive comeback dancing on his tongue until he realized Ridge was actually worried. Passing a hand down his face, he quickly shook his head. “No. Well, maybe, but I’ll keep it to myself until you’re gone.”

“Crying doesn’t bother me,” Ridge said. “I grew up with little brothers who were almost thirteen years younger than I was, and we had a home where we were allowed to be emotional.”

That must have been nice. That was the home Adele had worked his ass off to create because that wasn’t something he and Bowen had been given.

“Well, as your boss, I feel like it’s probably not a good idea to put you in an awkward situation.”

Ridge sighed but didn’t argue with him, though Adele probably didn’t feel like much of a boss. Their town was so small their fire department wasn’t more than a dozen members and no real structure apart from him and his deputy. Their calls were few and far between, and most of them were for animal rescue, car accidents, and the small pocket of senior citizens calling for chest pains or falls.

But he kind of liked it that way. He enjoyed the fact that he was more friend to all of his guys at the station than he was the captain with a stick lodged up his ass and a vendetta against fun.

“I should cook you dinner,” Ridge said.

Adele blinked in surprise. “I…okay. Why?”

“Because you’re always taking care of everyone else, and I thought it might be nice if someone took a turn for you.”

Adele didn’t know what to say. There wasn’t a lack of care for him in his friend group, but Ridge did have a point. No one was tripping over themselves to cook him dinner. Well, Lane and Bowen some nights, but that was a different dynamic when the other guys weren’t around.

“Look, I’m not a gourmet chef or anything, but I can make a mean enchilada pie.”

Adele raised a brow at him. “A what?”

“It’s the white people attempt at making decent enchiladas,” Ridge said with a small grin. “But I was taught by my best friend’s abuelita—I make the sauce from scratch and everything. I even refry my own beans.”

Adele chuckled softly and shrugged. “You know what? Why the hell not. That sounds amazing, and I could use a night off from the kitchen.”

Ridge nodded, then stood up and set his chair back where it had been. Before he reached the door, he turned and cast Adele a hesitant look. “So, you, Gage, and…your friend, right?”

“Yeah. Kash’ll be home,” Adele said. Everyone was walking on eggshells around him, and he was starting to hate it. He knew Kash had to detest it, but he was also keeping himself out of everyone’s line of sight, no matter how hard they tried to include him. “I’ll make sure he comes down for dinner.”

“Sweet. We’re both off tomorrow. You cool if I bring Ina?”

“Always,” Adele said. “And I expect to see her more when I’m suffering from an empty nest.”

“You can play grandpa. Get some practice in,” Ridge said with a wink, then let himself out before Adele could throw something at him.

It was one thing to label himself a pop pop. He wasn’t wrinkled enough or grey enough for the rest of the world to see him that way, damn it.

“Honey, I’m hoooome.”

“In here, dearest,” came a voice from the living room. It was familiar, but it didn’t belong to his son or to Kash.

Adele poked his head around the corner and smiled when he saw Lucas sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table with a big white sheet laid out over it. He recognized the braille D&D map he and Gage had been working on for the last six months.

“Is my wayward son home?”

Lucas wrinkled his nose. “He went outside to take a call. He and that douche are fighting again, and I told him to take that crap outside so I don’t have to hear about it for the thousandth time.”

Adele sighed. For a while, he thought Lucas and Gage were going to fall apart as friends. It had been glaringly obvious Lucas had a massive crush on Gage, but his son’s taste in partners was…not the best.

Adele was really hoping it was growing pains or some sort of learning curve he was developing.

Luckily, Lucas had gotten over his crush because Gage was on his third boyfriend in half a year and probably on the verge of another breakup, and Adele was grateful he didn’t have to be the one comforting him for dating jackasses. He’d quietly celebrate that he wouldn’t have to worry about shit going wrong when Gage went off to school.

“Wanna make an ice cream bet on how many days this’ll go on until he calls it quits?” Adele asked.

Lucas stuck his hand out, not quite in the direction of Adele, so he adjusted his stance for him. “I call three days.”

“Do you know something I don’t?” Adele asked before shaking on it.

Lucas shook his head with a laugh. “Just working on my statistics game. Or patterns? I never remember which is which. I got a C minus in statistics last year.”

“I cheated my way through all my math classes,” Adele told him, and he took Lucas’s hand, giving it a firm shake. “I’m going with tomorrow night.”

Lucas wrinkled his nose. “I’m working.”

“That’s okay. I’ll stop by the store and grab some Jamocha Fudge pints, and you can come by after. Relieve me of my shift.”

“What shift? Dude, do not go work for my dad,” came Gage’s voice from behind them.

Adele stepped aside to give his son room to move past him as Lucas snorted. “Bruh, like they’d hire me there?”

“I would totally hire you,” Adele said. “But I couldn’t let you drive the truck. ”

“Donuts in the parking lot?” Lucas bartered.

Adele rubbed his chin. “Maybe in the SUV.”

“Does it have sirens?”

Adele laughed. “Yeah, bud. Loud ones.”

“I’m sold. When do I start?”

“Come by the day after your birthday, and we’ll talk. Though your dad might actually kill me if I let you work at the station. He’s still pissed Kylen lets you fly.”

Lucas huffed. “I thought he’d be less annoying once he got the stick out of his ass and got some dick up there, but?—”

“Bruh! You’re talking to my dad,” Gage protested, looking horrified.

Lucas shrugged. “Your dad, not mine. It’s not weird when I say it to him.”

“He’s practically your dad. And you’re talking about yours and his ass. Weird, okay. Just…weird.”

“Stop being Amish.”

“What does that even mean ?”

Adele clapped his hands for silence. “Boys! Continue this without me. But for what it’s worth, I don’t care what Bronx puts up his ass as long as he’s being safe. You would not believe the calls I’ve gotten over the years when people decided random objects belonged up there.”

Lucas cackled, and Gage paled. “I hate you,” his son moaned.

Adele smiled back sweetly. “You wish you could. Have fun, you two. Hey, write something into your campaign about rescuing a guy who found a phallic-shaped wand and decided to have some fun and failed.”

“ Yes !”

“ No !”

Adele left them with that and headed down the hall, pausing by Kash’s room. The door was cracked open, which was his usual invite. Taking a breath, Adele pushed inside and found Kash sitting up on his bed with his laptop balanced on his knees.

“You’re going to go broke from his therapy bills,” Kash said.

Adele grinned, even as his breath caught in his chest at the sight of his friend. Kash was so beautiful. He always had been, but he was aging like the finest wine. He had lines on his face that only accentuated his sharp cheekbones and defined jaw. His eyes looked wider, his hair thicker and a little coarser, and his facial hair was a constant five-o’clock shadow.

The only thing Adele hated was the line of tension in his face and the fact that Kash was losing weight. Eating got hard for him sometimes. His dystonia was mostly in his legs and sometimes his hands, but every now and again, his throat didn’t want to work well. He’d lose his ability to speak above a whisper, and he was too afraid to try swallowing.

Adele’s heart sank when he realized that Kash’s left hand was in a tight fist. He walked to the bed and helped himself to the empty space beside Kash, taking his curled fist, and he began to massage the heel of his palm.

“Thank you,” Kash whispered after a long moment of silence.

Adele’s thumbs worked at the impossibly stiff muscle. “How long has it been like this?”

Kash closed his eyes and knocked his head against the headboard. “Since I woke up. My fingers started to release a little while ago, but then I had a full-body spasm, and they tightened back up.”

Adele wanted to kiss his wrist, his knuckles, his jaw, his lips. In another world, he might have. For now, he shifted a little closer and continued rubbing. This didn’t usually work, but Kash was honest when it said it helped his body feel better, and Adele would do this until he collapsed if it meant being able to give his friend some relief.

“How was work, dear?” Kash asked after a long beat of silence.

Adele grinned and laid his head on Kash’s shoulder. “Good. Boring. No calls today. Oh, and Ridge is coming over tomorrow to cook us dinner.”

“Like a date?”

Adele tried to read his tone, but it sounded neutral. Maybe too neutral? Was he hiding something? No, that was wishful thinking. “More like he thinks I’m a pathetic, lonely loser who’s going to be alone when my son moves out of the house, and he wants to make sure I’m being taken care of.”

Kash snorted. “I’ve been on you about that for years.”

“Yes, thank you. You two have a very cool club,” Adele snarked back.

Kash grinned and turned his head, pressing a kiss to Adele’s hair. “That’s sweet of him. Maybe you can save me some leftovers.”

Adele lifted his head. “He’s cooking us dinner, Kash. Me, you, Gage. Please meet him. It’s not a dad thing.”

Kash had been repeatedly invited to dad events, which he’d turned down, stating he wasn’t one. And he fought back every time Adele implied that he was an honorary one for how much Kash had always loved Gage the way a father should. He’d made an appearance at a few of the afternoon lunch events when Adele was barbequing, but nothing more than that .

Adele braced himself for a fight, but he wasn’t going to let Kash win this one.

Kash bit his lip, but right when Adele thought he was going to say no, he nodded. “As long as my hands are cooperating and I can hold a fork, count me in.”

“Thank you,” Adele said.

He didn’t tell Kash why it was important to him. He didn’t say that he wanted Kash to feel like this was everything so he never left again.

That would be too much.

Instead, he fell into a comfortable silence and enjoyed the time he was allowed to have before Kash caught on and put a stop to Adele’s miserable pining.