Night by Night

by Tymber Dalton

  One he felt like a gigantic fucking asshole for almost being…eager to implement.

  After he released Hank, he followed him down the hall to JJ’s room, where Hank took a deep breath before opening her door and going in.

  She opened her eyes. “Hi, Daddy.”

  Maddox hung back in the doorway, watching as Hank knelt next to her bed and leaned in to kiss her forehead. “Hey, sweetheart. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you this afternoon.”

  “It’s okay. Uncle Dox took care of me. We told them he’s my step-dad.”

  Maddox remained quiet and carefully watched Hank for any sign he was going to freak out so he could step in and take over if he did.

  “He kinda is, isn’t he?” Hank said as he stroked her forehead. “I’m going to take off from work tomorrow and go with you and Dox to the appointment. I want to talk to the doctor myself.”

  “He said it might be die beetles.”

  Maddox couldn’t hold back his snort. “Diabetes.”

  “I don’t want to miss gymnastics tomorrow,” she groused. “We’re supposed to start learning balance beam.”

  “Miss June told me she’d help you make it up, honey,” Maddox said. “You’ll be caught up in no time.”

  When Hank looked up at him, his haunted gaze drew Maddox over to the bed, where he helped him to his feet. “You rest some more, sweetie,” Maddox told JJ. “I’ll have dinner ready soon, and Daddy needs a shower.”

  She smiled. “Daddy’s stinky.”

  “Yeah, he is.” Maddox turned him and steered him out the door and into their bedroom, where Hank started crying as soon as the door closed behind them.

  “What am I going to do?” he tearfully whispered.

  Maddox pulled him in for a hug. “You’re going to breathe and let me take charge of this. You focus on keeping calm for her, because that’s what’s best for her. We’ll take this day by day. It might not be that.”

  “But he thinks it is?”

  “Yeah, he does.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “Then they teach us what to do next.” He didn’t want to overwhelm Hank with an info dump.

  Like that they’d be referring them immediately to a pediatric endocrinologist, among other specialists. That they’d also want her eyes checked, follow-ups with other doctors, like a cardiologist, to get baselines so they could monitor her for any potential damage by the disease. That they’d need to go to a dietician, at first, and take classes to help learn how to manage it, and how to give her shots and check her blood sugar and and and…

  That night, once they got her put to bed and they went to bed early, too, Maddox knew Hank wasn’t doing well at all. He tried to quietly cry where he lay on his side facing away from Maddox, but he could hear his soft sniffles.

  It broke his heart, but he didn’t want to push too hard. Not yet. Once they had confirmation, then he could step in and totally take over. It was what would be best for JJ.

  Fortunately, everyone’s offices were located in the Proctor-Collins Medical Center complex, meaning they could walk to all the appointments once they arrived. No driving back and forth all over Sarasota.

  The next afternoon, after a morning spent getting the lab work done, and more time as an urgent referral in other doctors’ offices, and going to the pharmacy, and talking to physician’s assistants and a dietician—there was a confirmation. A consensus.

  A diagnosis.

  A preliminary plan of treatment.

  Maddox worried about Hank, so he handled doing all the talking and taking notes and asking questions while Hank held JJ and listened while wearing a wide-eyed look of shock.

  He didn’t let Hank handle any of the paperwork or see the bills, either. Yes, he was hitting credit cards and dipping into his own savings to make the payments, but there wasn’t another option and he wouldn’t let Hank raid JJ’s savings account for it.

  Best just to keep him out of this part of the process. Hank was having a difficult enough time digesting all the info coming at them hard and fast.

  Later that evening, after dinner and getting JJ put to bed, Hank finally crumbled. Despair washed over his face. “I’ve got less than eight hundred dollars in the damn bank right now,” he numbly said. “That was how much all those medications and stuff were today. I saw the pharmacy bill. We don’t have a fucking place to live. I don’t have health insurance for me or for her. I have a car payment now, and higher auto insurance. I’m not going to be able to get any kind of health insurance through work for weeks yet. What the hell am I going to do?” He struggled against his tears. “I don’t want to raid her savings account!”

  Dox reached for his arm. “Dude, please listen to me. To start with, you do have a place to live—here, with me.”

  “I…I…” Hank looked like he couldn’t focus on anything. He brushed the tears out of his eyes. “This isn’t what you signed up for, man. I can’t ask you to let us live here indefinitely. I…” Hank let out a ragged sigh. “Fuck my life. I take two steps forward and twenty back no matter what I try.”

  Hank headed for the bedroom, leaving the door standing open behind him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Maddox followed Hank to their bedroom, where he softly closed the door behind him and locked it. If JJ awoke and needed them, she’d knock.

  Right now, he was worried about Hank.

  Desperately worried.

  Hank had ended up sitting on the edge of the bed, head bowed, shoulders shaking as he softly sobbed.

  It broke Maddox’s heart.

  I have to do this.

  Hank had hit his breaking point, his rock bottom.

  He was broken.

  “What am I going to do?” Hank hoarsely whispered. “How am I supposed to take care of her?”

  Maddox walked over and sat next to him on the bed. Hank offered no resistance when Maddox draped his left arm around his shoulders and pulled him over, so his head lay in Maddox’s lap. Hank ended up with his legs on the bed, literally curled into a fetal position with Maddox’s arm around him.

  “Remember the night of the sinkhole, how we talked after I got you both back here and settled in?” Maddox softly asked. “How you said you owed me?” He hated approaching it like this but knew it was the only way. He had to think about what was best for JJ.

  That it dovetailed perfectly with his own hopes and dreams was the only bright point in this whole mess.

  “Yeah?”

  Maddox reached down with his right hand and brushed Hank’s hair away from his face. He kept his voice soft, but firm. “I’m calling that in. Right now. You and I will go to the county clerk’s office first thing in the morning and get a marriage license. Tomorrow’s Wednesday, and I think there’s a three-day wait to actually get married, so we’ll probably have to go back Monday to do that. You’re going to marry me, I’ll put both of you on my health insurance immediately, and I’ll adopt JJ as my daughter. We’ll raise her together.”

  Hank froze, looking up at him, but didn’t pull away, didn’t immediately argue.

  Maddox waited him out.

  “What?” Hank finally asked.

  Maddox threaded his fingers through Hank’s hair. “You heard me, buddy. I’m taking over. This is how it’s going to be.” He gently fisted Hank’s hair. “All you have to do is say yes, and I’ll take things from there. No more fighting through this alone.” With his left arm still draped around Hank’s body he tightened his grip on his friend, his love.

  His.

  Hank finally rolled over in Maddox’s lap to stare up at him with those gorgeous blue eyes. “Really?”

  “Really. You want to pay me back? You do this for me. Marry me.” Maddox laced fingers with him. “At the risk of borking what we have, I need to confess something to you.”

  Maddox swallowed back his fear but knew he couldn’t start their marriage with a lie and ever hope to really have what he wanted with Hank.

  “I’ve always loved you. I’ve always been in l
ove with you. I’m bi. I’ve had relationships with men and women. But I was afraid I might scare you away if I told you how much I was crushing on you back then. So I kept it to myself. I love you, I’m in love with you, and I really want to marry you. I get that you don’t feel like that for me, and that’s okay. I don’t even care. All I care about is taking care of you, and taking care of JJ. If this is the only way I can have you, I’ll be happy to have it. I love her like a daughter, so let her be my daughter. No one can take either of you away from me then.”

  * * * *

  Hank’s brain had pretty much hit blue-screen status and he knew it. He was beyond functioning. Thank god for Dox, for him being there today, for him taking over.

  The hits had kept coming, and it felt like Dox had stepped between Hank and life and was taking the blows for him so he could fucking take a goddamned breath.

  He stared up into those brown eyes and tried to…process.

  JJ loved Dox already. Even better, she trusted him.

  Hell, he fucking trusted him.

  It took him a moment to pull enough brain cells and breath together to form speech. “All those nights together when we were younger…”

  Dox sadly smiled. “You have no idea how many times I laid there next to you and listened to you breathing and felt desperate to beat off. More than a few times I went into the bathroom and did it, just so I could fucking sleep. Made the few times we did that together particularly good for me.”

  Dox stroked Hank’s hair, massaged his scalp, and it felt so goddamned good that Hank’s eyes nearly dropped closed.

  “And…now?” Hank asked.

  Dox sighed. “I know you’re straight, buddy. I mean it—I don’t even care about that. I don’t care if you don’t love me like that. It’s okay. I won’t expect anything from you. This is about me being able to take care of the two of you. I can do this thing, right now. I’ve got damned good health insurance. All we have to do is get a piece of paper for us, so I can fill out another piece of paper, and we can get her everything she needs. Nothing else has to change between us, if you don’t want it to. I can’t sit here watching you drown and not save you. This is bigger than me and my feelings—this is about JJ and her life and her health.”

  Dox was right—it was bigger than both of them. And it wasn’t like he was dating or anything.

  Crap, he didn’t want to. Every day since he’d been living there, he’d looked forward to coming home—

  To Dox.

  “Please,” Maddox softly begged. “Let me take care of you both.”

  Hank pushed himself up into a sitting position and found himself eye-to-eye with Maddox. Hank nervously swallowed, licked his lips, and didn’t miss how Maddox watched him do it like he was entranced or something.

  No one had ever looked at him like that before.

  With hunger in their eyes.

  If he thought back to when they were teenagers, he remembered catching a glimpse now and then of Maddox watching him if they were working out in the yard shirtless, or swimming, or—

  Honestly?

  This last hit had finished taking his legs out from under him.

  Hank knew he had nothing left in him with which to fight, and he was lying to himself if he tried to say otherwise. He was…tired. Exhausted.

  Done.

  “Okay,” Hank whispered before he lost his nerve.

  Fierce triumph flashed across Maddox’s face and he tipped his head forward, forehead-to-forehead with Hank now, his hand coming to rest on the back of Hank’s head.

  “I love you, buddy,” Maddox said, sounding vulnerable in a way Hank had never heard him sound before, like he’d opened the depths of his soul and laid it bare before him. “Even if it means I can only love you like this, that’s okay. Because at least I’m taking care of you, of both of you. That’s what true love’s really about—taking care of each other. Taking care of the people you love.”

  Hank didn’t want to move. His mind struggled to make sense of the confusion and emotions swirling through him with every one of them simultaneously battling for his attention.

  When they were growing up, Maddox had always taken care of him, bigger, older, and able to stand up for him. He’d always followed Dox’s lead, let him make the decisions, felt happy to follow in his wake. Dox had been the popular one, the smart one.

  Dox had always put himself between Hank and bullies, because back then Hank had been a skinny damn twig and Dox had two inches and about thirty pounds on him.

  Until this moment, he didn’t realize how much he’d truly missed all that. Dox watching out for him, having his back. Helping him study, worried about him passing tests—

  All of it.

  For the first time in his adult life, he also realized he’d never had someone to take care of him. After leaving Florida, he’d always been the caretaker, stepping in when their parents were killed so Lois could continue school. Stepping in to take care of her after Cameron fucking beat her up, helping her get away from him.

  Stepping in to be a father to his niece and taking care of both of them.

  Then truly becoming JJ’s father, spending the last couple of years as a single dad.

  How many nights before moving to Florida had he cried himself to sleep because he felt panic threatening to strangle the breath from his lungs? Trying to put on a strong front for JJ so she didn’t worry, trying to be strong and comfort her even when he felt like he was tap-dancing on paper-thin ice with his arms full of dynamite? Waiting until he was in the shower or until after she’d gone to bed so he could secretly cry, sitting there silently wailing with his arms wrapped around himself as he rocked, trying to soothe himself.

  Always feeling like he was faking it. Wondering how the hell everyone else was a functioning adult, and here he was, stumbling around and barely able to keep his shit together.

  The crushing loneliness. Being terrified to let anyone in emotionally when he was living in Pennsylvania, because he was worried whether or not they were connected to Cameron’s family.

  Before he could think about it too much, he reached up and cupped the back of Maddox’s head, the way Maddox was holding him, mirroring him.

  “What do you need from me?” Hank asked. “Right now?”

  He realized the sudden brightness in Maddox’s eyes was from tears he struggled to blink back. “Just for you to say yes.” He didn’t move his hand from the back of Hank’s head, or his other arm, where it still curled around Hank. “Please marry me.”

  Where Hank’s hair had a slight natural curl to it, looking shaggy and unkempt if he let it get too long, Maddox’s brown hair felt straight and fine and soft under his fingers.

  He met and held Maddox’s brown gaze for a long moment, saw the flecks of amber and chocolate there.

  Took a moment to process how most of the voids in his life had been filled with memories of this man, and of missing him, even when Maddox wasn’t consciously on his mind.

  Missing the relationship they’d had.

  Missing their friendship.

  The trust.

  The thought of giving in and letting go to this man filled his brain with a sweet, quiet peace that called to him.

  There was no other choice he wanted to make.

  “Yes. Yes…Sir?”

  A ragged laugh escaped Maddox and he cupped Hank’s face in both his hands, their foreheads still pressed together. “I won’t make you call me that. You don’t have to do any of that if you don’t want to. I’ll never force you to do anything you don’t want to do. I mean it. Even if we never have anything other than this moment like this, buddy. Even if all we are is friends who live together and are married.”

  Hank took a long, slow breath and let it out again. “What if I…want to? What if I want to try it? What if I’m done pretending I’m a functioning adult and I admit I need a…need an owner?” He took a deep breath. “What if I want to be with you as more than just friends?”

  Maddox’s thumb stroked Hank’s ch
eek. “Ever been with a guy before?”

  Hank shook his head a little, his heart racing, pounding in his chest. “I mean, just those times we…you know, jerked off together, but that’s it.”

  Was he really thinking about doing this?

  Hell, yeah, he was.

  It wasn’t like what he’d been doing was working for him anymore.

  Maybe it was time for him to try something different.

  Someone different.

  Someone he trusted, someone he knew would always have his back, no matter what.

  Someone who knew everything about him and not only stared back at him unflinchingly but who wanted to step up and take control and make things right.

  Someone JJ loved, and who loved her as much as he did.

  “I mean it,” Maddox said. “I don’t need this from you if you aren’t comfor—”

  Before he could lose his nerve, Hank pulled him in for a kiss. Dox’s deep, needy groan as he slanted his lips over Hank’s drove a spike of molten desire straight through Hank’s balls and into his cock.

  Desire on a scale he honestly could never remember feeling before.

  Their cheeks rasped against each other, both of them needing a shave. Their teeth clicked together but when Hank felt Maddox’s tongue sweep over them he met him there, tentatively at first. Both of them tentative.

  In a way, that reassured Hank, that he wasn’t the only one…nervous.

  He’d never felt anything like this before.

  Maddox’s fingers tightened around the back of his head, taking control as he lifted his lips from Hank’s.

  “I mean it—I don’t have to have this if you don’t want to do it.”

  “I want to try.”

  Dox studied his face for a long moment. “Then we take it slow. We take it night by night. We work our way through everything and don’t take each other for granted.”

  Hank nodded. “Yes, Sir.”

  “Rule one,” Maddox hoarsely said, “you do not lie to me. I need full honesty from you about everything. If anything about what we’re doing doesn’t work for you, I need you to talk to me about it. Say red or yellow, I don’t care what it’s for, so we can talk. I have zero interest in forcing you to do anything. Like I said, I still want to marry you, even if there’s no sex or play or anything other than friendship between us.