by J. M. Snyder
“No, you check,” Braden said, shaking his head. “Daddy, you, too. No birds or animals in our tree.”
“Got it.” Remy nodded down the steps that led off the back porch to the frost-encrusted grass. “Lead the way.”
Braden took charge, marching through the brittle grass and frozen mud, Remy a step behind him, and Lane bringing up the rear. He had tried to swing the axe over his shoulder, thinking that would enhance his look, but it hurt his arm and he ended up dragging it behind him, instead. More caveman than Marlboro man, unfortunately. Still, after a few minutes Remy stopped and leaned back when Lane came up to him, pressing against him to whisper, “You sexy thing, you.”
“Yeah, you say that now,” Lane teased. “Just keep that in mind when you’re rushing me to the emergency room with blood gushing out of my leg.”
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” Remy asked. “You said your dad—”
“He’s done this,” Lane said. “Not me. You want someone to chop down a tree for you who’s done it a time or two, give him a call. This is going to be my first time.”
Remy winked. “A virgin, eh?”
“A virgin what?” Braden asked. At some point he had noticed his father was no longer behind him and come back, unwilling to leave Remy and Lane alone. Taking Remy’s hand, Braden tugged at him to put some distance between them. “A virgin what, Dad?”
“This is going to be Lane’s first tree,” Remy said. “Stop pulling on me. Did you pick one out yet.”
“There’s one up ahead I like. Come on.” Braden edged around Remy to push his father’s behind and start them moving again.
At first Lane thought it cute the boy was in-between them—maybe he was starting to come around. Then Lane noticed he wasn’t trying to hang out with both of them; he was widening the gap between them, keeping Remy and him apart! “Hey,” he started.
“Here!” Braden cried. He rushed ahead of Remy and raced to a blue spruce that towered over him but barely came above his father’s head. He grabbed the nearest branches and shook them. “This one, this one!”
Remy grinned at Lane. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re the one who has to climb inside and check for animals,” Lane said. “I have the axe, remember? I’m cutting it down.”
“He wanted both of us to look,” Remy pointed out.
“You’re his father,” Lane countered. “I think he’ll trust you.”
Remy gave Lane an annoyed smirk. “He said—”
“I trust you, Dad!” Braden called, obviously listening in on their conversation. “Come on, come look!”
Leaning in close to Lane, Remy whispered, “I’m getting you back for this tonight.”
“Oh, really?” Lane flashed his lover an innocent smile and repeated, “I have the axe.”
“Are you bringing it to bed?” Remy asked. “I mean, if you want to get kinky…”
Braden interrupted again. “Da-aad! Come on already!”
Lane blew Remy a kiss. “You have a tree to inspect.”
* * * *
In the end, Lane was surprised at how easy it was to cut down the tree. Then again, it wasn’t a towering specimen, and he’d seen enough shows on the Discovery Channel to get the gist of it. Remy even hollered out, “Timber!,” though the tree hit the ground before he got the whole word out. Lane remembered seeing his father trim down the base of the trunk a little, angling it to make it fit in the tree stand, so he did that, as well, then stood back and leaned on the axe. “There you go. One Christmas tree.”
“It isn’t decorated,” Braden said.
“It isn’t even inside yet,” Remy told him. Grimacing at Lane, he asked, “How do we get it inside?”
Lane shrugged. “I don’t know. Drag it?”
“By myself?” Remy asked.
Lane patted the wooden handle he leaned against. “I have the axe, remember?”
But he helped out, and somehow, between the three of them, they manhandled the tree back to the cabin. A few of the branches broke in the process, but Lane chopped them off and turned that part of the tree around towards the wall so no one would see the bald spots. Under the tree skirt in the main room, they found a tree stand ready to be filled with water. Together, he and Remy lifted the tree into place, while Braden shouted at them when it leaned too far one way or the other.
Hours seemed to pass before the kid was satisfied with the tree’s placement. Remy stepped back, wiping his hands on his sweatshirt. “Looks good,” he announced. “Let’s decorate it when we get back.”
“Back from where?” Lane held his dirty hands out at his sides; they were coated in sap, and he swore he could feel pine needles inside his shirt. He wanted nothing more than a hot shower and maybe another cup of coffee. What did Remy have in mind?
“From the store?” Remy asked, as if Lane should’ve known.
Right, shit. The store they meant to stop at the night before, only they had been running late. Well, they did stop at Wal-Mart in Roanoke, but only for essentials. They needed a lot more groceries if they hoped to last a full two weeks out in the woods. “Damn,” Lane swore softly.
Remy frowned. “What?”
Lane’s arms ached from swinging the axe and lugging the tree inside. He was sticky with sap and tired—already he’d done more physical labor in a few hours than he had all year. “Do we have to?” he asked. “I’m whupped.”
“Well, I could take Braden…” Remy glanced at his son, who was grinning madly. “But what are you going to do?”
“Wash up first,” Lane said. “Then maybe decorate the tree. I can wrap some presents, get that out of the way. Oh! That reminds me…”
Lane looked at Braden, then at Remy, who covered his son’s ears with both hands. “What’s that?” he asked.
Even though Remy kept Braden turned away, Lane still whispered. “I don’t have a gift for him.”
“Take one of Kate’s,” Remy told him. “He’ll never know. Just don’t take the Wii U, that’s mine.”
Braden had been watching his father’s face, and now yelled, “Which one’s yours?”
“Look who has superhuman hearing,” Remy remarked. He steered Braden toward the door. “Go on outside for a minute, will you? We’re going to the store.”
“Yipee!” Braden crowed. He flung open the cabin door and clomped out onto the porch, then stopped. “Hey, Dad, which store? Can I get—”
Remy shut the door between them, then turned and leaned against it. With a smoldering look in his eye, he caught Lane’s hand in his and reeled his lover closer. “Kiss me,” he murmured.
Lane pressed against Remy’s, pinning him in place. “Or what?” he teased.
“Or I’m going to beg,” Remy said with a sigh. He stared at Lane’s lips, the hunger in his eyes naked and bare.
Lane kept his distance, but only thus. His breath fanned Remy’s cheek; he felt it breeze back his way. His lover’s scent filled Lane’s senses, a heady rush of wildness and cold and a sensual musk all Remy’s own. He could practically feel the peach-skin fuzz on Remy’s jaw tickle his own, and when he parted his lips, he knew just how sweet Remy would taste.
But when Remy moved towards him, Lane pulled back. Just an inch, nothing more.
Remy pouted as prettily as Braden had been doing on and off all morning. “Don’t make me beg,” he whispered.
Trailing a hand up under Remy’s sweatshirt, Lane rubbed his lover’s belly. “Tell me what you want me to do to you,” Lane murmured.
“Kiss me,” Remy said, leaning in towards him again. But when Lane pulled away, he sighed. “Damn it! Stand still, will you?”
On the other side of the door, Braden knocked. “Dad? Aren’t we going to the store?”
“In a minute,” Remy shouted back. Lowering his voice, he said, “If someone will stop fucking around and kiss me already.”
Lane plunged in, covering Remy’s mouth with his. His tongue dove between Remy’s lips, insistent, greedy. Demanding. It was a
deep kiss, knee-weakening. Remy moaned beneath him, surrendering. Lane kissed his lover back against the door with a brusque buss that sparked every nerve in his body and left Remy breathless when he stepped back.
It was a good thing Remy was taking Braden out of the cabin for a little bit. Lane had a date with his hand and a washcloth in the shower. “I’ll think of you when I come,” he murmured.
Remy whimpered. “Can’t we just give him the keys and let him go to the store by himself?”
Chapter 9
Alone with his son in the front seat of Lane’s Jeep, Remy mulled over the first morning the three of them had spent together. There had been more laughter than the night before, that was for sure, but Braden still seemed a little moody around Lane. Remy wondered if Lane was right, and Braden was mad because he had seen the two men kissing in Kate’s kitchen. Would that be enough to spoil his mood and turn him against Lane before they were even properly introduced?
Remy thought maybe it was.
He tried to imagine how he would have felt at Braden’s age, but it was difficult to do. Not only was his childhood so far in his past that it was hard for him to recall ever feeling any different than he did now as an adult, but because his parents had been married. He had never lived with just his mother and only seen his father on weekend visits. He had never seen anyone other than his mother kissing his father, and when they did it in public, he was no more angry or embarrassed than other kids were when their parents showed affection to each other.
Braden knew Remy and Kate both loved him very much—they told him often enough—but that they no longer loved each other. It had taken Kate a while to get back into dating, but in his son’s mind, Remy must have never appeared to be seeing anyone. There were no other women he brought around, no one he introduced as a “special friend,” no indication that Remy had a life outside of his son’s until yesterday. Until Lane.
Was it because Lane was another guy that Braden was so upset? With gay rights always in the news anymore, he didn’t understand how anyone could still be shocked to discover two men dating. But at eight, Remy hadn’t paid attention to current events—he couldn’t recall any one thing that had happened when he was that age. His earliest memory of watching the news on TV with his family was when the Challenger exploded, but he was twelve when that happened. Sixth grade. He was home from school with the chicken pox, and his father had called his mother from work to tell her to turn on the television. When Remy went back to school the following week, they had an assembly with a real, live astronaut to explain the disaster to the children.
But he couldn’t recall anything before that. At least, nothing newsworthy. If he looked the year 1982 up online, he might could find something that would jog his memory, but he wouldn’t be sure it had been something he remembered when it happened or something he’d learned later as an adult.
Still, Remy had hoped his son would be more accepting of him. He didn’t want to say his lifestyle, because being bisexual wasn’t a way of life; it was life. For as far back as he could remember, he had always been attracted to both genders. It wasn’t until college that he really felt comfortable exploring his gay side, but it had always been there. If he closed his eyes, he could recall in vivid detail the hunky Pierce Chester, a towering tight end on his high school varsity football team, who Remy knew only in passing and on whom he had had a fierce, adolescent crush.
The one time Pierce actually touched him, Remy almost swooned. It had been on the stairs at the end of the language hall, and a couple of football players were rough housing on the landing between the two flights. Students heading to class edged around them, but before Remy could get out of the way, someone shoved Pierce right into him. Remy had tottered on the top step, and would’ve fallen if Pierce hadn’t turned and grabbed his arm in a crushing grip. “Whoa, dude,” Pierce had said, giving Remy a hearty shove across the landing. “You’re okay, huh? We cool?”
Oh, hell yes, they had been cool. Remy even came a little at that moment, and for months afterward, he jerked off to the memory of Pierce’s hand on his arm, and the one-sided smile Pierce had given him before turning back to the other jocks. The first guy Remy ever hooked up with at a college frat party had actually looked a little like Pierce—same Neanderthal brow, same quarterback shoulders, same death grip. Then he realized there was truth to the rumor that steroids shrunk a man’s penis, or maybe the additional bulk above the waist just made everything below look smaller. Whatever the reason, Remy quickly discovered he liked his men to be big where it counted, and couldn’t care less for a muscled chest or arms or legs if there wasn’t enough to hold on to at the crotch. It put him off men for a little while, and he’d started fooling around with women. Met Kate, had Braden, and the rest, as they say, was history.
Which was how he found himself driving down an almost empty interstate in his boyfriend’s Jeep with his young son sulking in the passenger seat beside him. If it was the kiss he had shared with Lane in Kate’s kitchen that was bothering Braden, Remy knew he had to address it sooner or later. Over the course of the next two weeks, Braden was bound to see them kiss again, and Remy wasn’t about to be judged by his own son.
Maybe it was a good thing Lane had stayed back at the cabin. Maybe this time alone with Braden would be the perfect opportunity to bring it up.
* * * *
Without realizing it, Remy had navigated his way back to the interstate and was headed for Roanoke. It wasn’t far, and a one-stop shop like Wal-Mart would allow him to get back on the road again quicker than if he stopped at several stores for everything he needed. It was the Saturday before Christmas, though, and Wal-Mart was going to be a madhouse.
Then again, he assured himself, most anywhere would be crazy this time of the year. Best to buck up and get it over with. Once they had enough food and supplies to last them, neither he nor Lane would have to venture far from the cabin until it was time to head home.
Beside him, Braden stared silently out the passenger side window. Remy tried to think of something to jumpstart a conversation, but didn’t want to just blurt out something like, “Why don’t you like Lane?” That would put his son on the defense, and Remy didn’t want to deal with Braden’s attitude in addition to the traffic at the store.
Finally, he settled on, “That was a really nice tree you picked out for us.”
Braden looked at him and grinned. “I can’t wait to see it all lit up.”
“It’s going to look pretty on Christmas Day,” Remy agreed, “after Santa’s been down the chimney.”
With a tilt of his head, Braden gave Remy a sardonic stare. “Dad, I’m eight. I know Santa’s not real. I just go along with that for Mom’s sake.”
Childhood innocence, my ass, Remy thought. “That’s too bad,” he said out loud, “because little boys who don’t believe in Santa Claus no longer get Santa gifts.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe,” Braden said quickly. “I just said he’s not real.”
Remy shook his head, confused by his son’s logic. Changing track, he asked, “Do you think you’ve been good enough to get Santa gifts this year?”
“Yeah.” Holding up his hand, Braden started counting on his fingers. “I told the teacher when Billy Mitchell stole my scissors in art class instead of punching him in the nose.”
Remy stifled a grin. “Okay, so that’s one.”
“I hold Mrs. Tetchley’s hand in church every Sunday,” Braden said, holding up a second finger, “even though she pinches my fingers and smells like moth balls.”
Remy wondered if these occurrences had been enumerated to Kate at some point to prove he’d been a good boy. If so, he wondered how she had managed to keep a straight face.
Braden continued. “Three, I cleaned my room every time Mommy asked, except for one time during the summer, when I sort of forgot.”
“Sort of,” Remy said, amused.
“Four, I don’t use bad words ever.” Braden brandished his four fingers in triumph. “And
…and I told on Uncle Mike when he said the H-word at Denny’s when they brought him bacon instead of sausage.”
It took Remy a moment to figure out what the “H-word” might be—had he ever considered hell a bad word? And what kind of man liked sausage over bacon? Kate had strange tastes, indeed.
Before Braden could go any farther, listing off imaginary reasons why he deserved gifts at Christmas, Remy held out his thumb and started his own count-down. “I don’t know, kid. You’ve been a little naughty lately, too. One, yesterday when I picked you up. Two, last night at McDonald’s when you didn’t say squat. Three, this morning, ignoring Lane when he asked you something.”
Braden’s face fell and Remy recognized the look of sullen defiance that clouded his eyes. Crossing his arms in front of his chest, he put his feet on the dashboard and glared at the road ahead. Quietly, he muttered, “But I was good before that.”
Now was the time to ask, “Why don’t you like him?”
Braden didn’t respond. Remy glanced at him and, when he realized his father was looking, he sort of shrugged like he didn’t know.
“Come on,” Remy cajoled. “You can tell me.”
“You’ll get mad,” Braden said.
“Well, I won’t be happy,” Remy conceded. “But I won’t get angry with you.”
Braden hunched down in his seat, unconvinced.
“Look, Brae, I won’t get mad,” Remy said.
He almost didn’t hear his son ask, “You promise?”
“I promise.”
For a long moment, Braden didn’t respond. Remy waited. The traffic on the interstate was fairly light, though he was sure it would get heavier as the day went on. People traveling to see relatives, running out to the stores for last-minute gifts, trying to get everything done in time for Christmas. Remy tried to remember if he had asked Lane not to put away his things. Normally, he wouldn’t mind his lover going through his duffle bags, but he didn’t want Lane to find the ring. Was it well-hidden? If Lane took it upon himself to unpack their clothes, would he find it accidentally?
