by Aiden Bates
"Hormones maybe?" Logan put an arm around him and kissed his cheek. "Plus, I think you're happy. Come on, Sam. Eat."
Sam took up his fork and ate the leftover gnocchi. "I am happy. I really am. I love this baby already." He didn't say what he wanted to say. He didn't point out that having Logan, his alpha, taking care of him like this was making him feel like he was floating on air. "Family was always this thing, growing up, you know?"
"I know you were in foster care."
Sam nodded. "They wouldn't let Silas just take custody after my dad took off, because he didn't have a steady job and had dropped out of high school. I bounced around all over the state. It kind of sucked. I won't bore you with the details." He waved a hand. "But it was always just me and Silas, you know? All these other people had families, except the other kids in care and even they were going back to something for the most part. I wasn't looking to get pregnant, I wasn't trying — you know that."
Logan petted Sam's hair, and he leaned into the touch. "I know. We both were careful."
"I guess I'm just… it's an opportunity for me, you know? It's been just us for so long, I'm happy that I have a chance to make it better, stronger, you know?" Sam took a big breath and tried to pull himself together. "Silas gave us this bar, and I've helped a lot with it. I'm giving us this baby, and he's going to help a lot with the baby."
Logan's smile was small but genuine. "I'm really glad that you guys have one another. But you're not going to be alone in this. I mean, you understand that, right? I'm going to be around. It's not going to be conventional, because I'm not willing to put you through what my mom went through. But I'm here for you and I'm here for the baby."
Sam nodded. "I'm not going to be your secret. And neither is this kid."
Logan tensed, but then he nodded. "I know." He blew out a harsh breath. "I get that. And I'm not going to ask you to be. I'm not going to bring you to the country club crap. I don't think you'd like that anyway."
"Nope." Sam shook his head. "But we're going to make this work. Together."
"Together."
Sam finished his gnocchi. When he was done, Logan took the dirty containers away and discarded them. He came back and wrapped Sam up in his arms. "So. A baby." He chuckled. "I've got to say, I think it's going to be a very good-looking kid."
Sam gave his lover a sleepy smile and snuggled up close, but he fell asleep too quickly for more than that. The combination of pregnancy-related fatigue and the warmth and safety of his alpha's arms were too much for him.
He woke a little while later, still in the same position. Someone had draped a blanket over him. He blamed Silas, since Logan was still in the same position he'd been in before.
Logan stroked his face. "You think you're ready to head to bed?"
Sam nodded and let his alpha lead him and Siena off to the bedroom. Logan stripped him down carefully and tucked him into bed, but he didn't do anything to try to arouse him. Instead, he crawled into bed beside him and held Sam in his arms.
Sam relaxed. "Are you going to head back to Portland tonight?"
Logan squeezed him tighter, just a little. "I figured I'd stay the night, if that's okay with you. You know, wrap our heads around this together."
Sam drowsed in Logan's arms, unable to resist the pull of comfort that he found there. There was something so right about this feeling that he never wanted it to end.
He and Logan had built their relationship on mutual attraction and lust. They'd progressed straight from "You represent everything I detest in the world, but you're hot," to "Bed. Naked. Now," in a few short weeks. They hadn't paused for much breath. Sam's omega friends talked about feeling sheltered with their alpha, feeling like they'd found a safe space and like they were protected from the world. Sam could honestly say that he understood that now.
They weren't traditional. They weren't going to be traditional. Quite frankly, Sam wasn't sure that he trusted Logan to still be around six months from now. He understood Logan's loyalty to his corporate bosses, even if he didn't think he could ever feel that way about a corporation himself. He understood Logan's need to build financial security for himself, and now for the baby too.
Sam could live with all of that. He would have to, but as he lay in the dark with his alpha's arms around him, it didn't feel like a hardship. He felt like they were going to build something very precious together, if only the right pieces fell into place.
***
Logan felt a thousand times better after he and Sam ironed things out about the baby. Everything wasn't settled, but they'd come to an agreement. Logan was going to be part of his child's life, and he wasn't necessarily going to lose Sam just yet. For now, that was going to have to be enough.
It was enough for Sam. He could see the weight lift off of Sam when Logan handed him the onesie. It meant that he was staying, that their child was going to have two parents. That was important to Sam. Logan didn't quite understand how Sam had wound up in foster care, only that his father suddenly wasn't in the picture anymore. Sam wouldn't say anything, but that early experience would have eaten at him just as much as the early experience of losing the house and the diner, and then his mom, had affected Logan. As they moved forward with their new lives and tried to build a family out of the tangled vines of their pasts, Logan could rest easy knowing that it was enough for Sam.
It was not enough for Silas. Silas' eyes burned into Logan like hot coals, every time they were together. Given that Sam wasn't moving out of the apartment he shared with his brother, Logan and Silas were together quite often, even though Logan didn't move into the apartment upstairs from the bar.
"He deserves better." Silas caught up to Logan about a week after the rapprochement. They were alone in the apartment while Sam closed up downstairs. Sam had given Logan his key earlier, so that he could get a head start on priming the walls in the room that would become the baby's room. Now Logan stood in the future nursery, with primer on his old jeans, and faced his child's uncle.
"I'm doing what I can, Silas." Logan shook his head and looked away. "Sam gets it. He's okay with what we have going on."
"Just because he accepts it doesn't mean that he doesn't deserve better." Silas picked up a roller and started to coat another wall in primer. "That kid is gold. He'd give the shirt off his back to anyone on the street, just because they asked. He deserves to be with someone who's going to be there and take care of him, not just someone who's going to be there when it's convenient. He deserves someone who's going to make a real commitment to him."
Logan glowered. "For someone who's got such strong opinions about what Sam deserves, I notice how you don't seem to have set him up with any alphas."
Silas sneered and rubbed at a bruised knuckle. "Hell no. None of them are good enough for my little brother. But at least one who was like us, who didn't have his heart set on belonging to a country club, would know how to treat him. There wouldn't be any of this nonsense about how they couldn't claim him because what if the other wives and omegas met him." He shook his head. "I mean, he tells me you love him, and I hear you say it, but that ain't love."
"By that same token, you don't love Kaylee." Logan turned to face his nemesis and crossed his arms over his chest. "I mean, it's not like you've proposed."
"It's not like she's pregnant either, ass face. And as it happens, there is a ring in my sock drawer."
Logan fumbled and almost dropped his roller. "Wait, what? You've barely known her for two months — not even!"
"Well, I haven't asked yet, have I?" Silas turned back to his wall. "Not the point. When the time is right, I'll ask. She might say yes, and she might not. The important thing is that I'm willing to make that kind of commitment to someone that I love. Because I'm a goddamn grownup and I show my appreciation to the people I care about. I don't leave them dangling like fish on freaking hooks."
"I'm not leaving him dangling like a fish on a hook, damn it. Do you think that I'm going to be able to support them if I lose my job? This is wh
at I do, what I went to college for. I manage restaurants. I need to work for a company like New England Restaurants if I want to make enough money to support them both. I can't do that if I don't fit in with the rest of the people in my position, can I?" The words rang hollow in his own ears, but he couldn't see any way out of his dilemma.
"That's crap. You think we don't have places to eat in Maine?" Silas scoffed.
"I think that the other places around here that are advertising for a general manger aren't looking for someone who does what I do. I'm not going to have my kid uprooted and chased out of his home because I couldn't cut the mustard and support him, okay?"
Silas' lip curled. "You're an idiot. Instead, you're going to make him watch as you treat him like a part-time thing in your life. And you're going to make him watch while his dad pines for you from afar. Yeah, that makes you father of the year right there."
Logan clenched his hand around the brush handle. "Look. You don't have to approve. Sam's okay with it, and it's all I'm able to give."
They didn't speak again until Sam got upstairs. If Sam noticed the tension between them, he didn't say anything.
October stretched on toward November, and Logan's gut burned more and more every night. He lost a waitress, Colette, because she couldn't make enough in tips to support herself. "A place like this, it's supposed to make up for the snooty customers in the pay, right?" She sighed and leaned against the door to his office. "And they're not stingy, not for the most part, but there just aren't enough of them."
"I know." Logan rubbed the heels of his palms into the space over his eyebrows. "It's been getting better, though. We've been getting more customers on the weekends, thanks to the ads. It'll get better."
"I don't think it will. Maybe if we offered some kind of coupon, but upscale places like this don't do coupons." She bit her lip. "I hate to do this, because I love this place and I love the staff. The food doesn't suck either. It doesn't pay enough for me to keep paying the sitter."
"I hear you." Logan shook her hand. "If things pick up again, I'll give you a call."
She pretended to believe him, and they promised to stay in touch even though they both knew that they wouldn't. Logan sat down to try to figure out logistics with one less waitress than they'd had before.
Colette had been right. They weren't bringing in enough to justify the expense of hiring on another waitress. He was thinking about letting one of the bartenders go too, since they got paid more and didn't bring in enough customers to make it worthwhile to keep them on. The only problem with not bringing in another waitress was that their customers expected a certain level of service for the money they paid, and they weren't getting it with a less than skeleton crew on board.
Complaints piled up. Logan listened to angry businessmen complain about the amount of time it took for their orders to come to their table. He listened to country club women complain about order mix-ups that overworked servers didn't notice on their way out to the tables. He listened to wealthy retirees complain about how long it took for them to get the check, and he listened to hipsters complain about the lack of apparent interest that the servers showed in keeping their complementary water topped up.
Those complaints led to more problems. For one thing, tips went down, because the first weapon that a disgruntled customer had to wield against a restaurant that didn't give them what they thought they were paying for was their wallets. They reduced their tips, or failed to leave them altogether. The low tipping led to near mutiny amongst the staff, and Logan had to dip into his personal savings to try to bring wages up to something that his workers could live on.
The other problem that hit Trattoria Siena as a result of the service hiccups was the bad reviews. Logan checked the trattoria's online reviews every day. When Trattoria Siena first opened, the reviews were generally positive. People said that it was a little on the small side and in a "developing" part of town, but that the food and atmosphere were delicious. They got the occasional disgruntled review here and there, but they were mostly tolerable.
Now the reviews were terrible, for the most part. "Delicious food that's mostly cold by the time it gets to your table," read one. "Waitstaff that's about as friendly as an ICE inspection," said another.
Utkin had gone back to Connecticut, but he still called every other day or so. "What the hell is going on up there, Logan? These reviews are terrible! And so are your receipts!"
"It's like an Ouroboros." Logan banged his head on the wall behind his chair. "Lack of tips lead to a lack of staff, which lead to lower service levels. Which made the customers angry, which you can see—"
"Right. The ad campaign did nothing?"
"It brought in a few customers." Logan bit down on his knuckle. He bitterly resented using Sam that way. "I think it would have brought in more under different circumstances. Half of the customers coming in wanted to come back on a night when the hot bartender was working." He couldn't help the little growl that rose up in his throat at that. Sam was his, damn it.
"Ouch." Utkin sniffed. "Any chance he'd come and work for you?"
"None." Logan considered telling his boss that Sam was pregnant, but held back at the last minute. He didn't know what Utkin would do with that information at this point. "He's not going to walk away from a place he owns to pour drinks for someone else, you know? That wouldn't make sense."
"He doesn't own that dump. He's what, eighteen?" Utkin scoffed and sipped something that Logan could hear through the phone. He hoped it was coffee.
"I think that if we re-opened with a different concept, maybe something a little more casual and exciting, there's money to be made here. The place next door doesn't sell food. If we offered something a little more unbuttoned, something that appealed to people out looking for a good time instead of to people looking for very upscale dining, I think we could probably attract people who might otherwise go to Joes. Or we might attract Joe's customers on their way in, and then send them on their way with a good meal in them."
Utkin cleared his throat noisily, and Logan knew that he'd overstepped his bounds. "Our market research ahead of time told us that the Portland market was ripe for an upscale Italian trattoria."
Logan did not tell Utkin that the market research had been conducted by drunken baboons. He did not point out that Westbrook was not Portland, either. He just punched his desk and heroically kept the sigh from his voice. "Unfortunately, I think the market hasn't developed this far out. An upscale eatery isn't going to work in Westbrook for another few years yet. I'd say maybe five."
"Hmm." Utkin's voice was contemplative. "I'm going to give some thought to what you said. It's possible that we could find a way to re-brand and turn this around, maybe think about a higher-end tapas place or gastro-pub."
"Yes, sir." Logan would take the victory if he could get it. He wasn't going to count on it, though.
One good thing did come out of the disaster. He laid off one of the bartenders, and chose the one who had served the drunks that Utkin had sent in to try to entrap the Marlowe brothers in the first place. The guy wasn't a bad guy, but he was a part-time employee and Logan needed to cut costs where he could. Laying him off would make him eligible for unemployment benefits.
Then he went over to Joe's. "I know that this guy pissed you off," he said, with the martini that Sam always made for him securely in his hand. "I do. The thing is, he's a good kid, and he needs to learn to stand up for himself. And you guys are going to need some help around here pretty soon. Would you be willing to hire Gus on a part-time basis until things pick up at the trattoria again?"
Silas was not thrilled about the request. "We've fixed enough of your messes, don't you think?" He glanced at Sam, though. "Can we afford it?"
Sam nodded, cheeks turning pink. "Yeah, big brother. We can afford it. We can probably give him maybe thirty-five hours? I'm not sure. Does that sound good to you, Silas? That'll give him enough to live on and it'll give us both some breathing room."
Silas grinned
at his brother. "I love that you just know our financial position off the top of your head."
"That's my job, big brother. That's literally why you keep me around."
Huh. Logan hadn't realized that. He pulled out his phone and called Gus, and told him to come in for an interview.
Gus would have impressed Logan with his interview, but he was a little too eager to please to gain extra points with the Marlowe brothers. His bartending skills and Logan's request got him the job, though. "The important thing for you to remember, Gus, is to know when to say when." Sam fixed Gus with a meaningful stare. "We're going to work on that, together. I know it can be hard, but it's literally your ass on the line. And ours. So we're going to be on you about that."
"Plus, rule number two is always in effect." Silas' scowl was only a sham this time. "Seriously, Gus, this is a biker bar. Jeans and a tee shirt are fine. You can wear a tie if you must, but people will mock you for it and they're going to think you're interviewing."
