Flare (40 page)

Hugo could only nod. He’d pretty much said everything he wanted. He hated it, but they were stuck.

“What do you want from me?” Kevin asked. It pissed Hugo off. Not how he said it. He said it in a kind enough way, but the words. They were defensive words.

Hugo felt his face pinch together in frustration, and if he were honest, anger. “I want you to realize that maybe I’m not nearly as content here as you are. This is not the kind of bubble I want to live in. I’d like you to look at the big picture and realize we’ve been adjusting a hell of a lot, but we might be fucking things up more than we’re fixing them.”

“What does that mean?”

“That’s what I want you to think about.”

When Hugo went upstairs, he saw two small heads making their way into their rooms in a mad rush. Great. The kids had heard everything.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Truth Over Puppy Dog Tails

K
EVIN
WAS
gone the next morning when Hugo woke up, but he wasn’t alone in the bed. Finn and Brooke were both there, looking at him as if they’d been waiting for him to finally join the land of the living.

“Morning,” he croaked.

“Are you getting a divorce?” Finn asked, eyes wide.

“What?”

“Are you and Dad getting a divorce?”

“No. We’re not even married yet, so we can’t get divorced. Not that we’d want to if we were.” Hugo sat up and rubbed at his eyes.

“I told you,” Brooke said, smacking Finn on the leg.

“Stop,” Finn whined. “I know what you said, but I wanted to ask.”

“I told you it was a stupid question.”

“Hey. Stop it, you guys,” Hugo said. “There are no stupid questions. I’m guessing you asked because you overheard Dad and me fighting last night, right?”

Both Brooke and Finn nodded and Hugo could see the worry in their eyes. He had to explain this, even if he and Kevin hadn’t resolved it.

“I was angry. The people who had dinner here last night said some things that made me really mad, and I said a lot of things I’ve been holding inside. Do you ever hold stuff in?”

“Not really. It makes me get a stomachache when I do that,” Finn said, rubbing his tummy in overly large circles. “Then I fart and burp all night long.”

“Gross!” Brooke said with a look of disgust.

“Not like that, Finn. I mean holding in worries and thoughts you have.”

“I do,” Brooke admitted. “But you already knew that.”

“I sure do, Olive. Well, I’ve been holding in a lot of the stuff that’s bugged me for a long time. You guys have heard some of the things people say about me when we go out.”

“You’re being bullied,” Brooke said. “Just like me.”

Hugo hadn’t thought of it that way, but when he stopped to really consider it, that was exactly what it was. Not just from Tasha but also from those few strangers. It had been so different than the blatant bullying he used to get from boys in high school and college. When he thought about it, he realized nearly everything that had happened to him had been done by women, and he knew from all the research he and Kevin had done over the last months that girls bullied in very different ways than boys did. It was mental and social, not physical. He was being ostracized, excluded, even alienated.

“It doesn’t feel good,” Hugo admitted and Brooke snuggled in tight, giving Hugo a squeeze.

“Are you still going to be my Papa?” Finn finally asked, articulating his real concern.

“Yeah. I’m going to be your Papa forever. Dad and I fought last night, but that doesn’t mean we don’t love each other. We just need to talk about things when I’m not so mad. I was too angry to make good choices last night, and we all know what happens when we don’t make good choices, don’t we?”

“Bedroom time,” Finn singsonged, and Hugo couldn’t help but laugh.

“That’s right, Pickle. And that’s exactly where I went too. Now go brush your teeth so you don’t smell like a dragon.”

Hugo did the same and got dressed, but he beat the kids by a long shot. They were always so pokey weekend mornings.

Kevin had been out buying breakfast pastries, but the box he set down on the kitchen counter when he walked in the door about five minutes after Hugo got out of the shower and dressed wasn’t from any bakery close by. He’d driven to Uptown to Hugo’s favorite bakery instead, Isles Bun & Coffee.

“What’s this?” Hugo asked as he opened up the box and saw his favorite treat in the whole world: a puppy dog tail.

“Breakfast.” Kevin set down a cup of coffee in front of Hugo, and leaned in to plant a quick kiss on his cheek.

“But why from here?” Hugo gestured to the print on top of the box.

Kevin shrugged and smiled. “I thought you deserved a little treat after last night.”

Hugo shook his head, feeling more as if he needed a little punishment.

“It’s a really nice bakery,” Kevin continued, ignoring the look of guilt Hugo knew was on his face. “I talked to the owner. I told him who I was buying for, and he knew exactly what you’d want. Was he right?”

Hugo reached into the pastry box and pulled out a puppy dog tail, nodding. “Yeah. He was right.”

The kids walked downstairs then and saw the box on the counter. They dug in to pick out a sticky, sweet treat for themselves. Kevin helped them pour milk and cut up some strawberries so they’d have a bit of nutritional value in their breakfast, encouraging them to sit at the dining room table before they slopped gooey frosting everywhere.

In the kitchen, Kevin turned his back on the kids and lowered his voice. “We need to talk.”

“I know,” Hugo relented.

“Sunroom?”

They closed the door behind them after giving the kids a few simple chores they needed to do after they finished eating, including getting themselves in the shower and dressed. They’d be running errands later that morning and needed to be ready to move.

“What bothers me more than anything about last night, aside from their inappropriate questions, is that you kept secrets,” Kevin began, getting right to the meat of their disagreement. His face was clearly radiating his worry. “I can’t fix something I don’t realize is broken. So just tell me why you didn’t share any of this with me.”

 “At first when it happened, it was when Erin was sick. I figured it was because I was new to town, an outsider, and people didn’t know what to make of me. That’s what Summer convinced me of. Then I thought I was running into people who were trying to protect Erin, then the kids.”

“That doesn’t explain why you kept it a secret.”

“No. I suppose it doesn’t.” Hugo picked at the seam on his jeans, a small imperfection in the fabric drawing his attention.

“Well? Are you going to tell me now?” Kevin asked.

An unconscious shrug tugged Hugo’s shirt, and he realized he wasn’t sure if he wanted to share. “I didn’t want to fuck things up.” It was that simple.

“What do you mean? How?”

Hugo bit at his lip and kept picking at his jeans. “I didn’t want to complain or point out things I didn’t like. You have a good life here. You love your house and how close you are to work. The kids have friends here and play kickball with the neighbors. It’s a good life.”

“But…?”

“But it’s not nearly as perfect as the manicured lawns make it seem. There’s ugliness here too. You’ve seen it with Felicity. It’s….” Hugo didn’t really know what to say.

“It’s not perfect,” Kevin finished for him.

“Yeah, but no place is. I just feel like I don’t belong here, and I’m not sure I ever will. I’m not sure I
want
to belong, to be entirely truthful.” It felt good to say, and Hugo finally looked up and saw Kevin’s concerned eyes.

“Okay…?” Kevin seemed to be considering something, and his gaze drifted outside to the edge of the wooded property line. “But you’re just saying you don’t feel like you belong in Edina.” He looked back at Hugo. “You’re not saying you don’t belong in our family, are you?”

“No, never that. Just Edina. I miss Uptown. I miss the vibrancy and the excitement. I miss how accepting people are there. We fucked on my balcony and got cheered for fuck’s sake.”

Kevin chuckled and smoothed his palm down Hugo’s back.

“I miss the eclectic shops where I used to buy shitty little trinkets that sat around my apartment. All of that’s in boxes now. All my shitty stuff is put away, and that bugs me.”

“We can pull it out and put it all over the house if you want. Let’s do that today,” Kevin said with enthusiasm.

Hugo shook his head. “No. That’s not going to make a big enough difference. I’ll never fit into this cookie-cutter world. I’m not a suburbanite. I don’t want to be. And if you haven’t noticed, our family doesn’t exactly fit into the mold here, either. This isn’t the life I want. Not at all.”

“Well, what do you want? What can I do to make this better?” It sounded as though Kevin was willing to fix this.

“I don’t really know aside from moving, which is another reason I kept all this shit to myself. I don’t know how to fix it without moving.”

“Back to Uptown, or did you have somewhere else in mind?”

“Uptown.” It was truly where Hugo wanted to be.

Kevin gave a long-suffering sigh as he leaned back on the couch and put his arm around Hugo’s shoulder. “I can talk to my real estate agent. She can show us some places.”

“You’d do that? You’d go and look?”

“Of course. Hugo, I think you forget this far too easily because of your history with men. I love you, and I’ve made a commitment to you, even if we haven’t said ‘I do’ yet. I made that commitment to you a hell of a long time before we even decided to get married. That doesn’t just fall apart if there are problems. It bugs me that you hide things that are obviously bothering you so much. You get frustrated as hell with Brooke when she gets secretive. It’s the same for me. And fucking stop redirecting conversations just to avoid talking about what’s really going on, okay? Or I’m going to deprive you of sex until you talk.”

“How dare you!” Mock outrage. “You wouldn’t. You couldn’t.” Hugo gave Kevin a sly grin, realizing he really couldn’t do such a thing.

“There you go again. Diversionary tactics.”

“Okay, fine. Yes, I was keeping stuff from you because I figured if I made things complicated, shit might happen.”

“What shit?”

“I didn’t know, but I’ve had a lot of bad shit go down in the past when I’ve needed something or changed my mind. I know you’re not those guys. I know you’d never do any of that to me, but again, my fucking head takes me there and sorta makes me feel like a hostage. I have to have more faith in you. I have to have faith that I’m worth keeping around too.”

“Yes, you do,” Kevin agreed, and then leaned forward and kissed Hugo’s pouty bottom lip.

“And I just have to say,
stop
with the friend thing.”

“What?”

“I have zero interest in being friends with those people who were at dinner last night and the rest of the game night crew. I like Mike and Dena, but everyone else I’ve met so far makes me want to stab my eyes out.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Kevin laughed. “Honesty, to a fault.”

“Let’s just say I’m feeling secure enough in our relationship right this second to tell you that you have really shitty taste in friends.”

Kevin threw his head back in laughter and kept on chuckling. “I think I’d have to agree. Some people are better off staying as acquaintances, aren’t they?”

“I don’t think I even want them as that,” Hugo said with a laugh. He knew what Kevin meant, but if Hugo never saw Sarah, Andrew, Beth, or Steve again, he’d be perfectly okay.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Broken Tiles or Security Codes

H
UGO
COULDN
’
T
believe it, but at the same time he could. They were days, literally days away from a wedding and reception, and he and Kevin weren’t doing a thing related to the wedding. Instead, they were traipsing around Uptown with Maggie, Kevin’s realtor. Hugo felt he had all his wedding worries compartmentalized well enough for this little break.

“This is a bit larger than the last place we looked at. Large backyard. Business district is within easy walking distance. Three blocks, I believe. No need to drive, if you choose.”

Hugo smiled at Maggie, who stood back and allowed them to explore the house. It was so much smaller than what they had in Edina, but Hugo knew that going into this. The house had character; it had seen numerous families over the years.

As he scoped out the kitchen to see if it had a functional layout or if it needed some upgrades, he saw Kevin slip upstairs and run his hand over the worn newel post with appreciation on his face. This was the third house they’d seen that day and the eighth that week. They’d been busy.

The previous night Kevin had asked, “Are you sure we have time to look tomorrow too? There’s still so much to finish for the wedding.”

“Everything’s ready. Stop panicking. We’re good.” Hugo knew they’d get it all done.

When Kevin headed back down the stairs and Hugo took his turn up there to snoop around the three bedrooms, they kissed and Hugo saw that Kevin was giving the house a fair chance.

“How do you feel about this home?” Hugo heard Maggie ask Kevin as Hugo opened the linen closet and tried to imagine fitting all their towels and sheets inside.

“It seems a bit small, but only because the rooms are so cut up. I wonder about some place with a little more open feel. It’s kinda claustrophobic in here.”

Hugo thought he might say that, and when he looked around, he saw what Kevin meant. They didn’t need to live in a football field, but to have some room to spread your arms would be nice.

“There’s one more place I have set up to show you today. I think it might give you more of the open feel you’re looking for.”

After driving a few blocks over, Maggie pulled into a parking lot of a taller building closer to Lake Calhoun. It wasn’t too far from Hugo’s old place, and the building looked as if it had been around for ages.

“It’s a former warehouse. I know it’s not everything you said you wanted, Kevin. There’s not a yard for the kids, but there’s a park nearby and it has a lot of the features Hugo talked about. And it has that open floor plan.”