Fakers (Licking Thicket 1)

“Hi, my boyfriend and I would like to sit together, please,” he said politely to the gate agent.

Boyfriend. I shouldn’t have felt giddy hearing it, but I did.

After getting us all squared away, the gate agent pointed us to the boarding desk, and I realized the lines had gone way down. We made our way through the tunnel and found our seats.

Brooks helped me take off my tux jacket and tie.

“Better?” he asked after doing the same.

I leaned over and whispered, “Better would include the removal of many more items, sir.”

He laughed and kissed me. “Soon. Unless…” His face turned serious. “You don’t have to come back now if you want to stay and see how your gallery opening did. Dad’s going to be okay.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Your dad loves me. Seeing me will help him recover.” I gave him a teasing grin.

Brooks smiled tenderly at me. “I can’t believe you left your gallery opening to fly home without a second thought. Thank you.”

I ran my hands up his chest, feeling the smooth fabric of his shirt beneath my fingers. I swallowed my nerves and claimed what I wanted. “I don’t care about a gallery opening as much as I care about my family.”

“Your family, huh?” he asked with a gentle smile.

I nodded. “If… if that’s okay with you…”

Brooks’s hands came up to cup my face again, and the look he gave me made my heart damn near skitter out of my chest. “I love you, Mal. And I would love to take you home as a part of my family. Forever, if you’ll have me.”

I blinked out another pair of tears, but this time they felt more like happy ones than sad ones. I felt like I had the whole world in my hands now that I was holding the person I cared about most.

“I’m sorry I ran,” I admitted in a whisper.

“I’m sorry I let you,” he said right back. And then he kissed me, and I knew I’d found what I’d been searching for when I left Homer all those years ago.

I’d finally found my home, and I was never leaving him.

I reached over to clasp his hand in mine. Somehow we’d ended up exactly where we were supposed to be: flying into our future together.

Epilogue

Brooks - One Year Later

My phone rang in the bedroom just as I finished shaving, and I debated running out to answer it.

See, Mal and I were running late—as in, really late. As in, later than late. As in, so late that Paul was on standby to run Mal’s booth at the Lickin’ Artists Fair when it opened in thirty minutes, because we might not make it. As in, so late my mom had called to inform us of our lateness twice, and I was pretty sure she would’ve come over to drag us both there by the ear already if Mal hadn’t laid on the honey, cross-his-heart-promised her we’d be there in twenty minutes, and begged her, pretty-please, to bring some of her delicious leftover ham biscuits for his breakfast.

The way Mal understood my mother’s compulsive need to help everyone (especially when they least needed it) might’ve surprised me a year ago, but now I knew it was just part of who he was—endlessly loving and understanding of the people he considered his family. Fortunately, my family had returned his love tenfold.

“You gonna answer that, Head Licker?” Mal teased, deliberately brushing against me on his way out of the bathroom. His shower-damp chest slid against my equally damp back in a way that made my well-satisfied cock twitch hopefully in my shorts, and the look in his blue eyes when our gazes met in the mirror was not the look of a man who’d already come twice that morning.

Head in the game, Brooks, I told myself, more out of habit than anything, but then I grinned, because I no longer had a game to get my head in. These days the only thing I really cared about winning was walking his bubble butt through our bedroom door.

I hastily wiped the remnants of shaving cream off my face, tossed my dirty towel in the hamper, and followed him, forgetting all about my phone for the moment.

“That’s co-Head Licker,” I reminded him.

It had been decided that since I was slammed at work and my dad was feeling much better, he and I would share the Head Licker title this year—or, as my mother liked to say, “Brooks and his daddy will be Head Licking together.”

At this point I had to assume she said these things on purpose.

“You’ll always be Head Licker in Chief to me, baby,” Mal said, fluttering his eyelashes at me over his shoulder.

I snorted. “Just like you’ll always be my Second Licker.”

“We could skip it, you know.” I caught Mal as he stood in front of our closet and wrapped my arms around his waist from behind. His deep chuckle said he knew I was joking—I’d never really let him miss the Artists Fair and a chance to show off his amazing work, but occasionally it was fun to pretend.