AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Why does it look like that? It’s bigger. Mine doesn’t look like that.’
Frey’s cheeks were so hot he felt like he was about to spontaneously combust. ‘Adults have penises that sometimes look different than kids.’
Rex narrowed his eyes further and took a step closer. ‘But in the shower, yours is like mine. But it’s not like mine now. Let me see.’
He started to reach for the towel, but Frey dodged his wandering fingers and managed to keep himself covered up. Fucking…fuck. This was the first time ever—or close to ever—he wished he had a husband just so he could say, ‘Go ask your other dad.’
But that wasn’t his life. There was probably a book about how to handle sons asking about erections for the first time, but Frey also wasn’t a big reader, so…
‘Let me see,’ Rex demanded.
Frey grabbed him by his arm and spun him, sitting him on the toilet seat. He was about to see whether or not he massively sucked as a parent now, apparently. Which was just par for the course on this fucking day.
He crouched in front of Rex, making sure he was still properly covered, though his dick had never been more limp in his life than it was right now. He managed something like a smile as he balanced on the balls of his feet so he could use both hands to sign.
‘Sometimes, blood flows down, and you get…’ Hard? Erect? What the fuck did he call it to a kid this young? ‘Bigger. And when you’re older, sometimes that feels good.’
‘Is that why you touched it?’
Fuck my life. Seriously. Dear God, just smite me now for fucking up my kid. Lane and Bowen will take him in and raise him right.
‘When that happens,’ he said, deciding not to answer that question because, well, he’d figure that one out a little later, ‘it’s private.’
‘Like no strangers touching me,’ Rex said.
‘Yes,’ Frey signed as emphatically as he could. ‘Totally private. And we can talk more about it later, but you’re supposed to be in bed.’
‘I have to pee,’ Rex said.
Frey covered his face for a second. ‘Yeah. Great. I’m going to get dressed in my pajamas. Go back to bed when you’re done, and I’ll check on you.’
‘Okay,’ Rex signed happily. The whole thing seemed forgotten.
That was great for him, but for Frey, he was pretty sure he was never going to be able to get hard ever, ever again.
Chapter Ten
Renato was more social than he’d been in years. Maybe even more social than before Grady had passed. He knew it was just him running away from taking responsibility for what he’d done—or even acknowledging it at all, if he was being brutally honest with himself. But it was in that moment he realized maybe it was the universe trying to tell him something.
He’d locked himself away tightly after he became a widower. Yes, he showed up to work and still had lunch with his brother-in-law. And he still went to the cinema to hear Grady’s disembodied voice telling him about fire exits and ice-cold Coca-Cola. He kept Grady’s headstone neat and tidy and always made sure the flowers were fresh and blooming.
But that was it.
He’d lost a huge piece of himself that made him who he was. His family wouldn’t have recognized him if they’d seen him. And the closest he’d come to seeing them was his lunch with his cousin three times a year. But Cosimo was American, so he didn’t fully understand Renato and what he’d shut away when he decided he was done living.
Now, sitting across from the man in question, who was giving him an odd look, Renato realized he was probably acting very differently. He was on edge. He was talking with his hands again. His leg was bouncing.
He felt like he was ready to jump out of his own skin.
Cosimo sipped delicately from his espresso cup, then sighed as he set it back down onto the saucer. “Elephant in the room time?”
“I hate that saying,” Renato groused. He liked elephants as a concept, but they freaked him out.
Cosimo rolled his eyes. “We’re not here to talk about your childhood circus phobia. You’ve either gotten addicted to speed, you’re having an episode of mania, or you’re repressing something.”
Mania might be easier to claim, as wrong as it would be—or the speed thing since, as a surgeon, he technically had access to the legal version of them all. But he felt a pressure in his chest, and he knew the only way to get rid of it was to be honest.
“I had sex.”
