Fuck, I was bad at subterfuge.
In general, this was a good thing. I didn’t like lying, and I especially didn’t like lying to the man I loved. But when Hawk had finally explained to me and Theo what the fuck they’d been talking about at dinner earlier—that he’d found the rooster he’d dubbed the “Cock of Good Fortune” at a rummage sale last weekend, that it was “powerful,” and that it had “made me and Jack closer than ever,if you know what I mean”—well, I’d been intrigued, even though I knew Theo had probably pulled a muscle restraining his eye roll.
And when it was time to go home, I’d done what any wildly in love, mildly desperate man would do.
I’d smuggled the cock home with me.
Now that I had it, though, I wasn’t sure what the fuck I was supposed to do with it. Did it just… sense your need and bestow its favors? Hawk hadn’t mentioned any magic words, and there was no handy On switch. I really hoped it wasn’t one of those things that needed to be charged under the full moon because I didn’t have that kind of?—
“Porter?” Theo’s voice was closer now. Right outside our bedroom.
I whirled around, leaned fake-casually against the closet doorframe with my arm above my head, and adopted a pose I considered sexy but natural. You know, just enough flex to make the shoulders pop, not enough to actually make thempop.
“Porter, seriously, are we playing hide-and—?Oh.”
Theo stood in the bedroom door and blinked, taking me in from my decades-old Sunday Orchard T-shirt to my probably equally old athletic shorts and flip-flops. He lifted one dark eyebrow. “Practicing our thirst traps, are we? Is this why you sprinted in from the car and pretended you didn’t hear me calling you?”
“Sprint? Pfft. I didn’tsprint.” I straightened, a little annoyed that my beloved was calling me out that way, butalso a little proud because I was almost positive my professor had never used “thirst trap” in a sentence before we met, and definitely a little amused because… well, he had a point.
“If I didn’t hear you, it’s probably that the cabin is so much bigger now than it used to be,” I said, not quite able to look him in the eye. “Not like back when we first got together, huh? When we only had one room, we couldn’t help seeing each other every minute of every day! I couldn’t take a deep breath without bumping into you. Man, those were some good times.”
Theo frowned like he was concerned I was having some kind of amnesiac event and… well, he might have a point about that, too. When Theo and I had first gotten together, the cabin hadn’t just been cozy buttiny, making it hard to have family over or for both of us to work at the same time. No one in their right mind would be nostalgic for those days.
And the truth was, when we’d put on the first addition—our bedroom suite—a few months into our relationship, I’d been so thrilled I’d promised the contractor who’d helped us that we’d name our first daughter after her. Theo had been so starry-eyed over our big bathtub, our walk-in closet, and our room with a door he hadn’t even argued, despite us having no plans to have a daughter at all, let alone to name her Jimmi-Lou. It had been that incredible.
But our second addition, last fall, of a home office where Theo could work uninterrupted? That might haveseemedpractical at the time, but in the last couple of weeks, I’d realized it was the worst idea we’d ever had. A soul-crushing nightmare. I mean, not to be dramatic or whatever.
“Porter, baby.” Theo walked closer and put his hands on my shoulders, his touch so warm and grounding that despite everything, I wanted to lean into him. “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” I shook my head. “Why would you think something was wrong? One of my favorite brothers is having ababy—actually,twobabies—and one of my favorite brothers just got engaged, and one of my favorite brothers is getting married this fall, which means myotherfavorite brother is going to come back from New York and bring his husband, who makes charcuterie! How could I be less than thrilled?”
The words were like a high-pitched avalanche, gathering speed and strength as they spilled out of me.
“And things at Hannabury Hub are great,” I went on. “Super great! We got that extra money from the Hannabury Fund, which means we’re installing ten new laptops for the after-school program,andwe’re piloting a new mentorship initiative with the high school in the fall. The kids are pumped.I’mpumped.”
“Porter—”
I sucked in a breath. “Andyou! Things are going amazing atyourwork, too, right? I mean, you haven’t talked about your new project very much. Or at all, really. But you’ve been really busy, and you seem happy? Right? You are happy, aren’t you?”
Theo, in his dress shorts and button-down, gave me the sort of look that felt like a hug and an interrogation under Klieg lights all at once. His glasses had slipped down his nose, and when he pushed them up with one finger, it was so freaking cute I felt an irrational spike of fondness.
“I have no idea what’s going on with you right now,” Theo began conversationally.
“I told you?—”
“But,” he went on, “if I can readBeowulfin the original and figure out what my English 101 students are trying to express, I can figure out what you’re not saying, too. I speak fluent Porter. I canlearn to read what silent love hath writ.”
“Sonnet 23,” I murmured grudgingly.
Theo smiled, clearly pleased. “Exactly.” Theo tapped his lip with one long finger. “So let’s piece together what we know, shall we?”
I almost laughed. That response wassoTheo. Andfuck, but I loved him for it.
When we’d first gotten together, I knew people questioned whether our relationship would last, and I didn’t blame them. On paper, Dr. Theo Hancock, PhD, head of the English Department at Hannabury College, beloved by students and terror of the administration, didn’t have much in common with Porter Sunday, orchard kid turned community center director.
But in practice? We worked. We really worked.
We’d always shared passions, like books, and hiking, and home improvement, and we’d expanded each other’s horizons over the years, too. Theo genuinely enjoyed hanging out with the kids at the youth center I ran, he fit with my family like he’d always been there, and he’d even admitted—though only once, in a mutter he refused to repeat—that he enjoyed when I dragged him to two-dollar Marvel movie rerun nights at the campus theater.
