FIFTEEN

 

 

Unsurprisingly, Justin was the first one who tapped out. It was fun playing soccer, for a while, but both Ken and Jade seemed to have way too much energy. It shouldn’t be legal, and Justin huddled in the insufficient shade of a tree and contented himself with just watching.

The whole day, he’d been terrified about how this would go. He’d seen Ken react well to children, but Justin also knew his daughter well enough to know that she was a bit of a handful, to say the least. But as it turned out, he had been worried about nothing.

Immediately, it was clear that Ken and Jade were going to get along like a house on fire. She latched on to the energetic young man immediately, and Justin softly sighed as he watched them, as he saw how happy they both were.

For so long, Justin had kept himself away from love, away from anything but work and his daughter. He had focused so much on not repeating the mistakes that his own single mother had made, on protecting his daughter, that he had made a completely different mistake.

Jade’s reaction to Ken made him think, though, and he wasn’t sure what to do with the thoughts. It was almost like she’d been waiting for Ken, for another adult to hang out with. Or was it too soon to tell?

Eventually, Ken dropped out, too, after having organized a bunch of kids into a soccer game. Which was a stroke of genius, really, because it meant that Ken could come drop down into the area under the tree, his face flushed and his body radiating heat. As well it should be, after all of the running around that he’d been doing.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Ken asked, and Justin turned to him, giving him a slight smile and taking his hand. Ken’s fingers were sweaty, but Justin didn’t mind, and he linked their hands together intimately, not making a big deal about it but not trying to hide it, either.

“You’d be overpaying,” Justin demurred, but Ken tilted his head to the side, clearly not about to let that go, and Justin frowned thoughtfully, trying to figure out how to put something into words. “It’s just, Jade really likes you. I kind of hope …” He let his words trail off, and when Ken didn’t look away, didn’t relent, only then did he continue. “I just kind of hope that you’re around for a while.”

Ken smiled at him, lightly squeezing Justin’s hand.

“Me, too,” he admitted, and Justin felt like a huge weight, one that he hadn’t even known that he was carrying, was lifted away from him. That short exchange was the most they’d talked about potentially having a future together, but it seemed like Ken wasn’t completely opposed to it, which was something.

Justin opened his mouth to say something more, though even he wasn’t sure what, and just then, Jade broke away from the game and came trotting over to them. Even she seemed a little bit winded, which was saying something. It took a lot to tire her out.

“All done?” Justin asked, with a fond smile her way, as she flopped down dramatically onto the blanket that Justin had set out.

“Yeah.” Jade tossed the soccer ball back to Ken, who caught it easily. “I still have to practice my routine today.”

“Routine?” Ken asked, and Jade nodded.

“For my dance class. My recital is in a week.” She spoke with a pride that Justin found fairly pardonable. She worked hard on her dance and utterly adored it, so why shouldn’t she be proud of everything that she’d done?

“Oh yeah? You wanna show me your dance?” Ken asked, and Justin was startled, for a moment, until he remembered. Ken was so athletic and huge and strong that it was easy to forget that he was a member of a boy band, who had no small amount of skill in that area himself.

“Oh, now you’ve done it,” Justin murmured, and Jade shot him a mock glare before turning to beam at Ken. Damned if Justin’s daughter wasn’t falling in love with Ken just as much as Justin himself was. And damned if that wasn’t a dangerous thought that Justin kept having about Ken.

“Dad,” she protested and then bounced to her feet, all exhaustion forgotten. It took her pretty much no prompting to dance, just as Justin had known would be the case and had teased her about, and she immediately went into her routine. Her lithe, graceful little body whirled and spun, her face both ecstatic and concentrating deeply at the same time.

“Huh. You’re pretty good,” Ken said, and the way he said it, Justin could tell that he meant it. From the pleasure on Jade’s face, she was the same way, and she beamed at him brighter than ever. “What is that? Contemp, right?”

At that moment, Justin actually watched as Jade gave her heart to Ken. She looked at him with something like hero worship in her eyes and nodded once in acknowledgment.

“You know dance?” Jade breathed, and when Ken nodded, she reached out and grabbed him by the wrist, doing her best to tug him up. “Show me!” Just like that, Ken had won his daughter’s heart, if he hadn’t already done so with that damn soccer ball.

“Um, baby girl, I don’t think …” Justin tried because this was a public place and Ken was pretty lucky that no one had noticed who he was yet. But Ken, well, he’d never been exactly shy, and he shook his head and heaved himself to his feet, standing beside Jade without hesitation.

“It’s okay. Let’s see. Your dance went something like this?”

Ken went into what seemed to Justin, at least, to be the same sequence of moves that Jade had done just a few minutes ago, his body moving and flowing like it was completely natural to him. By the end, both Jade and Justin were staring at him with twin expressions of wonder on their faces.

“You only saw me do that once,” Jade’s eyes were wide, and she stared at Ken with awe. “How did you do that?”

Ken gave a wry little grin and a shrug.

“About, hmmm, let’s see. Fifteen years or so of practice?” he said, and Jade shook her head. Moment by moment, Ken was winding his way into Jade’s heart, and that was both terrifying and deeply gratifying at the same time.

It was also a relief because if Jade hadn’t liked Ken, Justin wasn’t sure what he would do. It would be a tough situation, and he was pretty glad that it was one that he wasn’t going to have to face.

“Show me again,” Jade demanded, and soon, the two of them were lost in movement, mirroring each other, the big strong athlete and the small girl, laughing and chattering and giving each other pointers, which Ken happily took just as easily as Jade did. Some people would be too proud to take advice from an eight-year-old, but Ken seemed willing to take it under advisement, at least.

At that moment, two things happened. Jade fell utterly and irrevocably in love, and Justin realized that he had lost his battle. He had been trying so hard not to let himself get attached to Ken, but that was just not something he was going to be able to stop anymore. How could he even pretend that he could, when he had allowed this meeting between Jade and Ken?

How long they would have gone with their impromptu dance session, Justin didn’t even know. But he wasn’t going to get a chance to find out, either, because first, there was a cold breeze that came in from the ocean, followed by the thick scent of incoming rain. Before long, the droplets came, and the dancers had to give it up and run to the picnic shelter, huddling under it and watching as the water came down in torrents, the hungry, dry ground sucking each drop up the moment it fell.

“Oh well. It’s getting close to dinner, anyway,” Justin mused. It was sad that their time was over, but it was just how it was.

“Great!” Jade spoke in the tone of one who is used to neatly arranging things her own way, like everything was settled. “Then Ken can come home with us, and we can have dinner there.”

With that decided, she headed off into the rain, holding up the picnic blanket as a makeshift shelter over her head, and Ken and Justin exchanged looks before bursting out laughing.

“She’s bossy,” Justin tried to explain, and Ken gave him a secret little smile, one almost as intimate as an embrace.

“Kind of like you,” Ken teased, and then he was gone, too, running through the park, following Jade to the parked car before Justin could work out if that was an insult or a compliment.

 

* * *

 

“Goodnight, Daddy. Goodnight, Ken.” Jade smiled and waved to them both, then went off to tuck herself into bed. Which was a sure sign of just how tired she really was, because usually, it took some serious work to get her to sit still for that long.

Of course, she had been sick. She was probably still recovering from that, too. Either way, as much as Justin loved his daughter, he was more than happy to have her safely tucked away in her room.

Ken was here. By some miracle, Ken was still actually here, and nothing terrible had happened. All of these years, Justin had tried to protect himself, and his daughter, but now he was having a hard time remembering just what he’d been so afraid of.

This day, despite all of Justin’s nerves, had been the most natural thing. Watching Ken and Jade together, seeing the bond that they’d made almost immediately, was really sort of the most beautiful experience that Justin could remember having in quite some time. Sometimes, it was hard to think about why he’d been so scared, but that was, in and of itself, not a little terrifying.

Justin settled down on the couch, and he only became aware that he was staring at Ken when the other man grinned at him self-consciously and waved a hand in front of Justin’s eyes.

“Hey, Earth to, Justin,” Ken teased, and Ken blinked and smirked a little bit.

“Sorry,” he admitted, and he was. He hadn’t meant to stare, but the truth was, he was coming to some rather uncomfortable understandings, and it had left him a little bit breathless.

“It’s okay,” Ken smiled, draping his arm comfortably around Justin’s shoulders, pulling him close. Justin let himself go, for once, just let himself feel what he was feeling, even though he knew that there was a good chance that it was going to turn around and bite him in the ass later.

Burying his face in Ken’s strong chest, listening to the slow beating of the other man’s heart, he tried to let it soothe him, to calm him down. But the fact of the matter was, with Jade’s easy acceptance of Ken, the last serious impediment that Justin had had to a relationship was swept away.

Just like that, he was free to go after this, to see if it could work, and the thought of that, after so many years resisting it, was just very intense and very frightening to him. When he buried his face in Ken’s chest, though, when he hugged the other man close and breathed in his scent, it helped.

God, was he really ready for this? In some way, he had given up on ever having this, from the moment his ex walked out on him. Maybe from before that, even, since they hadn’t been on great terms even before she’d gotten pregnant.

So now, here he was, face to face with something that made anything that he’d felt before feel like nothing more than a passing infatuation. Ken was, more and more, slowly but very surely, worming his way into Justin’s heart and making a home for himself there.

And all he could think of to do was to let it happen, and hope that his luck this time was better than it had been before.