Housewife Zaney - The Conclusion...For Now (Patreon)

Unbeta'd/Unedited.

Zane

Why was he so nervous?

He’d talked it all out with Avi earlier. He’d felt confident that Felix and Asa would hear him out on baby number 3. But now, as they all lounged in Asa and Zane’s bed, naked and sated, their skin still heated from their bath, the scent of vanilla still clinging in the air, all his confidence drained from him.

The room was warm and dim, the blankets tangled around their legs, everybody soft and loose in that boneless way they only ever seemed to get when it was just the four of them. There was no safer place in the world, which somehow made Zane’s nerves feel even more ridiculous.

The conversation could wait. It wasn’t like anyone’s biological clock was ticking down. He could bring it up tomorrow. Or next week. Or six months from now when he’d rehearsed every possible version of the conversation and prepared rebuttals for arguments nobody had actually made.

Maybe it wasn’t the baby.

Maybe it was this secret he’d been carrying around with him for a couple of weeks now? He wanted to tell them but wasn’t sure how, wasn’t even sure there was really anything to tell. It was one of those things that had seemed trivial at first but the longer he held it inside, the heavier it seemed. Now he could practically feel the weight of it sitting beneath his ribs.

He didn’t know why he was hesitating to tell them. They were the most important people in his life. They’d all been together for so long now, yet Zane didn’t feel any older, any wiser. He felt stuck. His childhood self trapped in an adult body playing pretend every day. Playing house. Playing reporter, husband, father. Waiting for somebody to finally notice he had no idea what the fuck he was doing and take it all away from him.

Dr. Jones said it was a trauma response. Zane had laughed at that. Noah had once told him that therapy was basically just learning that your whole personality was just one giant trauma response. He was right. It really was. Apparently, even being funny about his trauma was a trauma response, which felt a little excessive. He should be allowed at least one personality trait that belonged exclusively to him.

He didn’t mean to release the heavy sigh that escaped, but it was there before he could stop it, landing in the room like a question mark.

“What’s wrong, Zaney?” Felix asked.

Of course Felix noticed. Felix always noticed. Zane could probably sigh three rooms away during a thunderstorm and Felix would materialize beside him asking what was wrong.

Zane wanted to tell them, but the words clotted in his throat. His fingers worried absently at the edge of the sheet instead, rubbing the fabric between his thumb and forefinger.

It shouldn’t be this hard. These were his people, his safety net, his home. They were his comfort and his familiarity. Nothing had changed. Not even the way they laid there in bed together. They were in their same configuration as always: Avi, Felix, Zane, Asa. Four bodies arranged by years of habit, fitting together without thought.

Zane and Felix liked to sleep cuddled into each other, both playing little spoon to the twins. Felix was warm against his back now, one arm draped loosely across Zane’s waist while Asa’s hand rested heavily on his hip from the other side. The weight of them should have settled him. Usually, it did. Sometimes, the babies would snuggle between Zane and Felix, their soft baby scent and their footie pajamas making Zane feel both nostalgic and…afraid.

They had maybe one good year left before they started saying footie pajamas were for babies and they were big boys. Before they didn’t want to sleep in a room filled with jungle animals and teddy bears but Super Mario or Paw Patrol.

While Zane often felt frozen in place, the boys were growing so fast. Sometimes it seemed like he only had to blink for them to become slightly different people.

He missed when they were just learning to crawl and would pull themselves up on everything. He missed their cooes and their babbles and the look of contentment on Felix’s face when he rocked them at night.

He even missed changing diapers. Which was objectively insane. Nobody missed diapers. Yet he did. He missed those sleepy middle-of-the-night changes when the house was silent and one of the boys would blink solemnly up at him like Zane was the only person in the entire universe.

Maybe that was the part he missed most. Being needed in a way that was simple but vital.

“Nothing,” Zane said, unwilling to risk popping the bubble of happiness surrounding them.

He was certain they would all think he was upset or disturbed about their most recent playtime, but he just couldn’t get the words to come. His stomach tightened at the thought. The last thing he wanted was for any of them to mistake his silence for regret.

Well, maybe not Avi.

He’d already talked to him at length.

Just not about his secret.

The secret.

Zane felt movement beside Felix and knew, without even looking, that Avi had propped himself up. A second later, Avi solved Zane’s problem in the most Avi way imaginable.

“Zaney wants another baby,” Avi said frankly. “He wants a baby with Asa.”

Felix inhaled sharply.

Zane closed his eyes.

Well. There went easing into it.

“That’s not true,” Zane gasped before Felix could speak. When Felix frowned, Zane stumbled over his words. “We-Well, it is true, but it doesn’t have to be m-my baby. I just want more babies. With Asa, with Felix…with any of you. They don’t have to be my DNA or anything. Hell, my DNA is probably poisonous anyway.”

“Poisonous?” Felix said, jaw clenching.

Zane just knew his brows would be pinched if he hadn’t started having his face frozen with botox every six months or so.

“I think he means venomous,” Avi teased.

“What did dad always say?” Asa asked. “Oh, right.”

“If it bites you and you die, it’s venomous, if you bite it and you die, it’s poisonous,” the twins said in unison.

Zane glowered at them but there was no heat behind it. They were just trying to lighten the room.

He stared down at the sheet gathered around his waist, wishing he could snatch the words back.

“You’re not toxic or venomous or poisonous,” Felix said, hugging him close. He pressed a kiss to Zane’s shoulder, lingering there like he could somehow make Zane believe him through sheer persistence.

“I’m all for a baby, Lois. But as much as I love the idea of knocking you up, Lois, some level of medical intervention would be necessary,” Asa said, arm tightening around his waist until some of his panic waned. His palm spread over Zane’s stomach, warm and possessive, anchoring him.

Just enough for his thoughts to get away from him…again.

“I have a sister,” Zane blurted out.

His words were like a record scratch, the silence deafening.

It was like everything froze.

Somewhere, Zane could hear a clock ticking, Felix’s breathing was loud in his ear. Even Asa’s thumb stopped its slow sweep over his skin. The stillness was suffocating. Zane’s heartbeat seemed impossibly loud in the silence, thudding against his ribs like it was trying to escape before he could explain himself.

“What?” Felix managed, forcing the word out on a low breath.

Tears sprang to Zane’s eyes but he wiped them away furiously. He hated that. Hated how quickly his body betrayed him, tears arriving before he’d even decided he was sad. Or scared. Or whatever the hell this was. “I-I didn’t want to say anything until I knew.”

“Knew that you have a sister?” Avi asked.

“Knew if they wanted anything to do with me. I did a DNA test on Ancestry. I figured maybe someone from my real father’s family might be there,” Zane said quietly. “It-It’s only been a couple of weeks. This isn’t some deep dark secret I’ve been keeping from you for months. In a way, I’ve more been keeping it from myself. The closer I get to these…strangers, the scarier it will become.”

Because strangers couldn’t hurt him. Not really. Family could. Zane had a lifetime of evidence to prove it.

“Nobody’s mad at you, Zaney,” Avi said. “Right?”

There was an authority in his voice that rarely surfaced outside of playtime. He was telling them that they better not be mad. It was such an Avi thing to do—protect Zane from a threat that didn’t even exist yet, just in case it decided to. Zane met his gaze over Felix’s shoulder, smiling softly when Avi gave him a firm nod.

“Of course not,” Asa assured him.

There was an edge beneath the words anyway, but Zane knew it wasn’t directed at him. Asa was already preparing to hate people he hadn’t even met yet.

Felix nodded, too. “We’d never be mad at you for wanting to know your family.” His hand slid into Zane’s, fingers threading together. Felix squeezed once, and some of the tightness in Zane’s chest loosened. After a moment, he added, “So you’ve talked to this…sister?”

Zane shook his head. “No, not yet. I’ve talked to a cousin…my-my cousin. Her name is Reina.”

My cousin.

Two stupid little words, but something about saying them aloud made his throat tighten all over again. He had cousins. Apparently. He’d existed for decades without knowing there were people walking around in the world whose family tree connected to his.

He needed to just tell them the whole truth. It was getting too complicated. Every answer seemed to require three more explanations, and he could already feel himself losing track of which pieces they knew and which ones had only been rattling around inside his own head.

“Why not just have Calliope research your father? Liam, right?” Felix asked.

Zane shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I hoped that if they saw I existed, they’d reach out first? And if they didn’t, I could just move on?”

Saying it out loud made him feel pathetic. Small. Like the kid who used to linger just outside a room hoping somebody would notice him without having to ask to be let in. Confronting his birth father—a father who clearly hadn’t wanted him back then—only to be rejected a second time was more than Zane could’ve handled.

He could survive being invisible to Liam. He wasn’t sure he could survive making himself visible and watching the man deliberately look away.

“And did they?” Avi asked. “Reach out first?”

“Reina did,” Zane said. The answer loosened something inside him, just a fraction. “We’ve only talked online. But she’s not related to my dad. Her mom is my mom’s estranged sister. I didn’t know my mom had a sister anymore than I knew my dad—Irving—had a brother.”

Zane shook his head. It was all so convoluted. His entire childhood had apparently been built on a family tree with half the branches deliberately hacked off.

“So Reina is Bev’s niece?” Felix asked.

He nodded. “According to her mom—Mayim—the Scotts and the Silvers were neighbors who became inseparable. Same neighborhood, same people, same synagogue. They shared holidays and weekends and summers at the beach…” Zane hated the bitterness in his voice.

“Because Bev and Irv were the same age, their parents dreamed of their fairytale wedding from the time they were both in diapers. They were practically an arranged marriage. Mayim and Liam were the odd ones out. Liam was Irv’s younger brother by three years. Mayim was Bev’s older sister by two so there was no way they would encourage the two of them to date. Reina said the four teens would always hang out together during family time but that it was apparent to anyone with eyes that Bev preferred Liam but she’d been told in no uncertain terms that she and Liam would never happen.”

“Bev was a messy bitch from day one,” Felix said, the condemnation in his voice soothing something in Zane.

A startled laugh escaped Zane before he could stop it, some of the pressure in his chest releasing with it. Trust Felix to reduce generations of family dysfunction to one sentence.

“I guess the families all remained friends until I arrived and then everyone parted like the Red Sea, taking sides over what to do about me, two families’ dirty little secret.” His laugh faded. He picked at a loose thread on the sheet, winding it tightly around his fingertip until the skin went white. “Reina said nobody was supposed to know about me but that the gossip mill never stops churning out content. I was the ghost of Christmas past that never seemed to stop haunting their happy holidays.”

Nobody spoke for a beat.

It sounded uglier out loud. He’d known it, obviously. Reina had told him as much. But there was something uniquely awful about imagining people passing mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie while discussing his existence in hushed voices. A whole extended family knew about him. They’d known where he was. They’d known what had happened. And somehow Zane had still grown up believing there was nobody else in the world.

“But you have a half-sister?” Asa asked. “On your father’s side?”

“Yeah, Idina,” Zane said, heart squeezing painfully. Even her name felt strange in his mouth. Too intimate for somebody he’d never spoken to.

“And is your dad…” Avi started but trailed off.

“Alive?” Zane offered with a smile he didn’t feel. “Yeah. He owns a boat dealership apparently. He’s pretty successful, I guess. It’s weird cause he’s only in his fifties. He’s young. Younger than Thomas anyway.”

That might have been the strangest part. Liam wasn’t some ancient figure from Zane’s past. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t lost to time. He woke up every morning somewhere in the same world Zane did. Ate breakfast. Went to work. Had a daughter. Apparently sold fucking boats.

He had simply lived an entire life that didn’t include Zane.

“How does Reina know so much?”

"She calls herself a professional busybody.”

Felix laughed quietly. “I like her already.”

Zane liked her,too. That was the problem.

“She and Idina are the black sheep of their family,” Zane said. “They were best friends when the families split and they kept in touch secretly, even managing to get into the same prep school. Idina now runs an artisan candle company in the city and Reina is a sculptor who builds massive statues for government buildings. She said their parents couldn’t be less proud.”

He could hear how ridiculous it was that he knew these details. Two weeks ago, Idina hadn’t even existed to him. Now he knew what she did for a living. He knew where she lived. He knew she apparently hated cilantro and had once broken her wrist falling off a skateboard at sixteen because Reina had sent him a picture of the cast. Little scraps of a stranger’s life that Zane had greedily collected without knowing what he was supposed to do with them.

“You know a lot,” Felix said, sounding impressed. “Are you going to talk to Idina?”

Zane sighed, anxiety filling his stomach like a lead balloon. There it was. The question he’d been carefully stepping around since Reina first mentioned her. “I don’t know.”

“Well, if she and Reina really are besties, do you really think Reina will keep her mouth shut?” Asa asked, as to the point as ever.

Zane grimaced. Asa never met an uncomfortable truth he couldn’t drag into the light and beat Zane over the head with. Usually, Zane appreciated that about him. Right now, he kind of wanted to smother him with a pillow.

He wasn’t wrong. There was a good chance that Idina already knew about Zane but what if she didn’t want anything to do with him? What if she wanted to pretend he didn’t exist? His mother had said that Liam had known about Zane and hadn’t wanted him. That was fine. Zane had accepted the likelihood of that. Or he’d told himself he had, which was basically the same thing as long as nobody examined it too closely. But some part of him at least wanted to know his sister and even his cousin.

He wanted somebody who shared pieces of him. A nose. A smile. Some weird genetic quirk. He wanted to look at another person and find something familiar looking back at him.

Was that stupid?

It felt stupid. Worse, it felt needy, and Zane had spent most of his life trying very hard not to need anything from anyone.

“Are they married? Do they have kids?” Felix asked, eyes alight as he clutched Zane’s sweaty hand in his own.

Zane bit back a smile at the thought of his busybody cousin meeting his busybody husband. The gossip would flow like cheap champagne.

Zane glanced down at their joined fingers. Felix either hadn’t noticed how clammy his palm had become or, more likely, had noticed and didn’t give a shit. His thumb kept sweeping over Zane’s knuckles in slow, soothing passes.

“Reina is divorced,” Zane said. “She has two boys, three and five. Casper and Quill. Idina’s partner is non-binary. Their name is Rue. They don’t want kids, apparently.”

“She told you that?” Felix asked, breathless.

His excitement was so naked that Zane’s mouth twitched. Felix already looked invested in these people. No suspicion. No hesitation. Zane had presented him with a cousin, a sister, a nibling-in-law and two little boys, and apparently Felix had simply expanded the boundaries of his universe to make room for all of them.

Zane nodded. “She’s a talker. She also sent me family photos.”

“I wanna see,” Felix cried.

Of course he did.

Zane gave a jerky nod, rolling onto his back and reaching over Asa for his phone where it was plugged into the charger. His stomach fluttered as his fingers closed around it. Showing them somehow felt more intimate than telling them. The messages had belonged only to him until now. His tiny window into a family he hadn’t known existed.

Once he opened it for them, all of this would become real.

Asa handed him his phone and they all crushed in around him. Felix immediately tucked himself against Zane’s shoulder while Avi practically climbed halfway across him to see, leaving Asa to peer over the top of Zane’s head. Zane was suddenly surrounded by warm skin and familiar breath, his husbands forming a protective wall around him without any of them seeming to realize they were doing it.

He pulled up their chat and went to the photos. There were tons of them. Reina joked she was the unwitting family archivist as well as voluntary gossip monger.

Zane had skipped over the older photos. The ones before he was born. He hadn’t deleted them, he just hadn’t had the emotional bandwidth needed to see the ‘before’. Before Zane had existed, before Zane had been the tiny bundle that had blown apart two families who loved each other.

It was easier to look at people who existed now. People whose happiness couldn’t possibly have anything to do with him.

“This is Reina,” Zane said, looking down at a photo of a girl with a big smile and dark waves. She had cat-like eyes and wore an expression like she knew everyone’s secrets. She was in New York in the photo, in the middle of an ice rink, at her feet were two bundled toddlers, using red walkers to help them get along on the ice. One of the boys—the older one—clearly favored his father, russet colored hair and freckles that reminded Zane of Noah.

The other looked just like Reina, his long curls stopped just at his chin, his eyes were somewhere between green and brown. She’d proudly told Zane that Quill wouldn’t allow her to cut his hair, that he liked it longer. He said it made him feel pretty.

Zane liked knowing that. It was such a useless little piece of information. The kind of thing nobody would ever put on a family tree. Quill liked his hair long. Casper hated peas. Reina drank iced coffee even when it was snowing. Tiny facts about people who had been strangers two weeks ago that Zane had tucked away like they mattered.

“She’s pretty,” Felix murmured, tracing her hair on the screen.

“Her kids are cute,” Asa grunted. “That one kinda looks like Noah.”

“That’s what I said,” Zane said with a smile that didn’t meet his eyes. Something about the resemblance had bothered him the first time too, though he hadn’t understood why. Maybe because it made them seem less hypothetical. Quill and Casper weren’t names attached to branches on a DNA website. They were little boys with scraped knees and Christmas pajamas and faces that reminded him of people he loved.

“This is Idina and her partner,” Zane said.

“Wow. She looks just like you,” Felix gasped.

Zane’s gaze snapped from the phone to Felix.

“You think?” Zane asked.

“You don’t?” Felix countered. “She has your hair, she has your eyes, your lashes, that smile. Wow.”

Zane looked back at the picture. He’d studied it so many times that he’d stopped actually seeing it. Now he tried to see Idina through Felix’s eyes. The dark curls. The heavy lashes. The shape of her smile.

His features.

On somebody else.

A strange ache spread through his chest. He’d spent his entire childhood being told all the ways he wasn’t Gage. He didn’t look enough like Gage. He wasn’t as smart as Gage. Wasn’t as good as Gage. Wasn’t the son Irving wanted.

Nobody had ever looked at another person and said, “ She looks just like you.”

Rue stood, arms wrapped around one of Idina’s. They were tiny compared to Idina. They reminded Zane a bit of an elf, soft features, pointy ears that stuck out beneath a beanie, brownish-blonde spikes framing big brown eyes. They were attractive in that androgynous way some people just have about them.

“They look happy,” Zane murmured to himself.

Idina wasn’t looking at the camera. She was looking at Rue, her smile wide and unguarded while Rue leaned into her side. There was something almost painfully ordinary about it.

His sister was happy.

Zane hadn’t realized until that moment how badly he’d needed her to be.

“Do you have more?” Asa asked.

Zane nodded, quietly swiping. The first photos he’d seen dozens of times now. Casper and Quill at the pumpkin patch, their cheeks painted with matching orange jack-o’-lanterns. Halloween costumes. The boys sitting on Santa’s lap, Casper grinning while Quill regarded Santa with obvious suspicion. Idina and Rue taking a selfie at a Broadway show holding up the Playbill. Idina in her workshop that she shared with Reina in the warehouse district. One side filled with vats of wax, the other items that looked more at home in a carpenter’s space than an artist’s.

Every picture had a story attached now because Reina couldn’t seem to send one without supplying context. Casper had insisted on carrying a pumpkin almost as big as he was. Quill had asked Santa if the elves were paid. Rue had surprised Idina with the Broadway tickets for their anniversary.

Zane knew these stories.

That realization made his thumb stall against the screen.

He knew family stories.

His hands trembled as he swiped to the older ones. The photos that had clearly been digitized. Felix noticed immediately. His fingers tightened around Zane’s hand, but he didn’t tell him to stop. Didn’t ask if he was okay. He simply held on.

The colors changed first. The crisp brightness of phone cameras disappeared, replaced by faded film and soft edges. Suddenly, Zane wasn’t looking through Reina’s life anymore. He was looking backward.

The first was a picture of his mom and da—Irving—leaving for what he could only assume was prom or maybe homecoming. They looked impossibly young. That bothered him more than he’d expected. Bev had existed in Zane’s mind almost exclusively as his mother, already hardened and angry, but here she was with smooth skin and carefully curled hair, wearing some hideous dress that probably hadn’t been hideous at the time.

Irving had an arm tight around Bev’s waist but she was looking off to the side, face pinched, phony smile nailed into place.

“Jesus,” Asa muttered. “She looks thrilled.”

Zane huffed out something that wasn’t quite a laugh and swiped again.

There were photos of them on the beach, not just his mother’s family, but the Scott’s too. Two families crowded together beneath the sun as if there had never been any distinction between them. Coolers and striped beach chairs littered the sand. Somebody had been buried up to their neck. In another picture, teenagers crowded together with sunburned noses and wet hair, arms thrown casually around each other’s shoulders.

Zane slowed down.

There was Bev. Irving. Mayim.

And Liam.

His thumb stopped moving.

It was clearly some kind of annual trip as there were several of them—each of the children looking slightly older—until they were quite obviously teens and once again, Bev sat on a log by the fire, Irving beside her.

They’d caught her in a laugh. Not one of those phony ones but a real laugh, head thrown back, mouth open. Her cheeks were flushed from the fire, her hair wild around her shoulders. For one disorienting second, she didn’t look anything like the woman who’d raised him.

She’d been beautiful once.

Young once. Happy once.

Liam clearly thought so. He was staring at her like she hung the moon and the stars.

Not at the camera. Not at his brother. Just her.

Zane swallowed. There was an entire story happening in that photograph. One nobody had ever bothered to tell him.

It hit him then, how much he looked like Liam. Not his mother, not Irving, but Liam.

The same dark curls. The same shape around the eyes. Even the angle of his jaw and the slight bow of his mouth. It was like somebody had taken pieces of Zane’s face and scattered them backward through time.

He said as much out loud.

“You do look like him. He’s handsome, like you,” Felix murmured.

“You could be twins,” Avi said.

“Lois is smaller,” Asa said fondly. “Slighter build. He’s prettier than his father.”

That made something warm unfurl beneath Zane’s ribs. Of course Asa would look at photographic evidence of Zane’s biological father and immediately turn it into an opportunity to declare Zane superior.

Zane reached behind him, hooking his fingers over Asa’s hip to drag him in closer. Asa got the message, moving until Zane was all but crushed between him and Felix.

Better.

Zane let himself sink into the weight of them. Felix at his back. Asa against his front. Avi plastered along Felix’s other side, one hand still resting on Zane like he needed some point of contact too.

His family.

“Are you going to meet her?” Felix finally asked quietly.

“I-I think so. Reina seems nice. Even if nobody else wants to meet me, she does.” Zane stared down at the frozen image of Liam for another second before locking his phone. “She knows who we are…who I am, so I suppose she could be dangerous if she found out about our…us. The four of us, I mean, not the murder stuff.”

“Everyone already knows we’re together, baby,” Felix said. “She’d hardly be Deep Throat.”

Avi snorted. “It’s 2026. Aliens are real, the world is run by a cabal of pedo cannibals, half the world thinks we can timeline jump, the other half thinks we’re a simulation and most other humans are NPCs. Who cares about four celebrities who came out as poly anymore?”

“Doesn’t even make the top 100 of 2026 scandals. Maybe not even the top 1000,” Asa added.

Zane laughed, but the sound faded quickly. The phone felt heavy in his hand. He set it facedown on the mattress, his fingers lingering over the case.

“Does it make us irresponsible? Bringing kids into this fucked-up world?” Zane asked.

The question had been lurking beneath all the others. Maybe beneath the baby conversation from the very beginning.

“Somebody has to do it,” Asa said. “Might as well be us. At least we have the means to keep them safe. Not everyone is as lucky as we are.”

“I feel guilty,” Zane admitted.

“Guilty?” Felix asked. “Why?”

“There’s a lot of little Noahs out there, though. Kids that need homes, good homes, safe homes,” Zane said. “Maybe we should adopt?”

Because wanting a baby simply because he wanted one suddenly seemed selfish. Especially after everything he’d just seen. All those children born into families that had plans for them before they could even walk. All those people deciding who belonged where and what happened when a child didn’t fit the plan.

Zane knew better than most what happened to unwanted children.

“It’s not an either-or thing, Lois. We can do both. We can do neither. This house is big enough for a little league team,” Asa reminded. “We can have as many babies, toddlers, preschoolers, etcetera as you want. We might eventually have to add onto the house but that’s a problem for another day.” Asa caught Zane’s chin, turning his face until Zane had no choice but to look at him. His expression had lost all its teasing. “Whatever you want, we got you. Always.”

Zane’s eyes burned.

There was that word again. Want.

Such a simple fucking word.

His entire childhood had been shaped by who had been wanted and who hadn’t. Gage had been wanted. Zane hadn’t. Bev had wanted Liam but married Irving. Irving had wanted the son he’d lost instead of the one still standing in front of him. Two entire families had apparently wanted a fairy tale badly enough that when reality ruined it, they’d scattered and left a little boy behind in the wreckage.

Maybe that was why wanting something still frightened him. Somewhere along the way, he’d learned that wanting was dangerous. Wanting gave other people something to take away.

Felix’s arm tightened around him.

“We don’t have to decide anything tonight,” Felix murmured, reading him the way he always did. “You can meet Reina. Or not. You can talk to Idina. Or not. We can have another baby. We can adopt. We can do both someday. Nothing has to happen just because you finally admitted you want it.”

Zane blinked hard. “I really do want another baby.”

“I know,” Felix said.

“I want one too,” Avi announced. “Several, actually.”

Asa groaned. “Of course you do.”

“Like four more,” Avi said, tone teasing. “Three more boys and one spoiled rotten girl.”

Asa balked. “Absolutely fucking not.”

Avi laughed, Felix joining him, and Zane found himself laughing too, his eyes still wet.

He looked at the phone lying beside him. Reina and Casper and Quill. Idina and Rue. Liam. Mayim. The Silvers and the Scotts. A whole sprawling collection of people who might become something to him or might remain nothing more than photographs on a screen.

For once, he didn’t need to know which.

He was already wedged between three men who loved him, and two little boys who called him Poppy. Nobody here wished he were someone else. Nobody was waiting for him to become Gage. Nobody considered his existence a mistake that needed to be hidden.

Zane had spent so much of his life believing he’d been born into the wrong family.

Maybe he’d just needed time to build the right one.