Del’s house looked like a bomb had gone off in it.
“Anything you want from your old place?” Del asked, stacking his kitchen gear in a box.
Justin leaned on the table. “No.”
He didn’t even have to think about it. There was nothing for him at his old house. There wasn’t a single memory he wanted to keep. He couldn’t wait to put Enterprise behind them, and start over in their beautiful house in California.
He’d been nervous about the horse thing, but he’d spoken with Leo, the guy they were buying the house from, and Leo had talked him through it. It was agistment. People mostly looked after their own horses—they just rented the space from Leo to do it. Justin would have to feed and water the horses twice a day, but Leo had showed him how to do it. Everything else—vet care and husbandry like hoof trimming—was the owners’ responsibility, and it was all spelled out in contracts with the owners. And with the five horses currently on the property it earned Leo a tidy eight hundred dollars a week in profits. And Justin wasn’t going to turn that much money down just because of a steep learning curve. The horses were all good with people too and had seemed to like Justin when he’d met them. So he was nervous, but cautiously confident he could learn. Also, with eight hundred dollars a week it wouldn’t be long at all until he could afford to get his gardens established. With seven acres, he had a lot of room to plan.
Justin smiled. “No, I’m just really excited to get to California, you know?”
“I know,” Del said. He walked over to Justin and slid his arms around him. Kissed him. “Me too. But something tells me that two days driving with three kids under seven is going to be a nightmare.”
Justin laughed. “But also, if we can survive this, we can survive anything, right?”
“Right,” Del agreed, and kissed him again. “This is our parenting baptism of fire.”
Justin reached up and gently tugged a twisting tendril of hair that had escaped Del’s messy bun. “You know, I kind of wish we had stopped at Vegas on our way back, Elvis wedding or not.”
“Hmmm.” Del smiled. “Except we both agreed Harper would have killed us in our sleep if she found out we’d got married without inviting her.”
“Probably,” Justin agreed.
Seeing the house in California had solidified something in Justin though. He’d never doubted Del’s commitment to him and the kids, but he’d still been afraid that Del was giving so much more than Justin was, and there had still been a part of him that was terrified that if things didn’t work out between them that Justin would be worse off than ever. Except Del had explained to him that the agistment job was his and his alone, and that Paul was doing up paperwork to say that, so even if they broke up—it wouldn’t happen, Del said, but he wanted to put Justin’s mind to rest—Justin wouldn’t be left without any income at all. And he and the kids could stay in the house as tenants, even if Justin and Del weren’t in a relationship anymore.
It was the opposite of a romantic gesture, Justin thought, but at the same time it was exactly what he’d needed to hear. Justin didn’t always trust promises. He’d had them broken so many times before that he needed to know exactly what would happen if it happened again. So it wasn’t a romantic declaration about how this was their happy ending and nothing would go wrong in their forever after—it was so much more than that. It was Del understanding Justin’s fears and accommodating them, and making sure that he knew, even if everything went wrong, that he had somewhere safe to land.
Justin’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out to read his text. “It’s from Leo,” he said. “He’s checking if we’re still going to be there on Tuesday afternoon. I’ll let him know that’s still the plan.”
The settlement date had actually been yesterday, but one of Leo’s teenage kids was camping out in the house until Justin and Del arrived so that the horses were fed and watered.
“That’s still the plan,” Del agreed. “We’ll get on the road early tomorrow morning, and try to break up the drive a bit so the kids don’t get too stir crazy in the car. We just need the movers to arrive on time this afternoon, and we’re all set.”
All set? That seemed like an overstatement.
Del laughed at his expression. “It’s all gonna come together, I swear.”
From upstairs, they heard the sound of something breaking, and then, from Wyatt: “Uh oh.”
“One less thing to pack, whatever it is,” Del said, as he and Justin hurried upstairs to do damage control.