Read Online By Any Other Name by Tia Fielding - Free Book Online Page A

It was a great scent, the trees and some flowers outside. He should take a day off soon just to be able to hang out in the garden a bit more. Sometimes he took a laptop to the deck, but that was it, really. Besides, the sunlight always got on his nerves when it reflected from the screen.
     
    “Okay, just nap if you feel like it, and I’ll wake you up around noon if you fall asleep. That’s when I usually take a little break for lunch,” Dru explained and got a distracted nod in response. Great, another man in the house who could get lost in his reading in three seconds flat. Perfect.
     
    Dru turned to check his e-mail and start the working day, which would consist of checking on some web pages he had coded and built from scratch and making adjustments where needed. He had all kinds of clients, from families to clubs and businesses. Everyone liked his hands-on way of running the sites. He was always on call, and naturally he knew the sites like the backs of his hands.
     
    After a while he got lost in work and the gentle sound of pages being turned on the couch not far from where he was sitting. He really forgot that he had company, and when he got up in his usual abrupt way, the gasp from the couch made him frown.
     
    “Sorry, sorry. Forgot you were there.”
     
    Skye looked annoyed at himself and didn’t say a thing.
     
    “Skye? We need to figure this out. Somehow. I’m open to suggestions, or else we just have to sort of learn to live with it over time. The first days will be tough in any case.”
     
    “Yeah.” Skye exhaled. “I really hope you’re right. I’m sick of being like this.”
     
    “I was just going to get coffee, and I’ll be right back,” Dru said, wanting to give the other man some more space.
     
    He went down the stairs and leaned on the counter for a moment, trying to wrap his head around how to be more considerate or how to make Skye get used to them faster. It was only day one, and he felt extremely guilty already. What would it be like when Thom came home? It wasn’t like they could hide the fact that they touched each other constantly; if they touched Skye in passing, or they made fast movements or something.
     
    Absentmindedly, he made himself a double espresso with the fancy machine Thom had gotten him for Christmas, and smiled a little. Thom would figure things out if they couldn’t. Dru had come to rely on his lover to be more mature and know more about things. It bothered him that Thom thought of their age gap as something negative. It was nothing like that. Sadly Dru also knew that it had been Thom’s mom, Cindy, who had put the idea into her son’s head back when they had begun to date more seriously.
     
    Dru did love Thom’s parents; hell, he cared for them way more than he did for his own sad excuses for parents, and the Williams family had really adopted him. It was Thom’s doing. He couldn’t understand how someone went through life without a “proper family,” so he had decided to include Dru in his. Naturally they had their own family, but there were Thom’s siblings and parents now too.
     
    Someone had once said that you could make your own family, that you weren’t born into one, you chose one for yourself. That had always been true for Dru. Skye had been his family from the moment he had stepped into Dru’s life over a decade ago. Now he was back, and somehow Dru felt better. Something had been missing, but already, merely by being there in their house, Skye had changed something within Dru more than an unlikely reunion with his parents could.
     
    While carrying his cup up the stairs, Dru thought about his chosen family. It wasn’t much: Thom and Kara, Thom’s best friend, Oscar. Thom’s family, especially his sister, Laura, and her three-year-old son, Jacob Thomas, or JT, as he went by. It had been enough. More than Dru had thought he’d ever have after he lost Skye. And again his mind came to the same strangely fulfilling thought: he had Skye