She settles back against me.

Why, Alan, does everyone I love leave me?

“Oh, baby, there is nothing you could do to make me leave you.”

Jack’s right. The answers are always simple if you let them be. I get it. No more questions. Let it rest, Alan. It doesn’t matter. You love her.

Out of nowhere, laughter bubbles upward. I try to fight it, but it pushes out stronger.

Chrissie’s face snaps up. “What?”

I can’t stop laughing.

Fuck, she’s going to get pissed if I say it.

Why does she have to stare at me with those eyes all confused and expectant?

I can’t look at her.

I close my lids.

Nope, not helping. The chuckles come louder. I can’t stop it.

“You came…to New York—” I choke out. “—to fix a problem…and you left creating two new ones. That’s so you, Chrissie.”

Oh fuck, I’m laughing like a madman. She’s going to be beyond pissed. She pulls from my arms and hits me with a pillow.

“That was mean, Alan.”

I laugh harder.

She hits me again.

“Stop laughing. It’s not funny,” she chides.

Good, she’s laughing, too. I spring up, grab her around the waist and lower her to the bed beneath me. I cover her mouth with mine, swallowing her humor, and fuck, I’m fully hard and pulsing again.

I start roaming her body with my kisses. My hands travel, lightly brushing her flesh. Her laughter melts down.

“Do you want to create more problems?”

Her eyes fly wide.

Exactly.

Too late now.

Whatever happens, happens.

I didn’t bring rubbers.

Neither did she.

I’m not cut. And I’m pretty certain birth control is still beyond manageable for Chrissie.

Fuck, I’m just going to enjoy being alone with her and worry later.

She groans. “Oh fuck, Alan.”

I sink myself deeply inside her. “I’m going to take that, Chrissie, as a yes.”

*  *  *

 

Mexico City, three months later

“Alan! Get in here. Now.”

I jerk awake.

Oh no, I know that tone of voice.

Oh please, don’t come in here and tell me you’re pregnant.

“I need to show you something. Darn it. It’s afternoon. Wake up. Why do I always have to come to you?”

I hear running footsteps and then I feel her in the room.

Grimacing and tense, I roll over in bed. Chrissie is holding a laptop. Not a stick from a test. Oh, thank you, God.

She stares at me, exasperated, from the open bedroom doorway. “Didn’t you tell Krystal not to lend her computer to Kaley?”

Oh fuck.

I sit up in bed. “I didn’t think of that. I didn’t think of cutting her data package and limiting the international airtime thing either.”

Chrissie plops down beside me, sets the computer in front of her and starts clicking away.

“What has she done now?” I ask as dread tightens every muscle in my gut.

She waves me off with a hand. “No. No. No. This is good. I want to show you this and then sneak it back into Krystal’s room so Kaley doesn’t know that we saw it.”

Not buying it. This will not be good, no matter what Chrissie thinks. Everything Kaley does digitally is an all-out nightmare.

Chrissie moves to sit between my legs, her ass brushing me there as she settles against me and sets the laptop on her thighs.

“Look, Alan. Look at what she’s been doing.”

She clicks on a video and hits play. Long and Hard: My Journey with My Father. Oh Christ, she’s got sixty minutes of video already cut into a documentary. Oh my. Photos and film. I don’t remember her taking those photos.

Oh fuck.

Tears.

Not again.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Chrissie whispers, overwhelmed. She starts to anxiously brush her cheeks. “This is good, Alan. Really good. This is how she sees you. Look at that photo of you with the boys.” She laughs. “You and Krystal. Oh gosh, look at us. God, I hope she shows me her photos of this trip. I want them. Aren’t they beautiful?”

Chrissie looks over her shoulder, her eyes sparkling, and my arms tighten around her. My chin rests on her shoulder. I can’t breathe. The emotion is just swallowing up all the oxygen the second I pull it into me.

When it’s over, Chrissie turns off the laptop and closes it. “Everything is going to be all right, Alan.”

I nod.

“Let me put this back in Krystal’s room before Lourdes returns with the kids.”

She springs from the bed and runs from the room. I lie back and close my eyes, trying to calm everything roiling through me. We are a long way, all of us, from where we were four months ago. It’s overwhelming at times. And yes, it was long and hard. But I think maybe we’re in light.

“I did something bad,” Chrissie says.

My eyes shoot open. Oh no, not now. I’m happy.

“What?”

She scrunches up her face. “Miles Abernathy sent the galley of your biography to the house for your approval. I didn’t tell you. I kept it. I read it, Alan.”

Oh fuck.

She drops it on my lap. Long and Hard—The Biography of Alan Manzone. What the hell is it about that song? Will all media creation about me forever and exclusively be that title?

I exhale. “How awful is it?”

Chrissie smiles. “It’s not awful at all. It is wonderful. I tucked it into Kaley’s suitcase before she left with you from California. I’m pretty sure she read it. Especially after seeing what she titled the documentary.”

Oh fuck.

Really, Chrissie?

I lie back on the bed, groaning. “Yep, give that to our daughter to read. Way to go, Chrissie. Way to be a team player.”

“Stop it,” she admonishes, lifting it from the bed.

Paper rustles.

Oh crud, she’s looking for something she wants me to read. I don’t want to read anything in this nightmare Miles Abernathy created.

I open my eyes and she shoves it at me. I drop it on the bed. I read the first paragraph and look up.

“How the fuck does Miles Abernathy know what happened in the nursery the first time I went in to meet Khloe?”

She bites her lower lip. She rolls her eyes and exhales.

“Jeez, Alan, I’ve got baby cameras in the nursery. When Miles called me wanting something for the chapter on Khloe, since that event happened after his meeting with you, I told him about that. How you were in the nursery with Khloe. I saw everything. When you picked her up. Sat on the bench. Held her.” She smiles. Her eyes shimmer more brightly. “When you cried. I never loved you more or more desperately wanted to be with you than at that moment. But it was enough I got to share it with you even if you didn’t know it. That’s when I knew we’d be OK.”

I stare at her.

“I love you, Chrissie.”

Her gorgeous blue eyes grow enormous in her face. “You are the most loving man I’ve ever known. I think it’s time, Alan, that you let people know it.”

 

 

Epilogue

Chrissie’s Journal

I never thought I would get to write this in my journal. Alan and I have made it through our first year of marriage. Even with how badly it started, the highlights and the lowlights, we’re both here. In the now. I think we both want to be here, clear and in the now.

An unpredictable journey in every way. But I don’t think we could have gotten here any other way, not really. If I had told Alan that Kaley was his, back when we were young, when Alan was the Alan of those days and I was the me of that time, we would have ended forever then.

And us ending would have been a tragic thing. We would both have missed so much and I would not have been able to gather the things along our journey so I would have them to share with Alan today.

It is how we have always loved, watching each other’s back and never testing an end. I took what he could give. He accepted the limits of what I could be. He slugged through the years of my need to wait until I was in a place where I could dare the possibility of him. Perhaps I’ve been unfair and dishonest.