And it has every day for the last year. Since the Christmas that changed our entire lives.

Jesse and I have been living in St. Barth for the last nine months or so. After our vacation last New Year’s, when we decided we wanted to move permanently away from Maine, and out of the States in general, we’ve been living this endless dream in a tropical paradise.

We had to leave when our trip ended, but only for long enough for me to sell my business, and our house. All in all, it took about ten weeks. We packed up our lives, said goodbye to the few people we care about back home, and moved to St. Barth for good. We found our little house, a cozy haven right on the ocean, and started our lives together…

As a former father and his adoptive son, turned lovers.

Of course, no one knows any of that. As far as the people of our quaint beach town are concerned, Jesse and I are just partners.

James McCallister and his nineteen-year-old boyfriend, Jesse Sorensen. Yes, Jesse has always shared a last name with his real parents.

I was adamant about that when I adopted him. I didn’t want to give him my last name, because I wanted to keep the memory of his parents alive, in him.

But maybe he’ll become a McCallister in the future… If he says yes.

These thoughts send a thrilling tickle through my stomach, and it causes me to haul him into me even closer, until our bodies are pressed together so tightly, I can barely tell where I end and he begins.

Swallowing up his little gasps, I suck on his pillowed lips, tugging them with my teeth in between feathering his tongue with mine. God, I fucking love this kid. So much more than I ever thought was possible. As not only my family, the most important person in my world, and the man I would lay down my life for…

But also as my lover; my partner. My treasure, my escape, my sanctuary. The man who makes my heart race, and settles me at the same time.

He’s literally everything to me. My sweetest gift.

“Mmff…” he mumbles into my mouth from the ferocity of my sensual kisses, and I chuckle. “You’re… distracting me.”

“What else is new?” I grin on his lips.

We pull apart, and he lifts his fingers to brush the hair away from where it wants to flop over my forehead. Clearing my throat, I stow the urges to lift him up onto the counter and tear off that dumb apron he still always wears—the one I gave him for Christmas last year—along with his fitted Rick and Morty boxer briefs, and make him come, and come and come…

To show him who he belongs to. And how I take care of what’s mine.

“You know… Christmas Eve is tomorrow…” I murmur, slipping my fingers into the waistband of his boxers.