Outtake: Boys Won't Be Boys #Antony
Hey, loves!
We’re back for another outtake. I pulled from the request pile because I didn’t have anything I immediately wanted to write myself, so … this one has been in there for quite a while. A reader wanted to see Antony with one, or all, of his boys when they were teens. You got one boy in this one, and it felt appropriate seeing as how I don’t do many outtakes with Antony and Gio together. So for anyone who wonders if I do eventually go back to old requests and write them, the answer is yes, I do.
Enjoy.
*
Antony
Boys Won’t Be Boys
“Is this what you were looking for?”
Antony grinned at the woman standing to his left, and took the Tupperware container with his secret sauce from her outstretched hand. Cecelia winked when he said, “Maybe I was.”
“Maybe. Maybe says the man who stayed up until one in the morning getting the sauce just right because apparently he can’t cook burgers on the grill without it.”
Sucking air through his teeth as he popped the top off the contained and the smell of spices and all his hard work the night before drifted into the air and mixed with the bit of smoke from the barbeque. “Are you—queen of her kitchen; first of her domain—telling me I was being ridiculous last night making my sauce?”
“No, I think the way you covet that sauce is ridiculous.”
She even added a pat to his cheek for good measure. Before he could think better of it, he leaned forward and caught hers lips with his own in a burning kiss. At least that way, he got something good out of this conversation and it quieted his woman.
God, he loved his wife.
Only Cecelia could make Antony playful, and he adored her for that, too.
“But you are a little ridiculous about it,” she whispered against his smirking lips.
Well …
“You only say that,” he murmured, straightening back up and readying to prep his burgers with a good dose of the sauce, “because I won’t tell you how I make it, Cecelia.”
“I don’t barbeque, Antony.”
He gave her a look from the side, arching a brow. “Are you saying you couldn’t use this sauce for something else, then? It’s quite flex—”
“Just cook your damn burgers.”
Antony’s laughter rung out over the mansion’s backyard that was currently filling with more people. After all these years, he still wasn’t one for entertaining, but Cecelia loved it. He’d do anything to indulge his wife—even barbequing for fifty people in the neighborhood who he swore only came to the Marcello party because they were curious what they might see behind closed doors. As though they were a fucking circus act.
But who was he to say what people thought?
“Oh, there’s the Martins,” Cecelia noted, “I’ll go say hi.”
Antony sighed, not even bothering to turn and look at the new guests his wife mentioned. He didn’t need to see the husband and wife, and their arrogant sixteen-year-old teenage son who regularly tested his patience whenever he was put in the same proximity as the boy.
“Keep Gio away from the kid, yeah?” Antony muttered.
Cecelia shot him a look. “I didn’t notice him. There’s … a problem there?”
Antony shrugged. “Always has been, I think.”
Not that he could explain it.
It just was.
Sometimes, that’s how boys worked. He wanted to avoid a real problem before it became an issue and keeping the teenagers separated seemed like the right way to do it when Gio’s anger could come quicker than a blink, and he had no qualms with acting out from it, either. Antony was still working on that with his fifteen-year-old. He had a feeling he’d be working on it for the rest of his fucking life, too.
“Oh, never mind,” Cecelia said under her breath, taking her first step away from Antony, “there’s their son. Worry about your burgers, Antony.”
Right.
The burgers.
*
“I’m proud of you,” Antony said.
From the end of his bed, Giovanni looked up from where he was kicking off his shoes to a careless pile on top of the clothes that rested down below. In nothing but his boxers, and looking like he’d probably had two or three glasses of wine when someone wasn’t watching—maybe something else, too; fuck, Antony really needed to keep a better eye on his youngest—Gio stared at his father in the doorway.
“What?” he asked.
“You heard what I said. But in simpler terms, thank you for not pounding the arrogant shit out of the Martin kid today during the barbeque.”
Gio rolled his eyes and fell to his back on the bed with his arms spread wide. “Okay, but that was really hard. He never shuts the fuck up, Papa—he’s always going on about one thing or another like he knows what he’s talking about.”
Then, all at once, Gio sat up on the bed and gave his father a look. “He’d probably be a lot easier to deal with if someone did knock his stupid ass out. Did you see how he wears his fucking hat?”
Yes, with a wide brim, and off to the side, usually with a bandana underneath it. If that was Antony’s kid—thank God it wasn’t—he’d burn every fucking hat.
Antony grinned. “Nonetheless … I’m proud of you for holding it in check.”
He fell back to the bed again. “S’was still hard.”
Yeah, Antony bet.
“So, why didn’t you?”
Gio made a noise under his breath. “Because then Ma would be sad, you would bitch, and Lucian and Dante would glare at me for the rest of the week while I walked around on eggshells. Honestly, he’d not worth the trouble, so …”
“You know, I think that’s called maturity. Growth.”
“Stupid fucking shit, that.”
Raising teenage boys was all about the give and the take. Sometimes Antony had to give a little, and sometimes he had to take. Gio’s mouth and bad language was something he ignored a lot of the time—like now—unless they were at the dinner table.
He had more important things to focus on.
Antony chuckled. “Part of growing up, figlio.”
“Besides,” Gio said, waving one hand high, “if I really wanted to mess with the asshole, I’d just fuck his girlfriend. I feel like that’s good enough for me.”
It took Antony a second to respond.
His brow lifted high. “Gio.”
“Hmm?”
“Are you safe?”
“Like—”
“I’m not fucking around with you right now, Giovanni David. I swear to God if someone brings a pregnant girl to my doorstep, I will have you neutered like a goddamn dog. I hear they’ll do that in Tijuana. Imagine flying through turbulence to come home with stitches in your fucking nuts. I can have you there by next weekend.”
“Jesus. Yes, I’m safe.”
Okay, that was good to know.
“Gio?”
His son tipped his head up and met his father’s stare from across the room. “What?”
“Women aren’t trophies or weapons and we don’t use them like they are. Don’t you ever do that. Boys will be boys—but not my fucking boys. My boys will be gentlemen who behave how I taught them. Do you understand me?”
Gio sighed. “Well …”
“Gio.”
“Yeah, Papa, I hear you.”
Antony’s shoulders sagged a bit with his next breath. “But do you?”
Tipping his head to the side on the bed, Gio met his father’s gaze and he smirked a bit. “I always hear you—even when you think I don’t.”
Yeah.
Antony certainly hoped so.
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