Dalton, Tymber - Stoneface (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (28 page)

“Now that I don’t know. She didn’t tell us that.” Okay, technically that was the truth. She didn’t tell them. Gwen had figured it out on her own after catching Amy and Rat Bastard red-handed.

Oh, good, another man to nickname.

Their mother shook her head in disbelief. “No. I don’t believe it.”

Liam scratched his head. “Well, sorry to be the bearer of all this bad news tonight. Amy’s pregnant, Gee and I are moving to South Dakota, and I’m gay.”

Gwen closed her eyes, her lips pressed together, cringing, waiting.

Their father did not disappoint. “If this is some idea of a joke, young man—”

“Oh, it’s no joke, Dad.” She heard Liam push his chair back. She didn’t dare open her eyes yet. “We love you, but you two have been operating under some pretty unrealistic ideals for a long, long time. Gee makes a damn good living at what she does. Amy has a life to live, and so do I. I’m tired of being scared of hiding who I am around you. Now I don’t have to. I’m going to move out there and start a new life, and Gee is willing to pull up stakes and go with me.”

Gwen finally dared open her eyes. Her parents stared at her. Her father trembled with anger and jabbed a finger at her. “This is all your fault, young lady! You writing that…that…filth! You’ve corrupted your brother!”

“Stop!” Liam stood, holding on to the table for balance. Gwen felt close to tears, but the protective anger on Liam’s face kept her from breaking down. “Gee is the one person I felt safe coming out to. The first person I came out to. This isn’t her fault, it’s the way I am, the way I was born. So back off, Dad. I knew you’d react this way. It’s why I was afraid to admit the truth to you. Well, I don’t have to be afraid anymore. I love you, and I love Mom, and I’m grateful beyond words for your love and support and care when I got sick, but it’s time for me to suck it up and move on and be who I need to be. Now I’m not scared to take care of myself anymore.” He grabbed his cane and held his hand out to Gwen. “Come on, kiddo. Let’s go home.”

“You’re not going anywhere!” their father screamed. “You’re going to stay here and discuss this, and then I’m calling our minister and have him come talk to you.”

Their mother didn’t rise from her chair. She sat there and cried. Gwen felt a little guilty about that, it coming down to this, but she trusted Liam and knew a confrontation would have happened regardless of how they approached it with their father.

Liam shook his head. “Sorry, Dad. This isn’t a demon you can say a few prayers over and exorcise. I’m gay, not possessed. Deal with it. You have a gay son, you have one daughter who makes her living writing erotica, and another daughter knocked up out of wedlock. The irony is, of course, that the knocked-up daughter is not the one who writes erotica, but the ‘good’ daughter, the one you’ve thrown in poor Gee’s face all these years.”

Gwen took his hand and stood, her own tears close to the surface.

Liam looked at her. “Come on, sweetie,” he gently said. “Let’s go home.” She let him lead her toward the front door.

Their father moved faster and blocked their exit. Liam still had a good three inches of height on him. “You’re not going anywhere!” their father roared. “You’re going to stay here so we can pray over you!”

Liam’s voice dropped, angry. “Get out of our way, Dad. We’re leaving.”

“I’m not moving!”

“Okay then.” Liam hooked his cane over his arm and, without releasing Gwen’s hand, reached into his pocket for his cell.

“What are you doing?” their father demanded.

“I’m calling 911 and telling them you’re holding us hostage and refusing to let us leave.”

Their mother finally stood and rushed to the front door. She grabbed their father’s arm. “Dave, please, just let them go!”

Liam’s thumb hovered over the
send
button on his phone. “What’ll it be, Dad?” Gwen never remembered hearing Liam sound so angry. “We’re not staying and being subjected to your abuse about our lives. We’re not backing down. Not this time. It’s time you see the truth about who your children are and learn to deal with it. You want to go after someone, go after Amy for scaring the crap out of all of us by disappearing the way she did and getting herself pregnant.”

Gwen clung to Liam’s arm, terrified he’d follow through with his threat to call. As pissed off as she could get at her parents, she didn’t want either of them in jail.

Their father finally let their mother pull him aside. Liam nodded and thumbed the end button to clear the number from his phone before he slipped it back into his pocket. “Mom, Dad, we love you. We are grateful to you, and we think you were good parents. But we are adults and we are tired of having to hide the truth about ourselves and trying to fight for your approval. We love you the way you are. We just wish you loved us for who we are and saw us for the functioning, successful adults we became. You did good. That should be good enough for you, and I’m sorry it’s not. No matter how much we love you, I’m not letting you bully us anymore.”

Gwen didn’t miss Liam’s particular phrasing, still the protective big brother.

Liam tugged on Gwen’s arm and pulled her toward the door. He grabbed his cane as she opened the front door for him. Not releasing her, he led her through the doorway and guided her to her car.

He didn’t let go until after she opened the passenger door for him and he got in, where he winked at her. “Let’s go.”

She cast a nervous glance at the front door, where her parents stood, staring at them.

Her tears hit a block from their house. She pulled over into a parking lot and cried with her forehead on the steering wheel until she laughed, then cried again. “What the fuck, Li? You told them about Amy!”

He rubbed her shoulder. “Well, I figured hey, it would take some of the sting out of me coming out to them and telling them about us moving. It worked, didn’t it? They didn’t even complain about the move.” He shrugged. “Besides, serves Amy right for sleeping with Ruthie’s husband.”

She spied his playful smile, which started her laughing again. She leaned over and they hugged for a long time. “Well, now you are really stuck with me,” she said.

He patted her on the back. “Yeah, well, if you think I’m going to let my baby sister move halfway across the country without me where I can’t keep an eye on her, think again.”

They both sat back. Gwen found a napkin between the seats and blew her nose. “So what now?”

He laughed. “I’d suggest a bar, but that might get us in trouble. How about over there?” He pointed down the street, to a liquor store.

She nodded and shifted the Element into drive. “Damn fine idea, bro. Damn fine idea.”

Chapter
Thirteen

“You and your stupid fucking ideas.” Blurry-eyed and hung over, Gwen sat at the kitchen table with a steaming mug of coffee in front of her.

Liam didn’t look much better. “Hey, you were the one playing Mad Scientist Bartender last night. I thought I taught you better than that. Never mix grape and grain, that’s what I said.” He smiled at her then eventually laughed.

She couldn’t help it. She smiled and laughed with him despite her pounding head. She didn’t want to check her e-mail, knowing, yet again, there wouldn’t be any messages from Tim.

Then again, what had she expected? She had told him not to contact her out of respect for Jack.

God, I’m such a fucking moron.
Why had she pushed Tim away just because Jack rejected her?

That hurt almost as much as her hangover.

Liam reached across the table and gripped her hand. “Partners, right? Laurel and Hardy.”

“Abbot and Costello.”

“Ponch and Jon.”

She grinned. “Bugs and Daffy.”

“Pinky and the Brain.” He squeezed her hand. “You okay, Pinky?”

Gwen nodded with a smile that eventually faded. “Yeah. It feels weird though. In a scary, freeing sort of way. Like there’s nothing left to lose. Nothing left to be afraid of.”

He nodded. “Yeah,” he softly said. “That’s exactly what it feels like for me, too.” They stared at each other for a moment. “I want to show you something,” he said. He got to his feet and, without his cane, slowly but steadily walked to his room. He returned a moment later with several sheets of paper and sat beside her. “What do you think?”

She looked through them, print outs from a local RV dealership website. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. Look, here’s my idea. We get an RV, I’ll put the down payment on it and hell, I’ll even make the payments. We get a tow dolly for your car. We pack up the house and my shit and we put it in storage. We rent out your house, use an agent to manage it for you. That way you don’t have to commit to selling it right now and it’s still making money to pay the taxes and insurance and stuff. We spend a couple of months driving around, wherever we want. California. Florida. Maine. Hell, we can go up to Canada or down to Mexico if we want. An RV is small enough I can get around in it okay, maybe even easier than a damn house. Neither of us are pack rats. We stay in a place for a few days or weeks, we both work during the day, hang out at night and whistle at cute guys.”

She smiled at his hopeful grin. “You do realize the majority demographic of RVers tends to be retired married couples, right?”

“That’s why we keep the Element and tow it. Then we can go cruising together.” He grabbed her hands. “Remember when we were kids we talked about traveling the world together? We were going to climb Everest and Kilimanjaro. We were going to see Paris and Tokyo. We were going to take a cruise and all that shit. Remember that night before I graduated high school?”

She remembered, but hadn’t realized he did. They’d lain outside on a blanket in their backyard, just the two of them, her cuddled against her big brother and staring up at a beautiful full moon in a cloudless sky. They’d talked about seeing the world together, inseparable. She’d worried his graduation was the loss of her brother, her best friend. That he’d go to college and she’d hardly ever see him.

That she’d be stuck there at home, with her parents, and facing her father’s scowling face alone every morning before school. A father who chastised her for “wasting time” taking creative writing classes and who always glorified Amy’s stellar math scores.

Liam had spent that evening alone with her, instead of with his friends, assuring her nothing could be further from the truth. That he would never abandon her.

He never had, either.

She looked at the papers again. He let her think and didn’t interrupt her.

“You can’t drive an RV to Tokyo,” she teased to break the tension.

He grinned. “I know. Fuck Tokyo. I want to see Key West. Heard there’s lots of hot guys there.”

She laughed. “I assume San Francisco’s on the itinerary, too?”

He shrugged. “Why not? We don’t have to travel forever, you know. Let’s give it six months. An extended working vacation. Hell, you can set up book signings and we can deduct it. If we like it, we go another six months, and so on. We don’t like it, we pick somewhere, anywhere, and settle down and have our stuff shipped to us.”

“I feel like I’m about to jump off a cliff.”

He stroked her cheek. “I’ll catch you, sis. I promise. I wubs you.”

She felt tears again and threw her arms around him. “I wubs you too, bro. Okay. Let’s do it.”

* * * *

Jack worked a lot of overtime starting from the day Tim returned to Rapid City for the next couple of weeks. He couldn’t bear the hurt and pain in Tim’s eyes. When Tim tried to discuss Gwen, he shut him down.

He couldn’t bear it.

Yes, he loved her. But that was stupid, because he barely knew her. Maybe the only reason he reacted the way he did to her was her uncanny resemblance to Mel.