Declan was silent for a moment.
“Be at LAX, terminal 3, in an hour,” he said. “Cate? The man is my brother. He can take care of himself, but I don’t like it when people make that harder on him than it has to be.”
Cate smiled into the receiver. Declan couldn’t know it, but knowing Soren had this kind of family around him made her happier than she thought possible.
“Me neither,” she said quietly. “That’s why I’m coming.”
Soren flipped up the collar of his leather jacket and cursed. He hadn’t thought to check the weather report before he’d jumped on a plane, and he’d forgotten how crappy East Coast “wintry mix” could be. He’d insisted on walking from Declan’s uncle Jim’s place, where Soren always stayed when he came back home, to his mother’s house. He figured he’d take the time to clear his head, get in the kind of mood he needed to be in to see his mother and sister.
One good thing: the weather meant he didn’t have to deal with anyone recognizing him. Last time he’d been back here he’d had to keep his head down.
The trouble was that Soren wasn’t totally sure what compelled him to come back. He doubted his mother would be happy to see him, so what the hell was the point? To make sure the bastard was really dead? For some kind of ‘closure?’ But ‘closure’ was a lie, and he knew that already. And expecting anything different out of his mother after all these years was the definition of insanity.
Had he come for Sonya?
Maybe. Soren might have liked to think he was still that hopeful kind of guy, willing to dole out forgiveness and all that crap, but he figured it was probably more selfish than that. As much as it troubled him not to know exactly what was going on his own head—disturbing for a Dom—he knew it had something to do with Julia.
No one knew Julia quite like Sonya had. The two of them had been best friends in high school, and when Sonya started going to college, Julia started going to Soren’s shows, and the rest…well… Did he think he could get some answers? There were never going to be answers. Julia had broken his heart and then she’d overdosed on freaking heroin. She’d been his first sub; she’d introduced him to BDSM. Soren had thought he was going to be with her for the rest of his life.
And then in the space of a week she’d broken his heart and died, and he learned he’d never known her at all. And what it had felt like—still felt like—was he hadn’t loved her well enough. And he hadn’t loved anyone since.
And now it was on the fucking news.
Or about to be.
Cate was doing all she could, but hell, even Soren knew what it looked like. It looked bad. It looked predatory, monster-level bad.
And sweet Jesus, there was
Cate
.
How sick was it that he was almost grateful to his son-of-a-bitch stepfather for dying and distracting him from how he felt about Cate?
About Cate running away from him, curling up into herself?
It destroyed him, thinking about Cate hurting.
And every time he thought about Julia, he thought about Cate. No one else had ever…
Damn. That was a loaded thought right there. He had to be careful.
So damn careful.
He’d tried to love women for ten years after Julia, and he’d never gotten close. Never felt that thing inside him switch on, never felt his hear femn careft pump with it, never had it make him feel like he was in love with the whole world just because of it. But Cate…everything with Cate had happened out of order. He never felt the switch flip on because it had been on the whole time, that constant flow between them, that dizzying energy that just…distorted everything.
He saw into Cate. He saw when she hurt, he knew her,
he
appreciated the hell out of her mind. He could never, ever forgive himself if he led her on and broke her heart because he forgot what he was.
And he didn’t know what that meant. Especially because he could barely stop thinking about her long enough to remember he was here for a frigging funeral.
“Jesus,” he said to himself, and looked up to see his mother’s house looming over him.
He hated that house. That’s where he’d been the whipping boy. On the other hand, the basement was where he and Declan used to pretend to be rock stars back when Declan lived with them for a little while, before
Soren’s
stepfather got really bad. So: not all bad memories.
Soren gritted his teeth and knocked on the door.
Everything he thought he knew went out the window when his mother opened the door.
When Soren had left she was just an angry woman, drunk on white wine and woozy on pills, with a mean streak a mile wide. The last time he’d seen her had only been about five years ago, when he’d tried, for the last time, to have a nice family reconciliation. She’d told him not to come back, since it upset her husband Ted so much, and he hadn’t seen a problem with honoring that.
Now? Holy crap, his
mother looked
frail. Seeing her like that was like a kick to the gut.
She was still mean, though.
And woozy.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” she said, squinting up at him.
“Almost didn’t,” Soren answered honestly.
His mother waved a dismissive hand. “Wouldn’t have made much difference to your stepfather.”
Soren sighed, and it turned into a laugh. She hadn’t even invited him in yet, and it had started. “Jesus, Mom,” he said, shaking his head.
“Well, I just wish you would have made more of an effort to get along with him, that’s all,” his mother said.
Soren took a deep breath. The man had made a game out of throwing lit cigarette butts at him when he was twelve. He’d been the one to break Soren’s nose. He’d run over Soren’s dog
on fucking purpose
while Soren was in the car, and then he’d gone inside and been sweet as pie to Sonya and their mother. It wasn’t really an issue of ‘getting along’ with him.
But then Soren looked up and took another look at his mother. Shhisize="+1e didn’t look like she was taking any joy in those barbed comments; she looked like she was barely standing up.
Ten years of being a Dom had taught Soren some things about observation. His mother
wasn’t just barely
standing up—she was barely holding on. She was lonely and terrified, the reality of her life encroaching on her alcoholic haze for the first time in years. And she was dealing with it the easiest way she knew how—by taking it out on her son.
Well, he was a fully grown man. He could take it now.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mom,” he said. And he meant it.
Maureen Andersson blinked up at her son for several seconds. Finally, she stepped back from the door.
“Well, thank you for coming,” she said.
***
It wasn’t long after that that Soren got the surprise of his life.
The wake wasn’t well attended, but Soren only knew his mother and Sonya. It reminded him how much he hadn’t been invited into his stepfather’s life. Sonya walked around shaking hands, thanking people. Soren stood there like a giant alien from another planet. It would have been funny if it weren’t for the circumstances.
What blew Soren’s mind, though, were Sonya’s kids. She had
kids
. He’d known that, obviously, but he’d never met them before. Twins, four years old, a boy and a girl. They were the spitting images of Sonya and
himself
when they were younger, and he couldn’t freaking believe it.
He kept staring at them. Somehow, those kids made him miss his own sister. He hadn’t thought anything in the world would have the power to do that, but the four-year-old terrors currently trying to steal the food off of people’s plates from beneath their chairs? Yeah.
Powerful little
rugrats
.
“Tyler looks like you,” Sonya said, bringing him a plate of crackers.
“Madison looks like you,” he said. “They seem to get along, though.”
Sonya smiled ruefully. Crap. He hadn’t even meant it like that.
“Where’s Doug?” Soren asked.
“Doug and I split,” Sonya said, looking down at the carpet. She always did like to trace patterns in the shag carpeting with her feet.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Soren finally said. His sister looked hurt. He wasn’t used to seeing that. “Are you guys all set? The kids are provided for and everything?”
“We’re fine,” Sonya said, frowning. “You don’t have to…that’s not why I said it. We’re actually thinking of moving back here. Spend more time with Mom.”
Soren frowned at the thought.
“She’s good with them,” Sonya said quietly. “She’s different with you than she is with us.”
Soren looked at his sister’s serious face and burst out laughing, loudly enough that he got some ‘this is a wake’ looks, and he tried to cover it with a cough. “You don’t say?” he said, still laughing into his hand.
Sonya actually smiled. “Maybe a little bit.”
Soren cracked his neck, the humor leaving him suddenly,
the
absurdity giving way to anger. Every once in a while, something could send him right back to that place he remembered from his childhood, that place where he knew he’d get the shit end of the stick for no reason. He mostly had it under control, but every so often he’d feel it crawl up his spine.
And his sister might have contributed to all that, but she was still his sister. She still knew him.
“Soren, there’s something I have to tell you,” she said. “When this is over. It’s important.”
Soren didn’t say anything.
“Please?”
“No promises,” he said. Then he sighed. “Let me cool off, Sonya.”
Which was why when the doorbell rang, Soren was more than happy to go answer it.
Standing huddled on his mother’s porch were Declan, Molly, Brian, and, behind them all, Cate.
Cate
.
“Holy crap,” Soren said.
“You fucking idiot,” Declan said, shaking his head. He clapped Soren on the shoulder while he walked past him, leaving Molly room to give him a fierce hug.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Molly said. Then she punched him lightly in the stomach and followed Declan inside.
Soren was still staring at Cate.
Brian looked between the two of them then looked inside.
“Right,” Brian said. “I belong at the kids’ table anyway. Soren, you ever pull something this dumb again, and I’m posting that song you wrote when you were seventeen online.”
Cate stared back at him.
“Are you listening to me?” Brian asked. “The one where you rhyme ‘love’ with ‘dove.’”
.>
That
got Cate’s attention. “Oh my God, I need to see that song.”
“Yeah, it’s not like it was Prince writing it, either,” Brian grinned. “It’s
earnest
.”
“Get your ass inside,” Soren said, pulling Brian into the house while the bassist tried to hide his laughter.
And then Soren stepped outside to be with Cate.
She was shivering. He wanted to hold her, keep her warm, but he remembered what she’d said—she couldn’t do that. Soren was afraid to touch her, like she might scatter, might run if he did. Like it might hurt her. She looked fragile, and it made him hurt inside, but it didn’t change the most important thing.