Authors: Shae Connor
E
VAN
PUSHED
the button and bounced on his toes as he waited. Thoughts careened around inside his head, none of them slowing down enough for him to catch them.
“Yes?” Riley’s voice came from the speaker, and Evan jumped to respond.
“Yeah, hi, Riley, it’s Evan. Can I come up? I just need to talk to you.”
The delay before Riley’s response was so long Evan thought it would never come. “All right,” Riley finally said. “You know where it is.”
The door buzzed and Evan jumped inside, heading for the elevators. A door opened immediately when he pushed the call button, and inside, he pushed the button for Riley’s floor and then held the door-close button until it worked. The ride took a year, but when he finally arrived, Riley was there waiting, standing just outside the elevator door.
Evan didn’t think. He reached Riley, wrapped his hands around Riley’s face, and pushed him back against the wall opposite the elevator before kissing him.
For a long, perfect moment, Riley submitted, opening his mouth and letting Evan inside. But then he stiffened and started shoving at Evan. It took another few moments for Evan to realize it, and by the time he did, he had to duck away to barely miss taking a knee to the groin.
They stood in the hallway, Riley still plastered to the wall, Evan two feet in front of him, both breathing hard but clearly for different reasons. Anger mixed with lust painted Riley’s face in hard lines, so different from his usual smiling self. As the adrenaline leeched away, Evan’s gut churned, and shame crept in.
“I’m sorry,” he started, but he only got a half step toward Riley before Riley’s hand flew up to ward him off.
“Don’t.” Riley’s face smoothed as he straightened up, steel in his spine. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I can’t do this. I like you, and I’d like to see you again, but I can’t deal with you out of control. First you came here drunk, and now you come here like this, and….” He dropped his hand to his side, and some of the fight went out of him. “I’m sorry for the way I behaved last week. It wasn’t fair to take out my issues on you. But—” He lifted his gaze to meet Evan’s. “I just can’t deal with you this way, okay?”
Evan opened his mouth to reply but realized he didn’t have a response that wouldn’t involve either jumping Riley again or starting an argument for no good reason. And even if he hadn’t been in a high-end building with on-site security, even if Riley hadn’t been part of a family rich enough for Evan to end up buried under the jail, he was not that guy. He was not going to force himself on anyone, ever.
Instead, he nodded his agreement, turned, and quick-stepped to the stairwell a few feet down the hall. He didn’t look back.
A
FTER
A
mostly sleepless night fueled by horrific dreams, Evan knew following through on his agreement to go to his parents’ house was a bad idea. He went anyway. He needed to get it over with, and if it ended in disaster again, well, it wasn’t likely to make him feel worse than he already did.
He arrived at noon on the dot, and his mother greeted him at the door with a tremulous smile and a small hug. She had on her June Cleaver best—a simple, tailored dress, pearls, and low heels—and it wasn’t until then that Evan realized they’d probably gone to church that morning. It had been long enough that he’d forgotten they preferred the earliest Mass to avoid the crowds and leave time to cook dinner.
“Come in, dear. I made a pot roast today, so it can wait a bit longer for us to have time to catch up.” Gwen led Evan into the living room, which he entered with a heavy dose of dread, remembering the last time he’d been in there. But it didn’t look the same now. The walls had been painted a different color, and the furniture was new, laid out differently than he remembered. It didn’t feel like the same room, which lessened his anxiety a bit.
At least, until his father unfolded himself from his easy chair and rose to his feet.
At six-foot-one, Charles Day stood only two inches taller than Evan, but he outweighed Evan by a good fifty pounds. His muscular build was much more like Charlie’s had been, though with age, Charles was developing a bit of a paunch.
He did not look comfortable in the least at the situation in which he found himself, but he stood tall and held out a hand. “Evan.”
Evan steeled himself and reached out to take the offering. “Charles.”
His father’s face twisted, but before he could respond, Gwen fluttered into Evan’s view. “Can I get you a drink, dear? Your father is having his usual.”
Evan dropped his hand back to his side but held his father’s gaze. He knew what his father drank. “Maker’s Mark,” he said. “Neat.” He’d learned the words long before he’d had any clue what they meant.
“Is that what you’d like, dear?”
Evan turned to his mom and gave her a small smile. “No. Did you make tea?”
Her hand lingered where she’d lifted it toward his arm. She smiled. “I did. With lemon?”
“Is there any other kind?”
Gwen laughed softly and turned to head toward the kitchen. Evan looked around the room, taking in the few familiar elements, like his parents’ wedding picture on the sofa table and some knickknacks on the mantel he remembered from childhood. He considered the second chair and the sofa, but he knew his mother would prefer the former, so decided he’d go with the latter.
His father resettled himself into his chair as Evan sat. The two men just looked at each other until finally Charles nodded, as if he’d made some silent decision.
“You’re looking well.”
Evan waited to see if he’d go on. Maybe add “son” to that. But he didn’t. Evan held on to his temper. “Thanks,” he replied.
That was as far as they got before Gwen returned, a glass of tea in each hand. “Here you are, dear,” she said, holding one of the glasses out to Evan. He took it, and Gwen reached for a coaster from the basket on the table and placed it in front of Evan. She did the same with a second coaster, placing it on the table between her chair and Charles’s, next to Charles’s own drink.
Once Gwen had seated herself, she crossed her lower legs in the familiar position Evan remembered and folded her hands into her lap. “I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk longer last time,” she said. “I apologize for upsetting you.”
Evan took a swallow of his tea to soothe his dry throat before setting the drink onto the coaster. “I apologize for flying off the handle,” he replied. “I guess there’s more built up there than I’d realized.” He glanced around the room. “I like what you’ve done in here. I assume it’s your design work?”
Gwen glowed from the compliment. “Yes, it is. It’s one of the first things I did, actually. I’ve made a few tweaks here and there over the past few years, but the basic design is the same.”
“Well, you did a great job.” Evan smiled, starting to relax for the first time since he’d agreed to come for Sunday dinner. In some ways, his mother’s obvious nerves about their meeting helped ease his. At least he knew he wasn’t the only one having a tough time.
“She’s been doing a little of this kind of work along and along.” Charles picked up his drink in its heavy, leaded crystal glass and took a sip. “We don’t need the money, of course, but she enjoys it, and it keeps her as busy as she’d like to be.”
Evan bit back his first inclination, which was to blast his father for belittling his mother’s talents. Yes, it was probably true that they didn’t need the income from her work, since Charles made plenty off the settlements he raked in for his clients. But she clearly enjoyed it, and the results were nicely done. Couldn’t he just be supportive?
Evan forced a smile. “It’s very good work.” He turned his attention back to his mother. “I have a friend who does some design work. I bet the two of you would have a lot to talk about.”
Charles made a low, derisive sound, but before he could say anything, Gwen reached over and laid her hand on his arm. “Charles,” she chided, and he glanced at her and gave a small nod.
“We wanted to talk to you about something,” Gwen said, turning her head back to Evan. “It’s kind of… well, it’s kind of big. We were going to wait until after we ate, but I think maybe it’s better to get it out of the way.”
Evan’s stomach roiled. “Um, sorry. I think I need to visit the bathroom first.”
Gwen nodded. “You remember where it is?”
No, Mom, I only lived here for eighteen years.
“Sure do.” Evan pushed to his feet and headed into the hallway, taking the first right into the bathroom he’d shared with Charlie growing up. The location was all it shared with that bathroom, though. It had been gutted at some point, the old fixtures and flooring replaced with newer styles, fixtures and tiles in stark white and cabinets in cherry with silver handles. A sage-green shower curtain hung across the bathtub, and matching towels were displayed on the towel bars. Evan relieved himself quickly, and while he washed his hands, he stared at his reflection in the mirror.
“Keep it together,” he muttered. “See what they want from you before you throw it back in their faces.”
Finished, Evan slipped out of the bathroom and headed back toward the living room. A glint from the dining room to his left caught his eye, and he paused to take a look. This room had been repainted and had new curtains, but the furniture was the same as he remembered, dark wood with curved accents, and the glass chandelier remained. The dimmer switch had been turned low, but Evan saw that the table was set for three, and that next to the place setting at the head of the table sat a long manila envelope.
Curiosity got the best of Evan almost immediately. He walked over to the table and picked up the envelope, realizing as he did that it had his name on the front, along with his last military APO address, though the envelope didn’t appear to have been mailed.
Well, it’s addressed to me
, Evan justified to himself as he opened the envelope and pulled out the sheaf of papers inside. He flipped the pages around the right way and skimmed the top sheet.
His heart nearly stopped beating.
Evan lowered himself into a chair at the table as he stared at the information he held. A quarter of a million. He had a
quarter of a million dollars
. For four and a half years, since the day he turned twenty-one, he’d had a fortune sitting in an account, just waiting for him to collect.
And his parents had never told him.
His hands started to shake.
“Evan?”
Evan’s head snapped up. His mother stood in the doorway to the kitchen, his father just to her left. Evan jumped to his feet.
“What the
fuck
is this?” His mother flinched. Evan ignored it and waved the paper at them. “Money? I had
money
all this time, and you never told me?”
“Son—”
“Don’t you
son
me.” Evan’s vision blurred. “Do you have any idea…? No. You don’t have a clue. Do you know how I’ve been making a living since the Marines threw me out?
Do you?
” He laughed, but even to his own ears, there was no humor in the sound. “Your son has been doing
porn
, Mommy and Daddy. Oh, and it gets better. It’s
gay
porn.”
He watched with no little satisfaction as his parents’ expressions went from confused to stunned. “That’s right. I’ve been whoring myself out for five
fucking
years since you and the US military dumped me like yesterday’s trash. You know how hard it is to get hired for a real job with a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ discharge and no education?”
His mother was crying by then, her hands over her face. His father’s face had passed red and was headed quickly toward purple. Evan ignored them and crumpled the papers in his hand. He threw them against the wall.
“You can keep your fucking blood money,” he said. “I’d rather spend the rest of my life getting fucked on camera for money than take a fucking
penny
from you people.”
“That’s enough!” His father took a step toward him, arm raised, and Evan barely had time to prepare himself for impact before everything seemed to happen at once. His mother jumped forward, grabbing for his father’s arm, and his father flung his hand out, catching her across the cheek. She reeled backward and fell, cracking her head on the corner of the sideboard against the wall. She landed on the floor and lay still.
Evan and his father froze for a long moment before they both jumped to her side. “Don’t touch her!” Evan demanded, his military medical training kicking in. “Don’t move her. Call 911!” He looked up to find his father in a crouch, staring down at his wife, tears welling in his eyes. “Snap out of it!” His father looked at him. “Call 911! Tell them we have a head and possible neck injury and need an ambulance with a backboard.
Now
!”
Charles snapped out of his fugue and jumped up to rush around the corner to the kitchen. Evan bent close to his mother, checking to be sure she was breathing, reaching for her wrist to check her pulse. A trickle of blood from the injury on her temple grew into a steady stream running down the side of her face to drip onto the carpet below. He wanted to move her, wanted to check her out more carefully, but he couldn’t risk causing more damage if she’d hurt her neck.
He could hear his father talking, but the sound was muted, like his ears were stopped up. Then he realized they were, because he was crying. Tears streamed down his face, dripping onto the carpet, landing next to his mother’s blood.
In the distance, he heard sirens, and he pushed back the tears, wiping an arm across his face to clear his vision. He had a job to do, an injured person to help, and he’d be damned if he was going to fail one more time.
E
VAN
STOOD
just outside the curtain that hid his mother’s emergency room bed. The doctor had arrived a few minutes earlier, and the tiny space hadn’t allowed for Evan to stay during the examination. To his relief, his mother had roused briefly when the paramedics arrived at the house, and though they’d still taken every precaution, strapping her to a backboard before moving her to the stretcher, she’d been able to answer a few questions as they took her to the ambulance.