Nobody's Son (17 page)

Gran waved a hand. “I’m fine, baby. You know I love having you here, but I can handle a few days on my own. And I’ve got friends who can help me out if I need it.”

That was true enough. They might not have blood relatives nearby, but Gran’s church friends had always been good to them, even before his mama died. In the months after her death, they’d been a near-constant presence, bringing them food and helping Gran navigate all the paperwork she’d had to take care of—most of it related to money, but most important, legal guardianship of Shaun.

“All right,” he said. “I can tell him I’ll take it, but if it doesn’t work out, then we’ll have to figure out something different.”

Gran nodded. “That’s all right, then. You’re a smart boy. Man,” she corrected, raising an eyebrow. “You take good care of me, but you gotta remember to take care of yourself. You listen to what I’m tellin’ you, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Shaun might be a grown man, but his gran was still his gran.

DAILY GRIND
was busy that afternoon. Shaun arrived a good fifteen minutes earlier than he’d told Erwin, to give himself a chance to catch his breath and be ready. It took him most of that time to score a table, thankfully one in a corner, away from the main traffic flow. He definitely wanted to do this in public, but he’d prefer not to make it easy to overhear what he had to say.

Erwin walked in exactly on time and looked around, finding Shaun in a few seconds and raising a hand in acknowledgment. He walked to the counter but picked up a bottle of juice instead of ordering coffee. He paid and was sliding into the chair across from Shaun a minute later.

“Have to say, this is all kind of cloak-and-dagger mysterious,” he said as he cracked the seal on his juice bottle. “Asking me to meet you but refusing to say why. Did something go wrong with your appointment yesterday?”

As Erwin lifted the bottle to take a sip, Shaun caught his gaze, and just like that, he knew Erwin knew what had happened. Maybe not details, but he knew Shaun had refused the testing. An icy calm settled over Shaun, and he tossed aside everything he’d planned to say.

“So what is it you need?” he asked. “They said live transplant. I can Google, you know. I’m not stupid. You want part of my liver, don’t you? Burned yours out with too much drinking?”

Erwin froze, the bottle in front of his mouth, and then lowered it slowly to the table. The façade melted away, and Shaun nearly flinched at the hard expression on Erwin’s face.

“I did everything they told me,” he growled. “Stopped the drinking. Did the meds and the liver flushes and all that.” He leaned forward. “Didn’t do me one damn bit of good. All the people I know who drink worse than I ever did, and they never have a problem. Me? I’ve got a rock where my liver ought to be, and they can’t find a match for a transplant.” He smiled, slow and mean. “And then I find out that tasty piece of chocolate from high school had a kid. How about that? One more chance falls right back into my lap.”

Shaun’s stomach soured. “So you figured you’d just, what, trick me into getting tested? What would’ve happened if I’d been a match? Were you planning to hit me over the head and drag me into surgery?”

He hadn’t intended to speak as if the testing was off the table, but seeing the way Erwin’s mouth curled and his eyes blazed, he was glad it had come out that way.

“So, what, you won’t even get tested? Gonna just go back to your cushy life and let your old man die for his sins?”

He spat the words like bullets, but each one bounced off Shaun like he was wearing Kevlar. He didn’t know this man, and he didn’t want to. It didn’t matter if they were related. Shaun had seen and heard more than enough.

He pushed back his chair as he stood, towering over Erwin, watching with no little satisfaction as the anger on his face shifted toward fear.

“We’re done here,” he said. “In fact, we’re done, period. Don’t call me. Don’t text me. Don’t come anywhere near me. My mom was a cop, and my boss is a lawyer.” He leaned in, one hand braced on the table. “Trust me. You don’t want to tangle with me.”

He straightened up, turned, and walked out without looking back. It felt like leaving a jail cell, and he relished the freedom.

SHAUN WAS
two beers in by the time Darnell walked into Stripes later that evening. Lewis had been eyeing him like he was a ticking time bomb, and considering the way Shaun felt, that probably wasn’t a bad idea.

He’d tried to call Jimmy after he left the coffee shop, but he’d just gotten voice mail. He’d considered calling Darnell to cancel, but he had to talk to somebody. And he wasn’t going to dump this all on his gran, not until he had his head on a little straighter about it.

Darnell dropped onto the stool next to him. “I’ll have what he’s having,” he told Lewis, who nodded and moved toward the tap. Darnell sat in silence for a few moments before he spoke again.

“You wanna tell me what has you sitting all hunched over like someone’s about to start whaling on you?”

Shaun forced himself to sit up a little straighter. “You know that guy I told you about last week?”

Darnell let out a growl. “Do I need to go kick some guy’s ass?”

Shaun stared at him for a second and then realized what he’d said. He barked out something like a laugh. “Not
that
guy. The one who said he’s my father.”

“Ohhhhhh.” Darnell frowned. “Do I need to kick
his
ass?”

“I don’t know.” Shaun picked up his beer. “How would you handle it if you found out someone only wanted you for an organ transplant?”

He took a sip of his beer and watched, amused by the way Darnell’s mouth fell open in shock. “He did what?”

Shaun swallowed and set his glass down. “I went for the DNA test.” He held up a finger. “Just the one test, now. That’s all I knew about. But when I got there, they were setting up to take a bunch of blood, and when I got a look at the paperwork, it was all about donor matching.”

“Holy shit, man.”

“Yeah. Guess I don’t need to tell you that I walked out. Made arrangements to talk to Erwin today, and he said it was true. Not just any transplant, either. He told me he was a drunk before, and he expected me to give him half my liver.”

Shaun didn’t think a person could look any more dumbfounded than Darnell did at that moment. “Jesus Christ,” he managed. “Did he want you to pay for the surgery too?”

“We didn’t get that far. But I wouldn’t have put it past him.”

Lewis set Darnell’s beer down in front of him, and Darnell gave him a distracted “thanks” as he reached for it. He took a long draught and then another before setting it back down.

“So,” he finally said, “Anything else going on in your life I should know about?”

Shaun cracked up, the laughter gradually taking over until he was bent over the bar, hands folded on the surface and head resting on top as he snickered. “Don’t mind him,” he heard Darnell saying, probably to Lewis. “He’s just having a little bit of a breakdown.”

Shaun finally settled down and sat up, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes before reaching for his beer to take a swallow. “Man,” he said. “I think I needed that.”

“What you need,” Darnell said, “is to get your ass beat at pool. Again.” Darnell had actually won the week before, for the first time in ages, and he wasn’t about to let Shaun forget that.

“Dream on.” Shaun lifted his glass in a mock toast. “You only have, oh, about fifteen more to go to catch up with me.”

Darnell made a grumbling sound against the rim of his glass. “How was I supposed to know you were some kind of crazy prodigy with a cue?”

“Your fault,” Shaun pointed out. “You suggested this.”

“Don’t remind me.” Darnell finished off his beer, belatedly reaching for his wallet and leaving payment on the bar next to his empty glass. “Come on. School me one more time or whatever. I gotta win one now and then just by law of averages or something, right?”

“Right.” Shaun downed the last of his glass and stood to follow Darnell to their usual table. A little brain-and-brawn-combined activity was just the distraction he needed.

THURSDAY WAS
probably the quietest day in the office Shaun had seen since he’d started working there back in May. Con had spent the previous few days working in the cabins, so he’d been by only once, ostensibly looking for a tool that had gone missing, though from the heated look he’d given Shaun, he guessed his presence might have had something to do with it too.

Jimmy came by just after five. “Hey,” he said, smiling as he leaned against the counter. “You have a chance to think about that offer I gave you?”

Shaun had. The letter Jimmy had given him laid out everything Jimmy had explained, including a raise of nearly 15 percent and a clause giving Shaun use of any empty cabin as needed until he could take over Jimmy’s place. Shaun had just one question:

“If my gran needs me at home,” he started.

“We’ll work it out,” Jimmy finished, waving a hand. “I know she’s important to you. If she gets sick or anything like that, we’ll get things covered for you.”

Shaun nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll take it.”

A grin split Jimmy’s face. “Awesome! We’ll get the details worked out next week and make it official the week after.” His smile fell away. “Did you hear back from that Erwin guy again?” Shaun had texted him late on Wednesday with the quick-and-dirty about how that meeting had gone.

“Not a word.” Shaun shrugged. “Don’t really think he’ll stay away for good, though.”

“Probably not. You let me know if you need that letter or anything else.”

“Will do, boss.”

Jimmy grinned again at that. “I’m headed into town overnight. Con said he’ll cover tonight, and I’ll be back by the time he needs to leave for Nashville in the morning.”

Shaun frowned. “He’s headed back already?” He thought Con had said he was moving to Atlanta, but maybe he’d misunderstood.

“Just for a week,” Jimmy said. “He had one last job scheduled before he’s down here for good.”

“Got it.” A week without having Con around was probably a good thing. Might help Shaun wrap his brain around the idea of being with a man and all the fallout that could involve, starting with his gran and moving on from there.

At least he’d already marked Darnell off that list. And it wasn’t like his boss would freak out about it.

“All right, then.” Jimmy pushed off from the desk. “I’m headed out. See you when you get in tomorrow.”

“I’ll be here.” Shaun watched Jimmy go, a spring in his step as he went off to be with his men. Shaun didn’t know how much they’d be able to get up to if Jimmy had to be back tomorrow morning, but he figured that was their business. Hell, for all he knew, they just slept curled up in a big puppy pile and didn’t even have sex.

Yeah, right. He’d seen the three of them together often enough to know they had plenty of sex. He didn’t need to know specifics, but he was pretty sure the likelihood of them all spending a night in the same bed without something going on was slim to none.

Shaking his head and smiling, he went back to the seemingly never-ending pile of paperwork to be filed.

SHAUN HAD
just gotten to the point of watching the clock, waiting for his shift to end at eight, when the front door opened and Con came in. He smiled as he walked over and behind the desk, moving right up to Shaun and wrapping his arms around Shaun’s waist.

“Hi,” he said, greeting Shaun with a small kiss. He smelled of soap and water and tasted minty fresh, so he must have showered and changed before coming up to the office. “You’re off in half an hour, right?”

Shaun nodded.

“Come swimming with me.”

“I…. Gran expects me home.” He fought a wince.
Damn, talk about the lamest excuse ever.

“Can you call her? Just tell her you’ll be late?” Con frowned. “She’s not the kind to worry, is she? I don’t want her to be upset or anything like that.”

It was the concern in Con’s voice and on his face that made Shaun’s mind up for him. “No, if I call, she’ll be fine. She only worries if I’m supposed to be somewhere and I’m not.” He laughed. “Heck, when we talked last weekend, she practically told me to stay out all night every night if I wanted.”

Con grinned and kissed the tip of Shaun’s nose. “Then why don’t you give her a call? I have an extra set of swim trunks if you need one.”

Shaun nodded, and Con kissed his lips this time, lingering for a long moment before pulling away. “Back in a few.”

He turned and headed out the front door, and without even thinking about it, Shaun reached for his phone and pulled up the house number. As the phone rang, Shaun blew out a long breath, and when his gran answered, he did his best to sound like nothing was wrong.

“Hey, Gran,” he said. “Just wanted to let you know I’ll be late getting back tonight. Couple of friends I hadn’t seen in a while wanted to hang out.”

He hated lying to anyone, especially her, but he couldn’t tell her the truth: “The hot guy I have a thing for wants to take a late-night swim and probably get into my trunks. Don’t wait up!”

“All right, baby.” Shaun could hear the smile in her voice. “I just got back from the ladies’ meeting at the church, so I haven’t even started dinner yet. I still have some of that stew left from the other night I can heat up, since it’ll just be me.”

“That’ll be good.” Shaun smiled. “You sleep well, and I’ll see you in the morning before I leave for work, okay?”

“Okay, baby. Have a good night.”

“Thanks.” Shaun was still smiling as he ended the call, but the smile slid away as his worries crept back him. His gran loved him, he knew that, but the mention of her church activities reminded him again that she’d grown up in a different world from him. Shaun had known gay people most of his life. One of his best friends in elementary school had had two moms, and a number of his high school classmates had been out, even more in college. Heck, his gran watched
Ellen
every day, and he’d never heard her say a single homophobic word in his life.

But dealing with celebrities and other people was an abstract concept. Finding out her own grandson was gay would be on a completely different level.