by Elle Keaton
Adam had the possibility of some fucking long-lost half-brother. Was he a random by-blow of his father’s ceaseless search for companionship, or had Gerald cared for Seth’s mother? How many more of these fucking guys were going to come out of the woodwork now that Gerald was gone?
“Fuck!” Adam screamed.
He immediately felt like total shit. Micah would do anything to have his family back.
Adam Klay: selfish bastard.
A drop of sweat from Adam’s temple smacked the back of his hand. Despite the cool temperature, his heart rate kicked up. What the fuck. His knuckles were white; his hands hurt. It was surprising the steering wheel hadn’t cracked yet. Jesus fuck.
An insistent pounding dragged his focus from the clusterfuck of his life. Through the fogged-up side window he could see dark hair and a flash of hot pink. Micah was on the other side. With a worried look, he gestured for Adam to open the door. It had started pouring again while he dwelled on the chaotic mess his life had become. Except for Micah.
Micah’s hair was plastered to his head. He wasn’t wearing a coat, only a bright pink T-shirt with a unicorn and a dinosaur fighting a duel on the front. His lips were starting to turn blue.
“Come inside, please,” was all he said before he turned and walked back to the porch.
The inside of Micah’s house smelled like pine and warmth. Micah didn’t say anything, gently tugging Adam gently into his house. Tenderly. The way he did everything. A cup of warm something, hot chocolate maybe, was pushed into his hands. Adam hunched over it, trying to make his universe shrink to the scent of chocolate. And Micah. A warm hand rubbing his back, keeping him from flying apart.
“You want to talk about it?” Micah asked.
Nope. He didn’t.
“I want to lie down. I didn’t sleep last night. Is that okay?” What were these words coming out of his mouth? “I’d like to lie down with you, maybe talk later. What time is it?”
“Nearly eleven. You were outside for a while.”
Adam gulped the hot chocolate greedily. He was still cold but slowly starting to warm up.
“I guess I have a brother.”
Thirty-Eight
“What? Never mind, we’ll talk about it after you’ve rested.” Micah had wondered what had driven Adam to the brink of a breakdown. A brother, Micah could see how that might make Adam go wobbly. He’d seen the look on his face when he’d gone out to see what Adam was doing sitting in front of his house. To ask if he was going to come inside. And maybe to tell him to fuck off.
He’d seen the weird expression on Adam’s face yesterday evening and known some screws were rubbing the wrong way in that brain of his, but he’d been exhausted. He’d called Brandon to rescue Kevin—that was more his line of work— and called it a day, letting Adam make his excuses about going back to his motel room alone.
Micah sighed and massaged the back of his neck. Despite living with his head in the sand for the past decade or so, he knew Adam needed someone to take care of him. The only people he talked about with true affection were his team leader, Mohammad Azaya and Mohammad’s wife, Ida.
No doubt, Adam believed he was the one who should serve and protect. It went along with his career. From their conversations about his past, Micah had the distinct feeling that no one had ever taken care of Adam. It had always been Adam taking care of others, when the supposed adults in his life should have known better.
Yet, Adam had come to Skagit and woken Micah up. A prince waking…well, Sleeping Beauty was stupid, but Micah felt like he had been asleep for a hundred years. Now that he was awake again, it was clear he needed to take care of Adam. Whether Adam liked it or not.
Leading an eerily passive Adam into the bedroom, where his bed was still unmade, Micah pushed him onto it. It was scary how pliant he was. Adam probably needed a safe place to check out for a little while, but it was kind of freaking Micah out. At least he had come to Micah’s and not left for parts unknown, as Micah suspected he had planned on.
Once Micah had Adam mostly undressed, shoes off and curled up under the handmade comforter that had been his parents’, he stripped down as well and slid in with him. His clients were going to have to wait another day. Today he got to be the big spoon plastered to Adam’s back, ready to fight any dragons, demons, or other beasts, real or imagined.
Micah woke a couple of hours later in the early afternoon, Adam was still sleeping heavily. The Booking Room, and Ed Schultz, was a good-enough place to start looking for the information he needed. He slid out of bed as quietly as possible, Adam didn’t stir. He really must not have slept at all the night before.
Ed was a gold mine of information. He admitted that Adam had grown up surrounded by adults who did nothing to raise him. Micah had known this from things Adam had said, but it was still a little shocking to have it confirmed. Not that he’d thought Adam had lied, but he’d hoped Adam had been exaggerating the extent of his abandonment.
“That boy. We all thought we were so goddamned marvelous. Gerald would have him making drinks for us, fetching this and that. Making little jokes.” Ed paused, clearly ashamed. “When Gerald died, I hoped the boy would come home. I wanted to apologize. I saw him at the funeral, but he didn’t stay to greet anyone. The thing was a dog-and-pony show anyway, the city wanting to show how much they loved Gerald Klay when all they ever liked was the dollars he brought from selling his work. Adam stood at the back, like always, and watched.” He was silent for a moment.
“I don’t think anything bad happened out there, but probably nothing good, either. Unless Gerald was working, we were smoking and talking about stupid shit; we thought were real smart. When he was real little, Gerald kept women around. We all did. But seems like that kind of ended when he could get himself to the school bus out on the county road.”
“Did all of you live out there?” Micah couldn’t imagine.
“Yes…no…I guess, sometimes. Look, Micah, I’m not proud of that time. I did a lot of wrong. I don’t believe in that AA stuff except for apologizing; not many of us left to do that.”
“Yeah?”
Ed rolled his eyes up, thinking.
“The guys helping clean Gerald’s place—except for Charlie Maker, who’s in jail for tax evasion, it’s only us left. Buck, he’s too young. Used to be a group of about ten. We’ve drowned, frozen to death, plain disappeared, a couple overdoses in the early days…we never were too smart. Except for Gerald, who was too smart to live normal.” He rubbed his scruffy chin, “Don’t know much about the women. Except for Sara’s mother. She was a snake; sure looked like a fairy, though. I didn’t know Sara existed until she showed up. Sara’s mother didn’t care about me, I guess she tried to use Sara for all sorts of scams and stuff when she was little, welfare and stuff. Never came to me, though; probably knew I wasn’t much use back then.”
“How did she find you?” Micah asked.
Ed huffed. “Funny. I guess Rhonda pulled one too many scams and was sent to Purdy for a while. Sara ended up living with a variety of so-called family. She was sixteen or seventeen, and one of them asked why she wasn’t living with her dad, why she was leeching off people who couldn’t afford her. She said she didn’t know who he was, and this person pulled out a whole handful of papers and my name was there somewhere.”
Micah must have looked skeptical, because Ed hastened to say he had insisted on a DNA test, not because he didn’t want to be Sara’s father but to protect her, too. Although, looking at them Micah knew they were related. Sara had copper colored hair but her eyes were the same color and shape as Ed’s.
“I’m not saying it was easy. At first I was angry and resentful; you would have thought I was the teenager. But Sara, she’s persistent and kind of wears a person down after a while. She got a job and started school and the next thing I knew I was looking forward to spending time with her. What does all this have to do with Adam?”
Micah had gotten swept up in Ed’s story, derailed from his purpose of finding
out more about Adam. He felt weird going behind Adam’s back, but Adam was in no state to share his childhood with Micah.
“I was wondering about Adam, and what it was like for him. Uh, you know, to grow up here, with Gerald Klay as his dad.”
“Gerald was no treat himself. But he had a way with the ladies, if you know what I mean.”
Micah did not know, but nodded to keep Ed talking.
“There was always one hanging around, willing to do the cooking and cleaning—to be the artist’s girlfriend. Adam’s mother lasted longer than most. I guess he brought her home from a show he did in San Francisco. She musta got knocked up right away. Had that baby and then got the hell out. She didn’t even want to touch it, Gerald said. Well,” he mused, lost in the past for a moment, “there were other girls after that, of course—and now there was a baby. Gerald loved that boy. Finally I guess he got tired, or they got tired, or the lifestyle got to them and they stopped coming around. Adam was about school-aged, like I said. He pretty much raised himself from then. It wasn’t right.”
Micah missed his family. It was something he would never heal from; he could only move forward. At least, though, he had good memories to pull out to comfort him on lonely nights. He’d been lucky. Not lucky that they were taken; that had almost killed him as well. But lucky to have been loved and accepted for himself.
Memories of hilarious Thanksgiving dinners when his mother would invite the lonely single grad students and divorced secretaries, encouraging illicit matches. They would all play board games, and after dessert everyone had to play melon football. The team not in possession of the melon when it finally exploded won. Birthday memories, family vacations—all things he knew Adam did not have.
He’d been selfish not remembering those things and instead focusing so much of his life on the fact that there wouldn’t be any more memories made with his parents and sister. He had been living in a stupor for a while, but that was over now; he was stronger now. His parents would be ashamed, maybe even angry at how Micah had fallen apart and then let himself stay that way.
Micah felt weirdly energized. It wasn’t the incredible sexual experiences with Adam alone, although he wasn’t going to discount sex. It was as if he had woken from a deep sleep. He was done with that; sleep was for the dead. The thought made him wince, but the truth was he had been like the dead, not honoring his parents’ or sister’s memories. Shona would want him to run and be happy, collect shells and heart-shaped rocks from the beach. Have a dog like they never did because Mom was allergic. Mom and Dad wouldn’t care that he didn’t do things the same way they did; they would be sad that he had limited himself to things he could do from the house.
He didn’t think it was his place to talk to Ed in depth about the mysterious brother who had popped up in Adam’s life. From what he had said, though, it was certainly possible that another groupie had borne a child. Their lives seemed to have consisted of drinking and fucking and getting up around noon to start it all over again. No wonder Adam was a mess.
Thirty-Nine
The rain was closing in on snow; Micah had forgotten gloves or a cap, and he shivered on his way from the car to his house. The repaired front door glimmered under the porch light. Another weird thing; after years of fighting the same sticky deadbolt he had watched his parents struggle with—now it was gone. Coming home was easy.
Nothing had changed inside the house. The afternoon chill was not disturbed, the air hanging still as it had before he’d left. He peeled off his coat and padded down the hall. Adam was still sleeping in Micah’s bed, safe under the warm covers. Adam was in the same position, but the cat had replaced Micah. The large orange fluff tucked against Adam’s back didn’t bother to look at him. Traitor.
Micah didn’t want any more coffee, but he needed something warm to hold while he thought. He turned on the kettle and began making himself a cup of tea. It wasn’t until he reached into the cabinet for a mug that he realized the one his father had always used had been smashed during the break-in. He stood still and waited to feel devastated. It didn’t happen, and he almost cried in relief.
Adam slept until late that afternoon. The man was obviously sleep-deprived as well as on emotional overload. He eventually shuffled into the kitchen with an adorably confused look on his face. Realistically, zero about Adam should be adorable. When Micah had first seen him at the Booking Room he had been intimidated by his stern demeanor. Nothing about him was soft. Even his hair, sun-kissed as it was, normally dared not step out of place. Today it stuck up in all directions. Apparently, the spell was broken.
Micah’s sleep pants were too long for him and the hoodie he had found, God only knew where, was way too small for his shoulders and was gaping wildly while he struggled like a small boy to zip it anyway.
“That’s a great look on you.”
Adam looked down at himself and groaned. “Fuck me.”
Grabbing him by his gorgeous shoulders, Micah led him back into the living room, pushed him down onto the couch, and wrapped him in a fleece blanket he kept out for movies on cold nights. Even though he had just woken up, Adam melted into the corner of the couch and shut his eyes. Micah wanted to take a snapshot; who knew when he would have Adam like this again? He debated for about a quarter of a second before plopping down right next to him. There was stuff they needed to talk about. Adam scooched closer and let his head fall onto Micah’s shoulder, his warm scent rising from the blanket.
“Hey,” Micah whispered, nudging Adam with his elbow.
“Mmm?”
“I need to talk for a minute.” Adam tried to sit up, but Micah held him in place. “Stay there, okay?”
“Okay.” Micah could hear and feel the tension shoot back into his body. Dammit.
“First, I need to confess that I talked to Ed Schultz this afternoon. I’m asking forgiveness after the fact, but....” he ran his hand through his hair, “I needed to understand more about Gerald and what it was like out there. I didn’t think you would mind; it’s probably common knowledge around here, but the more he told me the more I felt like I was violating your privacy. I’m sorry.”
Adam kind of grunted, and laid his head back down. “Yeah, that was a mess,” he said softly.
“Ed told me his story—about Sara and everything. To be honest, I’m surprised all those guys don’t have a passel of kids. I’m sure they were too high and drunk to use condoms.”
“Don’t ask me about the first time I caught one of them having sex. Emphasis on first time. That was enough to keep my dick out of shit for years. They were living the dream, I guess. Gerald paid for everything, let them stay in the house or cabin. Some of them did produce work, but mostly not. Gerald was the only one who could focus in the chaos.”
“You’re not angry?”
“I’m numb, Micah. Mohammad’s been bugging for years to talk about it. I guess now is as good as ever.”
“Uh. Okay. So, it seems to me that the possibility of you having a half-brother is high. Do you want to meet him?” He hadn’t gone through the stack of paperwork Adam had tossed onto the coffee table, but the letter right on top had been clear.
“Here’s where I am a selfish asshole, Mic.” Adam sighed deeply before continuing. “I had this shitty-ass childhood, yet I wanted for nothing. I wasn’t hungry. I had clothes and a roof over my head. Gerald paid for a lot, even after I left. The one thing I wanted was a dad. Or a mom. Because I tell you, Carolyn is a piece of work.”
“You don’t have to tell me all this.”
“I want to. The one thing I wanted was the kind of family I saw other kids at school have. Probably the kind you had. Then Gerald and I had this big, stupid fight when he was wasted that I refused to let him apologize for—until he died. Now I’m angry that he died, that he let shit pile up, and that he was way more fucked up than I am. I am angry that he did the best he could but it wasn’t enough. Just, fuck. Now I’m angry that I didn’t know him. How could he have another child and not tell me?”
Adam looked at him. “I wonder too but it’s hard to wrap my head around. There was unopened correspondence from the other guys lawyer.”
“Yeah?”
“What time is it?”
“What?”
“What time is it?” Adam repeated.
“Uh, around four.”
“So five in Phoenix.”
“I guess?”
“I think I want to call him.”
Wow, this was not what he expected from his repressed, calculating Fed.
“I might as well get it over with.” That was more like it.
“Hang on a sec. I, well, I talked to Mohammad, your boss—”
“I know who Mohammad is. How did you talk to him?” Adam sat up, looking around for what Micah assumed was his cell phone.
“Look, your phone was going crazy. It started buzzing about three and didn’t stop, so I finally answered.”
Adam leaned back again with a groan. “Jesus Christ.”
“Well, firstly he was worried about you because you hadn’t called and told him you were bored in a few days. Secondly he was, and here I quote, ‘very glad Adam decided to finally let himself relax.’ I’m supposed to tell you that he’s got news about the Hide case—”
“Rochelle Heid.” Adam corrected.
“Okay. Anyway, he said it looks good, solid. Also, something on the ‘other thing’ and that Weir will catch you up this evening? And,” Micah held up his hand, “he said you’d be mad but he’s been assigned as your partner so get over it and don’t treat him like shit, he is a great investigator, and not to take it out on me because I am just the messenger.”
Adam was generally hard to read. At first Micah had thought it was the investigator thing, but the closer he got the more he figured it was Adam’s way and it happened to mesh with being a Fed.