Fly Boy: A Friends to Lovers Standalone Romance (Tobin Tribe Book 2)

by Caitlyn Coakley

  Warm and inviting it wasn’t.

  BJ sat at the table closest to the door and waited. At least when the time came, he’d have a quick escape route.

  He knew he would be leaving in a few minutes, but silently sitting there sent vines of terror crawling down his spine. What would it like to know that when that lock clicked, you were in for good?

  He didn’t want to think about it.

  This was one place he hoped he would never have to be, but for Megan, he’d swallowed his growing dread, willing to confront the man who was responsible for the very existence of the woman he loved.

  What was it he was planning to do? Ask for her hand in marriage? Hardly. Mastery had never been more than a sperm donor. Calling him a father and affording him the respect due to title was an insult to decent men everywhere. The thought of him forcing himself on Megan’s mother made BJ angry enough to strangle the man with his bare hands in front of guards and the security cameras. No, the man was not a father and deserved no respect.

  And yet, without Mastery’s unspeakable act, there would be no Megan.

  How was it possible to be repulsed by and grateful for the same act?

  Coming up with a decent answer to that would be harder than teaching theoretical physics to a cat.

  BJ heard another click and watched a door on the other side of the room slide open. EJ Mastery, accompanied by a guard, entered the visitor’s area and took a seat across from BJ.

  “When they told me Brian Tobin was here to see me, I was expecting your father. I’m surprised to see you, BJ,” he said.

  His former “uncle” had made bail almost immediately after being arrested, but within weeks, he’d violated the conditions of his release with a ten-year old girl. Twice more, he’d been released and twice more he had violated the conditions. Now, he wasn’t going anywhere until his trial.

  Maybe.

  Rumor had it his high-powered legal team was making an end run around the judge and appealing directly to the governor. But in the meantime, Mastery waited as a guest at the Gray Bar Motel. Not the five-star accommodations he was used to.

  The man sitting across the table looked different: older, confused, lost. Months in confinement had claimed his vigor. His skin paler, his hair grayer, his shoulders slumped. BJ struggled to control the growing anger that called on him to beat the man senseless. His hands, placed on the table in front of him, balled into tight fists.

  BJ had loved this man for as long as he could remember, and now he wanted to rip him to shreds. “We found the file Irene Johnson kept on you. You disgust me.” He could barely force the words out of his mouth.

  With a flick of his wrist, Mastery motioned as if he was shooing a pesky fly away. “Harsh words from a little boy I used to give piggyback rides to. I’m important. I own half the car dealerships in the state. I have connections. Don’t forget, the governor is one of us. We are all brothers for life.”

  Yeah, brothers for life—the Ksi Alpha fraternity motto. No matter what your pledge class, or whether you’d ever met your brother, the sentiment applied across the board. They were more than words from an intricately designed mural on the frat house wall; they meant something.

  Which was why BJ hadn’t beaten Mastery half-unconscious already.

  “Don’t try that shit, old man.” He slapped a picture of a very pregnant woman holding a smiling baby boy on the table and shoved it toward Mastery. “Miss Irene kept a file on everyone, and you know it. We found the box with her journal, pictures, the original birth certificates you thought you’d destroyed. I don’t think there’s a word in the English language to adequately describe how much I loathe you.”

  Mastery picked up the photo and stared at it. He ran his finger over the woman’s face. His chin quivered before he regained his dignity. “Kathleen and Ethan. I loved them so much. Her grandmother was our housekeeper and she used to bring Kathleen along sometimes. Then she died, and Kathleen went into foster care. But I found her. My beautiful Kathleen. Her foster parents wanted to adopt her. They were going to consent to our marriage. I’ve spent my whole life trying to recreate the magic we had.” He gestured around the room. “And look where that got me.”

  He wiped his tears with the back of his hand. “Mother told me they’d died in a house fire. She drove me by the house. She showed me newspaper clippings and took me to their grave.”

  He bent to kiss the picture. “But when sifting through her papers to settle her estate, I discovered that Mother had gone to the hospital and presented the nurse with a court order to take the baby. She’d already had Ethan taken from the foster home. There was a letter from the nurse on duty stating that Kathleen ripped out her IV and ran out of the hospital to look for our baby. There’s no mention of what happened to her after that. I’ve been looking for her ever since.” He clutched the picture to his chest and looked up at BJ, not bothering to hide the tears cascading down his face. “Please, if you ever loved me at all, let me keep this.”

  All of BJ’s righteous indignation imploded, leaving him hollow and confused. “Kathleen might very well be dead, but your children are very much alive,” BJ whispered. “They were raised in foster care, and it was brutal. Somehow they survived their shitty childhoods and turned out to be good people. Ethan married Steppie Kerrigan, and they have a daughter, Kegan. Megan is a widow with a fourteen-month-old son, Pete. If I’m lucky, she’ll agree to marry me, and I will dedicate my life to making her forget her past.”

  Pieces of the man BJ once knew surfaced. “I have...I have grandchildren?” The joy quickly mixed with fear. “But Stephanie married...”

  “Yeah, Ethan Webb.” BJ’s words sat in the room like a litter box that hadn’t been cleaned in weeks.

  The color, what was left of it, drained out of Mastery’s face. “But Kathleen’s last name was Webster, not Webb. I...I don’t understand.” Mastery buried his face in his hands and sobbed.

  Pity stabbed at BJ’s gut. “There was a name change and new birth certificates issued with the mother listed as Katherine Webb and father unknown. Irene Johnson documented the whole thing. She used it to keep you in line long enough to set up her revenge against the Kerrigans. You betrayed Uncle Jamie, one of your best friends. You deserve whatever you get. I hope you rot in hell.”

  “No, you’re wrong. That bitch used the information to keep Mother in line. Not me. I never knew about any of it until after Mother died. The grand, stately matriarch who had declared Kathleen socially inferior had designs on Jamison Kerrigan. I guess his lack of breeding didn’t bother her. According to Mother’s diaries, Jamison wanted to marry her. Mother knew he was after her money, but she didn’t care. But Irene Johnson couldn’t let that happen. The old biddy was blackmailing Mother for what she did to my children. All of this time, I’ve been grieving Ethan and Megan Webster. But if my children are alive, maybe my Kathleen is too.”

  “Ethan and Megan have been searching for years but haven’t had any luck. Tell me what you know, and I’ll consider putting in a good word with our brother, the governor.”

  CHAPTER 58

  Megan knelt, picking stray leaves off the grave. Her grave. Ethan’s grave. Katherine’s, or rather Kathleen’s grave. She reached out to take Ethan’s hand. “I think I’ll call her Katie.” It was still too soon to call her mom.

  She could barely manage a whisper. “Everything they told us our whole lives was a lie. She didn’t abandon us. She didn’t rip out her IV and run away because she was overwhelmed. She’d come looking for whoever had kidnapped us. She loved us. Our father, the miserable asshole that he is, loved us.”

  Ethan stared at the headstone. Kathleen, Ethan, and Megan Webster along with a single date. Her birthday. It was a basic, economy stone; the kind you would expect the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to provide for a child in foster care. But would it have been too much to ask for Katie’s and Ethan’s birthdates to be included? They had lived, damn it. Their lives, however short, deserved recognition.

  The rumb
le of heavy machinery broke the silence. Ethan stood and reached out to pull her up. “I’m not ready to go there. Not until I know who is buried here and we get the results of the DNA tests.”

  He handed the legal documents to the crew chief and lead Megan to the stone bench as the workers set up privacy screens around the site. They clung to each other the way they had so many times in their youth. Frightened and powerless. The first drops of Ethan’s tears filtered through her hair to dampen her scalp. Ethan had never cried no matter how bad things had gotten. How the hell was she supposed to keep it together if he couldn’t? The simple answer was she wouldn’t be able to.

  The sound of the first bite of earth ripped through her like a bullet. She bent, resting her head on her knees as she hugged them. Nothing had ever hurt this much. Not Smitty’s death or his betrayal. Nothing. Every clump of dirt that hit the ground was another bit of her insides being scooped out until she felt like a pumpkin on the verge of becoming a jack-o-lantern. Cold. Empty. Numb.

  Gentle hands softly stroked her back. So softly, it took a few minutes for her to realize that Ethan had moved away from her. He stood weeping in Stephanie’s arms while BJ concentrated on her.

  “You didn’t think we’d let you go through this alone, did you? You have a family who loves you now. Whether you like it or not, and there will be times you will not, we Tobins stick together.”

  A family who loved her. She rose, walked around the bench, and all but collapsed into BJ’s arms. Wrapped in his warmth, the sudden silence startled her.

  “Mr. Webb, Mrs. Smith, you need to see this,” the crew chief called.

  BJ whispered into her ear, “Together.”

  Intertwined as if to hold each other up—which wasn’t far from the truth— the foursome made its way to the grave. The cap from the cement liner still dangled from the crane that had lifted it from the hole.

  But the cement liner was empty.

  CHAPTER 59

  BJ slipped into the dressing room behind Megan and Pete with an armload of costumes. He hung them on a hook, then took off his baseball cap, tucked his sunglasses inside, and set the cap on the tiny shelf. He slid out of his bomber jacket and draped it over the back of the chair.

  “Where should we start? He grabbed a costume off the rack. “Do you want to be a cowboy, little man? No problem.”

  Dressed in chaps and a hat that was a size too big, Pete straddled BJ as he crawled out of the room on all fours. “Hold on, Pete, this horsie is gonna buck!” Pete wrapped his chubby little arms around BJ’s neck and squealed with delight when BJ stood. Other than that, Pete was not impressed.

  “Not a cowboy? No sweat.” He carried Pete over to the rack. “How about Superman?”

  Megan lifted Pete off BJ’s back, stripped him out of the cowboy costume, and slipped him into the tights and shirt. BJ grabbed the child around the middle and “flew” him down the narrow hall, singing the notes to the Superman theme. “Put your hands out in front of you like Superman does!”

  But that wasn’t it either.

  Not a Minion, how about a policeman? A fireman? Ninja? Ninja Turtle? Arr.. what about a pirate, matey? Spiderman? One by one they tried costume after costume until there were no more costumes left to try.

  “I give up,” a dejected BJ turned to bemused Megan. “What?”

  “You are so patient with him. Thank you.”

  “Hecka-ter!” Pete toddled over to the chair where BJ had draped the jacket he always wore when he took Pete flying. Yeah, it was kind of a hokey, a costume of its own in a way, but BJ liked the way it looked and felt. He owned the company; he could wear what he wanted. And he wanted to look like a WWII bomber pilot. Besides, at eight thousand feet, the temperatures could get a little chilly, and the jacket kept him nice and toasty.

  “What if we got him a little leather bomber jacket like yours, and a little cap and pair of sunglasses?” She reached over to take BJ’s jacket off the chair.

  “That would work. I could get the custom shop to embroider my logo on the back and hat like mine...what?”

  Megan frowned as she bounced his jacket up and down. “Why is your jacket so heavy?”

  BJ reached for the jacket. “Give it to me. I can explain...”

  She felt the pocket where she detected the weight. “Is this a... a gun? You left a gun where Pete could get it?”

  “The safety is on; he can’t get hurt. I would never...”

  “Why do you have a gun? You know my story. You know how much I hate guns. Why would you do this to me?”

  “Baby, please don’t.”

  “I know you have some strong opinions that we don’t talk about, but I didn’t think you’d go this far!”

  He reached for the jacket. “I have a permit. I have hours of target range practice. I know how to use a gun safely. Please, give it to me before you hurt someone!”

  She held it out of his reach. “Before I hurt someone? Explain yourself!”

  He grabbed the jacket out of her grasp. “This is not the place!” Why did these things always seem to come up in public?

  This one could get loud and messy. And it was an argument he knew he wasn’t going to win. “I’ve had a carry permit since I was sixteen. We all have one. Even Mom and Dad carry. Usually in an ankle holster.”

  Megan stared at him with an open mouth. “My God, you mean there’s always a gun at Pete’s level? I can’t...why would you put Pete in danger like that?”

  “It’s not for danger; it’s for safety! We’ve all been kidnap targets since the day we were born. We’re worth a lot of money to the wrong people. One of the reasons we all went to Sorrows Academy is because they cater to wealthy families like ours. They have world-class security in those wretched buildings. The secretaries and custodians were expert marksmen. We rode to school every day in an armored car with armed guards. The security system at Mom and Dad’s is state of the art. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  “And now?”

  “And now my condo has a state-of-the-art security system, and I carry a gun. Before I come into your house, I lock the gun in a custom-made gun safe under the passenger’s seat of my car. When I’m at my place, it’s locked and hidden in a false-bottom drawer in my nightstand. No one is ever in any danger. I know what I’m doing. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Not a big deal? If it’s not a big deal, then why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to freak out like this.” Oh crap.

  “I’m not freaking out.”

  “Can’t we please finish this conversation in private?”

  “I don’t think we have anything more to talk about.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I don’t think we should see each other again.”

  “Babe, no, don’t, we can fix this. Let me take you home. We’ll talk some more.”

  “I’ll call Ethan to come get us, but you need to leave before I call store security. You put my son in danger, and I can’t let that happen.”

  CHAPTER 60

  Megan refused to take his calls, she refused to accept delivery of the five bouquets of fifteen yellow roses he’d sent. She wouldn’t talk to his mother. What the hell was wrong with her? Couldn’t she see how necessary it was for him to protect himself? To protect her and Pete?

  Yeah, he’d screwed up by not making sure his jacket was out of reach, but the safety had been on. Pete would never have been able to lift the gun, and he didn’t have the strength to pull the trigger. He was never in any danger. There wasn’t a chance in hell that anyone would get hurt.

  God damn her, why was she being such a bitch about this? Now that they were a couple, she and Pete were as big a target as the rest of his family had been.

  And that about killed him.

  Did she honestly think he wouldn’t protect her and Pete with everything in his power? If anything happened to either one of them and he wasn’t there to protect them, he would never forgive himself.

 
God fucking damn it! He had to find a way to fix this. He may not be a rocket scientist, but he wasn’t an idiot either. Or was he? Only an idiot would find himself in this situation.

  There had to be something, anything, he could do. Whatever it was, he would figure it out and do it. He couldn’t lose her. Lose them. Without Megan and Pete in his life, nothing else mattered.

  * * *

  She hated guns, and he knew it. Hated them in a way only a terrified teenager could while lying next to a dead girl. A dead girl that should have been her. Too many times during her years in foster care, gun violence had erupted, taking a classmate here or a neighbor there. Too many nights she’d lain in bed, clutching Ethan’s hand while shots rang out somewhere close by.

  And now BJ had brought that fear, that danger, back into her life and left it where Pete could have gotten hurt.

  The worst part was he hadn’t told her. If it was such a part of his life, why had he hidden it from her? Why hadn’t he trusted her enough to share that part of himself with her? Did he trust her at all? And if he didn’t trust her, did he truly love her?

  And that comment about freaking out. What was she, eight years old? She had been concerned for her son’s safety. That wasn’t freaking out; it was being a responsible parent. If he didn’t understand that, then she couldn’t risk having him around. Despite how much she loved and wanted him, she couldn’t let him put her son in danger. She had to stay strong to protect Pete no matter how much it hurt.

  And damn it, it hurt a lot.

  CHAPTER 61

  The Big, Bad Wolf let himself into the house and greeted Sleeping Beauty with a chaste hug and a quick kiss on the cheek. “Happy Birthday, Steppie. Sorry I’m late. I had engine problems and had to set her down in the middle of nowhere. Thank God for GPS.” He looked around the party. “Did Megan come as Little Red?” He was going to look totally ridiculous if Steppie’s intel was faulty.