Douglas slumped back in his chair. “Fuck!”
“Exactly.” Doyle glanced at his watch and stood. “So it would behoove you both to do this, make it happen fast, get Anna to go away even faster, and then let the adoption hopefully go through with no bumps in the road. Anna is convinced that Connor is a good father and a good man who deserves to have full custody of Kayleigh. She agrees she really likes you, and is happy Connor found you, because apparently she knew a little of that story about you guys as kids from Connor telling her. She asked me if you were his childhood friend.
“I told her I couldn’t comment on your personal life, but that I know Kayleigh is happy and well-loved, and has a new little sister. She doesn’t want to rip your family apart. But if someone gets their hooks into Anna and puts ideas in her head, and money in her hand, it wouldn’t shock me if that’s what happens. So maybe figure out a way to impart how crucial it is this visit happens as soon as possible and as smoothly as possible.”
“I’ll talk to him tonight.”
“Good. Let me know in the morning so I can make the arrangements and scheduling changes.” Doyle let the office door swing shut behind him.
Douglas threw his head back and stared at the ceiling.
Fuuuuuuck!
There goes date night.
Chapter Thirty-Three
As he drove home with the music cranked, Douglas was not looking forward to having this conversation with Connor.
God, please give me the strength to help my husband through this and show him that this is just and right. And please give me guidance on how to calm him, because I’m really going to need that. Amen.
Douglas opted to get it over with immediately, at home, instead of doing it at the restaurant, or waiting until later. He wanted this done without the girls home and to give Connor the maximum amount of time possible to calm down before they picked up the girls. He arrived home about five minutes before Connor did.
Connor bopped into the house and wore a beaming smile. “Let me hit the bathroom and change shirts, and I’ll be ready to go, babe.” He pecked Douglas on the lips on his way through the living room to the bedroom.
Fuck. He looked so…happy.
Douglas knew damn well he’d be anything but when they finished this conversation.
When Connor emerged from their bedroom, he wore a smile and had changed into a different shirt, one without the dealership’s logo on it. “Ready?”
“Um, no, Master. We need to talk first.”
“Talk?”
“Yes, Master.” Douglas took a deep breath.
“Why does this sound bad?”
“It’s…touchy.”
“Touchy?”
“Yes, Master.” The only way through this hell was through it. “There’s something I need to talk to you about, but I can’t talk about some of it because of patient confidentiality.”
Connor stood with his hands on his hips, legs spread shoulder-width, and stared at him.
It took every ounce of strength Douglas had not to drop to his knees in front of him under that gaze.
“Go on.”
“Karlie’s out of jail. And…I was her counsellor for three weeks.”
“What?”
“I didn’t know who she was then,” he quickly added. “She was listed as Anna Williams in the file. She didn’t tell me her middle name was Karlie, and she didn’t ask me to call her that. I had no idea until she started talking about Kayleigh today, and then she mentioned your name. As soon as I found out who she was, I handed her off to Doyle, because he was the only one with an open slot.”
“This happened today?”
“Yes, Master.”
“And you were talking to her for three weeks?”
“Today was her third session with me, yes. She didn’t mention she even had a child until today.”
Connor turned away from him and laced his hands on top of his head. “Okay. That’s not bad. So you don’t have to deal with her anymore, right?”
“I can’t, because you’re my husband. It’s a conflict of interest.”
He turned back to Douglas. “Then what’s the problem? Because I’m not upset. If you didn’t know who she was until today, that’s not your fault.”
He took a deep breath. “She wants to see Kayleigh.”
Connor’s eyes widened and he dropped his hands. “No fucking way. She lost all rights to her when she put my daughter in danger.”
Douglas let the priest take charge. “I know she signed her rights away. Sometimes, we need to do things we don’t want to do now for the long-term good.” He desperately wanted to tell Connor the full story and knew he couldn’t.
“I’m not risking my daughter’s safety. I can’t believe you’d even ask!”
“It would be a supervised visitation.”
Connor advanced on him. “You are supposed to be on my side!”
Douglas held up his hands but didn’t retreat. “I am on your side, Master.”
“Then tell the bitch to go the fuck away! She signed her rights away when she fucking got arrested and put my daughter in jeopardy. I will not play around with her.”
“All she’s asking is to see Kayleigh. Supervised visitation, for two hours. We’ll bring Kayleigh to the facility and use one of the conference rooms there.”
“Kayleigh doesn’t even know her! Karlie’s been in fucking jail for most of her life! She doesn’t remember her!”
Douglas knew there was a lot of pain, old and recent, filling his husband’s soul. It was like barely cooled lava crust. It looked like he was stable, but if you stepped just wrong, you’d plunge to a very hot and painful death in the molten rock below.
And he had to tread oh, so carefully.
Douglas kept his voice calm, soft, slow. At least this was some small way his experience as a priest, at sometimes having to defuse explosive domestic situations, came in handy.
“If we don’t let her at least visit with Kayleigh this time, she could go get an attorney, and—”
“She can fucking try,” Connor snarled.
“—and they might claim she only agreed to sign the revocation of her rights under duress and drag us into court to try to reverse the whole thing. Which means I wouldn’t be able to adopt her then.”
Connor flinched. Finally, a point his husband seemed to understand and could focus on besides his pain.
Hating himself, Douglas pressed forward, gentling his voice even more. “Connor, we’re so close to having all our dreams finally come true,” he softly said. “Remember what we used to talk about? Wishing we could get married and have kids? This is it.” He gave his husband a moment to process his words. “Please?”
Connor stared at Douglas for a long, tense moment. “I’m not leaving Karlie alone with my daughter.”
Relief washed through Douglas. Connor wasn’t happy about this, but he would eventually say yes. “You won’t have to. Niall and Doyle have already volunteered to be there for it and supervise it.”
“What if she tries to run out with her?”
He’d already thought of this, understanding why Connor would default to worst-case scenarios. “You and I will be standing outside the door, and Doyle or Niall will always be blocking the door on the inside. She won’t be allowed to bring anyone else inside with her, either.” He was making rules up on the fly but knew Doyle would help him sell them to Karlie…Anna…whatever the fuck her name was.
“What if Kayleigh doesn’t want to see her?”
“We need to let her decide that.”
“She’s fucking three years old, Douglas. She can’t decide if she wants to pick her nose or eat grapes.”
“If we don’t let this happen, it could get really ugly really fast. Like, maybe the newspaper picks it up and some asshole who hates gays starts a GoFundMe for her legal fees or something. That kind of ugly. It behooves us to set a precedent of not being unreasonable. We don’t give her a reason to try to get an attorney.
“She knows
she fucked up. She knows you have full custody. She’s not trying to challenge that. All she wants is to see her. Two hours one afternoon, before her appointment with Doyle. That’s all. I don’t think that’s unreasonable. She just wants closure.” He studied Connor. “And if you weren’t in so much pain and feeling so scared, I think you’d agree it’s reasonable, too.”
Connor pulled at his hair, then laced his hands together on top of his head and turned away from him, walking over to the windows looking out into the backyard.
Their backyard, where they now had so many plans to do things as a family.
Their family.
A house already full of memories, old ones, good ones that he could now fondly look back on without it ripping his heart out of his soul.
A house primed to see more good memories be made, already being made on a daily basis. His husband, and their daughters.
Connor didn’t face him, but Douglas didn’t like how low and dark Connor’s voice sounded. “What if she tries something?”
“Like what?”
“Like hurting her?”
“She won’t have any weapons on her.”
“What if she says something to her?”
“We’ll have the right to end the session early. Kayleigh knows Niall. She trusts him. He’s Uncle Niall to her. He knows her. Do you honestly think he would sit there and let something happen to her? Or Doyle? Doyle and Niall will have override rights to end things early if they think it’s harming Kayleigh in any way.”
“Why should I agree to this? Give me one fucking good reason!”
Douglas wished he could give him the best reason of all, but it meant violating patient confidentiality, and he couldn’t.
Not even to put his husband’s mind at ease.
Douglas walked over to him, gently wrapping his arms around him from behind and resting his chin on his right shoulder. “Because you’re a good dad. If Kayleigh ever asks us later on if her mom tried to have contact with her, we can be honest and say yes. And that we made the tough call to let her have that contact.”
“You sound like you don’t think she’ll hang around.”
Even this was pushing the barrier. “I…don’t know.”
Connor turned in his arms. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Please don’t ask me that, Master.”
“Tell me!” He grabbed Douglas by the throat, but Douglas didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away, didn’t panic. This was another loyalty test, even if Connor didn’t consciously realize it.
Douglas maintained his gaze, looking Connor in the eyes, knowing his husband was at the edge of his control because one of the only two things in the world more precious to Connor than Douglas was being threatened.
“I can’t tell you,” Douglas said, knowing he’d have to admit this much. “It was something I learned before I realized who she was and alerted the caseworker and got her transferred to Doyle.”
Connor’s expression hardened, even as his fingers tightened around Douglas’ throat. “I’m giving you a direct order, boy. Fucking tell me.”
Still, Douglas stood there, refusing to react and trying to breathe through his growing panic, choosing to trust.
Choosing to believe.
If Connor really wanted to harm him, Douglas wouldn’t stop him, wouldn’t fight back. His husband was in pain and scared, and that wasn’t something Douglas could fix for him.
But he refused to believe his husband would cross that line. Ever. Not even through all of Connor’s dark bluster and the even darker look in his eyes.
All Douglas could do was pray his husband trusted him as much as he trusted Connor.
“Do you trust me, Master?” he managed.
Connor leaned in, his face twisted in rage. “How many fucking pedophiles did you stand by and protect during your years as a priest?”
“Zero. The worst crime anyone ever confessed to me was backing into a car in a parking lot and driving away without leaving a note on the windshield.”
“What if you had? Sanctity of the confessional, and all that bullshit.”
This was something he’d struggled with during seminary but had come to accept before ordination. “I would have reported it to the police, and I would have been excommunicated for doing it.”
Douglas grimly smiled. “And I would have taken down a lot of people in the Church with me when I went. When I gathered information on him about your case, I made sure to hold on to that and other information I stumbled across, like women who were paid off, babies being supported, things like that. I would have dumped it all in some reporter’s e-mail and watched the fireworks.”
Connor blinked as his rage evaporated. “Really?” His grip loosened on Douglas’ throat.
“Really. No way in hell would I have stood by, priest or not, and let that happen to another child. I was willing to take the risk. I wanted to try to protect from within. So again, I ask you—do you trust me, Master?”
Connor stared at him for several minutes without speaking.
Douglas waited him out.
“I’ll only agree to it if you’re in there with her, too,” Connor finally said. “And one hour. Kayleigh’s only three. If it goes well, I might allow another visitation like that, but don’t you dare tell her that.” He finally released Douglas’ throat. “And yes, of course I trust you.”
Douglas breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Master. I’ll tell them and set it up. We won’t tell them that you’ll allow another visitation. She’s only asking for the one. Let’s not offer more than we need to.”
If they were lucky, she’d be moving in a few weeks, and it would be moot after that point anyway.
Not that he could tell Connor that. If she related that to Connor herself, fine.
But…he couldn’t. It was already dicey enough that he’d had as much contact with her as he’d had. He couldn’t lose this job. His benefits were better than Connor’s, and they’d already switched Connor and Kayleigh’s health insurance to his plan.
Connor stared at him again, peering deep into his eyes. Douglas couldn’t help it when he felt his face flush, heat in his cheeks.
“Is she moving or something?” Connor quietly asked.
“Please don’t ask me things I can’t answer, Connor.”
He stepped closer, his voice dropping even more as a predatory smile quirked his lips. “You’re not allowed to lie to me, boy.”
He swallowed hard. “I know, Master…Connor. I’m not lying, I swear. You’ll know the answer soon enough. I’m only asking you to trust me.”
“She dying or something?”
Connor wasn’t going to give up, and Douglas knew it, but he needed to try to hold the line.
He didn’t answer.
Connor startled him when he swept Douglas into his arms and kissed him, tipping him back and crushing his lips, plunging his tongue into Douglas’ mouth and fucking him with it intently, making Douglas wish it was Connor’s cock fucking his—
“Tell me, baby. Confess to me, and let me hold your secrets,” Connor whispered against Douglas’ lips. “She’s moving, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” he breathed before he even realized he’d answered.
Victory narrowed Connor’s gaze before he slanted another crushing kiss over Douglas’ lips. “My beautiful boy,” Connor whispered. “Such a very good boy for me.”
All his will fled. But before he could pull away, Connor laid one more kiss on him, melting him, turning him into a compliant puddle of need and want.
Then Connor stood him up again and released him, smiling down at him, helping him straighten his shirt.
“I trust you,” Connor said, his smile fading. “I know you love Kayleigh as much as I do. Let’s get it over with as soon as possible. The sooner, the better, right?”
“Yes, Master. Next Monday afternoon.” Still, relief filled him. He knew Connor wouldn’t tell anyone he’d squealed. That wasn’t the problem.
The problem was it wasn’t a sure
thing—yet—that she was moving. It was the probable thing. The likely thing.
Not the definite thing.
“I don’t think you should have contact with her,” Douglas added.
“Why?”
“Because if you get upset and go off, that doesn’t look good.” Not that he believed Connor would get physical with her, because he knew Connor wouldn’t do that. Not unless he or one of the girls was in danger. He was used to Connor’s “hands-on” ways as a sort of pressure relief for the man, and Douglas had always happily played that role for him, even as kids, knowing it helped him cope.
Knowing it spoke to the level of trust Connor had in him, too.
Douglas pressed. “Please, let me handle this. I’m your husband, and she knows that now. I promise I’ll handle this. Doyle’s office is right next to one of the conference rooms. You can wait in his office until Karlie’s inside, then I’ll bring Kayleigh out to you when it’s over while Doyle and Niall talk to her.”
“But you’ll be in there, with Kayleigh, right?”
Douglas nodded. “I will, if that’s what you want.”
“Okay.” He rested his forehead against Douglas’. “I trust you. I know you’ll keep her safe.”
Douglas just hoped he could get Connor through this stress with all their respective sanities intact. “Do you want to cancel dinner tonight?”
Connor frowned. “No, why?”
“I’d understand if you want to.”
Connor pulled him in for another hug. “No, baby. I want to live our lives. Like you said, this is our life. This is what we always wanted and dreamed of. I’m not wasting a minute of it.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Douglas stopped by Doyle’s office first thing Tuesday morning. “Okay.”
Doyle leaned back in his chair, smiling. “See? How many strokes did he give you?”
Douglas rolled his eyes. “None. I told him the truth—that being married and having kids is something we’d always dreamed about and never thought could happen. Now that it is, it’d be stupid to do something to jeopardize it.”
“Ah, logic. Smart thinking.”
“He’s not happy.”
“I’m sure he’s not.”
Come in From the Cold Page 28