Against the Rules

by A. R. Barley

  Hell’s bells. Ian let out a breath. It was like something out of Edgar Allen Poe, brutal and macabre. All that hurt. All that pain. “Did you have time to mourn?”

  “I had to take care of my mom,” Kelly said. “I didn’t have time to mourn. I didn’t have time for Nick. All I could do was watch her waste away in front of me. She died in August.”

  It had been less than a year. Ian nodded. “I understand—I mean, there’s no way I could possibly understand what you’re going through, I don’t think anyone could, but I think I know why you’re living on campus. It lets you feel normal.” And then—because he wasn’t normal—when it all got to be too much, he went looking for release in wild sex and random hookups.

  Ian turned his back to that horrible room. He wrapped his arms tight around Kelly, holding him as tears began to fall. “I’m here for you. If you ever need anything—”

  “I’m fine,” Kelly said. “I’m about to graduate from college. I’ve got a nice house and a job offer—even if I’m not sure I want it.”

  “You’ve got a boyfriend,” Ian said. “If you want one.”

  “Yeah. A boyfriend would be all right.”

  “Good.” Ian bit back a grin, trying to hide just how happy that admission made him. Instead, he buried his nose in the crook of Kelly’s neck, breathing in the rich scent of sweat and sex mingled with the familiar tang of soap. He might not know the best way to help Kelly work through his grief, but if necessary he’d kill himself trying. “Do you want to tell me about her?”

  “Her hair fell out.” Kelly sucked in a deep breath. His entire body was shaking. “It used to be red—like Nora and Aunt Emma—but during the chemo it fell out in clumps. I—” His voice broke off. “What else do you want to know?”

  “Whatever you want to tell me.” There was a long pause. “I know how she died...tell me about how she lived.” He racked his brain for any of the small hints Kelly had dropped. “She worked at the university?”

  “Janet O’Connor, Professor of Art History. She was smart, published, she could have taught anywhere, but this is where my aunts live. It’s where my father worked—he was an accountant—so she stayed at Halston and tried to make it a better place for the faculty and the students.”

  “Yeah?”

  “She’s the one who recruited Aldridge ten years ago—his original PhD is in art history as well. They were friends.” Kelly’s tone lightened slightly at the admission. “They used to get a bottle of wine on Sunday nights and hang out in the library debating who was a better artist, Michelangelo or Monet.”

  “It’s two completely different styles.”

  “That’s the point.” Kelly chuckled and his voice was warm for the first time since he’d started speaking. “Aldridge helped with the renovation. The stained glass in my mom’s office...he picked it up on a recruiting trip in San Francisco. My father thought they were having an affair.”

  Ian blinked in surprise. He’d met the president twice since starting at Halston. Aldridge was a force of nature, a slim man in his early seventies who was determined to leave his mark on higher education in general and Halston University in particular. Faculty gossip said he was a stickler for the rules, and Ian had no reason to disbelieve it. “Were they?”

  “I used to hope so. At least then my mom might have been with someone who made her smile. My parents loved each other—I think—but things were hard even before the diagnosis. I don’t think they had a lot of fun together.”

  “Too bad for them.” Ian couldn’t imagine being in a relationship with someone who didn’t make him smile. Love wasn’t just about the big things. It was about being happy with the quiet moments, like working beside each other in the coffee shop or lazy Saturday mornings eating breakfast together.

  His stomach certainly perked up at that idea. “I think that’s enough for now. Why don’t you point me toward the bathroom and then I’ll make my boyfriend breakfast.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Minutes later Ian’s teeth were minty fresh and he’d come downstairs to rummage through the kitchen cabinets. He’d let the puppy out for a quick run in the yard, and now the little monster was happily devouring an oversized portion of kibble.

  “You better slow down or you’re going to make yourself sick.” He pushed the bowl away with his toe, forcing the dog to scoot after it, before adding a carton of eggs to the contents of the kitchen island. He found a bag of blueberries in the freezer he could add to his mother’s yogurt pancake recipe.

  He was measuring out flour when a key rattled in the kitchen door. “Hello, Lola,” a young woman cheered as she pushed her way inside. “Come to Auntie Nora!”

  The puppy’s ears flickered back and forth, but she didn’t look up from her meal.

  It took a moment for the redhead to realize the big kitchen was already occupied. Piercing blue eyes that reminded him so much of Kelly blinked twice. Her lips opened to form a perfect O of surprise. “Are you the new dog walker? Bet he pays you better than he pays me.”

  “Depends.” Ian cracked a pair of eggs, adding the yolk to the bowl of dry ingredients. “What do you have to do and what do you get?”

  “Two walks a day, morning and evening, and I get to use the car anytime I want. Plus, I can hang out here when I want to get out of my parents’ house.” Nora shrugged. “Not that my mom’s that bad—she’s not Aunt Carly—but it means more cuddle time with the love-bug.” She bent down and held her arms open in the puppy’s direction. Nothing happened.

  “Freaking dog, only interested in one thing.” She dropped her bag on the floor and climbed onto one of the stools beside the island. “What are we having for breakfast?”

  “Yogurt pancakes with frozen blueberries.”

  “Damn.” Her cheeks flushed eagerly. “Are you sure you’re gay?”

  “Stop trying to steal my boyfriend.” Kelly walked into the room grinning. He’d taken a shower upstairs and his wet blond locks were plastered to his head. His cheeks were flushed and clean.

  His clothes had to be left over from high school. A blue T-shirt fit his shoulders just a little too tight—he’d packed on the muscle since it was bought—while worn jeans clung to him like a second skin. His feet were bare; his index toe was slightly longer than his big toe.

  “But he’s hot,” Nora whined. “And he makes pancakes.”

  “No waffles?” Kelly frowned.

  “No waffle maker,” Ian explained.

  “Damn.” Full lips pursed, letting out a sharp whistle. “Lola, come.”

  The puppy dropped the piece of kibble it was working on and threw itself into Kelly’s arms, vibrating happily as strong hands rubbed her belly. Ian knew how she felt. He’d be whimpering too if Kelly touched him like that.

  “We weren’t properly introduced.” He grinned at Kelly’s cousin. “Ian Larkin.”

  “Nora McCormick.” She grinned back.

  “I’m making breakfast, think you can do the coffee?”

  “I am a trained professional.” She slid off the stool and rattled through the kitchen’s cabinets, pulling out roasted beans, a grinder and a filter for the coffeemaker already set up on the counter. A couple of minutes later the percolator was burbling and the rich scent of coffee filled the air. Liquid bliss.

  Ian finished combining ingredients for the pancake batter and got out a big cast iron pan to heat on the stove. The blueberries were the last step. He got them out of the freezer and began mixing them in.

  Ring. Riing. The first pancake was just beginning to brown when a cell phone went off. Riiing. Ian frowned when he realized the device in question belonged to him. He answered without looking at the screen, wincing when an angry shout invaded his ears. “Finally,” Andrew snarled. “You’d think you didn’t want to talk to me.”

  “I always want to talk to you, big brother.�
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  “I’ve been calling for a week solid.”

  Ian counted backward in his head. That sounded about right. “I’ve been busy.”

  “I need to borrow a couple of hundred dollars.”

  “No can do.” This wasn’t his first time at the rodeo. Giving a gambling addict money was like throwing dollar bills on a fire. Except it wouldn’t even keep him warm. “I thought you were working the program.”

  “Fuck you.” Andrew snorted. “I’m fine. Anyway, you still owe me for the car.”

  “I paid you ten grand for the car.” It had been money he couldn’t afford, borrowed against his credit card, but it had been enough to pay off Andrew’s debts and save his older brother from a pair of broken kneecaps. At the time Ian had thought it was a fresh start.

  Unfortunately, Andrew had seen it as an opportunity to place bigger—and riskier—bets. Their parents had bailed him out twice more before he’d been caught stealing from the law firm where he worked and sentenced to six months in jail.

  “The car’s worth twice that and you know it.”

  “I paid you Blue Book value.” Ian grabbed a spatula and started flipping over the pancakes. Some of them were already done. He maneuvered them onto a clean plate and poured more batter out into nice evenly spaced circles.

  “Come on,” Andrew said, and someone started shouting on his end of the line. The halfway house where he’d been living since his release wasn’t quiet, but it was clean and there was a Gambler’s Anonymous meeting held in the front room twice a week. “Please. You owe me.”

  “I don’t owe you shit.” Ian sighed. The happy buzz he’d gotten from waking up with Kelly was completely gone. He could barely concentrate on the food cooking in front of him. “School ends in six weeks. I’ll come up and bring you a care package.”

  “Fuck you and your care package.” There was a slight pause. “You better bring real cookies this time—homemade—none of that crap from a box. I can taste the difference.” The line went dead.

  Ian tossed his phone onto the kitchen island with a sigh. “I love you too, asshole.”

  “Family, right?” Nora laughed. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t bury ’em in the backyard without the cops knocking at the door. At least that’s what Mom says about Aunt Carly.”

  “My brother.” Ian chose his words carefully. It probably sounded like he was answering Nora’s question, but all of his energy was focused on Kelly. If they were going to be a couple—a real couple with a future—then he needed to know this. He needed to know why Ian drove a nice car but lived in a shitty apartment, why he spent every penny paying down his student loans and the thought of more credit card debt gave him the heebie-jeebies.

  “Andrew’s an addict. A gambler. It started out with small bets, but then he needed riskier and riskier behavior to get the same high.” It had started out so freaking slowly, no one had realized what was going on until it was too late. “The things he did—the things he put us through—I bailed him out more than a few times—”

  “The fancy sports car,” Kelly said.

  “No way to afford that on a professor’s salary. I gave him every penny I could get my hands on—my parents withdrew their retirement plans—but it still wasn’t enough to keep him safe.” He just kept pushing—like David—chasing bigger highs and harder thrills.

  “And now he wants more?”

  “He won’t stop until he drags the rest of the family down with him.” The acrid scent of burning sugar filled the air. Fuck.

  He turned around and slid the ruined pancakes into the trash, turning on the vent fan above the stove and regreasing the pan. He needed to concentrate on what was right in front of him.

  The pancakes cooked up fast and five minutes later he was handing over warm plates to Kelly and Nora. “Do you have any maple syrup?”

  “Powdered sugar—” the two cousins said at the same time. They laughed.

  “Aunt Janet hated maple syrup,” Nora explained, her cheeks red with laughter. “She used to insist we all use powdered sugar instead.”

  Kelly stood up and retrieved the box, coating his pancakes in a fine mist before handing it over to his cousin. He sat down and took bite. “Mmm.” A soft moan escaped his lips, the sound eerily reminiscent of the noises he’d made in bed the night before.

  Ian swallowed hard as the memory slammed into him, Kelly spread out naked and eager on the big blue quilt. His hands tied over his head, unable to move. He’d been completely at Ian’s mercy. It had been where they were headed all night, but riding him? That had been a burst of inspiration sent by the gods. His cock plumped and he stepped closer to the island to hide the reaction in his borrowed pajama bottoms.

  “Delicious,” Nora agreed, pouring sugar onto her pancakes. A cloud of white powder escaped into the air around her, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  The puppy had gone back to eating kibble.

  Ian ate some pancakes—sans powdered sugar. They were damn good and it had felt nice to work in a real kitchen again, one with space to lay things out. He’d have to bring over some tools—and real maple syrup—but he could see himself cooking food here in the future.

  The O’Connor house had everything he was looking for in a home: a fenced-in backyard, a real kitchen and Kelly...it was practically perfect.

  Of course, it also had at least three extra bedrooms and a freaking library, but all that empty space wouldn’t matter when they were snuggled up together.

  He was getting ahead of himself.

  The house might be Kelly’s but he didn’t live here—the only person who actually lived here was the damn dog—and Kelly hadn’t asked Ian to move in with him. Their relationship was fresh, new. It could do without the added pressure of cohabitation, no matter how much Ian liked the square footage.

  “Seriously, though,” Nora said around a mouthful of pancakes. “Is your brother straight?”

  “In bed? Straight as an arrow, but he’ll take all your money.”

  “I’m a barista, last week I pulled in two hundred dollars and a Bible pamphlet. I don’t have any money. Can he cook?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  For the second week in a row Kelly was walking up the steps of his Aunt Carly’s house for family dinner. He was pretty sure the seas were boiling.

  He tugged nervously at the cuffs to his shirt. If it was going to be the apocalypse, then at least he’d dressed well in a pin-striped button-down over his best jeans. Ian had gone for the genial professor look in a pair of black slacks and a tweed jacket over his hunter green T-shirt. The jacket had elbow patches, but it did nice things for his ass.

  Kelly sucked in a deep breath. “We don’t have to do this. We can get back in the car and drive to Bermuda.”

  “Pretty sure there’s an ocean in the way.”

  “Then we can drive to Pittsburgh.” Anywhere would be better than sitting down with his aunts. Kelly was getting ready to turn around when the door opened.

  “You were thinking about running away,” Uncle Matt said.

  “Of course not,” Kelly lied.

  “Carly’s making lamb shanks.”

  “Guess I’ll stay.”

  His uncle extended a hand to Ian. “Matt McCormick.”

  “Nora’s father. She’s a charming young woman.” Ian shook it quickly. “I’m Ian Larkin.”

  “You watch football?”

  “I’m a baseball man.”

  There was a short pause. “Not everyone’s perfect. Treat Kelly right and it won’t matter.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Ian put a hand on Kelly’s waist as they walked inside.

  Carly’s house wasn’t as big as the one Kelly had grown up in. It was a low-slung ranch on the outskirts of town that she’d purchased with her ex-husband twenty years earlier. The bedrooms we
re on the left side of the house, the communal space on the right.

  The furniture was overstuffed and comfortable. The carpet was beige Berber. There were framed pictures of family members on the walls and a collection of plants arranged on the pass-through between the dining room and the kitchen.

  Growing up, Kelly had always preferred the easy comfort of Carly’s living room with its crowd of cousins to his own house, but now the familiar sight of his parents’ wedding photo on the living room wall made his hands itch.

  There was still a good twenty minutes before dinner, so Kelly decided to face the dragon. He led Ian into the ranch house’s cramped kitchen, where pots and pans covered the stove. “Hope you’ve got room for two more, Aunt Carly.”

  “Always room for family. Did you bring your new boyfriend?” Carly glanced up from where she was stirring a pot of mashed potatoes and blinked in surprise when she saw Ian. “You’re not a boy.”

  “Ian Larkin, I’d like you to meet Carly Weldon.” Kelly made the introductions quickly. “Ian’s only twenty-nine. He’s a professor at the university.”

  “Ha.” Carly snorted. “Bunch of layabouts. Never did an honest day’s work in their life.” Her silver-and-blond hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail. Her dress was plain red cotton, covered by a white-and-blue-striped apron that had undoubtedly been a present from one of her kids. “Never mind. I’m sure you’re the respectable sort, Mr. Larkin?”

  “Call me Ian.”

  “Humph. And how long have you been dating my nephew?”

  “Not long enough.” Ian beamed charmingly, obviously trying to make some kind of an effort.

  It didn’t work.

  Carly didn’t even look at him. She was too focused on the food on the stove. “I hope you can convince him to come to his senses. He doesn’t need to be stuck here in Halston. He could go anywhere.” She frowned. “Where did you go to graduate school?”

  “UCLA.”