by Sierra Riley
“It is stupid. And you could go to jail. But I know you, and I know you were aware of both those things going into it. I’m starting to think you would have done it even if getting caught was guaranteed.”
He bristled at that, immediately jumping on the defensive.
“Just so long as you had a chance to help him before they locked you up,” she finished, deflating him instantly.
Jake’s stomach lurched. That wasn’t better. It was true, of course. But he was beginning to think her first assumption was even more true. He would have done anything if it meant being the one to ride to Russ’s rescue.
“I know it’s terrible. I don’t know what I was thinking when I came up with it,” he said, dropping back against the wall and folding his arms over his chest as if they’d protect him.
“Come on, J. We both know what you were thinking.”
“What? That I could suddenly convince Russ not to get an annulment? That he’d magically realize he’s bi and in love with me, too?”
The words tasted bitter on his tongue. Whether it was because there was some grain of truth to them or not, he didn’t know.
“I know you’re smarter than that. And not nearly as selfish as you think.”
Lynn’s tone had softened considerably, but this was almost worse. She should be angry at him for this. Not sympathetic. He didn’t deserve sympathy.
“You have a better opinion of me than I have of myself,” he mumbled.
“I know.”
They were both quiet for a time, and Jake listened to the sounds of the clinic beyond the door. One of their nurses was taking a patient’s vitals in Exam Three. He had to deliver lab results to Exam Two. In a few moments, the world would go back to exactly what it had been before this admission.
But Lynn would know, and that would weigh on him. Probably for the rest of his life.
“You know I just want you to protect yourself, don’t you? I will tear apart anyone who hurts you, but J, hon, when you’re the one who’s hurting you…”
“I know,” he said, echoing her sentiment from earlier. He groaned, swiping a hand over his face. “I know.”
“One month,” she said, pushing up from the chair. He arched a brow at her, waiting for her to finish her thought. “One month will give you enough time to submit all the insurance claims, and it should be long enough to provide for Ryan’s recovery, too. Promise me you’ll get it annulled after that. No longer.”
Jake’s heart clenched, but he nodded.
“One month. I promise.”
* * *
He didn’t see the text from Russ until after their last patients left for the day.
His phone had been set to silent, largely to protect himself from anyone calling about the Tribune article. He didn’t really expect backlash on a professional level. Anyone who didn’t want their kid going to a gay doctor had plenty of other options. But he still didn’t want it affecting his professional life.
When he finally did check his phone, there were a few missed calls from numbers he didn’t recognize, and one text from Russ. As he sat down with the day’s paperwork, he couldn’t help but wonder if Russ had seen that paper and what he thought of it.
Considering the text he sent, there was a fair bet he had.
We need to tell Ryan.
That was all it said. Five words, and yet they sliced a fear through him that left him almost paralyzed. He’d never really wanted to lie to Ryan in the first place, but the alternative was worse. Much worse. If Ryan didn’t understand, or if he thought they were making a mockery of his mother’s memory, it would kill Jake.
But Russ was right. If other people knew about it, it was sure to come up when Ryan went to school. He’d be teased about it, and that wasn’t the sort of thing a kid should find out through some uncreative bully.
Pulling up the reply screen, he shot off a quick one of his own:
Give me an hour and I’ll be there.
15
Jake
The walk from his car up to the Callaghans’ front door was like a death march.
He knew he shouldn’t be so damn dramatic about it, but this could fundamentally change his relationship with Ryan. The last thing he wanted was to give him any cause for resentment, but Jake wasn’t sure there was any way to come clean about this without Ryan feeling at least a little betrayed.
By the time he made it up to the door, Russ was already waiting. He had a dish towel in his hands, and looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. His voice reflected every ounce of his exhaustion, and Jake just wanted to escort him upstairs and put him to bed.
“Hey, come on in.”
He shut the door behind him, and Russ went to put away the last of the now-clean dishes.
“So I’m guessing you saw the paper.” He shrugged out of his coat, hanging it on the back of a chair.
“Yeah. Carter of all people called me to congratulate us. Said he knew all along.”
Jake laughed it off, because Carter was never that observant, and he assumed Russ wasn’t putting much stock in it. Even so, his heart started to beat a little bit faster.
“Lynn was the one who showed me.”
“Ouch,” Russ said with a little wince.
Yeah. It definitely was. A part of Jake was still reeling from it, but he couldn’t tell Russ why. He couldn’t tell him how spot-on she was about his reasons for tying the knot, or what it was going to do to him when everything inevitably fell apart.
“Ryan upstairs?” He asked, trying to drag his mind away from his own little pity party and toward the task at hand.
Russ sighed. “Yeah. On Xbox with his friends. I told him we’d all talk about it tonight. He hasn’t pushed, but I just… I wonder what’s going through his head, you know?”
“Only one way to find out.”
Russ nodded, tossing the dish towel onto the counter. He raked a hand through his hair, and Jake could practically feel his friend’s anxiety. Russ hadn’t always been this way. He’d been pretty devil-may-care in college, and Jake had been the one prone to excessive worry.
But now that he had Ryan—and especially now that he was Ryan’s only caregiver—he’d definitely taken on more than his fair share of heartache.
The best thing Jake could do for him now was to try and be that balancing weight on the other side. If Russ was anxious, he would be calm.
“I think it’s best to tell him the truth; tell him exactly why we’re doing this. What it means and what it… doesn’t mean.”
He hoped to God Russ didn’t pick up on the crack in his voice.
“I just don’t want him to feel like he’s a burden. You know how kids internalize this shit. He’ll think we did this because of him.”
“That’s going to happen either way, I think. Best to just make sure we head it off before he can get deep into it. I’m worried that if we don’t tell him it’s because of the insurance, he’ll resent us both for trying to replace his mom.”
“Yeah.” Russ leaned back against the kitchen counter, tilting his head back and looking skyward. “Shit. I guess there’s no getting out of it, huh? I can’t crawl through the window?”
Jake caught Russ’s slight smile, and met it with one of his own, remembering exactly what his friend was referencing. Carrie had come to their dorm mad as hell once. Jake didn’t even remember what Russ had done to piss her off, but it’d been bad enough for him to feel it was necessary to climb out of their window and fall into the hedges below.
At least Carrie ended up laughing so hard at him that her anger mostly dissipated.
“’Fraid not. Come on,” he said, reaching out to clap Russ on the arm.
They headed upstairs, Russ leading the way. Ryan was lounged on a bean bag chair, his TV showing what looked to be one of the Halo games. His headset was on, and he didn’t seem to notice their presence at first.
“Hey, Ryan. Jake’s here. Think the three of us can talk now?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said distractedly. The sou
nd of gunshots came through his headphones. The alien in front of him dropped to the ground in a physics-defying pile of green goo. “I gotta go eat dinner. Later guys.”
Ryan took off his headset and shut down the console, and Jake idly wondered if he’d still be so cooperative when he was a teenager. He supposed they’d find out soon enough.
“So, you remember what you asked me at the hospital? About what was happening in the spring?”
“Yeah.”
Jake looked from Russ to Ryan, wondering what exactly had taken place. He knew today was Ryan’s pre-op appointment, and still felt bad about missing it. But he hadn’t even gotten back to the clinic until after three.
“Well. Ah.” Russ looked toward him, a clear “help me” in his eyes. Oh, boy. This was going to be a long conversation.
“Your dad needed some help paying for everything. I’m sure you’ve noticed it’s been a little tight around here.”
“Yeah,” he said, in a way that made Jake think that he really did understand. At least on some level. “We eat in a lot more.”
“Right, you guys have had to make some cutbacks. But even that doesn’t take care of big expenses.”
“Like surgeries,” Ryan said.
There was a note to his voice that made Jake falter. This was what he hadn’t wanted. Ryan was a bright kid, and if this conversation was anything to go on, it seemed he already felt like a burden to his dad. Thankfully, Russ seemed to pick up on that, too.
“Not just surgeries. Any emergency. If the car breaks down, or one of my saws breaks, or anything.”
Ryan nodded, but looked at them both dubiously.
“There was a way I could help your dad with those emergencies; make it easier on you both, so you don’t have to cut back so much. But it meant your dad and I…” He looked toward Russ. Shit. Now he had no idea what to say. “Well, people who are married get certain things that single people don’t. So your dad and I went down to the courthouse and had them marry us.”
He expected anger. He expected the immediate backlash of Ryan telling him he wasn’t ever going to replace his mother, and having to run damage control while desperately hoping the situation wouldn’t blow up any worse.
What he got was… something else.
“So are you going to live here now?”
Jake just gaped, and Russ took over.
“We haven’t really talked about that yet. But are you sure you don’t have… other questions? Or concerns or something?”
He shrugged a little. “I’m not a little kid. I get it. When Tristan’s mom and dad got divorced, his dad got married to someone else.”
That Ryan could put such vastly different circumstances in the same frame of reference blew Jake’s mind. Especially since he was still trying to process the fact that Ryan seemed virtually unaffected. Kids were resilient, yeah, but he hadn’t realized just how resilient.
“This doesn’t change anything between us, okay? Your dad’s still your dad, and I’m still Uncle Jake. I would never try to replace your mom, Ryan.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Russ glanced at him, his eyes a little wide. Apparently Jake wasn’t the only one caught off guard.
“You’re not upset or anything, bud? You can tell us. We won’t be mad. You have a right to feel upset.”
“I don’t know. I don’t feel upset. Maybe if you’d just married somebody I didn’t know. But Uncle Jake is cool.”
Russ laughed, the sound tinged with disbelief. “Yeah, he is.” He took a seat in Ryan’s computer chair, leaning forward so he could be closer to his son’s eye level. “Listen, I know this is a lot to take in. So if you ever need to talk about it later, I’m here, okay?”
“Okay.”
He hadn’t expected a full monologue from Ryan, but he’d forgotten how little Russ’s son talked aside from the times he was talking about Minecraft or a cool thing he’d done in science class. It was almost refreshing, actually.
“You know I love ya, right?”
A goofy little smile showed Ryan’s age. He was trying so hard to hide his pleasure at hearing that, but Jake could see it easily.
“Yeah. Love you too.”
He felt that familiar ache of yearning as he watched father and son. He and Russ were legally married. Bound as tightly as they would ever be. And still he didn’t feel as if he had any right to say the words that raced through his mind; to tell Ryan that he loved him, too, and would do anything in the world for him.
Lynn’s words suddenly surfaced in his mind:
This must be killing you.
It was. Even with everything going right—or at least as right as he could hope for—it was.
16
Russ
Russ was still a little dazed when he and Jake headed back downstairs.
He hadn’t expected a shouting match. Ryan just wasn’t that kind of kid. But he’d thought there’d be some resistance. That’s the way it always was in the movies, at least, with the kid feeling resentful of the stepparent. Then again, Jake wasn’t really the stepparent in this case. As much as he’d been there for Russ, maybe he was still just Uncle Jake to Ryan.
Or maybe Ryan knew that it was temporary; that it wasn’t a real marriage.
Why did that make Russ feel so… unsettled?
“That was easier than I thought it would be,” Russ said, stopping at the bottom of the stairs.
“You have a good kid.”
He did have a good kid. Better than he deserved, really. But it was still hard for Russ to let go of that nagging worry that told him there was more going on than what he saw at first glance.
“I just hope he isn’t hiding anything from me, you know? Bottling up what he really feels.”
“Does it seem like he is?”
Jake’s expression wasn’t the slightest bit confrontational. Somehow when his friend asked questions he already knew the answer to, he managed to do it in a way that wasn’t condescending. He seemed to have a knack for guiding Russ toward the right answer. Lately that seemed to be something he desperately needed.
“Not really.”
Jake smiled, and Russ was instantly reminded of the smile he’d given him in the courtroom. Right before they’d kissed. A little tingle danced up his spine.
“I think you have a few more years before that starts happening.”
Russ groaned at the image of Ryan as a teenager. If Russ’s own adolescence was anything to go off, Ryan would transform from sweet kid into surly teen-beast almost overnight.
“Jesus, don’t remind me,” he said.
He walked with Jake to the door, stopping before he opened it. He didn’t necessarily want him to go, but it wasn’t like Jake didn’t have better things to do than hang around and watch him try to be a responsible adult. The fact that he’d already taken time out of his night to help Russ break the news was bad enough.
Russ reached up, tangling a hand through his hair. “Hey, about the being around more often thing… Don’t feel like you have to.”
Jake’s smile didn’t reach his eyes this time. “Sure, yeah.”
Shit. That wasn’t how he’d wanted it to come across.
“I mean, I’d love to have you around more. I just, uh… I know you have your own stuff going on.”
He felt like he was sixteen again, standing on someone’s porch, clumsily trying to ask for a second date. The comparison was pretty laughable, considering he and Jake were married now. Jesus.
“You seem to think I have more of a social life than I actually do,” Jake joked. “Work is the only stuff I have going on.”
Russ felt an odd twinge of relief at that. He knew Jake wasn’t big on partying. Neither of them had been, even back in college. But the idea that Jake probably went out on dates or at least out to bars to meet guys had crossed his mind.
“I do have some paperwork to finish up, though. I’ll be sure to drop by a few times before Ryan’s surgery, though, to see how you both are doing.”
“All ri
ght, man. I won’t keep you.”
He opened the door for Jake, and his heart started to thump loudly in his chest, not speeding, but just beating stronger than ever. His earlier analogy resurfaced in his mind, and all he could think about was that nervous energy that always surrounded the decision to go in for the goodnight kiss.
Christ, he was pathetic.
One taste—one totally platonic taste—and all of those long-buried feelings from college were cropping up again.
Jake started out the door, and Russ felt an overwhelming urge to stop him.
“I know I don’t say it enough, but thank you, Jake. You’re a lifesaver. I really don’t know what I’d do without you.”
It felt like a weightier confession that he intended, and the way Jake smiled at him made him question everything. Had he agreed to this marriage because it was the only way out? Or was there some other reason he kept clinging to Jake?
“I’m happy to help. You’ve always been like a brother to me.”
It should have been a huge compliment, but instead it was like a sudden punch to the gut. Russ practically staggered, one hand gripping the door frame. His jumbled emotions fell into a useless heap, and he wasn’t in any hurry to pick them back up.
“Me too,” he managed as Jake headed out onto the porch.
He leaned back against the door frame, watching Jake leave. He had no idea what he’d been hoping for there. Had he wanted the goodnight kiss? The butterflies swirling in his stomach as they agreed to make plans for the future? It was silly. He had so many other things to worry about; this budding attraction had to be last on his list.
But as he let the door fall softly closed, he couldn’t help but feel like he’d been given the equivalent of a quick peck on the cheek and a “let’s just be friends.”
And that stung a whole lot more than he wanted to admit.
17
Russ