by Liz Crowe
Jace allowed himself to be installed in Kieran’s car next to Frankie and touched the baby’s chest. “I’ll take care of him.” He gazed up at Kieran somberly.
“Great.” He turned to Dominic. “I sent Cara a text. Kent’s mama called her already. She’ll drive you there.”
Dom nodded, unable to find words. Dizziness made him wobbly. But he climbed on his bike and fired it up, noting his father nearby. The worst sort of emptied-out feeling in his chest and a burning desire to point his bike toward Diana’s place stole over him. But she had a wedding planned for the following weekend. She’d have no time or inclination to coddle him.
His father took a few steps closer to him and gestured to turn the bike off. Dom did, but remained seated. “We think Jace should stay with us, indefinitely.” His words shocked Dom to his core.
“No,” he declared through gritted teeth. “He’s my son. I’ll get something sorted out with him.”
“He can’t live with you, Dominic. Not if you and…Kent are together.” His father’s jaw was set in a way Dom knew well.
“Daddy, I’m not with Kent in case you hadn’t noticed. And I likely won’t be. God, you are unbelievable, you know that?”
Anton glared at him. Dom glared back. “I have to go now. Kent wants to talk to me. Don’t worry, I won’t get any gay germs on you or on my son.” He fired up the bike, and roared out into the street, chest tight and face burning hot.
Dom entered Kent’s darkened room with Cara hanging on his arm. His body broke into a cold sweat, the urge to bolt from the horror that awaited him never stronger, But he had to thank him, to look the man in the face and tell him… a lot of things, but mostly that he was so very grateful he’d found Jace.
When he got to Kent’s side, he put his shaking palm on the other man’s arm.
Kent’s eyes opened slowly. Cara gasped, but Dom held onto his smile as long as he could. “Oh. Hi. What…what’s going on?” He frowned at Cara who stood at Dom’s shoulder then swiped at his dry lips.
“Your mama called me.” Dom gave Kent’s arm a gentle squeeze. “Told me you wanted to talk.”
“Oh, um, no. I didn’t.”
Dom blinked, hypnotized by Kent’s dark blue gaze. He gulped. “Oh, well….” He took a step away from the bed.
“Stay.” Kent’s voice barely above a whisper. “I guess you should both know. They’re moving me to hospice.”
Cara burst into tears. “Sorry, sorry.” She shook her head. “My hormones are so whacked.” She pressed a kiss to Kent’s gaunt cheek. “I’m gonna go find Missus Lowery.”
Kent nodded, then winced. Panic draped over Dom’s brain as he dropped into an uncomfortable chair next to the bed.
“Do me a favor,” Kent said, staring up at the ceiling.
“Sure.”
“Touch my arm again.” Kent turned his head to Dom, and the smile that had so captured him appeared in its full, breathtaking force. Dom’s heart raced. “I missed you,” Kent said, his voice breathy.
A tumble of memories, poignant and incredibly erotic, filled Dom’s consciousness. He swallowed hard and put his palm on Kent’s arm again. “Nah, you didn’t miss me. I’m no good. Ask anybody.”
Kent trained his gaze upward again. “I am so fucking tired of this ceiling. I’m tired of everything.”
“Hey, don’t talk like that,” Dom insisted, reaching over the brush Kent’s hair off his forehead. “Why’re you avoiding me? Jace is beside himself over not seeing you.”
“I don’t want him to see me like this. It’ll just scare him.” He smiled at Dom again. “He’s a great kid, Dom. Don’t give up on him.” A tear slid down the man’s cheek. “Gah, I hate crying. All I do is blubber like a fuckin’ girl anymore.”
Dominic’s heart seemed to expand, the way it had the moment he realized that the simple, flirty, sexy relationship he’d struck up with a man more or less on a whim had led him into an emotional connection he’d not felt since Diana. Dom laid his head on Kent’s thin, T-shirt-covered shoulder. “Why did you do it?” He moved his palm to Kent’s chest, feeling the slow heartbeat. “You were always Mister Safe Sex.” Dom’s skin prickled at the memories, but he shoved them away, unwilling to revisit any of it.
Kent chuckled, then coughed so long and loud the nurses came running. Once they had him settled, he held out his hand. Without a second’s hesitation, Dom took it. “Because I wanted you. And if I couldn’t have you, I didn’t care anymore.”
Kent’s mother and Cara walked in at that moment. Dom tried to let go, but Kent held tight.
“Kent, honey, we’re headed over to hospice.” Vivian Lowery kissed her son’s forehead. “Noon tomorrow they’ll be ready for you but Cara and I want to make sure your room’s set up properly.”
Dom brushed his lips over Kent’s, praying harder than he ever had at that moment for a reset, a do-over, a life Mulligan. What he might actually concoct with such an opportunity he had no idea, really, given the precarious state of affairs with his father. But he knew he had to make some things right, now that he had a shot at it. “I need to…I want to do some stuff to your room over there too, make it feel homier than here.”
Kent nodded. “Tired,” he muttered, his eyes already closing. Cara and Dom rode to her house in total silence.
The next day Dom ran a few final errands before he parked his bike at the hospice building and shouldered his backpack containing the supplies he’d procured, hoping to make something up to Kent, but knowing he would never be able to repay him. After charming his way past a gaggle of nurses and volunteers, he re-arranged the room up the way he wanted, then sat to wait.
A kind of peace had set itself up in his soul. While he’d accepted that he did love Kent, had loved him, he also knew he wouldn’t love any other man again. He had a different set of priorities now. Despite Jace’s mistaken conception and his horrific early start to life, it was now Dominic’s responsibility to fix things for him. He owed Jace that. Hell, he owned Kent that.
When he opened up the email on his readopted smartphone screen, a message flashed up at him, the word contract in the subject line from Erasmus Brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado. He’d been doing a bit of job hunting in the past few weeks, hoping to get out from under his father’s thumb and off his payroll, despite Dom’s desire to stay closer to home, near his mother. But he’d become obsolete at Love Brewing since being booted out, replaced by some hotshot his father had hired away from a brewery in Michigan. Dom figured if he could work a year or two somewhere else, he could return home and reassume his proper place at Love Brewing, after his parents did their tough-love discipline thing on Jace.
He had to get some distance from all this…from what had happened to Kent, from Diana and the ongoing temptation she presented to him, from his hovering, well-meaning, but irritating brothers.
But first… he smiled when the nurse wheeled Kent into the room. “I’ve got him.” He winked at the woman, helped Kent out of the wheelchair and into a recliner next to his. He popped open a couple of Love Brewing Heartbroken IPAs and passed Kent one.
“Take a load off,” he insisted, putting his feet up on the leather ottoman he’d also arranged for. Kent clutched the beer, then smiled and put his feet up with a small wince of pain. Dom held up his bottle. Kent touched his to it. They sipped. Dom pointed up to the ceiling. Kent’s gaze followed and he choked out a laugh.
Dom grinned up at the posters he’d bought and plastered over the entire expanse of boring, beige drywall. Women in all sorts of undress gazed down at them with collective come-hither expressions. He’d spared the staff some of the really raunchy, split wet-beaver shots, but had a stack of those tucked into the bedside table drawer. There were plenty of tits and ass on display above them, of the sort he and Kent both enjoyed, they’d learned to their mutual delight once Kent had popped Dom’s cherry.
“Well, hell.” Kent chuckled, sipping and admiring the view above him. “I might be able to get it up despite all these meds.”
<
br /> Dom grinned and pointed his beer bottle at him with a wink. “That’s the idea.”
“Got movies too?”
“Only the finest video porn money can buy, streamed directly to that giant flat screen over there. Girl-on-girl galore. Hey, I’ve got a great idea. Let’s watch some.”
Kent grinned around his beer bottle. Dom tried not to weep at the vision of the man, once so amazingly robust and healthy, now like a famine victim, his wasted frame swimming in his jeans and T-shirt. Kent’s eyes were bright as Dom locked the door then pointed the remote at the TV.
“Come over here,” Kent said, his voice hoarse. “Please.”
Dom nodded and sat in his recliner, enjoying some of their favorite girl-on-girl variations, getting hornier by the minute.
Kent reached over the small table and touched Dom’s hair. “Show me?”
He nodded, got to his feet and unzipped his jeans, his face burning with unshed tears.
It took about five days for Kent to decline, and when he died, Dom held him close, whispering I love you’s. Once the doctor had been summoned to declare it official, Dom let Kent go, accepted hugs from Cara, his mother, and Kent’s mother, then ran out the door. He got on his bike and rode for an hour, before pulling up in front of the fancy new Brantley Farms barn-turned-banquet hall.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Diana put her phone down at about the same time she heard Dom’s Harley in the driveway. She walked to the side screen door and opened it, then gathered him close and dropped to the couch, rocking him until he calmed, and for the first time since the second she’d acknowledged her feelings for him as a teenager, she was not tempted to kiss him. He laid his head against her chest, convincing her that this was good, this was fine, it was okay have him close and provide what comfort she could.
They held onto each other and Diana allowed herself to drift off, visions of her upcoming wedding to Lee filling her dreaming brain. When she woke he’d draped a blanket over her, but she heard him puttering in the kitchen. He emerged with two cups of coffee and sat next to her.
“I’m moving to Colorado,” he declared, surprising her.
“What? Why?”
“I have to get away from here. Start over, or something. I was gonna go alone but I’ve decided to…well…I’m taking the boy with me.”
She put her coffee cup down. “You can’t take him away from your parents, Dom. That will kill them.”
“He’s my son. I have to work out my relationship with him without them constantly stepping between us. They’re too old, as my brothers like to remind me, to be taking care of a rowdy-ass seven-year-old.”
She leaned on her knees, contemplating this apparent change of plans. “I…um…well, have you at least talked to them about it?”
“I just came from watching my…my ex-lover die from cancer because he had AIDS, Diana. I think I’m grown-up enough to decide where to live with my own kid.”
She blew out a breath. “No one is trying to take away your right to decide things.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
She touched his jaw with her fingertips.
“Relax, honey. I’m on your side.”
He glared at her, making her recoil. “If you were on my side you wouldn’t be about to marry the veterinarian.”
She jumped up, unwilling to go down that road again with him. “You know, just when I think you’re done being a selfish ass, your true self shows up again.”
“I’ve had a crappy few months, Di. Cut me some slack.”
“Fuck you and your slack. All you ever get is slack. We all coddle you too much. ‘Where’s Dom? Is he still on his meds? Who’s taking care of Dom?’” She backed up, not believing the words she heard coming from her own lips. “You know what? I’m done babysitting you, you bastard. I never should have let you in here, in my life, but I kept doing it, up until and including this last time.”
He rose slowly and walked toward her, his gaze darkening in a way she recognized.
“Don’t come any closer. You don’t get to have me, Dominic. Get that through your thick skull right now. Go on and run away to Colorado or wherever you think you have to. It’s probably best. You’ve used up all the goodwill here.” She pushed past him.
He grabbed her arm. “Wait, please. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean….”
“You came here to tell me you were hightailing it out west with the son you barely know under one arm and you honest to god thought I’d chuck all my plans with Lee out the window, didn’t you?” She faced away from him, her arm still in his grip. “Jesus H. Christ, Dom. What kind of idiot do you take me for?”
“No,” he insisted, giving her a little tug. “Yes.” He folded her into his arms. “I’m sorry.”
“Let go of me.” She disentangled, nearly blind and deaf with rage and remorse. “You are three days late and about a thousand dollars short for that. You fucked me over one too many times. I love Lee, do you get me, you asshole? Not you.” She gave him a shove. He didn’t resist, stumbling over the table, sending their cups to the floor and dark stains spreading across the worn wooden porch floor.
A piercing pain sliced through her chest, sensing this for a final the end—at last. But she owned it, and slammed the kitchen door in his face when he tried to follow her inside.
She shook all over as she retrieved her phone from the kitchen counter and pulled up Lee’s number. “Come get me,” she sobbed into the device. “Don’t ask me any questions. Please.”
He arrived within fifteen minutes, from where she had no idea, and she fell into his arms.
Their wedding went off flawlessly two days later. But when Diana sought the one person she wanted so very much to be there and happy for her, he was absent. Lindsay gave her a long, tight hug toward the end of the reception in the new banquet barn.
“Dom’s headed West, he says.” She let go and dabbed her eyes with a hankie. “He’s taking Jace with him. Anton is apoplectic. So it’s kinda status quo at my house.” She patted Diana’s cheek. “You are so beautiful. I wish…. Oh, never mind what I wish.” She touched Lee’s arm. “You two be happy, now, hear? Make some pretty babies and just…be happy.”
“What was that all about,” Lee asked Diana, cupping her ass and yanking her close.
“Oh, nothing, I don’t know.” She pressed her face into his chest, her brain buzzing and her body revving up.
“Hmmm, well, is this deal over yet? I’m ready to get on a plane and have so much sex we can’t walk.”
“I’m not having sex on a plane with you, ick.” She giggled when he nuzzled her neck.
“Fine. Let’s go fuck now and knock my edge off before we leave.”
She glanced across the mostly empty room, then motioned to a closed door where she kept a small office. “Let’s make a baby,” she whispered to him once they were alone.
He blinked, then smiled, then kissed her lightly. “Okay, that’s new. You sure?” She nodded. His grin widened. “Well, they say practice makes perfect.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Two Years Later
Dominic heaved the huge bags of malt off the pallet and onto the ’gator wagon, shoulders aching and his mouth bone-dry after the bender he’d gone on the night before. He watched the lady brewer as she reamed out some poor shmuck of a brew boy in the large open doorway to the main brewery. Her recent promotion over his better-qualified head as a publicity stunt had pissed him off so much he’d overpaid a babysitter and gone out to get ass-over-teakettle drunk with some girl he barely remembered until he woke up sticky and naked, draped over her bare body.
The sitter had agreed to stay over, but he knew he’d pay the price in spades from his son once he got home from work today. Since it was summer break, he didn’t have to worry about getting Jace on the bus with his lunch packed exactly right, thank the good Lord. The kid knew how to extract his pound of flesh—a tantrum followed by junk food, violent video games and/or the latest gore-fest movie.
“Love!�
�� Chris, the newly and unfairly promoted brewer lady’s voice broke through his fog, making him grit his teeth.
“I’m coming, hold your water.” He drove across the parking lot and pulled into the open garage door to the huge production floor then spent the next three hours letting her boss him to her heart’s content until they had two hundred barrels of their signature California Common bubbling away in fermentation.
He flopped onto the couch in his old office that she’d co-opted and put his boots up on his—now her—desk. She glanced up from her laptop screen and shoved them off. “Come on, doll. Don’t be bitchy,” he spoke to the ceiling.
She stretched, and he got an eye popping view of the expanse of her torso between her shirt and jeans. “Let’s fuck.” He was already unzipping his jeans.
“Where were you last night?” She let her tiny excuse for a shirt hike up even farther, giving him a glimpse of the black sports bra barely encasing her huge tits.
“Out.” He got to his feet and bumped the door closed with his hip. “What? We’re not married. I don’t report to you.”
“You left in a snit.” She let him pull her to her feet. “Such a big baby.” She slid his zipper all the way down. “I wanted this,” she whispered, rubbing her warm palm up and down his stiffening dick. “And you took it away from me.”
He repressed the urge to shove her off him and run out of the boiling hot office. The woman was a little clingy-scary, but somehow that made her more enticing and something perverse in him loved getting her wound up. “You’re spoiled,” he growled, dipping his fingers down her pants and finding her warm, and moist, and ready. “I can’t have that.” He let out a hiss when she flicked his piercing a little too enthusiastically, shivering at the pain and pleasure combination. Blinded by the sort of lust he’d forgotten he possessed, he yanked her jeans down, flipped her around so she faced her—once his—desk and smacked her bare butt.