by Blair Young
“Come on,” I said. “Richard is just as much a stranger to you as he is to me. You haven’t known him for years, and you still don’t. You don’t have to put yourself through this if you don’t want to.”
“I want to help,” Damon replied. “More than anything, I want to give you the justice you deserve. You’ve been through so much in your life, and a lot of the pain you’ve had is because of what I did to you so long ago. It’s my job to make that up to you now.”
“We’re in this together,” I reminded him. “You weren’t alone when you picked on me, and we were just kids. I don’t hold it against you. You’ve already made up for it in more ways than one.”
I laid in bed with him and snuggled close. We were both silent for a moment, and I tried to sort out my thoughts. I wanted more than anything to figure out the truth, but I didn’t want to put Damon through any more pain to get the answers I was looking for.
He clearly had a lot of unresolved pain in his own life, and I wanted to help him work through it. I knew what it was like to feel alone in the world, and to carry around the burden of pain that I just wanted to let go. I knew how hard it could be to feel like there was no one to talk to and no way out of the situation you were trapped in.
And for Damon, I wanted to be that beacon of light. I wanted to be able to be his rock when he had spent so much time fighting to stand on his own. He had been there for me through so much, I could shoulder some of the pain and stress he was dealing with now.
I didn’t have a lot to go on. I knew his father’s name and occupation, and I could easily figure out the name of the school where he was teaching. I didn’t need a lot of information to get what I was after, and much of that information I’d memorized out of the case file already. I didn’t need Damon to tell me, and I didn’t need to look over the file again, either.
Shoot, I even had the home address of where Damon had lived with his mother before he was put in the foster care system. Perhaps that would be a good place to start finding some answers. It wasn’t incredibly close, but then, it wasn’t too far for me to investigate, either.
I made up my mind to get into my father’s headspace as best as I could and do some PI work of my own. I wanted to join the force to some extent some day and solve this mystery once and for all if I couldn’t do it now, so what better way to get some practice in than to do what my father would do.
I closed my eyes, taking in Damon’s warm scent as my head rose and fell with his breathing. I always felt safe when I was with him, and right now, I finally felt I could fall asleep. I knew I should slip back to my room before Dean and Susan woke up, but then, we were often awake before they were anyway.
There was plenty of time for me to creep right next door first thing in the morning. I might not have meant to spend the night when I walked through the door to talk to Damon, but now, I didn’t want to go back to my own bed.
Here, I was warm and safe, snug and comfortable. And Damon, with his arm around me and holding me close to himself, was clearly comfortable as well. I smiled, finally able to relax enough to let sleep claim me. There were still a hundred things running through my mind, and I knew I was facing another mountain of a challenge, but right now, it didn’t matter.
Right now I was with Damon, and he was holding me close. This was where I belonged. No matter what was happening out in the rest of the world, what anyone thought about our relationship, and no matter what hardship still lay ahead, this was where I should be.
And nothing was going to pull me away.
Chapter 18
Sutton
“I just don’t see why we’ve got to go to this stupid dinner anyway,” I said as leaned in toward my mirror and put on mascara.
“Mom and Dean think it would be a good idea for us to all go out as a family to try to ease some of the tension that’s clearly still lingering around here,” Damon said with a shrug. He was leaning against the door frame with his hands in his pockets, watching me as I got ready for the dinner.
That morning, Susan had announced at breakfast she wanted us to all go out to dinner as a family midafternoon. I wasn’t at all excited about it, and I could tell Damon wasn’t thrilled with the idea, either. Dean, on the other hand, seemed a little too eager to join in for my taste.
It didn’t make any sense to me that he would want to go out for a family dinner when, in my mind, he wasn’t part of the family. Shoot, this wasn’t even my family as far as I was concerned. My family was dead, and I was living with Susan until I was old enough to live out on my own.
She was nice, and I did love her for taking me in like she had, but that didn’t change anything. She wasn’t my mom, and though my murdered mother wasn’t technically my real mom, either, she was the one I would forever consider to by my parent.
Susan was just my foster, and Dean was her boyfriend.
“I know why do, but why does Dean have to come? And if he doesn’t, why do we have to go?” I asked.
“Dean’s Susan’s partner. I mean, I guess that makes him part of the family, right?” Damon shrugged.
“No,” I said, a little too tartly. “It doesn’t. He and Susan are just dating and he moved in out of the blue. Don’t you think any of this is a little weird?”
Damon laughed. “Will you just let that go already? I know you aren’t used to Dean, but they were dating before I ever moved in with Susan in the first place. I mean, they’ve been together for like ten years. Sure, they broke up for a while, but they pretty much just picked up where they left off when they got back together. It happens.”
“But doesn’t it bother you that they broke up?” I challenged. “I mean, think about it. If they were so in love and everything was so great, then why did they break up? I lived here for a few months before Dean came back into the picture, and from what I could tell, Susan wasn’t exactly thrilled about the idea in the beginning.”
“I’m sure there was a lot of pain in her heart after the breakup. Like I said. Can you imagine being with someone for like ten years then breaking up? I’m sure it was quite the shock for her, then to have me go and work for him when she was still hurting had to be a slap in the face. Of course, I was doing what was best for me, and I’m glad I did, but still, it’s not that weird, Sutton,” Damon said with a shrug.
I sighed. I knew it was impossible to talk to Damon about Dean. He believed the guy was perfectly fine. But, there was still something I didn’t like about him. Sure, to Damon it might seem like he was just coming back into their lives after a fight that ended poorly, but the facts were the facts in my perspective, and I knew how Susan had reacted when she learned that Damon was working for Dean.
And she wasn’t happy about it.
And, we both thought it was strange when Dean just sort of moved back in as though nothing had ever happened. Sure, Damon had gotten used to the idea a lot faster than I had, but he still wasn’t entirely sure about it from what I could tell.
I hadn’t ever told him about the fact that I had caught Dean sneaking around in Susan’s office, and I was once again tempted to now. But, with the way he was defending Dean and telling me that I should just accept it and stop worrying, I knew that he wasn’t going to actually listen to what I had to say.
Like so many other things Dean did, Damon would just blindly accept it and dismiss it as perfectly normal.
I, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure I could do that.
Of course I knew I had a natural tendency not to trust anyone for a long time. It had come from the years of bullying I’d dealt with most of my childhood. But, I wanted to believe that this was deeper than that. There was a lot more to the way I felt toward Dean than just a general distrust for the man.
It was much like the feeling I had when I was around Chad. Like there was something sinister about him and he was just waiting for his moment to pounce. I wasn’t jealous of his relationship with Damon or Susan. I didn’t feel like I was being left out of the family, either.
It was something
that I just felt when I was around him, and I wasn’t sure why. I hated it, more than anything I hated it. I really didn’t want to get to know him, and I had no intention of doing so.
But, Damon was going to the stupid dinner, and both Susan and Dean were going, so I knew I would be going, too. Though I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to do anything that would cause more controversy and tension in the house, either. We had dealt with enough of that over the past few weeks with the fact Damon and I were dating and now Damon had his suspension and fight with Chad.
So, I might as well be easy to get along with and go to the dinner. It would be a couple of hours and we could get it over with, then Susan could feel better about herself, Dean could feel like he was part of the family, and Damon and I could get brownie points for being the good teenagers who showed up for the ride.
Still, it sounded dreadful to me, and I hoped that it would be short and sweet. I didn’t want to talk about much of anything, and I had a feeling most of the conversation would be directed toward us.
Susan tried to be involved when she could be, even when it came to things I would really rather she left to me to handle. But, there was no getting out of this dinner, or the conversation that would go along with it. I just had to be on my guard and not say anything that would give away what I was doing hunting down the person who had killed my parents.
I’d managed to keep it all under wraps during the dinners we had at home, after all. The only difference was, they would be more likely to talk to each other when we were at home. I didn’t get the impression that would be the plan today, since this was supposed to help us all bond after the tension that was in the house.
I just had to let it unfold as it did.
Damon was doing most of the talking during dinner, which I was glad for. He knew I didn’t want to be there at all, and he was doing what he could to take most of the focus off me. He answered the questions about school, even though he hadn’t been there for the past five days, and he kept rambling on about his job at the board shop.
I noticed he avoided any talk about him fighting, and he stepped in to answer questions that were directed at me more than once. I chimed in every now and then so no one would think that I was trying to sit silently, though it wasn’t long before Dean started to pry on me in ways Damon couldn’t come to my rescue.
“You seem like you’ve got something on your mind, Sutton,” he said at last with a grin. I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not, but he continued. “Care to share it with the class?”
I hated everything about the guy, and I hated it when he treated me like I was a little kid. But, I was shocked with what came flying out of my mouth. Despite the fact I was so determined to keep it low key and not talk about much, the thought that was running through my mind when he asked me the question was the one that left my lips, leaving the table in shocked silence.
“Did you know my parents like Susan did?” I blurted out.
Susan looked started by the question, and Dean was downright shell shocked. Clearly, neither of them thought that would be the thing I had on my mind, and neither were prepared to give me an answer on the fly.
Damon, on the other hand, grabbed his soda and took a drink, looking both interested and amused by the situation. I wasn’t sure if he knew that Susan had told me she was a friend of the family, but he clearly wasn’t expecting me to ask Dean about his connection to my parents, either.
Dean cleared his throat. “Um, no, Sutton, I didn’t know your parents. And I didn’t know Susan knew them, either. So I guess this is a surprise all around.”
Immediately, I got the impression he was lying to me. Susan still looked very uncomfortable with the entire situation, and Damon looked like he was going to start laughing. He liked it when we were able to catch the adults in the house off guard and make them squirm, and it was evident by the way Dean was reacting to the question that he was grasping for the right way to answer without me pursuing the topic.
But, with the way Susan described the situation, she made it sound like she had been really good friends with my parents, and that was the entire reason why she had been the one to take me in when they were murdered.
From the beginning, I thought that was a lie, too. My father didn’t have many friends, and my mother had next to none, if any. I never saw Susan around the house, nor did I ever hear them mention her name, ever. It had come as a shock to me when I was told I would be moving in with her, and no one would tell me the connection she had to my parents.
Yet, there she was, in the will to take me in should the need arise. And, all the answer I could get out of anyone I asked was that she was the one my parents had chosen out of their own discretion, and she was a good friend of the family.
But, if what Damon had said about Dean was true, and he and Susan were really close when they were dating – dating for ten years, even – there was no way she could be so close to my parents without him at least knowing that she was. Let alone not having met them himself.
He had grabbed the collar of his shirt and let out some air when he answered the question, and I wondered if Damon had caught that gesture as well. I was the one watching Dean like a hawk, eager to catch any clue as to how he would react to things like that, and I could see that it made him very uncomfortable.
He was lying to me, I just knew it.
But, two people could play games with each other, and I wasn’t going to let him have any knowledge that I knew he was lying. I smiled and sat back, trying to seem satisfied with his answers.
“Why do you ask?” Dean continued, clearly trying to feel out how much I knew about him.
“I was just wondering if you could tell me anything about them. Now that they’re gone, well, I want to know more about them than I realized,” I said. “I guess there’s a lot you don’t notice when you’re young that you want to know when they’re gone.”
“That’s understandable,” Dean said with a nod. “Well, I can’t tell you anything about that, but I can tell you that any parent loves their child more than anything, so without a doubt I can tell you that your parents both loved you very much, and they wanted nothing more than for you to be happy and healthy.”
I smiled again, and Dean relaxed, clearly falling for my trick. It was such a trite answer anyone could give, and I hated to hear him talk about my parents that way. He was right. He didn’t know anything about them. It didn’t help answer any of the questions I had about how Susan knew them, and I still wondered how much Dean did know.
But, he wasn’t around enough to have known them the way that I did, and I hated to hear him try to put words in their mouths. He didn’t have to tell me they loved me. I knew they did. They loved me more than anything. For as much as my father worked, and as much as my mother fought her alcoholism, I knew without a doubt the two of them loved me.
They weren’t the best at showing it, but I was always cared for, and for whatever reason, they sent me to live with a very specific person when they passed. They had to have known she would take care of me, even if I still didn’t understand why they had chosen her to by my guardian.
But, I knew one thing was for sure. I wasn’t going to just take Dean at his word. I would find out how he knew my parents, and to what extent, too. He might have the rest of the table fooled, but not me. I was on to him, and I had a feeling he knew it.
We were playing a game of cat and mouse right under Susan’s nose. She wanted to believe we were one big happy family, and she might have fooled Damon into thinking the same thing, but the facts were the facts, and I didn’t trust a thing about Dean.
I even had a hard time trusting Susan, though I didn’t think she was as big of a threat as Dean. One of us was going to cave, I knew it was just a matter of time. We both knew the other had secrets, and eventually one of us would have to spill the truth.
The question was, who was going to hold out longer?
Chapter 19
Sutton
I was the last one in the house
after we got back from dinner, and I was eager to put on something comfortable. I didn’t like being dressed up, even a little bit, but Susan had wanted us all to dress nicely for the outing.
I was on my way through the kitchen, getting ready to follow Damon up the stairs when Susan suddenly cornered me.
“Don’t ask Dean questions like that without any warning!” she scolded. “Couldn’t you see how uncomfortable you made him putting him on the spot like that?”
She hissed the words at me, and I looked at her in surprise. I knew there was more to the situation than she was letting on, but I was good at putting up a front when I had to. Immediately, I gave her my most innocent look.
“Sorry, I was just curious. I mean, you said that you were really close to my parents, and I was curious to know if he was, too, that’s all,” I said with a shrug. Almost immediately, Susan relaxed. The tight expression she’d had on her face relaxed into a soft smile, and she patted me on the shoulders before pulling me in close for a hug.
“Of course you are, that’s only natural after what you’ve been through. I’m sorry. I just know you’re not adjusting to Dean being here as quickly as Damon is, and I want so much for the two of you to be friends. I hope you didn’t think he was being rude to you or anything,” she cooed.
“Not at all,” I lied. “I thought he was just surprised by the question is all and wasn’t sure how to answer. As soon as I said the words I thought it might be a little blunt.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Like you said, you were just curious. I would be, too, if I was in your shoes. But it’s okay now. Just be careful and think about what you say before you say it next time, okay?”