End Game

by Samantha Wayland

  Savannah laid her hand over his on the table and held on.

  He tried, and failed, to smile. “After a week or so, poor Mrs. Rosenberg gave up and called social services. She was so upset.” He remembered her distress, seeing it through the eyes of an adult instead of a child. He felt sorry for her now. “I think she hated to give me to the state, but she was in no position to take on a child. Before they came to take me away, she and I sat and talked about what to tell them.”

  Savannah’s brows drew together, the questions on her face, and he tried to answer them as best he could. There was a certain comfort, an insulation from it becoming too intense or emotional, by doing this in a crowded bar. There was also a lot of risk as he struggled to maintain his composure.

  “Mom was an addict. Couldn’t tell you what, exactly, but she was out of it a lot. I didn’t trust her, but I loved her. She was my mom,” he said softly, swallowing hard, “and I was just a little kid, you know?”

  Savannah nodded and pulled his hand into her lap.

  “She wasn’t the problem, though. She had a boyfriend. Jimmy. I don’t think he was around for long, but I can’t say for sure. All I remember is that I was afraid of Jimmy. Really afraid. Maybe my mind has done me the favor of forgetting how I knew it, but I knew Jimmy was bad.”

  Savannah’s grip on his hand was almost painful, but it was also reassuring. If nothing else, it kept him grounded in the here and now.

  “Mrs. Rosenberg agreed, I guess, because—and I remember this so clearly—she asked me if I wanted to go back to my mom and Jimmy.”

  He took a big slug of beer. He could still see Mrs. Rosenberg’s floral couch. Recall the awful smell of the heavy smoker DSS sent to take him into custody. But nothing was clearer than his answer to that question.

  “I said no.”

  Savannah bit the inside of her lip hard enough to draw blood. By all that was holy, if Rhian could get through telling her this without crying like a baby, she sure as shit wouldn’t either.

  She eased her stranglehold on his fingers and rubbed her other hand over his to soothe him. Okay, and to soothe herself, too.

  She didn’t allow herself to dwell on how he knew Jimmy was dangerous. She could only pray he’d had good instincts, and that few or no actual learning experiences had been required.

  She didn’t say anything, even if the questions practically choked her.

  He sat silent, looking far older than his twenty-four years. But then, he’d made a decision at age four that few people would have the courage to make at any age. To have so little innocence left, so young, was heartbreaking.

  She bit down harder.

  “When DSS showed up, Mrs. Rosenberg pretended she’d never met me before I’d turned up on her doorstep, and I played along. I gave them my first name, but she came up with the spelling. I suspect that if I have a real birth certificate out there somewhere, it’s spelled the normal way.”

  She smiled. “I bet she was a Fleetwood Mac fan.”

  Rhian cocked his head. “Huh?”

  “Rhiannon. Every time I see your name, I think of that damn song. It’s probably why everyone pronounces it wrong when they see it, saying Rhee-an instead of Rye-an.”

  He laughed. “I never thought about it, but you might be right.”

  He seemed pleased with the idea. She was relieved to see his shoulders come down a little, his posture less rigid.

  “Anyway, we agreed that we would pretend not to know my last name, but when I told them that, they kept asking. I can remember thinking they knew I was lying. So I made one up.”

  “You made it up? Savage? How on earth did you choose that?”

  Rhian grimaced and she instantly regretted opening her mouth.

  “It’s what he called me,” he said quietly.

  “Who?”

  “Jimmy. He called me the little savage.” His eyes narrowed on the table, as if searching his memory on its surface. “He’d knock me around and complain about all the noise and mess I made.” He blinked and looked back at her. “I just remembered that. That he used to hit me. Lock me in the bedroom.”

  He fell silent. Savannah didn’t move or speak.

  “Funny, I remembered how I chose the name but I didn’t remember the context until just now.” He seemed more curious than upset.

  “You all right?” she asked, just to be sure.

  “What? Oh yeah, it’s okay. I mean, I knew he was bad and I figured it was shit like that. Better than some other stuff he could have done, I suppose. Sexual stuff. I don’t remember being aware of that kind of abuse, though, until later. In foster care.”

  She didn’t ask when and why it came up in foster care, even as a smoldering rage ignited in her gut.

  “Anyway,” he continued, and she told herself to let it go, “I told them my last name was Savage and they believed it. Some poor slob probably spent hours searching for the family of Rhian Savage when he didn’t exist before that day in Mrs. Rosenberg’s living room. Tough old bird. She was pretty clever to have schemed up a way to hide me with the state.”

  Seemed to Savannah, the tough one was the four year old who’d carried out the deception, flawlessly, for twenty years.

  “So your original name,” she said, careful not to call it his real name, “was Ryan Lynch?”

  His lips twisted. “I think so?”

  “Do you ever think about looking for them? Your family? Your mother?”

  He shook his head. “Never. Truth is, we didn’t do that great a job of hiding me. Same first name, same birthday, same city. And it’s not like I changed my face. If my mother or her family had wanted to find me, they could have. They didn’t.”

  “For what it’s worth, it was entirely their loss.”

  He smiled, some of the light returning to his beautiful eyes. “Thanks. And for listening.”

  She laced her fingers with his. “You’re welcome. Thank you.”

  For trusting her. For being her friend. For being possibly the strongest, bravest man she’d ever met.

  It was a damn good thing she was already in love with Garrick, and Rhian was gay. It would be entirely too easy to fall in love with this man.

  Chapter Twelve

  Savannah spent the afternoon of the biopsy pacing the waiting room, texting back and forth with Garrick non-stop. She tried to be patient and failed miserably. It was impossible not to worry.

  Not that they’d get answers today, but this step would get them closer.

  In the past few days, she’d stopped thinking of Rhian as Garrick’s boyfriend. Of course, he was that still, but he was also just Rhian again. Their friendship was no longer defined entirely by their relationships with Garrick.

  It was weird, but it might make it…not easy, but easier going forward. She’d lost sympathy for Rhian over the past months. Had been well on the way to losing all sense of him as anything but the “other man”. Now she remembered who he was. And why she liked him.

  His life could have made him hard. Angry. It would have made most people all that and bitter. But he was remarkably gentle. Kind. Smart. And as much as she tried, she couldn’t pretend she was unaware of him on a physical level. His good looks, his spectacular body. She told herself to think of him as a brother, but somehow that felt wrong. Her reaction, particularly when he caught her off-guard with a smile or a touch, both so rare from him, was not sisterly.

  She sat next to him in the cab as it careened down Huntington Avenue toward the city and held his hand as he fought not to wince against the jarring bumps in the road.

  “You okay?”

  He nodded a little too quickly. “Yeah. But we might have to walk from your place.” He tried to smile, but a particularly deep pothole killed the attempt.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when they made it to Charles Street, the traffic and narrow roads in her neighborhood forcing the cabbie to slow down. She rubbed his hand where it rested on her thigh, trying to distract him from the quick turns that shifted them against the seat
and each other.

  “We’re almost there, then we don’t have to go anywhere.”

  He gripped her leg. “I shouldn’t go up. I can wait on the street.”

  He hadn’t been to the apartment yet and she regretted that his first time seeing it would be when he was feeling so low. She wondered how Rhian felt about Garrick “officially” living with her and not with him.

  Then again, Rhian lived in a hotel. Maybe Garrick was waiting to see where Rhian ended up. Foolishly, it hadn’t occurred to her before now that Garrick might not make their apartment his primary residence.

  But it was supposed to be their home. Could he have two of those?

  She looked out the window and stuffed that thought into the back of her mind for another time. Right now, she needed to get Rhian up three flights of stairs before informing him that he was spending the night.

  Rhian stared up at the elegant brick and black-shuttered Beacon Hill row house. It was beautiful. He knew without a doubt that inside he would find a warm, welcoming home.

  He pointed down the street. “I can walk to my place from here.”

  Savannah shoved him up the front stairs and through the door, ignoring his protests. He almost smiled at her pushiness, not sure when that had become endearing. Then he saw the mailboxes.

  LeBlanc/Morrison

  Garrick was going to live here. With her. Where he belonged. Rhian hadn’t needed the sobering reminder.

  “Come on.” Savannah nudged him farther into the building. “You think you’ll be okay for three flights of stairs?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  He started the climb carefully. It didn’t hurt any more than just walking hurt. Not bad, but not that comfortable either. Mostly, he was exhausted. The doctor had warned him that a procedure like this, no matter how minimally invasive, might hit him harder than he expected.

  Savannah caught up to him, a hand on his back. “We can stop.”

  Over his dead body. “I’m fine.”

  She didn’t point out that he was using his grip on the banister to do a lot of the work. Or that he was going at half his usual pace. She just climbed the stairs beside him, silently supportive.

  By the time they made it to the third floor, he’d begun to sweat. He felt utterly pathetic. For Christ’s sake, he could run up ten times this many stairs on a normal day.

  “Let’s get you into bed,” Savannah said, oh-so-casually.

  He wondered if he was hearing things. Maybe he shouldn’t have climbed all those stairs.

  She smiled at him and he became even more suspicious.

  He followed her into the apartment and stopped to stare. The kitchen shone with warm wood and dark granite to his right, divided from the living and dining rooms by the suggestion of a hallway where he stood within the open space. To his left, a big couch that looked like heaven—particularly compared to the hard plank at the hotel—faced a big TV, the light streaming in from the bay window and skylights making the wood floors and soft yellow upholstery glow. The dining room was also lit from above, the old chandelier sparkling above a big table.

  A home. Just as he’d suspected. He almost marched right back out the door.

  “Come on.” Savannah grabbed his elbow and towed him down the hall, past the open door to what appeared to be an office, another to a pretty white and blue bathroom, and finally to the door at the end. He knew where it led without being told and suddenly, with all his being, he didn’t want to see where Garrick and Savannah curled up together, in the heart of their lovely home.

  It wasn’t contempt. It was pure, unadulterated envy.

  There was no graceful way to stop, short of digging in his heels, and he had enough pride left to prevent him from running, screaming, from the apartment. Before he knew it, he was standing in the middle of their bedroom.

  It was, he thought with wonder and bemusement, a nest. The walls were plum-colored, the one window heavily draped in something soft and romantic. The bed was huge, the dark wood fitting against the rich wall color, the warm yellow light from the bedside lamps casting a glow over the piles of pillows and heaping duvet.

  Savannah smiled as she looked around at her own creation. “I call it bordello chic.”

  He chuckled at the apt description.

  “I like it,” he admitted. In truth, he loved it, which wasn’t like him. Home decoration was right up there with soap operas and knitting on the list of things he never thought about.

  “Great. Why don’t you strip down and hop into bed, and we’ll get you settled in for the night.”

  “Uh…what?”

  She breezed past him, as if she hadn’t said something completely outrageous. “Go ahead and get into bed. You know I have to go out for a while tonight. I’m sorry about the timing. I want to make sure you’re settled in and have everything you need before I go.”

  “I…I can’t stay here,” he stammered.

  “Why not?” She stopped in the process of folding down the covers and gave him an exasperated look. “I promise I’ve changed the sheets since Garrick was here. Does that help?”

  Great, now he was staring at the bed, picturing Garrick and Savannah in all kinds of compromising positions. “No,” he answered honestly.

  “Do you want something to wear? I know you’ve got boxer briefs on for once, and I’ve seen you in less.”

  He chose not to address the fact that she knew he didn’t normally wear underwear with his street clothes.

  “I can stay at my place.”

  When her hands landed on her hips, he knew he was in trouble.

  “Look, I know it’s weird, but please get over it. At least for tonight? It’s easier for both of us if you stay here. If you’re still not comfortable when I get back, I’ll take you to your place and we’ll crash there.”

  He didn’t remember deciding that she was going to spend the night. Or that he was. When had they decided that they should ever spend the night in the same place?

  His instinct—okay, maybe it was a compulsion—to keep his distance kicked into overdrive. Way too late, but here it was.

  “I’ll be fine on my own,” he said firmly. “You go ahead, and I’ll check in with you later.”

  She sighed. “No, I’ll cancel my plans.” She went to her bag and started rooting around its contents.

  He slumped, caving like a badly drafted rookie.

  “Fine,” he muttered, “I’ll stay here. But I’ll be on the couch.”

  She smiled, confirming he’d just been neatly manipulated.

  “Your brothers hate you, don’t they?” he groused.

  “They adore me,” she assured him. “Now, I have to get ready or I’ll be late.”

  He stepped back, unsure what he was supposed to do. He might have gone for the door and the living room couch beyond, but was stymied when Savannah toed off her sneakers and stripped her jeans down to her ankles.

  Momma mia.

  Her legs were endless. Her ass, spectacular.

  His cock stirred, then immediately subsided because it fucking hurt. He was reminded, forcibly, that he wasn’t supposed to do anything of a sexual nature for a couple of days.

  She plucked an outfit out of the closet and tossed it on the bed. Oh god, he knew what would come next, knew he should tell her to stop and explain that he wasn’t immune, wasn’t in fact gay, but it was too late.

  He tried to play it cool, discretely tucking his hands into his pockets while she hauled her fleece and T-shirt up over her head. He didn’t think his dick could surmount the effects of the biopsy, but her midnight blue lace bra, standing out against her smooth, pale skin, might just do the trick. The brush of her dark, silky ponytail across her shoulder drew his eye and he admired the long curve of her neck, the arch of her back, the flare of her hips.

  He dragged his eyes back up and stared, fascinated by the dusting of freckles across her collarbone.

  Jesus, she was gorgeous.

  He gulped when the straps of her bra slid down
her arms before she turned her back to him.

  Now she turns away? Maybe she feared the sight of her bare breasts would overset his gay sensibilities.

  Well, his sensibilities were definitely overset. The low-grade sting in his balls was an effective erection-killer, but it wasn’t enough to shut off his brain.

  She slipped on a soft pink lace and satin bra, then a fuzzy pink sweater with a wide scoop neck over it, the straps peaking out.

  Fuck it, he was going to have to run for the bathroom. Another pinch in his nuts forced him to amend that plan. He was going to have to limp to the bathroom.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said, and turned for the door before he could make his escape.

  The soft sweater hugged her waist, the soft cotton clinging to the peaks of breasts, the hem barely covering the tops of her thighs. She was at least five-ten, and the full length of her bare legs etched themselves in his mind.

  She paused in the doorway to look back at him, and he worried he was supposed to have said something in the last two minutes. He had lost access to any higher brain function.

  Sure, he was in love with Garrick. But he wasn’t dead.

  He smiled weakly, hoping like hell she hadn’t caught him staring, and nodded to tell her it was okay to leave him alone. The minute she was out of sight, he stripped out of his jeans and T-shirt and hurled himself into the bed as quickly as his sore spots would allow. He needed the distance. The shield of the bedding. To shed his snug jeans and let his legs fall open so he could cradle his achy bits for a second.

  Of course the mattress was like sitting on a cloud. He caught a hint of a familiar scent.

  Savannah.

  The antique floorboards in the hallway creaked and he yanked the covers up over his lap.

  Savannah stared at Rhian in her bed.