by Kelex
“No. We don’t. I’m taking you to the fucking attorney so she can tell you what you can do to go back home and get the hell out of my hair. Once you’re gone, we can put a stop to this madness.”
Noah frowned. It wasn’t madness. Brody only needed to see that.
He kept his mouth shut for the rest of the drive, realizing it was for the best. Once they arrived at the office, Brody walked in with him and they both took a seat in the waiting room after checking in with the receptionist. They sat side by side, yet were miles apart. Noah hated the distance.
A well-dressed woman came striding into the waiting room with her hand raised. “Noah?”
Noah rose and shook her hand. “Hi there.”
“I’m Mariah St. Claire.” She turned to Brody. “And you are?”
“His stepfather,” Brody mumbled before shaking her hand.
“Your mother and I spoke on the phone this morning.” She glanced around. “Is she here, as well?”
“No. Brody brought me in.”
“Ah… she did say something about your father staking her house out, so maybe that’s for the best. No need to alert him you’re visiting an attorney.” She turned. “You guys can follow me on back.”
“I’ll stay out here,” Brody murmured.
“I could use someone in there. To navigate all this,” Noah said under his breath. When Brody didn’t move an inch. “Please.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have another brain to bounce ideas off… and to support Noah. If that’s what he needs,” Ms. St. Claire said before forging ahead.
Brody sighed before urging Noah on. They followed the attorney into her office and sat in the comfortable armchairs across from her desk. Ms. St. Claire opened a folder and scanned something there.
“Okay, from what your mother told me, your father and stepmother never returned you after a court mandated visitation—and then proceeded to use your stepmother’s connections in the judiciary to have your mother’s parental rights stripped from her. You haven’t seen your mother for over a decade—until you ran away on your eighteenth birthday and returned to her home. Your father and stepmother were there, waiting your arrival, and then used a forged birth certificate in order to claim you were still underage and have the police escort you from her home—but she was able to show the true birth certificate and the police stood down. Now you’re here to figure out what you can do, legally, to protect yourself. Do I have all that right?”
“Yes,” Noah murmured. “Well, technically I was still seventeen when I ran away. I left a few days before my eighteenth birthday.”
The attorney shrugged. “Point is, you’re eighteen now and that’s really all that matters.” She eyed him. “Are you of sound mind? No mental health issues I should aware about?”
“No mental health issues,” Noah replied.
“Well, there is the fact that his father and stepmother are very religious and…” Brody turned to Noah. “Knowing your father, they might try claiming mental incapacity. I think you need to tell her the thing that forced you to run, so she’s prepared to defend you.”
Noah nodded and turned back to Ms. St. Claire. “I’m gay. They assume there’s something wrong with me and wanted to send me away to conversion therapy. I ran before they had the chance.”
“Lovely,” the attorney said, raising an eyebrow. “Has there been any abuse?”
“Mostly mental.”
“Which is harder to prove,” she said. “Go on.”
Noah told his story, trying not to leave anything out. He shared the lies, the manipulations, the refusal to allow him college attendance, and the hours upon hours of physical labor he’d been forced to do, all in the name of their church.
She sighed. “Well, it sounds like they did their best to skirt the line between abuse and tough love.” She paused a moment. “The fact we have it on record that they didn’t return you to your mother, had her rights stripped, and then recently lied about your age, forging a legal document in order to abduct you illegally—that will work in our favor. It will hopefully illustrate years of manipulation and their desire to control you by any means necessary. Hopefully we can get a judge to sign a protective order. I’ll need a written statement by you, explaining in detail any abuse, any threats, or anything else that could help sway the judge—basically what you just told me. I need you to get that together and into my office as soon as possible, along with a notarized copy of your birth certificate—which I believe your mother is working on. I’ll get us before the judge as soon as I have those, so I need you to get to work.”
“This protective order, what does it mean?” Noah asked.
“Legally—they have to stay away from you. If they ignore it, they could land in jail,” she answered.
“Walt and Abbie Lee have already shown their utter lack of regard for the law,” Brody said. “They already stole him once. I wouldn’t put it past them to bust on through a protective order and attempt it again.”
Noah eyed Brody and then the attorney. The expression on her face spoke volumes. He wouldn’t be safe. Not at all.
“Isn’t there anything else I can do?” he asked.
“Outside of getting a gun and learning how to use it? No. Your stepmother’s connections have likely caused them to believe they’re above the law. I don’t know if they’d abide by the order.”
“California doesn’t have an official Stand Your Ground law,” Brody said.
“No, but there’s enough cases out there where it’s been used as a defense over the years, so there’s precedence.”
“I can’t shoot my father,” Noah said. “No matter how evil he was. There’s no way I could do that.”
“You’re staying in my home,” Brody said. “It’s my ground to stand on.”
Noah turned to eye Brody.
“I let him take you the first time… when I sensed something was wrong. I won’t let him take you again.”
“Brody…”
He captured Noah’s stare. “I said I’d protect you. And I will.”
Noah gasped inwardly… and he sensed his daddy would do anything to keep him safe. Taking a life? It was too much. He wouldn’t ask Brody to go that far.
“I’m not suggesting anyone shoots anyone,” the attorney stated. “Technically, I didn’t suggest you get a gun and learn how to use it. That would be unprofessional of me.”
“Understood,” Brody replied, turning to face her.
“We still need the protective order. We need to show Noah is in danger and have it all on the record—in his own words. Noah, get me that statement as soon as you can. Tomorrow would be great.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Noah replied, still reeling from the prospect of what was to come.
Not much later, they drove home in silence, neither of them speaking about what they discussed in the office. That silence had been hard to bear, his mind spinning with scenarios he didn’t want to imagine. Once home, Noah used Brody’s laptop to write his statement while Brody removed two guns from a safe and sat at the dining table, cleaning them.
Hours later, a knock came to the door. They both stiffened. Brody slid one of the guns in the back of his waistband before heading for the door. After gazing through the peephole, he sighed and pulled the door open.
“What in the fuck are you two thinking?” Geena asked from the doorway.
“Hello, Geena,” Brody said before removing the gun from his back and returning to the dining table and his work. He rested the 9mm beside the revolver he was still in the midst of cleaning.
Geena closed the door and followed him in. “Are you going to answer my question?” She glimpsed the table. “What the fuck, Brody?”
“The attorney gave us little,” Brody said. “A protective order that Walt and Abbie Lee could barrel through. That won’t stop them. You know that as well as I do. So I need to be ready to.”
“Have you gone insane?” Geena asked. “When did you get a gun?”
“I own a club. We’ve
had threats against us. So I have protection, in case.” There was another semi-automatic pistol and a shotgun downstairs in the club, locked in his office. For years, there’d been a series of threats—though they’d intensified after Pulse. While he hated guns, his fear and anger had led him to doing something, anything to protect those he loved. He’d filed for a concealed weapon permit and gone through the appropriate training. He still went to the gun range on a regular basis, making sure he’d be as ready as he could be for danger. If a particular threat sounded legitimate, he carried for a few nights to ensure no one died inside his club.
Not if he could help it.
“Do you even know how to use them?” Geena asked snidely.
He began reassembling the handgun. “Of course I do.”
“This is a side of you I’ve never seen—but considering what Stace told me, there’s a lot of sides to you, Brody. And I’m not liking any of them.”
“Be mad at me,” Noah said, leaning against the column separating the dining space from the living space. “It wasn’t Brody’s fault. He thought I was a 20-something named Chris.”
“Oh, I’m plenty mad at you,” Geena said, turning to Noah. “How could you do this? I mean, before you knew the truth, I can almost understand. It was a mistake. A tragic mistake. But to choose to stay with him?” She spun to face Brody. “And you? You’re letting him stay? You’re his stepfather!”
“We both understand I really wasn’t Stacey’s husband—which means I really wasn’t his stepfather,” Brody argued.
“Is that the justification you’re using to excuse all this in your mind? What about the fact that he’s your son’s brother?” Geena asked.
“Half-brother,” Noah corrected.
Geena spun back to Noah. “This isn’t right.”
“We’re two consenting adults,” Noah argued. “We’re not related in any way. It’s only wrong in your mind because of proximity. You see him as family. I see him as a man I’ve grown close to. A man who gave me a safe place to stay when I needed it. A man I’ve spent hours in bed with, sharing intimacies.”
Geena held up a hand. “Stop. I don’t want to hear what you’ve done.” She shook her head. “You’ve gutted your mother.”
“I wish she didn’t feel bad. I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Noah,” Brody murmured. “Stop.”
“Send him home, Brody.”
Brody had planned to do just that—but after hearing what the attorney had to say, he realized sending the boy back to Stacey and Geena was practically handing Noah back to his father. They would realize exactly where he was and would snatch him the first chance they got. “I can’t do that, Geena. Not now. Not until Walt and Abbie Lee are out of his life.”
Geena spun to Brody. “Neither of you are welcome in our home. Not until this ends. Not until Noah comes home with us.” She turned and headed for the door. “And don’t consider seeing Parker. There’s no way he’d understand whatever this is between you two.”
The silence that filled the apartment after her departure was heavy. Brody was sick, and all he wanted to do was scream for hours to rid himself of the emotion.
Noah turned to him. “I’m so sorry.”
Brody shook his head. “Go finish your statement. The sooner we have that, the better.”
Noah stepped forward.
“Stop,” Brody said under his breath. “Go. Finish your statement.”
Noah walked away, silent.
Brody finished assembling his gun, his mind raging at the world. Everything was falling apart around him. For what?
His gaze drifted to Noah, typing away at the laptop.
For him.
Days had passed since Noah had submitted his statement. His mother had delivered the copy of his birth certificate to the office, as well as the copy of the police report from his attempted abduction. She’d never called or contacted him, not that he’d anticipated she would—but he was surprised she still helped him considering their situation.
Even angry at him, she helped protect him. It nearly broke him imagining that… considering the parents he’d run from. The pair who never would’ve lent a hand in the same situation. He’d hurt her and Geena—taken Parker away from Brody—and sent Brody into some dark, twisted rage. All because he’d been selfish and unable to keep his mouth closed.
They hadn’t been together since that night in the loft when things had most definitely crossed the line. Brody had moved Noah’s belongings into the guest room and without being told, he was aware that he needed to give the man distance.
The nights had been cold and lonely, realizing the man he was falling for was sleeping alone in the next bedroom.
Falling for? There’s no such thing as love. Yet, he knew deep down he was falling in love with the man.
Finally, he got the call. A court date the following Monday.
Brody and he showed up to court along with Mariah St. Claire, Esquire. He was nervous, and it didn’t help that the judge was an imposing-looking man. As the judge sat down, he heard a door open. Glancing behind him, Noah saw his father and Abbie Lee enter the courtroom.
Shit.
He spun forward, trying to ignore them. His body shook, fear nearly overwhelming him. Ms. St. Claire reached over and squeezed his arm. “It’s okay, kid. We’re going to get through this.”
Noah wasn’t so sure she was right. He glanced over his shoulder again, but saw Brody had moved… he was blocking Noah’s view of his father and stepmother. Their stares met, and Brody nodded encouragingly.
Still, when Noah was called to speak, dread nearly stole the ability from him.
“Mr. Butler, I’ve read your statement. Is there anything else you wish to add?”
Noah rose, urged to by his attorney. “No, Your Honor. I believe I covered everything in my statement.”
The judge smiled weakly. “I got a call from your grandfather. Well, step-grandfather, I suppose. He related to me his interest in this case and implied you were mentally unwell. Are you mentally unwell, Mr. Butler?”
“No, sir.”
“Your Honor!” his stepmother’s voice rang out. “The boy isn’t well. He needs help. I’m sure my father explained the situation.”
“Oh, he explained a lot of things,” the attorney said.
“Your Honor, we could have Noah seen by a court-approved psychiatrist or therapist to clear all this up. We’d only need a postponement,” Ms. St. Claire said.
The judge raised a hand. “Let’s put a tack in that.” The man eyed Noah, lids narrowing. “I want to hear your take on things, Noah. Should I believe these people who deem you unwell?”
“My stepmother’s father is a religious man, just like his children. They all use that religion like a weapon, using it against me.” He paused, realizing he was using his mother’s words. His heart ached for what he’d done to her. “They believe the fact I’m gay means there’s something wrong with me. That I need therapy—and their version of therapy is… well, it’s brainwashing, sir. They want to change me into something I’m not.” Noah paused. “I’m not perfect. I’ve made mistakes like anyone else, but I am most definitely not mentally unwell, sir. Not because I’m attracted to other men.” He paused. “They’ve used manipulation my whole life, to try and mold me into the vision of who they consider I should be. I only want the chance to be who I can be… away from them.”
“He lies,” Noah’s father said. “We’ve given him a good, Christian home. A family. And this is how he repays us?”
“And you think him mentally incapacitated… because he’s gay?” the judge asked.
“Yes!” his father cried. “He needs salvation!”
The judge smiled wryly at his father. “I heard much of the same from your father-in-law during that phone call. Along with some very interesting threats against me and my court.” The judge frowned. “I don’t respond well to threats.” He paused, eyeing Noah. “I agree that there is a significant danger posed by your father, Walter Lee Butle
r, and your stepmother, Abbie Lee Butler. Your motion for an order of protection is granted.” He lifted his gavel and pounded it. “Stay safe, son. I wish you all the luck in the world.”
His parents argued with the judge, their words a cacophony in the courtroom.
The judge banged his gavel. “I would have no problem placing you both in jail for contempt of court if you do not control yourself!”
That threat didn’t stop his father and Abbie Lee. The judge banged his gavel again before crying, “That’s it! Arrest them and place them in jail for twenty-four hours! I won’t stand for this in my courtroom!”
Noah watched wide-eyed as his parents argued with the bailiff. Two more sheriff’s deputies entered the courtroom, and they handcuffed his father and stepmother before dragging them out. All the while, both his father and Abbie Lee argued, using Bible verses as to why everyone in the courtroom was going to hell.
“Well, that was interesting,” his attorney said from his side before rising and giving him a hug. “Good news all around. You got the order and peace and quiet for at least one day.”
“One day. And then they could blow through that piece of paper,” Noah said.
“The law is on our side. That’s a good thing, Noah.”
“Yeah,” he said. He turned to search for Brody in the gallery—and saw his mother and Geena were also in the back of the courtroom. Before he could call out to them, they slipped out the back. “Wait!”
Noah went running for them. He was able to catch up before they entered the elevator. “Please, wait.”
Neither of them spoke, but they didn’t enter the elevator when it opened, either.
“Thanks for being here,” he murmured as the doors closed behind them. “And for getting the paperwork to Ms. St. Claire. I appreciate it.”
“We may be disappointed with your choices, but we won’t let you remain in danger,” his mother said. “It’s the least we could do. Now you have the order of protection—so perhaps Walt and Abbie Lee will stand down after this and go home.”
Geena chuckled. “A day in jail. Perhaps some time to contemplate will do them good.”