Accidental Roots The Series Volume 1: an mm romantic suspense box set

by Elle Keaton

  When he had moved in, eight years earlier, he hadn’t had much to bring with him. Over the last few years he had made the space more and more home-like. He liked supporting fellow local entrepreneurs and artists. Two small Gerald Klay prints hung on one wall. Now that the guy had died, Sterling would never be able to afford the real thing. Several other local artists’ prints adorned his walls. A beautiful hand-thrown Japanese-style bowl he had picked up at the farmers market had a special place on the counter separating the kitchenette and the living room. The rest of his walls were covered with bookshelves, all of which were full to the point of being stacked two rows deep. Everyone had their own addiction.

  Before stripping down and crawling into bed, he set his alarm for ten a.m. An errant image of Weir popped into his head. He found himself unaccountably curious about the younger man. Maybe it was the deep brown eyes, expressive yet wary. The few times he’d met him before Valentine’s Day, Weir hadn’t appealed. Now, while Sterling lay in bed trying to fall asleep, he had visions of a slender, athletic man with blond hair and an amazing mouth.

  Even after the mutual blow jobs, all Sterling knew about Weir was that he had been a surfer, ran ridiculous distances, and his sister had disappeared when he was very young. With the long day, blow job, inventory woes all swirling in his head, it took Sterling much longer than he expected to fall asleep. Too soon an alarm was chiming in his ear.

  Six

  The bathroom mirror, tactless thing, didn’t lie. Weir looked like shit. The hellish schedule he had going was making him look like a ghoul. Sterling’s remark about his cargos falling off his ass wasn’t far from the truth. Remembering to eat had always been secondary, but when he was this wrapped up in a case it was inevitable that he forgot. It was mid-March; by October when Halloween rolled around he wouldn’t need a costume, he would be a living skeleton.

  Weir had been on the cock-clam assignment for what seemed like forever. The pace was insane. He was also still meeting with the vestiges of Adam’s team left in Skagit to try and tie up the loose ends on that case and prop up the farce of his cover. They might have caught most of the pieces of shit involved in the human-trafficking ring, but a few had slithered away, taking vital information with them. His days were spent on the Matveev case, nights on the water chasing down leads, freezing his skinny ass off on the Skagit Bay.

  Out on the water last night with Poole they’d again found nothing and nobody. He’d felt like a popsicle by the time he returned to his hotel room. The blow job from Sterling had been the highlight of his day. He’d fallen into a restless sleep for only about an hour before waking far too early, his brain still frustrated about the lack of leads, turning ideas over and over trying to find something that hadn’t caught his attention before.

  Weir hoped the smugglers made a mistake soon. He and Poole were searching for a needle in a haystack. Fuck, forget haystack, a grain of sand in the Sahara. Weir didn’t even have Adam to bounce ideas off of anymore. Adam and his much-nicer boyfriend, Micah, had finally left for a long vacation in California. He was jealous of their trip south to sunshine.

  Screw this. He needed to go for a real run. A long one to clear his head and keep the walls from closing in too close around him. He didn’t think he could hit Sterling up every time he needed a little distraction. He’d struggled with anxiety attacks as a kid and teen. When his bio-dad had forgotten his existence for weeks he had been a fucking mess. Now, for the most part, it only bothered him when he didn’t get enough exercise.

  He dug his running clothes out of his still-mostly-packed suitcase and dressed quickly. Thankfully, he still had a protein bar stashed in the pocket of his jacket along with some high-carb gel snacks that helped keep him going when he hit the wall. He was good to go.

  Out on the street he almost changed his mind. The heavy gray clouds were dark and ominous, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. Not today. He needed to feel the unrelenting pavement under his feet, the wind against his face, the fierce pump of his legs and lungs as he pushed himself as far as he could, then farther. The charge he got from pushing past the wall of exhaustion, tapping resources he didn’t know he possessed, was addictive. Flying past the mental block of “I can’t go any farther” was a high he could ride for miles. No thinking, no worry, only coasting, letting his body give his mind a break. Running was almost as good as sex, he fleetingly thought. Almost.

  Pelting rain began about a mile into his run, as he was truly warming up. He didn’t stop. Pounding past the rose garden, south along Old Charter, the scenic route that ran along the cliff tops of Skagit Bay, he was in his zone. Endorphins coursed through his system, keeping him going. He felt more alive than he had in months.

  Weir had never run this part of the road before, although he had driven it several times as an alternative to I-5. It curved along Skagit Bay, offering tantalizing views of the frigid water and heavy waves crashing against enormous rocks far below. Wind-sculpted evergreens hunched eastward, forever battling the elements. Fascinated by the movement of the water, his heart and breathing in tune with the storm—the rain, the wind, even the crashing waves an extension of his own body—Weir kept running.

  The last thing he remembered, before opening his eyes to the frantic deep-blue gaze of a stranger, was being enthralled by the sight of an enormous swell he knew would dwarf all the others he had seen that day. He slowed a little because he wanted to watch it crash against the shore.

  “Don’t move him,” someone said.

  “We have to do something.” A second, lighter voice.

  “His eyes are open.”

  Another concerned face pushed into view, but Weir didn’t have the strength to keep his eyes open any longer. Darkness freed him from the agonizing pain.

  Seven

  It wasn’t Sterling’s alarm. It was some moron who didn’t understand he had a very real need for sleep in order to function as an almost-pleasant human being. Rolling over, he snatched his phone from the bedside table. Why the fuck would Raven be calling him this early? She knew better. Plus, last he’d heard from her she was grounded, except for school and church.

  Their ultraconservative parents hadn’t learned much the first time around. Raven, fourteen years younger than Sterling, hadn’t fallen far from the tree. Sterling’s tree. If his youth had been a cautionary tale of how not to raise your gay child, hers was proving to be cautionary fact. Sterling had learned early on to nod and keep his head down. The less he rocked the boat, the less attention his parents paid to him.

  Rocking the boat should be under Raven’s name in the dictionary, although the connection to the trickster who stole the sun from its keeper and brought it to humans was pretty good, too. Their mother claimed Raven was named because of the color of her hair. Well, Sterling had that hair, too, and that didn’t explain his ridiculous name.

  His approach to growing up in the Bailey household had worked until halfway through freshman year of high school when he had been outed by a so-called friend around the same time his mother had discovered she was pregnant with Raven. She’d been content to let her husband, his father, throw him out of the house. After all, she had a do-over child in her belly.

  Sterling snorted. Raven had announced her plan to marry her best friend, Isabela, while in kindergarten. She not changed her mind over the years. Raven was the most stubborn person Sterling had ever met.

  Their parents had tried to keep her away from him, but this had proved impossible. She had bonded with him like a baby duck with its mother the very first time she laid eyes on him. Sterling was never allowed back into the house to live, but he was allowed to visit his willful, beautiful younger sister. For her alone, he put up with their shit.

  Over time he and his parents had come to an agreement of sorts. Sterling would be allowed a relationship with Raven if he never revealed how he had been treated when he had been outed. How for months he had lived on the streets of Seattle, making money the only way a fourteen-year-old boy with no access to his
birth certificate or bank account could.

  “Why are you calling me this early?” His voice was raspy and dry from sleep.

  “Sterling, we need your help.” Raven sounded breathless, panicked, and scared. Sterling immediately got out of bed and began looking for something to throw on. He could hear crashing waves and wind through the phone.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Okay, so I’m not at school.”

  Sterling groaned. Their parents were going to be fucking livid.

  “Me and Pony were driving out on Charter. We found someone who is hurt. Hurt bad. We can’t get in trouble, Sterling, the droids will ground me forever, and Pony’s folks… This guy really needs help.” Fuck, yeah, Pony’s folks made their own parents look like PFLAG founding members.

  Fifteen minutes later he pulled off Charter, parking next to his sister’s little beater car. He had almost missed them because it was raining so hard his wipers were having trouble keeping up. Raven and Pony were standing guard over a sprawled form, trying to protect it from the rain. They’d laid their own jackets over a still figure to keep whoever it was warm and dry.

  Before he left the warmth of his car he was dialing 911. No way was someone going to lie unmoving in the freezing rain like that and not need medical assistance.

  They hadn’t covered the man’s face. Sterling stumbled over his words to the emergency dispatcher as recognition propelled him forward—the shock of tangled blond hair snarled in the thick mud, pine needles, and twigs around his head. At the very moment Sterling knelt down, Weir’s eyes fluttered open, looking right at him.

  “Jesus, Weir.” Sterling swallowed down his fear. He didn’t know where to look, to touch. “What the fuck happened?”

  Weir stared at him for infinity, for a heartbeat, slurring, “Run,” before his eyes slid closed again. Sterling wanted to prod him back awake but was afraid of what he couldn’t see under the coats Raven and Pony had protected him with. He didn’t want to injure him even more.

  The sirens called from a long way away. Before they arrived, he rushed the teens off, promising to return their jackets later and demanding they make themselves available so he could find out what the hell they had been doing out driving in that storm. Threatening Raven with their parents if she stepped a single toe out of line.

  Once the two were gone, he wanted them back. Against his own better judgment, he slid a hand under one of the coats to find Weir’s cold one. It was probably only a reflex, but Sterling thought, maybe, Weir squeezed back.

  Flashing lights finally appeared around the curve. Sterling stood, waving to get the medics’ attention. He had no clue how Raven or Pony had seen Weir lying in the mud amongst the dead weeds and brambles along the side of the road.

  For that matter, what the fuck had Weir been doing running out here? Why would any sane person be out in this storm? In his rush, Sterling had thrown on jeans, a T-shirt, his Doc Martens, and a raincoat that was past its prime. It was zipped against the weather, but he was still soaking wet from head to toe.

  The ambulance rumbled off the road into the small parking area, and Sterling stepped aside to let them work. He felt helpless. He was helpless. A police cruiser rolled up a few minutes later. Two officers emerged. The taller one, K. Jorgensen according to his name tag, stepped over to ask Sterling what he knew about “the victim,” while the other went to talk to the EMTs.

  “I actually know him, he’s—” Oh god, Sterling didn’t know what the right thing to say was. He had the impression that Weir was working on a case, but he had no way of knowing for certain, especially with all that leave-for-work-in-the-middle-of-the-night skullduggery yesterday. Had it only been a few hours ago? Was he supposed to tell these guys Weir was a fed?

  Sterling panicked. “He’s… he’s a regular at my bar.” Jesus, how was he going to keep his sister out of this shitstorm? Their parents were already fed up with her. Sterling couldn’t afford a second mouth to feed, much less fit her in his apartment.

  In the end he made up something about heading toward Anacortes when he saw something out of the corner of his eye as he was driving, only realizing after he’d stopped that it was someone he knew. When the officer asked whose coats were covering Weir, Sterling told a half-truth, that they were his sister’s and a friend’s, and they’d been left in his car. The more complicated his lie became, the more he worried that the officer was suspicious.

  It didn’t help Sterling’s state of mind when one of the EMTs, Roberts, strode over to the two of them to inform Jorgensen that the victim had no ID, no wallet, and no cell phone on his person. If Weir weren’t so obviously badly injured, Sterling would have gone over there to shake some sense into him. What had he been thinking, running with no ID or cell phone? Remembering Weir’s comment about getting away from his own brain, he wondered what he had been running from today.

  After what felt like hours, the EMTs finished poking and prodding Weir. They loaded him onto a stretcher, strapped into a neck brace as well as a backboard. Sterling was unexpectedly agitated. A tide of uncomfortable emotion surged, threatening to drown him like one of the powerful waves crashing below. He needed to see Weir once more before the ambulance doors closed and he was swallowed by bureaucracy.

  He grabbed Jorgensen by the arm. “Can I see him before he goes?”

  The officer nodded his assent. Sterling dashed back to the ambulance, where they were getting ready to push the collapsible stretcher inside.

  Weir’s eyes were open again. It must hurt like a bitch to be jostled around. Sterling hadn’t seen his injuries, but there was no doubt in his mind that things were broken—the angles had been all wrong.

  “Hey.” He looked into bottomless brown eyes. “Who do I call? They won’t let me go with you.”

  “Adam,” Weir slurred so quietly Sterling almost missed it. He was leaning in close enough that he saw Weir’s eyes weren’t only brown; there were tiny flecks of gold, confetti reflecting little flashes of light.

  The rain, which had never let up, began to fall harder. The EMTs gently nudged Sterling aside so they could get Weir on his way to the hospital. The one sitting in back was pulling the doors shut when Sterling thought to ask, “What hospital?”

  “St. Joe’s, unless we hear otherwise.”

  Standing in the rain after the ambulance left the scene, Sterling tried to make sense of what had happened. The location wasn’t one of the trickier spots for cars; there were other stretches that were unforgivingly narrow. A sheer cliff rising straight toward the cloud-covered sky on the east side of the road, only a flimsy steel guardrail separating drivers from the freezing, turbulent water of Skagit Bay to the west. Not here. Thank fucking god.

  Pony and Raven had discovered Weir at the boundary of a scenic view turnoff. Tourists and Sunday drivers stopped at these spots on their way north or south between Skagit and the flats. There was plenty of room for both runner and vehicle where he had been found. Spinning in a slow circle, Sterling tried thinking like an investigator. Where had the car come from? Had the driver merely missed seeing Weir in the downpour?

  Jorgensen and the other officer were efficiently taking pictures and measurements of the scene. Accident-scene tape was draped across the entrance so no one passing by would disturb the evidence, though not a single car had driven past while they worked. Sterling had no idea what he was doing standing there.

  The thought of Weir being alone and afraid at the hospital spurred him into motion. After making sure the officers had the information they needed from him, he started his car for the drive back into Skagit. How was he supposed to get a hold of—he assumed—Adam Klay? He knew nothing about Weir. Did he have family who needed to be notified?

  Pushing his car to its limit while praying to the gods of “Please don’t let me get a speeding ticket,” Sterling made it to St. Joe’s in record time and rushed inside, only to realize that Weir had been taken in for treatment and he had no right to follow.

  Eight

  The
ceaseless beeping was driving him fucking crazy, like an itch he couldn’t reach, an irritating whisper of leaves against a windowpane, the irregular snap and buzz of electric lines in the heat. He would try to slip deeper into sleep and the beeping would begin again, get louder, change its pattern.

  Weir couldn’t stand it any longer. Twisting so he could turn off the alarm, he was hollowed out by an agonizing shock of pain through his entire body, halting any movement. The pain was so intense he whimpered, yet he still couldn’t force his eyes open. Concluding he was dreaming as the pain’s intensity faded, he attempted to will himself back to sleep.

  “Oh no you don’t. Not this time.”

  He knew that voice. He felt a cool hand on his left arm. The arm that didn’t hurt.

  “Open your eyes.” Who was talking to him? Couldn’t the asshole leave him alone already?

  “I had to cancel my vacation for the second fucking time in three months, so you had better consider opening your eyes. I know you’re in there,” Adam Klay growled.

  “Adam. You can’t talk to him like that,” Micah admonished his boyfriend. “Weir, Carroll, can you try and open your eyes? We’re all very worried about you.”

  “Don’t call him Carroll, he hates that.”

  Another voice. “His name is Carroll? Damn.”

  Who was that? “Sterling?” Weir rasped, but his mouth and throat were so dry the word only sounded like slush.

  “Shhh. You’re going to get us in trouble for bringing you into his room. They said only two visitors.” Micah again.

  “He said something.” Sterling for certain. Something tugged at his memory, but he was too groggy to pin it down and the thought fled back to wherever it had come from.

  “He probably said, ‘Shut the fuck up, I am trying to sleep.’” Adam again. Did he practice being abrasive and rude in front of his bathroom mirror?