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

by Elle Keaton

  Weir was far too skinny. He’d been skinny before the accident; now he was bordering on dangerously underweight. The doctor had taken Sterling aside while Weir had been arguing with the nurse and told him if Weir expected to heal well he needed to gain weight. Sterling was given strict instructions to get him to eat. Too bad Sterling could barely boil water.

  Sterling was headed into what was bound to be an uncomfortable staff meeting. He hadn’t wanted to schedule it for today, but had been left no choice. He’d waited as long as possible, to see if he was imagining things, but now he had to put a stop to it. Any sign of theft or unusual activity would give the bank pause, and he couldn’t afford for that to happen. Not when he was so close to his dream.

  Parking in front of the Loft instead of behind it, since he wasn’t staying, he opened the front door and left it unlocked for the meeting. Inside he pulled a few tables together, grabbed some sodas out of the fridge, along with chips and salsa, and got ready for the staff to arrive. Might as well make them comfortable before the interrogation began.

  Kent and Kevin arrived together, interesting. Sterling hadn’t known they were friends, although he supposed it was none of his business. Mac, the quasi–kitchen manager, showed up next. Pretty much everybody else arrived at the same time: Jude, Sebastian, and Marco, the main serving staff, then Cameron and Danny, who mostly bussed and did dishes. Sometimes Cam helped Mac in the kitchen with prep. These were the core staff, and one of them was stealing.

  Pulling a chair out and turning it around so he could sit in it backwards, he motioned for everybody to sit. All part of his plan to make them comfortable.

  First, they went over schedules and some ideas Mac had for the menu. Sterling wanted to change things up a bit. Everybody had burgers; he wanted the Loft to stand out a little more. He’d already worked on the beer list, adding more local breweries and artisan stuff. Sterling wasn’t a fan himself, but out-of-towners liked their fancy beer. Even the gay ones.

  “All right, we’ve done the easy part of this meeting.” He looked over the staff one by one. “I hate to say this, because I like to think we’re a kind of family here at the Loft, that I am a pretty decent judge of character… but somebody is stealing liquor.” He raised his hand to keep people from chiming in right away. “So far it hasn’t been a lot. But it has been enough for me to notice, since I’m usually the one who takes inventory. Last month four different bottles of a variety of liquor disappeared.

  “Here’s the deal: it stops now. This one time, I’m giving whoever is doing this a pass. You know what you took, and I want it replaced by the end of the week, Sunday close. No questions asked, whoever it is, however you choose to return it, is up to you. Am I clear?”

  A chorus of muted yesses while everybody gave each other the side-eye, trying to be Agatha Christie and figure out who the culprit was. Ugh, Sterling hated this part of his job.

  Before they left, he cornered Kent and Kevin. He was nearly positive it wasn’t one of them.

  “Guys.” They stopped their meander toward the door. Kevin shoved his hands in his pockets, trying to hide that he had been reaching for Kent’s hand. Aw. “I’m going to need some extra help for a while, maybe even a month. Can you two each take a couple more shifts?”

  Kevin shrugged. “Yeah, I could use the money.” His eyes widened, “But I’m not, I mean—” He broke off, muttering, “I’m not stealing, neither is Kent.”

  Sterling shook his head. He didn’t think it was one of them, but he couldn’t make any promises, either. “Look, I need some time off. This isn’t the best time to take it, but I don’t have a choice. We’ll figure this out. If you guys could cover Thursday, Friday, and Saturday for a while, and one of you take Sunday and the other Wednesday. I’ll pick up the slack with Monday and Tuesday.”

  They looked at each other, doing some sort of silent communication thing.

  “No sex in the office,” Sterling added for good measure. He was the only one who got to have sex in the office.

  Seemed like he was too late with that warning, as he watched both of their faces turn bright red. Kevin’s was harder to see, with his skin tone, but Sterling could see the telltale blush.

  To Sterling’s relief, they agreed to the extra hours. He didn’t trust Weir not to do something stupid and reinjure himself before he was fully healed. Plus, he had physical therapy and other doctor appointments Sterling needed to make sure he got to. He had the sneaking suspicion that Weir would never set foot in a medical facility again if he didn’t have an escort.

  As he got back into his car, leaving Kevin and Kent to sort out who was going to work that night, his phone buzzed in his back pocket. Dragging it out, he saw a voice mail from his mother, of all people. He had a sinking feeling this was not going to be good. She only contacted him when she needed him to talk Raven off the ledge. He did not need this today, but he’d learned not to ignore these rare phone calls.

  “Sterling.” His mother’s voice was clipped. A sure sign of anger or frustration.

  “Sybil.”

  “Your sister skipped school today and is out with that… person… I banned her from association with.” Good lord, his mother sounded like she had an actual stick up her ass. Taking a deep breath, he tried reason. It had never worked before, but what the hell, he might as well try.

  “Which friend?” He knew full well Sybil meant Pony. Raven was nothing if not a passionately devoted friend. If Pony was in a bad situation, if they needed help or a shoulder to cry on, there was no stopping Raven.

  “The horsey one.”

  “Pony.”

  “It doesn’t matter. This was her last chance. Your father has had it with her. I have had it with her. We are making arrangements for boarding school. They can take her mid-April.”

  Sterling felt a sharp pain in his chest. He had to tighten his grip on his phone in order not to drop it. Fuck. They had used “boarding school” as a threat before but never followed through. Boarding school was code for pray-away-the-gay therapy.

  “Why are you calling me if you’ve already decided?” Raven was an amazing person, his favorite person on earth. The only person he loved. There was no way this was happening if he could prevent it. How, he had no idea. His mother must have an ulterior motive behind calling him.

  “She listens to you.”

  “She would listen to you if you respected her at all.”

  “We will not tolerate her lifestyle choice. The church is very clear about what an appropriate relationship is.” They’d changed churches after he had come out; the one they had been going to turned out to be too liberal. He rolled his eyes.

  “Sybil, I don’t understand why you’re calling me. I am a gay man, your own son, who you allowed to be banned from the only home I knew when you found out. Nothing has changed since then. I am still gay. It is not a choice, not a lifestyle. Your refusal to understand this is the root of all your issues with Raven.”

  “She listens to you.” Her voice had gone low, a wheedling tone.

  “She listens to me because I listen to her.”

  “Sterling, your father is adamant. She cannot stay in this house any longer.”

  A dam burst inside him, words he’d been saving up for screaming into the empty night rushing out before he could stop himself. “How can you stay with him? Why do you let him take your children away from you? Why is Stephen Bailey more important to you than your own children?”

  Damn, damn, damn. Taking air in through his nose, he tamped down his anger. It wouldn’t help.

  Sybil didn’t answer. Sterling didn’t expect her to. He thought he knew why she stayed: fear of the unknown, fear of what would happen to her status in the community if she left him. And yet, when she called, Sterling answered and did her bidding because he lived in fear, too. Fear of what would happen to his amazing sister if she was forced onto the streets or, god forbid, into some sort of boarding school that focused on “behavioral therapy.”

  Raven was scary smart.
Sterling was not embarrassed to admit she was much smarter than he was. That was the core problem. She understood exactly what her actions were going to mean for her. She didn’t care. She was a passionate, incredibly intelligent, caring human being. Their parents had done her a disservice by keeping her in the public school system in Skagit. Now, however, it was far, far too late to send her away.

  Conversion therapy over his dead body.

  “She’s sixteen, Sybil. It’s great to know you managed to keep her in the house two more years than me. That’s almost a 15 percent increase. Wow, I’m super impressed.”

  The rest of the staff not working that night were filing out of the bar. Seeing his car, Cameron looked curiously at him. Normally, of course, his car was around back because his apartment was upstairs, but he wasn’t living there right now. Sterling needed to get moving. He didn’t want Weir waking up and doing something stupid.

  “What do you want?” he repeated. Goddammit, whatever she wanted, he was going to make her fucking ask for it. Starting the car, he pulled a U-turn from the curb, violating about ten traffic laws, including having his phone to his ear.

  “She said she would go to school if she could stay with you.”

  In his five-hundred-square-foot apartment? What was his mother thinking? Sybil had no concept of how Sterling lived. She had never visited him, and he had never invited her. She chose to live in a bubble, safely padded by Stephen’s money.

  “Stephen agrees with this?”

  There was no way his father would agree. They hadn’t seen or spoken to each other in years, communicating only through Sybil or Raven, but Sterling knew he would never agree to have Raven stay in his home.

  “He will. Please, Sterling. I don’t want to send her away.” She was actually whining.

  Then fucking don’t, he thought.

  Honestly, he had no idea how the inner workings of his mother’s brain operated, how she lived with herself.

  “I’ll talk to her.” He’d let Raven stay with him, but he needed to figure out how that was going to work, since he was babysitting Weir at the moment. Fuck. My. Life.

  Passing the bank on his way home, back to Micah’s, he made a mental note to reschedule with them. He hoped they were understanding.

  He parked in front of Micah’s house and took a moment to collect himself before heading up the front steps and inside. There was no way he could do this without asking Micah first. Fuck, he hated airing his dirty laundry.

  The living room was quiet. Weir was still passed out from the pain medications Sterling had plied him with. As the front door clicked shut behind Sterling, Weir’s eyelids cracked open, and he tracked Sterling’s movement across the room toward the kitchen before shutting them again. Once in the kitchen, Sterling allowed himself a minor freak-out. Elbows on the counter, he leaned in to rest his forehead against his hands. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  When he was done with his breakdown he called the newest number saved in his contacts. Micah answered on the second ring.

  “Everything okay with Weir?” His voice was breathless, concerned.

  “Yeah, no, sorry to worry you. He’s here, currently tucked up safe on the couch. I’ll badger him into your room soon enough. Listen, I, uh, have a favor to ask.”

  By the time he was done telling Micah the sordid story of his, and Raven’s, family life—as little as he could get away with, but feeling like Micah deserved some sort of explanation—Sterling felt eviscerated all over again. He didn’t share with many people, anyone really, what had happened to him as a young teen, but it couldn’t happen to Raven. Sterling wouldn’t let it.

  The next call he made was to the girl herself. She answered right away; she’d been waiting for his call. Ten minutes later, he had a verbal agreement that she would stay with him and go to school every day. No skipping, no shenanigans. She would be there by five, as she had the Gay-Straight Alliance after-school club to attend before coming over. It drove him nuts that she would skip school but make sure she was at the GSA.

  They would see how things went, if their dad calmed down. Raven was a junior. It was conceivable she was out forever. Sterling hoped not; that was a legacy they did not need to share. After ending the call, Sterling spent another few minutes gathering his thoughts. He about hit the fucking ceiling when he heard Weir’s voice from directly behind him.

  “Who were you talking to, dude? That sounded intense.”

  Whirling around, Sterling came face-to-face with Weir, who had retrieved his crutch and snuck into the fucking kitchen without Sterling hearing him. “Jesus Christ!”

  Rumpled and sleepy, Weir looked good enough to eat.

  Sterling was in a whole hell of a lot of hot, hot water.

  Twelve

  The kitchen hadn’t seemed that far when he had the bright idea of grabbing his crutch and shuffling that direction. The twelve-foot journey took Weir five minutes, most of it spent heaving himself up off the couch without injury.

  He’d watched Sterling come into the house. Weir may have been on all sorts of medication, but even he could tell the guy was barely holding himself together. His eyes were wild and his face was tight. He looked a little unhinged.

  By the time Weir dragged himself to the kitchen doorway, Sterling had finished his phone call and was leaning facedown on the kitchen countertop, his black-denim-covered ass on display. Weir was on pain meds, not dead; he could appreciate a very fine ass.

  “Dude, who were you talking to? That sounded intense.”

  Sterling whirled around, staring at him like he was a ghost. “Jesus Christ.”

  Trying to appear as if he was casually leaning against the doorjamb rather than using it to keep himself from falling to the floor, Weir pressed on. “What was that about?”

  Sterling rubbed his face, then ran his fingers through his short, dark hair. Classic avoidance gesture. Damn, a bolt of pain streaked through Weir’s leg, and he couldn’t keep from grimacing.

  “For fuck’s sake, you need to be lying down.”

  He pouted. “I’m supposed to move around at regular intervals.”

  “With help,” Sterling pointed out, moving to his side and taking the crutch from him. He replaced it with an arm around his waist, slinging Weir’s good arm over his own shoulder and pressing his warm body against Weir’s.

  The meds must still have been doing something in his system, otherwise he never would have allowed himself to sink into the heat Sterling offered. They were almost the same height, and while Weir normally had more muscle mass, currently he and Sterling were probably the same weight. He liked how they fit together, liked that Sterling was lean instead of built.

  Slowly Sterling turned him, heading down the short hallway toward Micah’s room. Weir had to focus on putting one foot in front of the other, not on the warm body next to his. Sterling smelled good. Weir distracted himself trying to figure out what the scent was: aftershave, or shampoo? He hadn’t decided by the time they arrived at the side of Micah’s nice big bed. Weir was sweating buckets, and swearing internally, from the pain and effort. He tried not to think about the long road from barely shuffling to Micah’s bedroom and a New Zealand ultramarathon.

  The bed was welcoming.

  At that point he wouldn’t have cared if Micah and Adam had had sex in it five minutes ago. Sterling turned them both around again so he could ease them into a sitting position on the edge of the mattress. Carefully moving out from under Weir’s arm, Sterling lifted Weir’s injured leg up onto the bed while helping him lie back against the mass of pillows.

  “I should have checked to see if you needed to use the bathroom.”

  “If I did, I wouldn’t admit it right now. Or I’d ask for a gallon milk container.” Lying back felt good.

  Sterling left the room but was back in a minute with another glass of water and handful of pills. Weir choked them down, welcoming the slight dulling of pain they promised. “So, what were you talking about on the phone?” Medicated, not dead.

  A hun
ted look crossed Sterling’s face. Maybe no one else would have caught it, but Weir was an expert at reading faces. Sterling grimaced. “I hate drama, so you know.”

  Gently scooting Weir over a little, creating space to perch on the edge of the bed, Sterling took a deep breath before continuing. “I’d really like to avoid this whole conversation, but, um. I have a younger sister. Her name is Raven. Anyway, long story short, my ultraconservative parents, mostly our dad, are ‘at the end of their ropes.’ Our mom is merely his puppet. If I don’t take her in, they are threatening to send her to,” air quotes, “‘a boarding school for troubled girls.’”

  “How old is she?”

  “Just turned sixteen.”

  “So, what’s happening?” Weir had to shut his eyes again, which bothered him because he enjoyed looking at Sterling’s face. He had nice eyes, a piercing blue ringed with something lighter, wolf-like. There were smile lines, too. His brain was focusing on all the wrong things.

  “How old are you?’ Weir accidentally wondered out loud.

  Sterling chuckled. “Almost thirty-three, youngster. Anyway, the phone calls. The first was to Micah asking if it’s okay that Raven stays here with us for now. The second was Raven, who will be here around five tonight.”

  “Is she like you?” He’d blame the meds for this entire conversation, but dammit, he had curiosity about Sterling he needed to slake.

  “I guess. We look alike. She’s wickedly smart, I’m not. Raven’s got a different outlook on the world than I do, I suppose.” There was a loose string on Sterling’s knee he felt the need to pick at.

  “Hmmm?”

  “Yeah, well.” Now he looked up at the ceiling. Everywhere but at Weir. The ceiling seemed to help. “When my parents found out I was gay they threw me out of the house, same ol’ story and song.”