by May Archer
The ache in his leg distracted him. He’d been getting better, slowly but surely, thanks to the physical therapy provided to him as an employee of Seaver Tech - Yet another thing he didn’t want to have to be grateful to the Seavers for - but he’d managed to set himself back in a big way thanks to those security goons. He fought the urge to rub it. It wouldn’t do much good, and he’d be damned if he’d call attention to it. For a second, he even contemplated the little bottle of pain medication calling to him from the kitchen counter, but he dismissed the idea just as quickly. He hadn’t had to take a pill in nearly a week before last night, and clearly his tolerance was all fucked up. He’d rather take the pain than the loss of control.
Cain shook his head and sat down on the coffee table. “Nah. No way. What did you say about Cort? That he was a Luddite?” He leaned forward, resting his hand on Damon’s leg in his excitement. “My father is the same. Not about everything. I mean, my parents at least have a coffee maker.” He rolled his eyes. “But he’s not a computer guy. Even when he and Cam’s dad founded Seaver Tech, he was one hundred percent behind the scenes, managing the contracts and negotiating deals. He never helped with development. When it comes to keeping records, it’s got to be in a physical location. And I can get you to those locations.”
“Ki…Cain,” he corrected himself just in time, although Cain’s narrowed eyes showed that he’d noted the slip. “Let’s say we can find this file, neatly labeled Evidence Against Me. Okay?”
Cain rolled his eyes again and nodded shortly.
“Okay, then what? You’ve said you don’t want to come forward about what happened on the plane, but if we can find the stuff you think we will, we’re going to have to present it to the authorities. And the media too. It’s going to come out, and your father will probably be arrested.”
Gentle fingers began to knead the muscles of Damon’s leg through his jeans, and holy shit it felt good. Cain instinctively applied the perfect level of pressure to loosen Damon’s knotted muscles without causing further pain. The man was staring into middle distance, his brow furrowed, like his mind was more occupied with his plan than the massage. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of Damon’s cock, which had woken up like a bear coming out of hibernation and scenting food for the first time in months. In the absence of pain, he couldn’t fail to appreciate Cain’s nearness, and the feeling of those long fingers pressing against him.
Jesus.
Not now. Not this guy. Inconvenient didn’t begin to describe the attraction he had going on. Impossible was closer to the truth. Even whole and uninjured, he wouldn’t have been anyone’s choice of partner, certainly not someone with as much beauty, charm, and potential as Cain Shaw. Not to mention, there was an entire lifetime of age between Damon’s forty and Cain’s almost-twenty-five - a long and fucked up lifetime.
“The thing is,” Cain was saying, drawing Damon’s thoughts back to reality. “It’s not that I don’t want to see my father punished, Damon.” His cheeks were flushed, but the gaze he shot Damon was firm. “But I can’t be the one to do it. I can’t risk him knowing it was me. Because if it didn’t work? If he managed to get out of it like he’s gotten out of everything so far?” He shook his head and looked away again. “I know it makes me a coward, but there are some things I can’t risk.”
Damon took a deep breath and tried to concentrate.
“That’s exactly what you’d be doing if I went along with your plan,” Damon reminded him. “If you sneak me into his office to look through his stuff, you think no one is going to know it was you?”
“I think it’s very possible they won’t know it was me, yeah,” Cain said staunchly. “I’m not going to call my parents and announce my intentions, and they won’t be back in Nashville for weeks. I still live in their house, and there’s nothing so unusual about me entering my own home. Besides…” He gave a self-deprecating smile. “The upside of having your father think you’re mostly spineless is that you’re never going to be the first suspect.”
Damon shook his head. “I still don’t like it.” Cain looked like he was going to argue, but Damon grabbed his hand and squeezed, silencing him. “I appreciate you wanting to help. I do. But I can’t ask you to do this.” And I don’t know if I can trust you to go against your father. And I don’t know if I can handle having you near me for that long without kissing you again, and how the fuck would that end?
“You’re not— “
Whatever argument Cain would have made was cut off when Damon’s phone rang shrilly from the kitchen counter where he’d plugged it in that morning. He went to stand up, but Cain stood first. “Rest your leg. I’ll get it.” He stepped over Damon’s leg to get the phone and returned to his spot a minute later, holding the phone out.
“Who’s Chelsea?” he asked.
Damon stared at the screen for a second, too stunned to speak. He’d never expected to hear from her again, after the way they’d left things the other day.
“My sister,” he whispered finally, and Cain’s face broke into a smile.
“Oh, right. I remember now.”
Damon reached for the phone, hope and panic churning together in his mind. “I don’t know what she wants.” And please, God, don’t let it be about the money Bas had sent her, or her reaming him out again for being a criminal asshole.
“You know, I sometimes find the best way to figure out what a caller wants is to actually answer the phone,” Cain teased.
Right, yeah. Answer.
He slid his finger across the screen and cleared his throat. “Chelsea?”
“What did you do?” Her voice shook with outrage.
He groaned. “Listen if this is about the check…”
“Not the check!” she cried. “Although I already told you I didn’t want your blood money, and you were asshole enough to send it anyway.”
“Yeah, I was,” he agreed. His voice had gone raspy again, so he cleared his throat before he continued. “I am. I know it doesn’t make up for missing all those years with you, or for what the media did to you after I disappeared, but I wanted you to have it anyway. To keep it for Molly. For college or… whatever.”
“College? Oh, my God, Damon!” Chelsea was nearly hysterical. “We’ll be lucky if she makes it to kindergarten thanks to you!” She broke down into sobs. “You’re going to get us killed.”
“Killed!” His eyes flashed to Cain, whose face wore the same expression of shocked worry he imagined he was wearing. “What are you talking about? Chelsea, is Molly okay?”
“Don’t pretend like you care about her, for God’s sake,” his sister wailed. “You came into our lives and brought nothing but trouble. I grew up without you, and from the second I learned you existed, you’ve done nothing but make my life harder.”
Damon’s heart sank to his stomach, dragging the breath from his lungs.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “If I had known, Chelsea. If I’d known about you, if I’d ever had even a tiny clue that you were alive, I would have come for you. I would have protected you.”
“Fuck that! All I wanted from you was for you to leave us alone. But you couldn’t even give me that, and now my baby is… my baby is…”
“What?” Damon leaned forward, hardly even aware that Cain was still in the room. “What happened to Molly, Chels?”
His sister’s crying was overlaid with the high-pitched warble of a three-year old, asking “Whas’ wrong, Mama?”
“It’s okay, baby,” Chelsea told the little girl, who had to have been Molly. Damon heard her take a deep breath, like she was trying to compose herself.
“Chelsea, tell me what the hell is going on,” he demanded. “Is Molly alright?”
“She’s alright,” Chelsea said, her voice cold and hard despite her sniffles. “Thank God. But Damon, this is the last phone call. Do you understand? I don’t know what you’re involved in, but I don’t want any part of it. No more calls, no more checks. I don’t know how your friends found us, but…”
“Wait. Chelsea! Don’t hang up!” Damon said, pushing to his feet, not giving a shit about the pain in his leg until it almost collapsed beneath him.
Without thinking, he grabbed at Cain’s shoulder for support, and Cain stood, wrapping an arm around Damon’s waist.
“Chels, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“Like you don’t know!”
“I swear to you, I swear to God, I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
“I worked a double last night,” she told him, and he nodded even though she couldn’t see him. He knew she waitressed at some all-night diner not thirty minutes from the house where his last and longest foster family had lived, the home where he’d met Cort --the only family he’d ever claimed. The knowledge that a sister he’d never known had been so fucking close all those years, dealing with their shithead father on her own, struggling to raise a daughter when she was barely out of her teens, herself… it absolutely flayed him. If she was too disgusted to allow him into her life, to be there for her personally, he’d thought he could at least help her financially, that maybe she’d take that much from him.
But somehow apparently even that had gone to hell.
“I got off work at eight this morning and got Molly from the sitter - she stays with this retired lady, Mrs. Danport, downstairs when I’m working. We came upstairs and… and-” She broke off into a round of fresh sobs.
“And what? Chelsea, and what?”
“And the door had been broken open!” she cried. “Our stuff was thrown around. Every dish in the cabinet was broken. M-my sofa, Damon. My new sofa. Someone took a knife to all the c-cushions and the st-stuffing was ripped out. I thought, it had to be a robbery. I went to grab some stuff for Molly so we could go back down to Mrs. Danport’s apartment and c-call the police, but when I went in Molly’s room…”
Damon’s stomach flipped. “Chelsea, honey.” He kept his voice low and calm. “What happened?”
“There was a note stuck to her pillow,” she whispered. “Stuck to my baby’s pillow, Damon. They rammed a knife right into the place where my daughter’s head would have been. And it said, ‘Tell your brother to disappear, or your daughter will.’”
Beside him, Cain froze in place, and Damon realized he’d been close enough to hear the entire conversation.
“It’s my father. He’s doing this, isn’t he?” Cain whispered. His face was paler than Damon had ever seen it. “Fuck!” He stepped away and grabbed at his hair with both hands. “Fuck him!” He turned toward the window, his body curled in on itself.
Christ.
Damon sucked in a deep breath as things began to click in his mind. He hadn’t been careful enough. Either Cain had let it slip to his father that Damon was alive - but, no. Looking at his anguished expression, Damon didn’t believe that. He simply couldn’t. Okay, then. It had to have been last night at the fundraiser. He’d thought he’d gotten away, but there were probably security cameras all over the place. Someone had seen his face and figured things out.
The element of surprise was no longer a factor.
“Chelsea, I know you’re pissed right now.” She made a noise that was a cross between grief and outrage, and he winced. “But you’ve got to let me help you.”
“Help me how, Damon? They know who I am. They know where I live.”
“Stop panicking and think, Chelsea. Is there anyone you could be safe with? Any place out of town you can go?”
“You want me to take my baby and, what? Just leave? How will I work? How will we live?”
“Don’t worry about the money,” he told her. “Do you have a place? Nowhere in Boston. Out of state would be better. Any friends who could help you?”
“No! God. My friends are all local, and I wouldn’t bring this shit to their doorsteps either! That’s your deal, not mi-”
“Okay,” he interrupted. “Okay. I have an idea. I’ll come get you. Pack what you need - not too much - and I’ll take you somewhere you’ll be safe. One hour, okay?”
“Damon.” There was a world of warning in those two syllables. Then Chelsea sighed, totally defeated, and Damon’s heart squeezed again. “Yeah. Fine.” She hung up without another word.
He held the phone in his hand for a second, staring as the screen went black, then lifted his gaze to Cain, who still stood in front of the window, staring blankly at the rain-slicked parking lot below.
“You heard?”
Cain startled, like he’d forgotten Damon was there. “Yeah. Yeah, I heard.”
“I’m gonna take her someplace safe,” Damon said, and Cain nodded, but didn’t turn.
“Tell me if you need anything. Money, or… anything.”
Damon closed his eyes. The parallels were not lost on him. Cain felt guilty for what had happened to Chelsea, the same way Damon did. And just like Damon, he was offering money because he was pretty sure anything else he had to offer would be rejected. The difference was, in this particular case Cain had nothing to feel guilty about.
“Actually, I need something more than that,” Damon said. This time, maybe sensing the change in his tone, Cain turned to look at him. “You might have noticed I’m a little dinged up.” He gestured towards his leg. “I can drive, but I haven’t driven for any length of time since I’ve been back. The place where I want to take Chelsea… it’s far. Two days’ drive, at least. Maybe more, with a kid, especially since we’ll need to take the long way. And I don’t want to fly. We can’t use anything that can be traced.”
Cain’s eyes were huge. “So, you want me to come with you?”
“Can you?”
“Yeah. Yes.” His face clouded. “I’ll figure out something to tell my parents.”
“You sure? We have no idea what we’re getting into here,” Damon warned.
Part of him wanted Cain to back out, both to keep him safe and because the man was a complication Damon didn’t need. But another part of him wanted Cain to be with him. Improbably, the guy kept him sane.
“I’m positive,” Cain said. “I won’t let you down.”
God.
Without conscious thought, Damon lifted a hand to Cain’s face, his thumb tracing Cain’s cheekbone for an instant before he pulled it back and turned away.
“I’ll go pack a bag,” he said roughly as he dragged his broken body into his room.
The way Cain looked at him - just as he had the previous night - made Damon’s chest tight with nerves and hot with an emotion he couldn’t quite name. With all his scars, all of his failures, Damon was nobody’s hero, and he could only hope Cain figured that out before one or both of them got hurt.
Chapter 5
“Well, well, well,” Sebastian Seaver said twenty minutes later, opening the door to Drew McMann’s sprawling Colonial like he owned the place. “This is an unexpected Saturday morning treat.”
Cain could say the same. Bas had one arm propped against the edge of the door in a way that displayed his impressive height, the lean muscles in his arms, and the hard, hairy line of his abs that peeked out from beneath his ratty Harvard Crew t-shirt. His brown hair was neatly trimmed and swept back from his forehead, and his blue eyes were clear. It was a far cry from the thin, ravaged man he’d been three months before, consumed by guilt and grief.
“Not my idea,” Damon said by way of greeting, folding his arms over his chest and nodding his head in Cain’s direction.
Cain rolled his eyes. It was his idea to contact Drew and ask for a favor, but Damon had agreed it was necessary. If they were going to drive Chelsea somewhere safe and keep her under the radar, they couldn’t very well take her car. Damon’s beat-up old pickup, which Cort had kept in storage for him, wasn’t going to work for transporting four people - Cain had felt cramped with just the two of them on the short ride to Drew’s house. And Cain’s car was down in Tennessee, parked in his parents’ garage. They couldn’t take a chance on renting a car with the paper t
rail that might leave, so there was only one decent option. After stopping at Cain’s hotel to grab a bag of clothes, he’d called Drew.
Bas gave Cain an appraising glance, his mistrust clear, and Cain did his best to hide the squirming discomfort in his gut.
Why the hell couldn’t Drew have answered the door?
Finally, Bas raised an eyebrow and stepped back.
“Drew, darling, your company’s here!” he drawled. He shut the door, and his bare feet made a soft sound as he led them down the long hallway through the center of the house, ushering them into a large, surprisingly cheerful kitchen. Pale green cabinets and cream-colored walls set off the dark wood of the island, and sunlight gleamed off the wide plank floors.
Off to the left, Drew rose from the battered oak farm table where he’d been typing at a laptop. The impressive pecs beneath his tight blue t-shirt flexed as he took off a pair of black-rimmed glasses, and ran a hand through his hair - though somehow, miraculously, every strand fell back into its proper place - and crossed the room to greet them.
“Wow,” Cain said, glancing around the room. “This is cool.”
Drew followed Cain’s glance, and smiled with unexpected shyness. “Yeah, thanks. I just redid it a few months ago. Took forever to get right.”
“You designed it?” Cain asked, looking around again in light of this new information. He wasn’t sure why he’d imagined Drew picking something less homey and more… marble and stainless-steel perfection. Maybe he’d misjudged.
“I did.” Drew shrugged. “Architecture and design are a hobby of mine.”
“A man of many secrets, our Drew,” Sebastian said, flopping an arm over Drew’s shoulders and shaking him. Though both men were tall and solidly-built, Drew was the more heavily muscled of the two, and Bas was slightly taller. “Aren’t you, buddy?”
Drew flushed and pushed Bas away, but didn’t respond, and Cain got the distinct impression there was a subtext he wasn’t understanding.