by May Archer
“But I thought you were sick!”
Cain hung up, and the sudden silence sounded through the car like a gunshot.
Cain didn’t know what to say, how to explain away all of the horrifying, embarrassing things his mother had just revealed. He was utterly mortified, and it didn’t help that Damon wasn’t speaking. Not a single word.
“That could have been worse,” he said softly. “I mean, she could have talked about me running around the house naked when I was a kid or something. Or the time I drew myself a beard with permanent marker. She could have demanded to know where I was running errands… honestly, I’m surprised she didn’t. She could have…”
“Cain,” Damon said finally, thrusting out a hand. “Could you just… not talk right now?”
Despite his stomach shrinking in on itself, Cain nodded and shivered at the silent tension.
Chapter 7
Damon was officially in hell.
“I want to get out of the car!” Molly screamed, kicking the driver’s seat to punctuate each word. The vibration was making Damon’s teeth rattle.
“What about if we sing a song, honey?” Cain said from the backseat, his voice full of the brittle cheer of someone who was at the end of his tether.
“The one time in her life she won’t take a freakin’ nap in the car.” Chelsea’s pissed-off whisper from the passenger’s seat was pitched low, so only Damon could hear.
“No! I. Want. To. Get. Out. Of. The. Carrrrrrr,” Molly wailed. Her tone was so high-pitched and frantic that Damon’s eyes shot back to hers in the rear-view mirror.
The little dark-haired, dark-eyed minx had seemed perfectly angelic when they’d first arrived at Chelsea’s apartment, sitting primly on the ruined sofa in their living room, tapping her feet together with three-year-old abandon. While Chelsea had raced around frantically packing a few last-minute things, Cain and Damon had stood in awkward silence, while the solemn child had watched them with brown eyes so intense, Damon had fought the urge to squirm under the close scrutiny. Finally, she’d tilted her head to the side, and opened her mouth like she was about to pronounce judgment.
“I’m three years old,” she’d said importantly. “Almost four.”
The words had been so comically similar to the way Cain had described his own age that Damon’s eyes had flown to him of their own accord. And for a moment, the smile they’d shared had loosened some of the tension that had built up between them.
Molly had attached herself to Cain immediately when they’d gotten to the car, recognizing that he was definitely the friendlier of the two strangers. Cain had endured it all with a smile and way more patience than Damon himself would ever be capable of. She’d wanted Cain to sit next to her in the backseat, Cain to listen to her jokes, Cain to read her the story about a pink princess. Damon had needed to bite his lip to hold back a smile when he’d started doing voices for each of the characters.
But then Molly, in her innocent way, had turned to Cain and said, “My friend Adrianna has two uncles. Are you and him my uncles?”
Cain’s eyes had met Damon’s in the rear-view mirror. “Uh, no,” Cain had told her. “Damon is your uncle, and I’m his…” He’d hesitated, so clearly wanting Damon to finish the sentence, but Damon didn’t, and Cain couldn’t hide his disappointment.
Really, what were they to each other, though? Friends? Damon had never had a friend whose mouth he wanted to pillage, who he wanted to hold down and fuck through a mattress before, which was pretty much where all his wayward thoughts had headed from the second they’d left his apartment this morning, even after bearing witness to Cain’s conversation with his mother.
And he couldn’t deny that hearing Cain on the phone had seriously brought the man’s loyalty into question and made him regret his impulsive decision to let Cain come with him.
He’d recognized that Cain wanted a shot at redemption, a shot to help Damon without risking his own neck. Kid, he’d thought. He’s young and struggling to do what’s right. It would take a certain level of coldness to put his own father behind bars, and he didn’t want to fault Cain for not being a cynical asshole like Damon himself.
But then Cain had agreed with every asinine thing that came out of his mother’s mouth. She’d treated him like she owned him, and he’d let her. She’d made insane demands, and he’d agreed to them. So how was Damon supposed to trust that Cain wouldn’t just crumple like wet cardboard the second anyone questioned his whereabouts or demanded to know more about Damon and Chelsea? It wasn’t just about coldness, he’d realized, but about strength. How could he trust that Cain would be strong when he needed to be?
In the end, Damon’s hesitation over the question hadn’t mattered, because Chelsea had stepped in to deliver a killing blow.
“They’re not your uncles, sweetie. Neither of them. They’re just drivers, taking us someplace safe.” She’d shot Damon a glare hot enough to roast a lesser man, then sat back with her arms folded over her chest. She’d been staring pointedly out the window ever since.
The tension in the car had reached stratospheric levels after that, with neither of his adult passengers meeting his eyes or speaking to anyone but Molly, and so maybe it was no surprise that now the little girl had decided to throw the world’s most epic temper tantrum.
Molly struggled against the buckles of her booster seat, demanding to be freed. Cain’s face was flushed and worn, his patience long since evaporated.
Damon made an executive decision and took the next exit off the highway.
“We’re stopping now.”
“Already?” Chelsea’s posture unlocked as she glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “We’ve only been driving for five hours. We’re not nearly far enough away yet.”
“Don’t argue with the driver,” he snapped. When her teeth clicked shut angrily, he sighed. “We haven’t been followed, as far as I can tell. And if anyone is trying to track us, they’ll expect that we’ll keep driving as far as we can. Varying our length of time on the road is a good thing. Tomorrow, we’ll get up early and drive straight through the day. Okay?”
She shrugged, and he took it for grudging acceptance.
He pulled into the parking lot of The Stafford Motel, whose sign proclaimed, ‘Best Breakfast in the Poconos!’ and found a secluded spot where the car wouldn’t be visible from the road, then cut the engine. Molly’s whining cut off at exactly the same time.
“I’ll go get us a room,” he said, opening the door.
“Two rooms.”
He turned back to find Chelsea glaring at him. “One room. It’s safer if we’re all together.”
“Two rooms. I don’t know you, Damon. I’m sure as hell not sharing a room with you.” The stubborn glint in her green eyes - so similar to his own - told him she wasn’t going to back down.
He sighed. “Fine. Two rooms.” He stood and stretched his leg, which had begun to throb dully. He’d been glad to drive this leg of the journey - grateful for the distraction, even. But his leg definitely couldn’t handle an all-day-stint.
“I’m going with you,” she told him, unbuckling her belt and sliding out her side.
“You fine with Molly?” Damon asked Cain, not looking him in the eye.
“Yeah. We’ll be great.”
With a nod, Damon set off for the office, Chelsea trailing behind him.
When they returned to the car, nearly twenty minutes later, Chelsea was no happier. “I said I could pay, Damon.”
“And I said no. You’re my sister, and I…”
“You are not my brother! God!” she fumed. “Do you know how many times I wished I had a brother or a sister, someone who could take me out of that shithole? But I didn’t. Because you never bothered getting in touch with dad after you left. And now I don’t want your help. I don’t need it. The only reason I’m letting you help me right now is because I literally don’t have a choice, also thanks to you.”
She blew out a breath. “I need to cool down before I get Molly or I’ll just upset her.
” She grabbed one of the keys from his hand and walked off in the other direction, taking the long way to her room.
Damon sighed, and went back to the car to get Cain and Molly. But when he got to the Acura, no one was there.
He panicked for half a second, before he heard laughter coming from behind a group of trees maybe a hundred feet away. He shuffled over, damning the stiffness in his leg once again. He’d purposely left his pain medication back in Boston, knowing that he’d need a clear head no matter how painful his leg was.
Another burst of childish laughter made him slow his steps as he got closer to the trees, and had him peeking around the side rather than yelling at them to hurry up. He was glad he’d been cautious. A pair of dark heads was bent over a picnic table, an open plastic container of crayons between them. A yellow-haired doll sat propped on the tabletop, supervising the art.
“Yeah, your mom must know coloring is your favorite,” Cain was agreeing. “That’s why she remembered to bring your supplies.”
“Yeah. My Momma was running this morning,” Molly told him matter-of-factly. “Hurrying around like…” She waved both hands in the air frantically and made a buzzing sound.
“Oh, yeah? And how were you feeling?” Cain asked. His tone was mild and he kept his eyes on whatever he was drawing.
“I was fine. But maybe… maybe Jenny was a bit scared, though.” She nodded at the doll on the table.
“Hmm. I can see that. Jenny’s just little. She’s not almost-four, so she doesn’t understand things like you do. Maybe you could explain to her that Damon is here now, and he’s not going to let anything happen to any of you. And neither will I.”
Damon squeezed his eyes shut tightly, and had to brace a hand against the tree trunk at the conviction in Cain’s voice. It made his heart beat faster knowing Cain had that much faith in him. And it made him feel like an asshole, because he didn’t - couldn’t - have the same faith in Cain.
He almost stepped forward then, but Molly spoke again.
“Jenny maybe thinks Damon is… scary.”
Cain huffed out a laugh. “He gets pretty scowly, doesn’t he? Like this?”
He couldn’t see what Cain was doing, but Molly started giggling. “Yes! His face is so pinchy, just like my Momma’s when she’s losing her mind.”
“When she’s what?”
“Losing her mind,” the little imp repeated patiently, as though explaining a foreign language to Cain. “One time, I colored on the cabinets in the kitchen even though I was s’posed to know that markers only color on paper for God’s sake, Molly.” Her voice as she imitated Chelsea was pitch-perfect. “And my Momma made me go to time-out in my room for like a hundred hours, or maybe even a year, because she was losing her mind.”
Damon shook his head, and Cain’s voice was choked with suppressed laughter when he replied, “But then she came and got you?”
“When she found her mind again. Yeah,” she agreed. “So, why is Damon losing his mind?”
“Uh. Well. He’s very angry that somebody made your mom upset, for one thing. He loves you both, even though he doesn’t know you as well as he’d like to. He was worried.”
“He was?”
“Sure. So was I.”
“Hey, can I have the purple one?”
They colored in silence for a minute, while Damon stood staring at the back of Cain’s head through the low branches of a pine tree, wishing he could read Cain’s mind. Was it really that simple for him?
Trusting people was such a weird and rare thing, Damon didn’t totally understand it. There were people he trusted because they’d earned it, like Cort, who’d grown up with him, sacrificed for him. There were people he trusted because he couldn’t help it, like Chelsea, who should have been his family all along. And there were people he trusted because he understood how their minds worked, like Sebastian Seaver, whose loyalty to Damon, such as it was, stemmed from guilt.
Cain didn’t fit neatly into any of those categories, and even though Damon wanted to trust him, wanted to believe that the unguarded man hanging with Molly could never turn on them, even to please his father, he had no idea how to make himself believe it.
“Do you ever get scared?”
Molly’s voice was so low, Damon could barely hear it, but he saw the back of Cain’s head move as he nodded.
“All the time. Anyone who says they’re not ever scared is telling a big, fat fib.”
Molly nodded, and Damon could see her eyes widen.
“One thing I do when I feel bad or scared is to play a little game called Worse.”
“I never hearda that game.”
“No. I made it up. It’s just something that reminds me that no matter how bad things are, they’re still pretty okay. Like, hmmm. What’s your least favorite food?”
“Cauliflower, because it is nothing like a flower even though it says so in the name.”
Damon could see Cain’s shoulders shake with his chuckle. “You know, you’re right! Okay, so, if you had to eat cauliflower with your dinner, that would be annoying, right? But what’s worse than that?”
Molly’s eyes narrowed. “Eating it for two dinners?”
“Yes, exactly! You’re really good at this game. So when you have to do something yucky like eat cauliflower, just remember, it’s not so bad. It could always be worse.”
The little philosopher nodded sagely, her dark curls sweeping her shoulders. “Cain, you know what’s worse than that? Eating nothing but cauliflower for the rest of your life.”
Cain laughed. “Right? That would be awful.”
“And know what’s worse than that?” Molly said, bracing her hands on the tabletop in excitement. “Would be having no food forever.”
“Wow. That escalated quickly,” Cain said. “But, uh. Yeah, I guess.”
“You could go on forever thinking of worse things!” Molly told him as she resumed coloring, and Cain’s voice was gentle as he replied.
“You could, princess. But I hope you don’t have to.”
“He’s sweet with her.” Chelsea’s soft voice off to his side startled Damon.
“Yeah,” he said, stepping back from the tree, but keeping his eyes on the pair at the table. “He’s a good guy, I think.”
“You’re not together,” she said. It was a statement, not a question, and Damon shook his head wordlessly. “Why not?”
He really didn’t want to talk about Cain, not when he barely understood his own feelings about the guy, but the fact that Chelsea was talking to him at all about anything felt like a miracle. He forced himself to be patient. To be honest.
“He… I…” Damon brought a hand up to rake through his long hair. “For one thing, he’s a kid.”
“That’s an excuse. He’s an adult who’s older than me, and I have a daughter. Try again.”
Damon snorted. “He’s rich and fucking gorgeous. Totally out of my league.”
“And he looks at you like you hung the moon. Try again.”
“How about he and I both dated and got screwed over by the same guy?”
“Weird,” Chelsea agreed, arms folded across her chest. “But not insurmountable. Common experience brings people together.”
Damon winced. “Aaaand there’s the little fact that his dad was probably the one who sent the goons to your apartment.”
“What?”
Nodding, Damon confirmed, “His dad is…Well, better if you don’t know. Suffice it to say, he’s got money and power, and he’s determined to keep both by whatever means necessary.”
“Jesus, Damon. But you brought Cain along anyway?”
“I did.” He shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Why, for God’s sake? Because you want to get together with him?”
“Not really.” He forced himself to be honest. “Or not entirely. I’m attracted to him, yeah, which is pretty fucked up for all the reasons I just gave you, but more than that I actually like him. He hasn’t done anything wrong, so I have
no reason to judge. I mean, none of us is our father, right?”
Chelsea snorted. “That’s true.”
“But I still don’t know if I trust him one hundred percent, even though I know that’s not fair.” He turned to look at the petite blonde woman at his shoulder, who was bundled up in a sweater and carrying a miniature pink sweatshirt for Molly. The sun had sunk low in the sky, and the air was chilly. “But I promise, I won’t let anything happen to you or Molly.”
Chelsea nodded, arms still crossed. “Well, to be honest, I don’t one hundred percent know if I trust you, either, even though that’s not fair.” She sighed. “What I said before was uncalled-for. You didn’t know I existed when I was a kid, and my shitty childhood isn’t your fault. But even though I know that logically, it still doesn’t change the way I feel. Trusting someone who has the potential to hurt you is just hard. Especially when you’ve been screwed over by somebody in the past.” She gave him a look. “Or several somebodies in your past.”
“Exactly. So it makes sense to be cautious.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” She shook her head and her ponytail swayed. “I don’t know how you’re supposed to make yourself trust someone, but I guess I don’t think it’s fair to just go around treating everyone like a heartbreak waiting to happen, either. Sometimes you have to just trust your gut. Can’t go through life waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
Was that what he was doing? Was this one more way of distancing himself from Cain before Cain could hurt him?
“So, what’s the solution then?”
“Hmm. I think choosing to give someone that chance is probably the first step.” She gave him a wry look. “Which is how I’ve found myself somewhere in fucking Pennsylvania at a place that could be the Bates Motel but apparently serves great breakfast.”
Damon laughed and pulled on a strand of her hair - the same light color his had been, before it had all gone gray. “You’re pretty smart, you know?”
“Next you’ll tell me it’s genetic,” she teased, but then she grew serious. “If I can give you a shot, maybe you can give him one.”
“You’re gonna give me a shot?” he asked, trying not to sound too hopeful. “A chance to be in your life and Molly’s?”