by Anna Martin
Oliver was handsome. Objectively, I could still see that. These days he looked too polished, though, too refined and put together, especially when I compared him to the scruffy artist who currently shared my bed.
He was wearing smart jeans and an Oxford shirt, open at the throat to show off the hair on his chest. He didn’t have a lot of chest hair, but he did like to get the little he had out on display whenever he could. The dark blond hair on his head was neatly styled back from his face for maximum jawbone and cheekbone display.
I couldn’t help but think that if things were different, if we were still together, by now it would be painfully obvious that Harrison was my biological son, not his. The curls were the first giveaway, then the dimples, then the color of his eyes. He was practically my reflection.
“I don’t know how we got here,” Oliver said, pulling me out of my what-ifs.
I gave him a long, even stare.
“I never meant for it to be like this,” he continued. “You have to know that, right?”
“It’s pretty simple to me, Oliver. You divorced me, left Harrison with nothing but a child-support second father, then fucked off out of our lives with not so much as a backward glance.”
“It was never that simple.”
“Go on, then. Explain it to me.”
He rolled his eyes at me and sighed. “I was waiting for you to object,” he said eventually in a small voice.
“What?”
“You never said no. You never told me to stay or said that you still wanted me.”
“Hold up—” I started.
“I kept waiting for you to ask me not to leave, for you to say that you still loved me and wanted us to make it work, for the sake of our child, and you just shrugged it off, Ellis. Like I didn’t matter, like you didn’t care that your husband was leaving you.”
“This is….” I shook my head. “So fucked up. This was all supposed to be—what—an ego boost for you?”
“I needed to know if we were doing the right thing. If it was the best thing for all of us, for our whole family.”
“So you filed for divorce and waited for me to beg you to stay? I’m not some beaten wife, Oliver.”
From inside the apartment I heard Harrison shriek. “Stay there,” I told him and went to rescue a train from the sofa, where Harrison couldn’t reach it.
When I returned, Oliver was hovering just inside the doorway.
“Can I see him?” he asked, turning on the please eyes that I’d fallen for so many times in the past.
“We’re not done talking.”
“What else do you want to know?”
I’d always wondered what it was about Zane that had sparked the whole thing with Oliver and his demand for custody. There was a part of me that insisted it wasn’t racially motivated, although there was no way of knowing if I was right. Even if I asked, he’d probably lie.
“Why now?” I asked. It wasn’t quite what I was trying to say, but it would do. “You can’t seriously think that Harrison is being mistreated.”
Oliver’s lips hardened, a gesture that was almost impossible to see except if you knew what you were looking for. I did.
“We had a baby to be raised by the two of us,” he said.
“Yeah, and you left,” I countered.
“You weren’t ever supposed to raise him with someone else. He’s my son, Ellis. You can’t deny me that.”
“I’m not denying you anything! You decided you didn’t want him!”
“I was wrong, okay?” Oliver snapped. “Is that what you wanted to hear? I was wrong, Ellis, wrong. You were right. Let’s just… can we just forget the past few months? Start over?”
My mind boggled. “What about your boyfriend?”
It wasn’t the best question to ask. What I was really thinking was, What about mine?
“Josh is a great guy. But he’s not you, El.”
He reached out, touched my arm, and squeezed it lightly, and I noticed he’d put his wedding ring back on. It turned my stomach.
“Zane is a great guy too. And he’s definitely not you.” I looked up and met his eyes, feeling icy hot all over. “And I love him, very much.”
The hand on my arm fell away.
“You can’t make me the bad guy for wanting to fix our family,” Oliver said. Just like that, the spiteful, hard man was back.
“There’s no family to fix anymore.”
“Right. You have a new one now.”
“I have one that came together on its own, Oliver. If there was any chance of us getting back together, that time has long since passed. I’ve moved on. I had to.”
“I can’t believe you,” he muttered, rolling his eyes as he turned away.
“What did you expect me to say?” I demanded. I was suddenly angry with him and wanted answers to all the questions I hadn’t asked last time. “That of course you can move back in, I’ll just kick my current boyfriend out to fend for himself? That I want you back? Well, I’m sorry, Oliver, but my life didn’t stop when you walked out of it.”
“I want to be with my son,” he said hotly. “That doesn’t make me a bad person.”
“No. It doesn’t. But you’ve had months to come to that decision and ample opportunity to spend more time with Harrison if that’s what you wanted. Zane is my partner now, and nothing in this world—including you—is going to change that.”
When I was done ranting at him, I asked him to leave in the politest terms I could manage, which still included a request for him to kindly fuck off. I wanted to rant and scream at him some more, but I was out of words. He’d literally rendered me speechless.
That night when Zane got home, I told him that Oliver had been over and gave him details in the broadest possible terms. He didn’t buy it.
“There’s more,” he said simply as he lay back against my chest, legs dangling off the side of the bed while we watched TV. Harrison was asleep, apparently unfazed by the events of the day.
“Some. Yeah. But nothing important.”
“He upset you, though.”
I hummed in agreement under my breath and smoothed his dark hair back from his face. He was growing it out, and it was almost long enough to tie back. A few more weeks and he’d be able to pull it into a stubby ponytail.
“I don’t let Oliver upset me anymore. I try not to, anyway. I’m not sure how often I succeed. He’s a very irritating man.”
Zane snorted with amusement. “Do you want me to go over and rough him up? I might be little, but I’m tougher than I look.”
“I don’t doubt that. It’s a nice offer, but I don’t want you getting into trouble.”
“All right. There’s no time limit on it, though. If he ever needs to be shown who’s boss, just let me know.”
The thinly veiled threats of violence were actually fairly comforting, and I snuggled into him further, content in the knowledge that Oliver knew nothing about this. Nothing at all.
When Zane started fussing with his sketchbook I left him alone. We didn’t have a routine beyond putting Harrison to bed, but I liked to chip away at my work in the evenings and spend the bulk of the day looking after my kid. With Zane helping out with the daytime stuff, it meant I wasn’t nearly as tired as I had been before, which was nice. I was far less stressed.
“I’m mad at you,” Zane said, storming into the living room an hour or so later.
“What? Why?”
Even though I was engrossed in my work, I spun around in my chair to look at him. He was waving a large glass dildo at me.
“This used to be my most favorite toy in the whole world. It was fucking expensive, and I love it.”
“Is that thing clean?”
“Yes. But it doesn’t work anymore. I tried getting off and… nothing.”
“You’ve been in there masturbating? I thought you were working, you little shit.” I couldn’t help but smile, despite my words. He was… beyond.
“You ruined my favorite dildo! It’s not good enough now!”
I leaned back in my chair and tucked my hands behind my neck.
“Don’t you give me that look, Ellis Broad,” Zane said, waving the dildo at me demonstratively.
“Sorry, baby. Have I stretched you out?”
“I’m mad at you.”
“Come here.”
He did, sitting awkwardly on my lap, his thighs spread over mine. The dildo was tucked safely between us.
“How about,” I suggested, kissing his neck, “if I were to use it on you?”
“I… uh….”
“Or we could try and fit me in alongside it.”
“What, are you trying to make a football fit up there? No, thanks.”
I chuckled and licked a wet stripe from the collar of his shirt up to his ear. “All right. Next time, though, if you’re horny, just let me know. I’d be more than willing to oblige.”
“I’m horny,” he said immediately. “Really, really.”
“How long ago did Harrison fall asleep?”
“Hours ago, now.”
I pushed him to his feet and yanked his pajama bottoms down to his knees.
“Oh God.”
I attached my lips around the head of his cock and sucked lightly, batting his hands away when he tried to grip my hair or fondle his own balls or do anything other than stand there and take it. I knew from experience he wasn’t particularly dick orientated. He’d told me before that since he discovered there was sexual pleasure to be found from his ass, he hadn’t found stimulating his cock nearly as exciting.
With that knowledge at the front of my mind, I reversed our positions so Zane was kneeling on my desk chair, his arms balanced on the back rest and his head pillowed on top of them, his ass stuck way up in the air.
I left him like that only long enough to run to the bedroom for lube, then returned to him and squeezed a blob right on his hole.
“Holy shit,” he muttered.
I grinned at his back but said nothing. The glass dildo was surprisingly heavy and very well made; that much was clear. I teased him for a moment with it, spreading the lube around with the blunt head before sinking it into him, inch by torturous inch.
That made him groan, long and low.
“Better yet?”
“Getting there,” he said with a hard grunt as I found a sweet spot.
The dildo settled against his taint with no trouble, confirming what he’d said before—that this was a favorite toy. Instead of thrusting it into him, I tapped the end of the toy, making it move inside him. When the light taps didn’t get the sort of reaction I’d hoped for, I started hitting it a little harder, secure in the knowledge that its set of heavy glass balls would stop it from going too deep.
“Don’t you dare come on my nice chair,” I murmured in between kissing up his ribs, where he was particularly ticklish.
“It’s—oh, fuck, Ellis—it’s leather. It’ll wipe off.”
“Not the point.”
I decided to give him a helping hand, so to speak, and after angling the dildo so it was pressed against his prostate and a few tugs on his cock, he was spilling into my hand and trying to muffle his groans in the crook of his elbow.
Since Zane looked totally wiped out, I took pity on him and picked him up, cradling his body carefully against my chest, and walked him through to the bathroom, where I dumped him rather unceremoniously into the tub.
“If you hadn’t just reamed my ass, I’d be mad at you for that,” Zane said, pouting up at me.
I placed a kiss on his bottom lip and turned the shower on. Cold.
He moved fairly quickly at that.
Chapter 16
“Ellis!”
“What?”
“Linda’s calling you!”
I was elbow-deep in bath water and shirtless, having learned long ago that it was best not to wear anything clean or dry while trying to get Harrison bathed. He was cool with bath time, thankfully, and liked to make a mess. The more bubbles the better.
“Baby, I’m kind of busy,” I said as Zane ran through to the bathroom, clutching my ringing phone. “Answer it.”
“Hello? No, this is Zane. Ellis is giving Harrison a bath. Can you hold on a sec? We’ll swap.”
It took a few moments to rearrange us both so Zane was knelt on the mat next to the bath to supervise while I sat on the toilet lid, rapidly rubbing at my arms with a hand towel.
“Hi, Linda, sorry,” I said as I picked up the conversation.
“It’s fine. I just called to let you know we’ve got a date booked for a hearing.”
“Oh. Okay.”
We’d sort of been expecting this since Oliver’s little visit. I’d got the impression that he thought he was going to get his way, one way or another, and since sweet-talking me hadn’t worked, he’d moved on to the next stage of his plan.
Sometimes it was scary how well I knew him.
“It’s just a hearing, not anything to worry about at this stage,” Linda said. “Basically Oliver’s going to say he wants full custody, we’re going to say why that’s not a good idea, then the judge will decide whether they want to hear full cases from both sides.”
“Okay.”
“Are you all right with all of that?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it sounds fine. Do I need to do anything?”
“No. You don’t even need to be there if you don’t want to. If you do, you can sit with me. Harrison won’t be allowed in, though.”
“That’s fine. I can get someone to watch him.”
“Excellent. It’s booked for the eighteenth, at ten. Please don’t be late.”
Zane looked fairly horrified, so I knelt down again and splashed water at Harrison to make him laugh.
“It’s fine, I promise,” I said, even though I wasn’t quite feeling that secure myself. “It’s just a hearing. It might not even get to court.”
“Do I have to be there?”
“No…. I think you have a class.”
I knew he was scared, but the relieved look on his face hurt, just a little bit. I wanted him there to support us, to support me, and even though Linda had my back, it would have been nice to have Zane by my side.
The morning of the hearing I dropped him off in Manhattan, needing to get downtown anyway. He kissed me hard before sliding out of the car. I’d already dropped Harrison off at my mom’s, so I had time to swing round to pick Linda up on our way to the courthouse.
Since it was family law, the building was small and the rooms inside smaller. It was more like an office block than the imposing image of a court. In the room we’d been assigned, there were two desks and a haphazard row of chairs behind for anyone who wanted to watch. Oliver had brought his new boyfriend with him, and I wished again for Zane.
The judge came in, we all stood up; she sat down, we did too. I pondered on rituals and must have looked like I was daydreaming because Linda jabbed me sharply with her elbow.
As the judge—an older woman with elegantly styled blonde hair—read over the notes of the case, I fidgeted, earning me another elbow to the ribs.
“Sit still,” Linda hissed.
I sat back and ground my teeth together instead.
“Good morning, gentlemen, counsel,” Judge Munroe said. “Okay, let’s get going. I’m happy to hear what you all have to say, and from there we’ll decide if things are going to stay as they are, change here today, or if we need to take this further and have a full case hearing at a later date.”
She nodded to Oliver’s lawyer first, a sleek-looking guy with an expensive suit, who stood and inclined his head.
“Thank you, Judge Munroe.”
I forced myself to listen as he laid out Oliver’s argument: he was in a better position financially than I was, he had a more secure job, a more stable relationship, a house, rather than my little one-and-a-half bedroom apartment. He could give Harrison more than I could. He would be a better, more appropriate full-time guardian.
Then he moved on to Zane, and I thought I was going to have to
excuse myself to throw up.
Zane was, apparently, a dangerous and unstable man who had been previously involved in New York gangs, and they believed he still could have connections with illegal activity in the city. He was a Muslim immigrant who had been questioned by the police in the murder of a rival gang member yet still lived with Oliver’s son (his son!) with unrestricted access to my baby.
Linda poked me again and scrawled something on her notepad.
1st gen. Imm.???
No, I wrote. Born here. American! Not religious.
Then I underlined American a few times to make my point.
When the lawyer was done, he sat down, looking pleased, which made me feel worse. Then Linda stood, and I should never have doubted her.
“I wish to start by addressing the matter of Zane Hadlin, if I may,” she said, and then she waited for the judge’s nod of approval before continuing. “What you have just heard is racial profiling at its very worst. Zane is not Muslim. He’s not Egyptian either. He’s an American who was born and raised in this country. I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will—he has absolutely no links to terrorism, either here or abroad.”
She paused then, for effect, I’m sure, to let this statement sink in.
“However, the subject of Zane is not one that we’re here to talk about. The reason for this meeting today is to determine who should be Harrison’s legal guardian.” She paused again, took a sip of water, then continued. “When the divorce of Mr. Price and Mr. Broad was being finalized by this court, a paternity test was conducted at Mr. Price’s behest. At that time, Mr. Broad strongly opposed having this information made public. It was a decision they had both made, as parents, that it didn’t matter whose sperm was used to create their child. They would both love and care for him regardless of his genetics. Then it was discovered that Mr. Broad is Harrison’s biological father, and Mr. Price stopped caring. He broke the first promise he’d made to his son.
“That sounds harsh, but it’s true. The paternity aspect of the divorce was settled. Mr. Broad, as Harrison’s biological father, was granted custody of his child, and things moved on. Until a few weeks ago, when Mr. Price decided he would not return Harrison at the end of his agreed-upon visitation hours and would hold the child hostage instead.”