“Of course.” He squeezed Danny’s fingers, relieved when he tucked into the stack of pancakes, liberally covered in blueberries and chocolate sauce. Jake had gone for the more traditional maple syrup on his.
With any luck, they could go pack some of Danny’s things and get out without seeing his father. It was as much for Danny’s sake as his own that he wanted to avoid the man. He couldn’t be sure he’d be able to keep his mouth shut if he saw Grant Jones after last night. Danny was an amazing person, and he hated that his father was hurting him so much.
He knew there was no way he could ever make up for Danny’s lack of fatherly love, but in that second, he wanted more than anything to be Danny’s everything. Only problem was, there were things about him he still hadn’t told Danny, like his reason for being in Everness. He just didn’t know when he should sit down and explain everything. And hope Danny wasn’t annoyed at him for keeping the truth to himself, or worse, think he was totally crazy.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. He hadn’t come to Everness with anything in mind other than getting justice for Luis and Hobbs’s other victims. And to make sure Hobbs didn’t hurt anyone else. On that front, he’d already failed. If it really did turn out Hobbs had been responsible for those two murders, he doubted he’d ever forget the victims’ names for as long as he lived.
A small voice in the back of his mind was still insisting he needed to get some distance and perspective from Danny—it’d all happened so fast.
This thing between them might be brand-new, but he was absolutely certain he’d never find anything like it again. He only hoped Danny felt the same way once he heard the entire sordid story of his reasons for moving to Everness.
Chapter Twenty
DANNY REACHED down and took Jake’s hand as they left his house and headed for the street. Jake looked surprised for maybe half a second but then grinned like Danny’d given him a million bucks, not done something so simple that countless people did around the world every day.
At college in Houston, it hadn’t been unusual to see same-sex couples holding hands or walking with their arms around each other on campus. No doubt if he and Jake strolled through the Everness town square holding hands they’d get more than a few odd looks, if not outright glares. It actually made part of him want to go do it just because he could—the rebellious side of him Jake seemed to bring out. But he had bigger things to worry about today besides making a point to the sheltered townsfolk of Everness.
Neither of them said anything the entire block and a half to his parents’ house. When they got there, he had to pause on the footpath, fighting down a wave of breath-stealing anxiety.
“Are you sure you want to do this now?” Jake asked from beside him, shifting in closer until their shoulders were pressed together.
“I need at least my clothes,” he replied stubbornly, as much for the sake of battling back his apprehension.
“I could go get them. Or even the sheriff, or Gina. It doesn’t have to be you.” Jake ran a comforting hand up and down his arm. “Of course, there’s every chance Gina will go through your underwear….”
He laughed, relieved that Jake had so effectively broken the tension. “You’re right. That’d be much worse.”
Danny stepped forward and opened the gate, but didn’t let go of Jake’s hand. This time, he didn’t let himself pause as he climbed the two steps to the landing and then walked straight through the door with Jake in tow.
Almost as if she was waiting, his mother came hurrying out of the living room.
“Danny!” She pulled him into a hug, immediately bursting into tears.
“Mom, are you okay?” he asked, heart skipping. Had she gotten some bad news from her doctor since last night? He didn’t think she had any appointments today—
“I should be asking you that.” She let him go to wipe her eyes with the crumpled handkerchief she was holding. “He’s not here. He went fishing on Lake Conroe for the day. I’m so sorry, Danny. I shouldn’t have let him—”
“No, Mom,” he cut her off gently. “You couldn’t have done anything. You might have gotten hurt too.”
His mom stared at him for a long moment, as if really looking at him for the first time, leaving him extremely unsettled. Did she see him differently now? Not her son anymore. Not the one she thought she’d had, anyway. He’d always been so worried about how his dad was going to react, he’d never given much thought to what he’d do if his mom hated him as well, and now the pancakes he’d eaten with Jake felt like stones in his stomach.
“I knew, Danny,” she finally said, sounding guilty, as if it had somehow all been her fault.
“What?” For a second he swore his legs were going to give out as shock flashed through him, overheating his body and leaving a cold sweat breaking out on his skin. Jake pressed a hand in the middle of his back, steadying him.
“Why don’t we all go into the kitchen and I’ll make some coffee?” Jake suggested.
For some reason he wanted to laugh at that. Making coffee seemed to be Jake’s answer for everything.
“I’d like that,” his mom said, looking hopeful. “I made some cookies this morning. Your favorite: oatmeal chocolate chip.”
She turned and headed into the kitchen without waiting for an answer, while Jake sent him a faintly offended look. “You desecrate your chocolate chip cookies with oatmeal?”
“After you’ve tasted the way my mom makes them, then you can judge.” He poked Jake in the ribs, enjoying the small indignant yelp he elicited.
They trailed his mom into the kitchen, where she’d already started making the coffee. Jake quickly jumped in and took over, telling her to sit down and let him finish. She retrieved the cookies that were still on the cooling rack and took her usual seat at the table, while Danny slid in across from her, watching Jake for the moment while he got his thoughts in order.
“I’m really sorry, Danny,” his mom said again, sounding like she was on the verge of tears.
“It’s okay, Mom,” he replied, turning his attention to her and wishing he didn’t feel so anxious about having this conversation. She didn’t seem upset with him… yet. “But what did you mean, that you knew?”
A tremulous smile edged over her lips. “A mom knows these things. Like you told your father last night, you never had a girlfriend all through high school, and for a while there, you used to talk about Mark Townsend an awful lot.”
“Mark Townsend, huh?” Jake said over his shoulder, amusement in his voice as he poured the coffees.
“He was the captain of the football team,” he told them with a touch of defensiveness in his tone, except the way his cheeks had started getting hot, he was completely giving himself away. It’d been his first and only high school crush, a secret he’d guarded deeply and fearfully, terrified of anyone ever finding out. Clearly he hadn’t done as good a job as he’d always thought.
His mom only smiled at him affectionately, however, and then thanked Jake as he set a coffee in front of her.
“I’d been sure for a long time, even though you never breathed a word,” his mom continued. “And I understand why. I knew your father would never— Otherwise, maybe I would have brought it up with you. I’m sorry, I should have done a better job at protecting you instead of just ignoring it.”
“I understand, Mom.” He reached over and took her hand, emotion making his eyes well and leaving him blinking. “I know what he’s like. You did what you had to so we could all get by.”
Determination and a hint of anger crept into his mom’s expression. “Not anymore.”
“What do you mean?” His stomach flip-flopped, because she couldn’t mean what he was thinking, what he’d been praying for ever since about the age of twelve.
“After last night—it was the last straw. If he doesn’t want you, if he can’t accept and love you, then he doesn’t get me either. If I have to choose between the two of you, then I’m going to choose you every time, Danny.”
“Mo
m—” He didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter because acute relief swelled up within him, blocking his throat and making it hard to breathe until Jake settled a hand on his forearm and murmured that it was okay.
“What are you going to do?” he asked quietly when he finally got his emotions under control again.
“I called Susan Yates this morning, and she said I could stay with her as long as I need to. She said the church has provisions for these sorts of things, if I need help with money.”
Susan Yates was the mayor’s wife and pretty much the backbone of the entire town. Like the sheriff, the Yateses had been friends with his parents for as long as he could remember.
“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of the money.” He didn’t know how, but he’d never been more determined to do anything. He’d have to find a job somewhere fast, though. “You and I can find somewhere to live together. It’ll be fine.”
His mom gave a soft laugh. “You’re a young man now, Danny. And you have a boyfriend. You should get your own place. You don’t want to be living with your mom.”
His mom saying the word boyfriend so calmly, like it was the most natural thing in the world, was the best thing he’d ever heard. It made his heart skip like crazy. “You shouldn’t be alone, not when you’re sick.”
“Well, maybe I won’t get sick again,” she said, the defiant look returning to her eyes. “Because first thing when the doctor’s surgery opens in the morning, I’m going to book in for the mastectomy.”
The hits just kept coming. Things had turned completely around. “That’s great, but I don’t understand what changed your mind so suddenly.”
“Truthfully, it was your father who didn’t like the idea of the surgery. It seems so stupid now, that I was willing to risk dying for the man just because he didn’t want me to get my breasts removed and be unnatural. They’re coming off as soon as I can get rid of them, and God willing, the cancer won’t ever come back.”
This time he didn’t bother trying to hold back the tears stinging his eyes. “Mom, that is the best news I’ve ever heard.”
He pushed out of his seat and went around to hug her. She cried into his shoulder for a few moments, but he knew they were tears of relief. After, he sat back, wiping his own wet face with his sleeve, still not quite able to believe his mom had so fully accepted him.
“Are you sure about all this?” Somehow, he felt like it was his fault his mom’s entire life had been turned upside down.
But she nodded without any hesitation. “I could have easily kept ignoring everything and let him push you away. But I don’t want to lose you, and I don’t want to die of cancer if there’s a chance they can save me. I wasted too many years putting up with that man. It’s time I lived my own life. Do what makes me happy instead of worrying about keeping his sorry, surly ass happy—which let me tell you, was basically impossible.”
Danny found himself laughing at his mom’s outburst, but it was tinged with emotion. She joined in, seeming relieved, with more life in her eyes than he could remember seeing in a long time.
“Now,” she said, wiping away a few last tears. “I’d offer to help you pack, but I’ve got my own things to get together.”
“Did you tell him?” he asked as he got to his feet.
“Of course not!” She stood and took their empty cups to the sink.
“You mean he’s going to come home from fishing tonight to an empty house and no dinner waiting for him?” He couldn’t quite keep the glee out of his voice, imagining the look on his father’s face.
“Yes, he is,” his mom replied with a whole lot of satisfaction in her tone, leaving them grinning at each other.
“You two are diabolical,” Jake drawled. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
His mom looked at Jake, her gaze steady and serious. “As long as you look after my boy properly, then we won’t have a problem.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jake replied, not seeming to know whether he should be amused or concerned.
“All right then, we better get moving if we all want to be out of here when he gets home,” his mom said, practically shooing them out of the kitchen.
Danny led Jake up the stairs to his room, which still looked the same as when he’d packed up and left for Houston a few weeks after finishing high school. When he’d come back a couple of months ago, he hadn’t bothered clearing it out or redecorating from sheer stubborn refusal to believe he was going to be here any significant length of time.
While he went to his closet, Jake did a lap around the room, pausing to look at his football trophies and pictures on the wall.
“You and Gina were friends in high school?” Jake asked, picking up a picture with him, Gina, Lizzie, and Chris.
“Yeah, her best friend dated my best friend and we ended up spending a lot of time together by default. Especially when they ditched us at parties to go screw in the back of Chris’s pickup.”
Jake smiled and moved on to another picture, this one of the football team.
“Which one is Mark?” Jake flashed the picture in his direction with an unrepentant grin. “I want to know if you have a type.”
“Would you shut up and come make yourself useful?” He flung an armful of T-shirts at Jake and then tossed a rucksack on his bed. Most of the shirts ended up scattered across the floor between them, and he gathered them up as he crossed the room, then jammed them haphazardly into his bag.
Jake actually took the time to fold what he packed, pointedly eyeing him as he did so.
“You know it’s faster to just shove them in, right?” Danny demonstrated by cramming in a pair of jeans.
“You know it’ll fit more easily if you fold everything, right?” Jake took the jeans out again and deftly folded them into thirds and slid them back into the bag.
Danny watched for a second as Jake took out a few of the T-shirts he’d shoved in and made them into neat squares, then stacked and packed them, which did somehow leave more room in the rucksack. Not to mention there was something sweet and sexy about Jake packing his bag for him.
“Why the hell is watching you fold my clothes turning me on?”
Jake sent him a smooth smile. “I’m just that good.”
He grabbed a handful of Jake’s shirt and tugged him in for a kiss, finding a strange kind of freedom in the fact he was standing in his childhood bedroom, kissing Jake and not feeling the least bit of shame in it.
Jake was the one who ended up pulling back, exhaling unevenly. “Enough of that, or I’m going to start getting all kinds of ideas about fucking you into the mattress of this bed right here, where I’m sure you used to jerk off over Mark what’s his name.”
He laughed as he stepped out of Jake’s hold and returned to the cupboard for some more clothes. “Don’t worry, I jerked off over you the morning after we met.”
Jake’s resulting grin was more than a little smug. “Now that’s what I like to hear.”
Together they packed almost all of his clothes into two bags, along with a few other personal items he wanted, then lugged them downstairs. After that, he went to check on his mom to see how she was going with her own packing to find Susan had arrived while he and Jake had been in his room.
“Hi, Danny,” Susan greeted warmly. “I hear you’ve been having a tough time of things.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” he murmured in reply. “Thank you for letting my mom stay with you.”
Susan shared a quick look with him mom. “You raised such a polite, considerate young man, Joyce.”
His mom actually blushed a little—it was where he got it from, the fair skin and ability to go bright red on a dime.
“No thanks to his father,” she said as she took some of her perfumes and lotions from the dressing table. “You boys get on now. Susan and I are nearly done here.”
“Will you call me later when you get settled?” He went over and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, sometimes still finding it odd that she only came up to
his chin these days. He could remember when he used to look up at her, though the memories were hazy.
“I should be the one telling you that.” She returned the hug tightly for a moment before stepping back. “Tell Alan I said thank you for looking out for you and I’ll bake him one of those devil’s chocolate cakes he loves so much.”
A thought struck him and he looked closely at her. “Mom, did you know about his brother, John?”
His mom nodded. “Everyone in town did. It caused quite a scandal. Of course, no one talks about it now. That’s the kind of thing people like to bury around here.”
“Not anymore, though,” Susan spoke up. “Anyone gives you a hard time, you make sure to tell us.”
“Thanks,” he said, not sure what else to say at that surprising development. He’d spent so long worrying about his dad finding out, he’d never once considered people might be so openly supportive of him.
He kissed his mom on the cheek one last time and then told both her and Susan goodbye before he and Jake returned to the front of the house and picked up his bags. As he stepped through the doors, he didn’t have even a second of sadness, exactly like when he’d left for college, only relief. There were too many memories in this place, and if he never came back, he didn’t think he’d be upset about it.
As they stepped onto the street and turned toward Jake’s house, he noticed a figure pushing off a fence on the opposite side of the road and striding quickly away. It was the same guy he’d seen in the town square staring at the diner a few days ago, before he’d walked home and found the body in the trunk of the car left outside the garage.
Something about it left a pit in his stomach and a chill rippling over his skin.
“What’s wrong?” Jake asked, staring at him in concern.
“That man.” He gestured down the street to where the figure was hurrying away. “I keep seeing him everywhere.”
Jake glanced in the direction he indicated, confusion flashing over his features.
“I don’t see anyone.” There was something in Jake’s eyes he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He looked back again, but of course the street was empty. The man had apparently disappeared into thin air. Great, that was all he needed, Jake thinking he was parting ways with sanity. Maybe he was, after everything that’d happened in the past few weeks.
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