by Amy Lane
Table of Contents
Blurb
Dedication
Rude Awakenings
Den Mother
Old Habits
It’s Not What It Looks Like
Ye Gods and Battered Fishes
Allies and Ally Cats
Dark Promises
New Horizons
Apprentice to the Master
Not My Job
Obvious Solutions
Hungry
Baby Steps and Baby Models
Tiny Demons
Forward Ho!
Amy’s Dark Contemporary Romance
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Copyright
Shades of Henry
By Amy Lane
A Flophouse Story
One bootstrap act of integrity cost Henry Worrall everything—military career, family, and the secret boyfriend who kept Henry trapped for eleven years. Desperate, Henry shows up on his brother’s doorstep and is offered a place to live and a job as a handyman in a flophouse for young porn stars.
Lance Luna’s past gave him reasons for being in porn, but as he continues his residency at a local hospital, they now feel more like excuses. He’s got the money to move out of the flophouse and live his own life—but who needs privacy when you’re taking care of a bunch of young men who think working penises make them adults?
Lance worries Henry won’t fit in, but Henry’s got a soft spot for lost young men and a way of helping them. Just as Lance and Henry find a rhythm as den mothers, a murder and the ghosts of Henry’s abusive past intrude. Lance knows Henry’s not capable of murder, but is he capable of caring for Lance’s heart?
This one is for Desi and Brenda and Mary of course—because everybody was as invested in Henry as I was, and that meant the world to me.
And also for Mate and the kids—because my house is just that nutballs sometimes, and Mate is my partner who looks at the chaos and then at me and goes, “O-kay… so we deal with this how?”
Rude Awakenings
HENRY KNEW what a cheap hotel bed felt like. With nine years in the military, he and Mal had gone on leave in a thousand different places. And the creak of the springs, the smell of sex, the chafing of cheap sheets?
It was all sickeningly familiar.
Except his face hurt, and his shoulder too, where someone had landed a blow, and his knuckles had that three-day ache from being clenched too hard.
Who’d he beaten up again?
His eyes shot open.
No. He hadn’t landed any blows in that fight. And Malachi had effectively betrayed him and ripped his heart out. And his family had taken Mal’s side.
Then why did he smell like sex?
He rolled over in the queen-sized bed and felt the warm spot—and the wet spot—and grimaced. Last night was so hazy. God. The bus had pulled in at, what? Ten thirty the night before? It had been raining, and he’d gotten a hotel nearby, and there’d been a guy… not bad-looking. Brown eyes, brown hair, a slick smile that showed all his teeth and a couple of dimples to boot.
He’d been a little tipsy. At first Henry had thought it was alcohol, but after the guy had come up to the hotel room, he’d popped open a little pharmacy bottle and offered Henry one. And it hadn’t been vodka in there.
Usually drugs would have repelled the fuck out of Henry, but his face still hurt, and his heart still hurt, and he was alone in Sacramento—a place as strange to him as he was to it—and the only people he had to contact in the morning might just kick the door in his face.
He hadn’t taken one, but he hadn’t kicked Martin out of the room, either.
The shower turned off, and Henry swung his legs over the end of the creaky bed and rested his head in his hands. A burst of steam and hotel-scented shampoo blew Martin back into the room, and he grinned, the look so suggestive, so filthy, Henry felt his gorge rise.
“Ready for another round, soldier?”
“No, thank you,” Henry muttered. “I need to shower and get out of here.”
“That’s a shame.” Martin gave a patently fake pout. “You sure you don’t want to stay around for… coffee?”
“Very.” Henry stood up, keeping the sheet around his waist.
“Well, then, could you spare some money for a cab?” It was said with a raised eyebrow, and Henry’s stomach churned. It wasn’t even a one-night stand. Well, thank God for condoms and PrEP.
“Yeah, sure.” Well, the guy could have taken his wallet and run while Henry was still sleeping; that was something. “Throw me my pants. My wallet’s in—” Martin went straight for the wallet in the pocket. “—the side.”
He wondered if he was going to have to chase his one-night trick naked down the Astroturf hallway of this shitty motel, but Martin froze as he was opening Henry’s wallet.
“Henry?”
“That’s me.”
“Henry Matthew Worrall?”
Henry blinked and rubbed his eyes. “Martin Whoever-You-Are?”
Martin blinked and shoved the wallet back into Henry’s pants, complete with the cash he’d been about to grab. “Sampson. But you can call me Martin About to Be Out of Your Hair,” he said abruptly. “Thanks for the nice time, soldier. See you around.”
He was dressing as he said it, the kind of quick, efficient movements of someone who was apparently used to getting in and out of his clothes a lot.
And then he was standing at the door before Henry could get awkward about not wanting to leave his wallet in the same room with the guy, even if Martin had just refused any payment for what had been about to be a business transaction.
“You said you’re going to visit your brother?” Martin asked carefully, thin face expressionless.
“Yeah?”
“Good. I hope you both find your way home.”
And then he was gone.
Henry groaned and banged his head silently on his fist. Shit. Shit shit shit shit. Sigh. Shit was a thing he had to get together in a paper bag right now or he was going to become one with this truly horrific bed.
Nine years in the Army. Nine years of learning how to pull himself up from his bootstraps and do the fucking job, and he was going to stop now?
He stood, back straight, and dropped the sheet, then grabbed the towels Martin had left on the floor. He had his brother’s address in his phone and enough money for a cab and some breakfast. And he was damned if he was going to let a glitch in his plan like Martin No-Last-Name derail him from moving on with his life.
Funny how what fate planned and what we plan for ourselves are very rarely the same thing, right?
Right?
“HENRY? SERIOUSLY. Is that you?”
Henry hefted his duffel bag over his shoulder and tried a smile. Davy, his brother, had always been the one with the charming grin. Henry had learned to keep his own features stoic and even in the last nine years.
“Davy?” Oh, this was harder than he’d thought.
His brother David lived in a cute little house in a nice residential area in the city proper. From Davy’s letters years before, Henry knew that the property values in Sacramento were pretty high, and the yard was small and the house only had one full bathroom and a spare bedroom, but he hadn’t expected it to be so… cute. The gutters and trim were painted green, the stucco painted a pale cream color, the fence recently stained, and from the looks of it over the fence, the backyard had some landscaping done.
The lawn was cut even with the driveway, and the shrubs in the front yard had been recently trimmed.
It wasn’t some trashy den of iniquity, as his father had sneered about ever since Davy had come out—not just as gay, but as
a former porn model. It was a home, right down to three sets of galoshes on the porch, one set a mud-covered and tiny pink color, with little umbrellas all over it….
Davy’s boyfriend—husband, dammit, husband!—had a niece who they cared for. Henry had forgotten about that until he’d walked up onto their porch, and suddenly he couldn’t decide who was dirtier, his brother for coming out to the family and walking away or Henry for getting kicked off the farm and dragging all his problems with him.
But then Davy opened the door, and Henry stopped asking himself stupid questions.
“Henry?”
Henry tried to give an ingratiating smile, but before it could even morph into a scowl, his brother—whom he had sneered at with their father for being a fag and a whore and a disgrace to the family—smiled at him with tears in his eyes and took Henry into the kind of embrace Henry had always dreamed of getting from his family, but never had.
AN HOUR later—after Carlos, Davy’s boy… erm… husband had taken his niece to school, all while giving Henry a lot of suspicious looks that Henry had more than earned—Henry sat at the breakfast table, eating pancakes and drinking coffee and feeling both happier and guiltier than he ever had in his life.
“Does Dad still call me names behind my back?” Davy asked. Something in his voice seemed to hurt, as if he hated himself for asking.
“Yeah,” Henry said with a sigh, the pancakes suddenly tasting like tire rubber. “I… I have to admit, Davy. Until very recently I did too.”
David had the family blond hair and blue eyes, with high cheekbones and a strong chin, a lush mouth, and a sort of innocence around his eyes that belied the fact that he’d readily admitted to putting himself through business school as a porn model.
Henry had a hard time reconciling his brother—the one who had always taken care of the younger kids, the nursemaid, the one who’d saved their youngest brother from drowning and who’d kept their sister from freaking all the boys out with her turbulent adolescence—had worked in porn. He still worked in it, if Davy’s letters to their older brother were to be believed. Behind the camera or in front of it—porn. Not something Henry would have ever thought of. Even though Davy was beautiful, stunningly beautiful as few men could ever lay claim to, he seemed more suited to fatherhood and life at the office, the bulging muscles in his arms and chest notwithstanding.
And somehow that beauty made his look of understanding harder to bear.
Henry shoved at his plate and stood. “Look, you know, I should just go. You don’t need me, with all of Dad’s shitty attitude, crashing your life here. I should probably—”
“Sit down and finish your breakfast, Henry,” Davy said quietly. Henry’s knees actually buckled, he was so excited to obey that order. “You look like hell. Who did that to your face?”
Henry opened his mouth to lie, but he couldn’t. And he couldn’t meet his brother’s eyes either.
“Dad,” David said softly. “Well, I had Kane to protect me when he tried that shit. Who’d you have?” Kane. Sometimes Davy called his husband Kane, and Kane called Davy Dex—it really did mess with Henry’s mind, and he didn’t even want to think about the fact that the alternative name habit started when they’d fucked each other in porn.
Henry just shook his head. He hadn’t been there when Davy had come out, Carlos by his side. He remembered that sick feeling, though, that terror, that if he ever had to do the same thing, nobody would speak up for him, because he hadn’t spoken up for anybody else. Not in their family, where as far as Henry knew, only their oldest brother, Travis, had anything to do with Davy at all.
David nodded. “Do you want to tell me why?”
Henry shook his head. “No.”
“Would you believe I could guess why?” David arched an eyebrow, and Henry’s flush turned into an instant sweat, pouring down his armpits, stinging his eyes.
“God, Davy. I can’t talk about it,” he begged, wiping his eyes. His humiliation was palpable, so thick he could almost choke on it. “I… I can’t even right now.” Davy had been prepared to leave all he was behind—he’d practiced at it, probably from the moment he’d moved away from Montana. But Henry had worked his whole life to hang on to his family, and he just couldn’t talk about what he’d left on the kitchen floor—along with not a little of his blood after his dad had beat the shit out of him, a military-trained adult, for being gay.
“I get that.” Gah—Davy’s eyes were still so earnest. “But you’re going to have to someday. As for where to put you, why don’t you stay here a couple of days? Shower, do your laundry. I’ll get you a laptop, and we can work on your résumé.”
“I can’t live here,” Henry said, looking around. There were pictures on the refrigerator of a turtle holding flowers, for God’s sake, and a small shelf of children’s books in the corner of the dining room. “This is your family.” And Henry was unclean, whether he could tell his brother that or not.
“It’s too small,” David said grimly. “Frances has the other bedroom. All we’ve got for you is the couch. How you doing for money?”
Henry grimaced. “Not great. I… I was saving for college, but….” A dishonorable discharge didn’t come with pay.
“You’ve got a little, but you don’t think it’ll go far,” David said, nodding when Henry did.
“I can get a basic job,” Henry told him. “Fast food, waiting tables—I just—”
“Need a place to start. I get it.” David nodded, like he was making a decision. “Okay. I think I can get something lined up for you. It’ll be sort of sporadic, odd jobs for me and John, my boss, mostly, but we’ve been talking about needing a gopher, and he’s been pretty good about Kane holding lights and doing set production stuff for a salary.”
“I wouldn’t have to—” Henry’s panic made his voice crack.
David let out a clearly negative snort. “No, you wouldn’t have to film scenes. Jesus, Henry—I’m not going to whore you out on film when you’re desperate. We only take the willing. Kane and I haven’t been on film for two years, and the business has kept on growing. Don’t worry. We’ll find something. A place for you to live is what we need.”
Henry’s relief made sweat pop out on his back. “Good to know,” he rasped.
David rolled his eyes some more and kept pondering. “There’s a place….” He grimaced and looked at him directly. “You’re not gonna like it. A bunch of the guys from Johnnies crash there. It’s sort of a flophouse—two bedrooms and like five guys, and they’re coming and going and shit. But they’re babies, really. I mean, yeah, they’re making their living doing porn, but some of them have never lived away from home. With the exception of the sex—and don’t get me wrong, you can practically smell come rolling down the stairwell—it’s like a boarding house for young men. They could use a grown man to help them out.”
Henry stared at him, nonplussed. “So, you want a, uh, nanny for porn stars?”
Another expression from David that made Henry feel mean-minded. “I work with these guys—do me a favor and don’t phrase it that way, all right? Like I said, they’re good kids. But… you know. Coming out, girlfriends who don’t know, parents who find out about the porn, boyfriends who don’t understand. Most of these guys are eighteen, nineteen. I think the oldest is Lance; he’s twenty-six or seven, and he does his best. It’s all about the fuckin’ drama with the other kids, and I….” He bit his lip like this hurt. “I’ve seen some spectacular flameouts. Friends. Friends who really needed a keeper so somebody could tell them they were worth the trouble and to please not do that thing that’s about to hurt us all.”
Henry caught his breath. Self-harm. Drugs. Dangerous behaviors. He could see all of that going down with young stupid people. Or stupid young people. Or just kids like he’d been, without the prop of the military and an outstanding cover story to explain why he was spending so much extra time with Mal.
Henry was twenty-seven, trained in physical combat, and he’d let his father beat the shit ou
t of him because he thought he deserved it. What would a teenager do if Daddy showed up at his door with an attitude?
He’d done so very little in his past to redeem himself. This was like… like protecting people, wasn’t it? He’d wanted to serve his country, and while this wasn’t anything close to that, it was something. Something that didn’t make the world about Henry Matthew Worrall—liar, cheat, and potential homewrecker, dishonorably discharged from the job he’d loved.
“Sure,” he said, wondering if this aching feeling would ever grow numb. “What do I have to lose?”
“Self-loathing,” David said brutally. “Prejudice. All the bullshit Dad saddled us with that’s going to kill you if you don’t let it out. Feel free to put that shit in your rearview, little brother.”
“Where’d you leave yours?” Henry asked bitterly, hating that his brother seemed happy, smug with it even, when Henry couldn’t stand the fit of his own skin.
“Mom’s kitchen floor, when Kane blocked his second punch.”
Henry opened his mouth and closed it, not sure he had an answer to that, but David held his hand out to stop him.
“It’s going to be harder for you, Henry. You didn’t have anybody to block.”
True enough. Because even before Henry had left his dignity on his mother’s kitchen floor, he’d left his heart and his hope and his self-respect at Malachi’s feet, and Mal had stomped on it all in combat boots. Well, fucking your brother-in-law was sort of an invitation for abuse, right?
He swallowed, the whole story pounding in his throat to get out, but at that moment, his brother jumped a little in that human gesture that said he had gotten a call but was determined to ignore it.
“Get it, Davy,” Henry said gruffly. “I’ll go shower and do my laundry and try to get my shit together, okay?”
David sighed. “This might be John about a car for you—Sacramento’s sort of spread out. You’ll need one. But Henry?”
Henry pulled his military mask in place. “Yeah?”
