The Innocence Series: Complete Bundle

by Riley Knight

  “I would rather just be open about it, but for now, at least, it seemed like the best option.” He hesitated and then added, “I would have told you, but I didn’t plan it out ahead of time.”

  That, too, Ben could understand. He sighed softly, and he couldn’t say he liked it, but it would make their lives easier. Maybe in a few years, small-town Texas would be ready for openness, but right now, for Sammy’s sake, anyway, it was probably best if people believed what they wanted to believe.

  “Either way, you’re mine,” Ben accepted it all at that moment, taking the relationship on, giving in to it utterly. In the end, it was all that mattered, that he and Isaac knew the truth.

  “I’m yours,” Isaac admitted, and their lips met in a sweet, but complicated, kiss, one which made Ben’s toes curl and his heart pound as he pulled the other man’s body against his own.

  THIRTY

  Rumors were flying all over town. Isaac knew because they were being told even in the bar, which tended to be generally a little bit apart from the rest of the town. The people at the bar kept to themselves, and when they did come from town they would act totally different at the bar than in their normal lives.

  So what was going on was a big enough deal that it had crossed the line. Amanda being pregnant, and people thinking it was with Isaac’s child, that hadn’t crossed that line. No one here had cared, which had made the whole place a welcome refuge for Isaac.

  No one here had asked him when he was going to do the right thing and marry the girl. There was no way that Isaac was going to do that, of course, but in this part of the world, most people still thought that was the right thing to do.

  Isaac would play this part, but not to that point. That would be going much too far. If he thought about marriage at all, he thought about it with Ben, though it was hard to think of the other man actually settling down like that. But it would be Ben, or it would be no one.

  The baby was going to be born in a few months, and Isaac and Ben had already decided with Amanda that they would help raise the child. They would share custody, and they had already started to look for a bigger house that they could all move into, which should only help along this elaborate fiction they had created.

  But that was not a big deal to the people of the bar. They weren’t talking about that at all, they never really had been. The talk these days was all of the horrible scandal going on in the town’s church, and it sort of amused Isaac as well as vaguely saddened him that no one even seemed to remember that Isaac had once been very involved in that church.

  Sometimes he missed it, but he knew that, if he had gone, he would need to be ready for a confrontation with his father. He had never, not quite, been ready for that, which gave him the utterly unique position, for once in his life, of being the outsider looking in as everything crumbled down around his father.

  The good pastor had been caught stealing.

  Not just a little bit of money, either. If the reports were true, it had been thousands and thousands of dollars. His father had gotten greedy, it seemed, and he’d been caught, and now, it was all that anyone could talk about.

  Something about that bothered Isaac. Of course, it bothered him that his own family, his father, could do something like that, but at the same time he couldn’t help but think of the vulnerable, scared look on Amanda’s face when she’d told him in the park that she couldn’t hide it anymore. His father should have known better with the money, and he should have known better with Amanda.

  But it was more than that, too. Brief images came into his mind of all of the towns in which they’d lived, all of the churches where his father had been, as he put it, called. They never stayed long, never more than a couple of years, and they’d always departed in a hurry.

  After work, Isaac went home, and he didn’t even know what he was going to do until he was doing it. He snagged the keys to Ben’s car, then turned to go, only to hear the creak of a floorboard behind him. When he turned, he wasn’t surprised to see Ben standing there, looking at him with a solemn face and eyes that seemed to see too much.

  “You heard,” Ben said, making it a comment rather than a question. Isaac nodded, and Ben sighed softly and rubbed his hands over his eyes. There was so much compassion on his face, and Isaac knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Ben would take this burden from him if he could.

  “Yes,” Isaac admitted and then walked over to Ben, who met him halfway through the living area and swept him up into his arms. They embraced, then briefly kissed, before pulling apart to just gaze at each other.

  “Do you have to go now? I can’t leave Sammy” Ben whispered, and even just knowing that Ben wanted to go with him, that he didn’t want him to have to face this alone, was deeply comforting to Isaac.

  “I don’t know how much time I have,” Isaac tried to explain. There was this feeling inside of him like something had hooked onto his stomach and was dragging him back to the old farmhouse where he’d lived for a while with his parents. He had to hurry. “Tomorrow might be too late.”

  Ben didn’t question him. Ben trusted him, and for Isaac, that was such a novel experience, to be treated like an adult, like what he wanted to do, what he felt like he needed to do, was a legitimate thing.

  “Okay. Good luck,” Ben whispered. “I’ll be waiting here when you come back.”

  Once more, their lips brushed together, Ben’s silken smooth and so soft that it made part of Isaac just want to pull him close and kiss him forever. To drag him back to the bedroom that Isaac knew was so close and make love to him until neither of them could move anymore.

  Instead, he forced himself to move, to walk away from his lover, to go out the door and down to where the car was parked.

  Was he insane? Yes, he probably was, to be able to walk away from Ben even temporarily, especially this late at night. But it was also something that he knew he had to do.

  * * *

  There was a light shining in the farmhouse. Just one, the one in the kitchen. It was well past three in the morning, and the house should be completely dark, his parents sound asleep. It was possible his mother had just left it on by accident, but that was not like her.

  The truck had been pulled up onto the grass, onto the lawn, by the back door, though, and that was not something that ever happened. As Isaac watched, a dark figure scurried from the house to the truck, putting something into the back.

  His mother. His mother was loading the truck. Isaac groaned softly as he parked the car, trying to deny what he already knew was true.

  There had been so many early mornings for him. So many times that his parents had told him that they needed to leave now, that yes, it was early, but that they needed to get an early start because they were driving so far. Isaac had just accepted it for so long, but he knew it now for what it had always been.

  His parents were running away. Nothing could have cemented their guilt in his mind as much as this one simple thing, the sight of his mother loading a box into the truck, her movements so furtive, a thief in the night.

  Well, his father was a thief in the night. What did his mother know about this? It didn’t seem possible that she would know nothing, but then, she’d always been pretty good at being willfully ignorant when it suited her.

  Quietly, not particularly trying to hide but also not making a lot of noise, Isaac got out of the car and walked over the heat wilted yellow grass, which muffled his footsteps. His heart was pounding so loudly he could hear it in his ears, feel it hammering at the base of his neck and in his wrists. Surely his parents would hear it, too?

  “Mom,” Isaac spoke softly as his mother came out of the house, once more laden down with boxes. “You have to know what it looks like that you’re leaving in the middle of the night. How many other churches, how many other towns, have you done this to?”

  His mother jumped, dropping the box she carried, pots and pans rattling inside of it. Isaac stood there, his hands in his pockets, gazing at his mother and wishing that she could someh
ow comfort him, just as she had when Isaac had been a child. But the only way she could do that would be to tell him that none of this had happened, and all of the signs pointed to that it had.

  “Isaac,” she whispered, not even moving to pick up the box. Behind her, through the kitchen window, Isaac saw a shadowy figure move, and his stomach churned and threatened to empty itself as he realized that it had to be his father.

  “How much did you know?” Isaac asked, his voice hurried, while he still had just her and not his father. But she didn’t say anything, just gazing at him with something like heartbreak in her eyes, her hands clasped in front of her and her face as solemn as if she were praying.

  “So righteous,” Isaac heard a familiar voice, one which he had heard, so many times, thundering from the pulpit. There was a sneer to that voice now, and the light from behind Isaac’s father cast a shadow onto his face, but Isaac would have been willing to bet that the same sneer was painted over his face and in his eyes.

  “Isaac, just go, please,” his mother begged, and Isaac shook his head, not even really looking at her anymore.

  “Dad. How many churches have you robbed?” Isaac asked directly, making himself meet his father’s shadowy eyes. Forcing himself not to give in to the habits of a lifetime, to instinctively lower his gaze and give his father the submission which the man so obviously wanted.

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You think I wanted to take that money? I needed it.” There was no remorse, no hint of any bad feeling, in his father’s eyes.

  “I tried to tell him to stop,” Isaac’s mother whispered. “Every town, he swore it was the last …”

  “Just stop talking,” Isaac’s father hissed and then went over to the fallen box and hefted it up into his own hands. “And you, get out of my sight. The best thing about leaving this place will be knowing that I left the son I should never have had behind.”

  Isaac took a deep breath, stung by that, but it didn’t hurt as much as he would have thought. Not even as much as it would have a couple of months ago. He’d grown up too much, and mostly, he just felt an overwhelming sadness, a deep ocean which could pull him into its depths, if he let it.

  “When the cops come to talk to me about it, I’ll tell them everything I know,” Isaac told his father, and his voice came out stern and quiet, but very assured. His breathing had slowed down, and his heart had settled into a more normal rhythm.

  He wasn’t scared of this man anymore, that was what it came down to. Instead, he looked at his mother, though his words were still addressed to his father, who was loading the box into the truck.

  “What about your kid?”

  He was searching his mother’s face as best he could in the gloom, because yes, she’d known about the stealing, but it really didn’t seem like she had any part in it. Isaac wanted to see how she reacted to that, and when he saw the frown of confusion on her face, he felt something like hope.

  “Kid?” she wondered, and Isaac’s father spun abruptly on his heel and turned to glare at both of them.

  “Shut up,” he hissed, anger radiating from him in a hot, poisonous cloud, but Isaac couldn’t let himself be dissuaded from this. This might be his last chance to talk to his mother. His father, he found, he had completely written off, maybe from the moment that he’d realized that his father had acted so carelessly with Amanda.

  “Isaac, what kid? You?” she asked, her tone urgent, and Isaac shook his head. He went over to her and put his hand on her shoulder, squeezing it lightly, feeling how light and thin she was. Had she always been this small?

  “No. Amanda Grant is pregnant with his child,” he told her, and from this close, he could see her eyes widening with horror and the round O her lips made as they parted, clutching at her heart.

  This was news to her. Just as surely as it hadn’t been news to her about the stealing, she’d had no idea that her husband had done this. That soothed Isaac, at least a little, and he leaned in to whisper in her ear, telling her the whole story.

  “You don’t have to stay with him,” Isaac finally told her. “If you don’t like what he’s doing, if you can’t tolerate it, and I wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t, then you can stay here. Stay with me.”

  “Isaac!” his father sounded furious now, and if Isaac turned to look at him, he knew he would see real, true anger. But he didn’t look. He had said, to his surprise, everything that he needed to say to his father.

  Quietly, he walked into the house, gathering his things and packing them into a backpack. His old room looked so much smaller to him, so much more pathetic, than he had remembered. He had spent so much time in this room, and now, it was nothing to him. That was sort of sad.

  He would probably never see this place again, and when he looked closely at that idea, he found that all he felt was a sense of relief. So he turned his back on it and walked out, and back down the stairs, to where his mother and father still stood there as if frozen. They looked at each other, and there was a world, a whole universe, in that look, that Isaac had nothing to do with.

  “Mom?” he asked, and she turned away from her husband’s beseeching gaze to look at Isaac instead. “I meant it. You can stay now, or come back anytime. You don’t have to do this anymore.”

  She just shook her head, and Isaac nodded. She wasn’t ready. He could understand that. How long had she been living under his dominion? It was hard just to walk away. Isaac hadn’t been able to do it until he’d actually been kicked out, so he wasn’t going to judge.

  Maybe she’d come around, maybe she never would. At least she had the option now, the same choice that Ben had given Isaac. Either way, Isaac walked away, holding his backpack of clothes in his arms, and he headed back to Ben. Back home, because wherever Ben was, that was home for Isaac.

  Ben was still up when Isaac got there, waiting on the couch, but he rose to his feet. There was worry stamped all over his face, and Isaac smiled a little to try to reassure him.

  It was okay. It would all be okay, it would all work out because Ben was standing there with his heart written all over his handsome features. Ben was there to greet him, even after what had been the most excruciatingly difficult scene of Isaac’s life.

  Ben was there for him, and Isaac would be there for Ben, and if there was a single thing in the world which could be more perfect, Isaac couldn’t think of it.

  EPILOGUE

  Isaac

  A few months later, the baby was born, and Isaac finally had the last piece of what he had always wanted, for as long as he could remember. Amanda gave birth to the little girl who the whole town would think was Isaac’s child, but was, in fact, his little sister.

  They moved, all of them, Sammy and Ben and Isaac and Amanda and the new baby, who Amanda had named Ruby, into the only big old house which was available in town. Ben had been worried about Isaac moving into the house where so much bad stuff had happened, but Isaac chose a different room, and they fixed the place up, and it honestly didn’t even seem like the same house.

  Sammy’s laughter changed it, and the way Amanda slowly gained confidence did more. It was love which transformed the house from a dreary old farmhouse to a home, a true, sincere love which had been missing from this house when Isaac had lived there before.

  The police did come, and just as Isaac had told his father he would, he cooperated fully with them. He told them as much as he knew, which wasn’t all that much, since he had no clue where his parents had gone, and he promised to testify against his father if he needed to. That wouldn’t be a fun day, but he needed to know that his father wouldn’t be doing these same things to other people, other towns.

  Life continued on. With Amanda around, Ben and Isaac were both able to work more, and spend more time together, too. Amanda started taking some correspondence college classes, and one day, when enough time had passed, Isaac and Amanda and little baby Ruby went back to church. Sammy, a little to Isaac’s surprise, came with them.

  The town settled d
own. People would always remember everything that had happened, Isaac supposed, but these events had been accepted into the public consciousness. It was just another one of those small-town stories, the sorts that every town had, the open secrets that no outsider would know.

  Maybe the whole town knew that Isaac and Ben shared a bed, but the fiction allowed them to pretend that they didn’t, and that was good enough, for now. He knew, and Ben knew, and really, that was what mattered.

  Though it wouldn’t last forever. More and more, as the months passed, Isaac realized that he was going to want to marry Ben someday, and probably sooner, rather than later. He wasn’t going to want to hide for the rest of his life, and he knew that Ben felt the same way.

  Everything was good, and the only regret that Isaac had was that he didn’t know where his mother was. He couldn’t claim not to be angry with her because he was, but it wasn’t the same sort of anger he had toward his father. It was the sort of anger that he thought he could forgive, eventually, if only she would give him a chance.

  It seemed that was the only thing which he would never have, until the day when the knock came at the door.

  Ruby was just learning to walk, her steps wobbly and needing to be supported by the furniture around, but she was surprisingly quick once she got going. So when the knock came, Isaac reached down and picked her up, because she had made a run for the outside before and he didn’t want her falling off the patio.

  Cradling the baby who was fast becoming a toddler, and who squirmed, unhappy with this development, Isaac went to open the door, only to see the last person that he would have expected at this point. When the months had passed and he hadn’t seen his mother, he had assumed that she was with his father to the end, that nothing would ever change that.

  But she was there, and she had bags with her, and she was alone. In the time they’d been apart, really just a matter of months, she had aged years, and the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes were deeper, the lines cruelly etched around her mouth more pronounced, than ever.