The Innocence Series: Complete Bundle

by Riley Knight

  Will shut his eyes, fighting down the strange urge that his stomach had just to rise up his throat and jump out of his mouth. Or that was what it felt like, anyway. This would have, once, been a dream come true. Now, it just felt like something that he really didn’t want to deal with.

  “What do you want, Jack? Is this a money thing?” Will asked.

  “I guess I deserve that,” Jack finally spoke up again. “But no. I wanted to know how our son is doing.”

  Our son. Our son. The words echoed in Will’s head because Stephen was not biologically related to Jack at all. It had been Will who had scraped together the money to have Stephen through a surrogate, and it had been Will who had taken care of him ever since. That was more to the point. The genetic thing would have been no issue at all for Will if Jack had been around and had been anything like a father to Stephen.

  “Stephen,” Will put a slight emphasis on the name. He wasn’t sure that he accepted Jack as his co-parent, and why should he? Sure, that had been the plan fifteen years ago, before Stephen was born, but things had changed since then. “Is fine. Look, Jack. What’s this about? I’ve moved on.”

  Damn it. He had, too. He had found a life, a job, and now he’d found Judah. Maybe it wasn’t much of a life to some people, but he was pretty happy with it.

  “I want to see you,” Jack murmured, and there was a hint of warmth to his voice, or was that just Will’s imagination? “And Stephen, too, if you’ll let me.”

  Will hesitated. For himself, he would have easily, without hesitation, said no way in hell. But Stephen, did he have the right to make that decision for the kid? On the other hand, what happened if Jack wasn’t sincere and came back into their lives and broke Stephen’s undoubtedly sensitive heart?

  “Jack …” Will’s voice was deeply uncertain, and he didn’t even try to hide it. It would be much easier if Jack just decided, all on his own, to walk away now, and given how good Jack was at walking away, Will didn’t even think it was that unlikely.

  “I’m just asking that you meet with me in person.” Jack’s voice didn’t waver, which was sort of strange for him. “There’s a lot that I’d like to say to you while looking into your eyes. I have to apologize, really apologize, and that’s going to be easier in person.”

  Will didn’t owe Jack any of this, did he? When he thought about it, he was pretty sure that he, as the injured party originally, had no reason at all to give Jack the time of day. The conversation that they had already had was more than Jack deserved.

  But then there was Stephen, and that complicated the fuck out of things. Stephen had been four when Jack had just simply walked out, and for a while, Stephen had been devastated. Could he really make this call for his son? On the other hand, could he really risk Jack breaking Stephen’s heart all over again?

  He just didn’t know enough. It was really a simple process, he knew. He just needed to detach his heart from this, engage his scientific brain. He needed to gather more evidence, to watch, to wait before he could make any serious decisions.

  “I’ll meet with you,” Will decided abruptly. “But probably only once, so I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.”

  If there had been the faintest hint of triumph in Jack’s voice, Will probably would have changed his mind right then and there, but there wasn’t.

  “My hopes are sometimes all that got me through rehab,” Jack told him, his voice somber. “I’m not going to give them up just yet.”

  On that note, Jack hung up the phone, and Will softly snorted as he stared down at his cell, shaking his head a little bit. In some ways, at least, Jack certainly hadn’t changed. He still seemed to feel the need to have the last word, and he was pretty good at getting it.

  Had Jack gone to rehab? Had he stopped drinking? The alcohol had honestly been the biggest issue between the two of them when they’d been together, and even now, with the separation of years, Will found that he couldn’t help but hope that it was true.

  It wouldn’t change anything, of course. Will was not available, certainly not to Jack. That ship had sailed a long time ago, but Jack had once meant a lot to Will.

  His screen went dark, and slowly, Will lowered his arm and set the phone on the coffee table. What had he done? What had he agreed to? Nothing but a meeting, really no big deal. He had even outright told Jack that he shouldn’t get his hopes up. Never, not in a million years, would there ever be even the faintest chance of Will taking Jack back.

  Did Jack even want that, though? Will shook his head as he wandered into the kitchen, starting some coffee brewing, just for something to do with his hands. Unfortunately, that didn’t help his mind, and it kept whirling, spinning around this problem, picking at it and trying to make it all somehow make sense.

  People didn’t just walk into his life after ten years, apologizing for the wrongs which had been done. It just didn’t happen. And honestly, it was probably better that way.

  Still, he would meet with Jack, in a public place, and he would hear what he had to say. Then, he would have the information that he needed, and he would have a talk with Stephen if Jack somehow managed to satisfy him that it was a good idea for him to take that risk.

  There wasn’t even a good chance of that, and Will started to calm himself down as he went through the familiar motions of putting in the filter, filling the appropriate places with ground coffee and water. Yes, he was calming down, though his hands were still shaking.

  Even the fact that he knew that there was nothing to be afraid of didn’t help him much. He had agreed to one meeting, and only one, and he would definitely not be stupid enough to go anywhere in private with Jack. He had well and thoroughly learned his lesson when it came to Jack.

  Still, he couldn’t help but remember one thing that he didn’t think had changed. Jack was good at getting his way. He was charming, and he could seem so damn sincere sometimes that it could break Will’s heart. Wasn’t it possible that that was exactly what was happening here? That he was being played, manipulated, by someone that he knew full well was damn good at that particular game?

  Yes, he was going to have to be very careful with this situation. Navigate it cautiously, but luckily, he had gotten a lot better at that in the past decade. If Jack did try to manipulate Will, then Jack would find it a fair bit more difficult than it had been the last time he’d tried.

  THIRTEEN

  The whole thing had been Sheila’s idea, of course. She seemed to itch for things to do, to help, for social time, and Judah couldn’t even deny that it was a good idea. He wanted, after all, for the church to be the center of the town, and that was going to be a lot easier to manage if he knew everyone and if they knew him.

  They were calling it a church potluck, but Judah was smart enough to know better. It was nothing more or less than a chance for the town, those of them who hadn’t already met him, to lay eyes on him and to make their decisions about him. It was a chance for him to prove himself, to show these people that he was worthy of the post he’d been given at such a young age.

  So no pressure or anything. It was just potentially his future in this town that was at stake.

  “I would really like it if you would be there,” Judah had admitted, just the day before, to Will. He had assumed before that Will wouldn’t want to come to a thing like this, but that was before the night that they had spent together. Will had been silent about it, hadn’t commented at all, and Judah had sort of resigned himself to the idea that Will was probably never going to come to a church event.

  Or maybe he would, Judah thought, as he let his eyes drift to where Stephen was hanging out with the other kids his age in the town, Ruby and Jesse. Surely even Will wouldn’t refuse to come and see Stephen in the Christmas play. No father could resist that.

  The church basement was filled with people, and the snack table was well attended. People were milling around, chattering, laughing, and Judah wasn’t necessarily the best judge of this sort of thing, but so far, at least, it seemed lik
e the get-together was a success.

  It seemed like a good chunk of the town had shown up, including, just as Sheila had obviously hoped, quite a few people that Judah had yet to meet. One couple, in particular, caught his eye, a very tall, fairly slender man with shaggy golden brown hair and a shorter, but stockier, man who stood by his side.

  They were holding hands, fingers linked as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and Judah found himself staring. The weird thing, though, was that no one else was staring. No one else—even among these people who would choose to come to a church get-together—had so much as blinked when they had walked in.

  If anything, they seemed to be quite popular, chatting and laughing as naturally as any of the other couples there. Judah had, he would have to admit, made his assumptions about what a small town in Texas would look like, and it shook him to see these two men.

  “That’s my brother, Sammy,” a deep voice said, and Judah turned to look up at a man who looked sort of familiar to him, a man with bright, round green eyes. It took him a moment to place the guy, and while Judah did that, the man was continuing to talk. “And that’s Gunner. His husband. You got a problem with that?”

  The words were not said in a particularly confrontational way, but they were a bit challenging, which was fair enough. This man was clearly pretty protective of his brother and wanted to make it clear that he wasn’t going to tolerate any disrespect toward him or his partner.

  “No,” Judah said, just as blunt as this man was. He had already told Will, and he would tell anyone else who asked. “I want this to be a place where everyone can feel safe and welcome.”

  The tall man’s shoulders relaxed a little, and a hint of a charming grin came over his face. Even though this man was well into middle age, he was definitely handsome, in a tall, broad sort of way.

  “Okay. Good. I’m Ben,” the guy introduced, and then, with that name, Judah had him placed. He was the man who had come to pick Ruby up, the one who had smiled but who had looked at him with thoughtful eyes. He remembered Sheila saying his name.

  “Ruby’s father,” Judah said, offering his hand, which disappeared into Ben’s big, strong grip.

  “Close enough,” Ben agreed, and before Judah had time to wonder just what that meant, another man walked up, his hand unerringly finding the small of Ben’s back, his smaller, more slender body inclining toward Ben.

  “Hello,” the newcomer commented, and Judah swallowed, somewhat out of his element, no doubt about it. This town wasn’t that big, and this wasn’t a state known for being particularly welcoming toward gay people. Was he reading the signs wrong?

  Before he could reply, before he could even open his mouth, Ben was leaning down and brushing his lips lightly over the other man’s, a sweet, intimate little kiss that really couldn’t be anything but what it was. No, he hadn’t read any signs wrong, which meant that there were, or seemed to be, already two gay couples in town.

  He really wouldn’t have expected that.

  “This is my husband, Isaac,” Ben introduced, and there was no doubt of the love, the devotion, in those big green eyes. And the way Isaac looked back at him, the way his eyes seemed to shine like twin sapphires, that pure, deep, sincere love was definitely returned.

  It felt a little bit strange to Judah, actually, witnessing this. Strange, but good. Even though there were probably different rules for these two than there were for him and Will, and even though he knew that Will didn’t even want what these two clearly had, he couldn’t help but feel a bit safer than he had even earlier today.

  “Hello, Isaac,” Judah murmured, and the smaller man turned to him and nodded, friendly enough. “Judah Daniels. Pastor Judah is fine.”

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Isaac said, and Judah nodded his acknowledgment of that. It was nice to meet them, both of them, and also nice to hear about Sam and Gunner. It was nice and more of a relief than he would have expected.

  “Judah?”

  The voice that met his ears then, he would have known anywhere. That smooth, sweet voice that could sound seductive enough to get his blood racing in seconds, or it could sound cold and reserved, as it so often did. But less often, Judah flattered himself, than it had before, at least with him.

  “Will.”

  It was everything Judah could do not to smile too brightly at the other man. Not to reach out and touch him, even. But the facts were the facts, and none of them had really changed, no matter that there were a surprising number of gay couples who seemed like they were completely accepted.

  Will did return the smile that Judah offered, but not like he might have hoped. The man seemed distracted by something, and Judah’s eyes narrowed as he tried his best to read Will’s handsome face.

  “Hey, Will,” Ben greeted, and Judah frowned a little bit. He knew that it was a small town, but how did Ben and Will know each other. Seconds later, though, he had his answer. Ruby. Ruby and Stephen were around the same age, so no doubt their parents would know each other.

  “Hello, Ben,” Will replied, and Judah took the chance, while they politely chattered, to examine the face of this man. The lips were tight, the eyes likewise, and there was clearly something very much on his mind.

  Was it Judah? He hadn’t really talked to Will since the morning sex. Will had fed him coffee when he woke up and then pretty much kicked him out, citing work. And there had been piles of marking around, so it had seemed likely enough to Judah.

  But school work couldn’t explain how Will was reacting to him now. How he seemed to be avoiding Judah’s eyes. Eventually, Isaac and Ben wandered off together, arms around each other, and that should have left Will and Judah alone. Only then Sheila came up to them both, chattering away, as was her habit, and when Judah next knew what was going on Will wasn’t by his side anymore.

  * * *

  Whatever was on Will’s mind, he wasn’t interested in talking to Judah about it. That was pretty clear early on, and at first, Judah was okay with just giving him his space. After all, Will had come to this event, and that had to mean something, right? If he gave him time, and space, Will would come talk to him.

  As the hours dragged on, nothing could seem to distract Judah from it, though. Every time he looked, Will was looking at him, and every time, those dark eyes dropped away the moment Judah let himself meet them. No amount of socializing could take Judah’s mind away from it, no matter how he tried to tell himself that he should. No matter how he chatted to the people of the town, no matter how aware he was that he needed to make a good impression, he was constantly seeking out Will, trying to catch his eye, and never having any success.

  It was like Will’s eyes were made of opaque glass. Even when Judah did manage to get a look at him, his gaze seemed to reflect, to glance, right off of the terrifying surface of those eyes.

  The strange thing was, it wasn’t like Will seemed to be having a particularly good time. If he had just gotten caught up in a conversation with someone, Judah would have understood that. But he was largely just standing around, only occasionally being approached by the townspeople. And when he was, he spoke to them only briefly, until they, wearing discouraged looks on their faces, withdrew.

  None of his business. He didn’t own Will. He and Will had been on exactly one date before, had slept together once, and just because it had meant something to Judah didn’t mean that it would to Will, too. After all, it had been Judah’s first time, not Will’s. And even at the time, when Judah had realized that he was quickly falling in love with Will, he had known that Will would be under no obligation to reciprocate.

  Only as he stood there, as people started to leave the church, full and happy, he found that he was able to accept this less and less. Will didn’t have to love him, but shouldn’t he at least not ignore him? It just wasn’t fair.

  As he watched, closer and closer to acting every moment, Stephen and Jesse came up to Will and spoke to him briefly. The boys left together, with Sheila trailing along behind them benevol
ently, and it seemed like a sign to Judah.

  Glancing around, he saw what he already knew to be true. People were filing out, and there were only a few left now. In a few moments, pretty much everyone would be gone, and as soon as Will came out of whatever funk he was in, he would realize it, too.

  That spurred Judah on. Soon, Will would be gone, and Judah had no idea when, or if, he would see the man again. He would have no idea why Will had come here at all when it seemed like he was miserable to be here. When Judah had seen him, he had thought, or maybe hoped, that Will was there for him, that it was something like a second date, but he wasn’t so sure about that anymore.

  “Will.” Judah approached him, seeking out those dark eyes, which were still glassy and impenetrable. No matter how much Judah tried to see into this man’s soul, he couldn’t.

  “What’s up, Judah?”

  That voice. It seemed cold, uncaring, or maybe just not focused. Judah had been thinking about very little else other than this man, and Will seemed to be utterly lost in his own world. Was it over so fast? Judah had known that it was doomed, but that didn’t mean he was resigned to it being over already.

  Just a while longer. Please.

  “I need to speak to you in my office,” Judah realized, because if they didn’t get somewhere private, Judah might just end up kissing him, trying to force a response out of him, right out here in the church basement. Most people had gone, but not everyone and that would surely get around town.

  For a moment, all Will did was just look at him, and Judah was sure that Will would turn him down flat. But then the other man gave a slight shrug and nodded, and when Judah turned to go up the stairs, with fingers tingling with the urge to touch the other man, Will followed.

  The moment that the office door was shut and prudently even locked behind them, Judah was flinging himself at Will, wrapping his arms around him and pushing him against the closed door, just with the weight of his body. His hands cupped Will’s hands like he could somehow hold him tightly enough to make Will feel something, anything, for him, too, and he let out a soft moan that was swallowed by Will’s lips as he kissed him with all of his emotion, unwelcome as he was sure it was, on his own lips.