by Amy Lane
“Mm….” Couldn’t argue with that. Dustin kissed his forehead again. “Well, I wish we’d known. I could have picked you up at the airport at the very least.” Dustin chuckled. “And saved you the show until you were ready.”
Quinlan let out a small puff of air. “I didn’t get that good a look,” he said, smiling faintly.
Dustin nodded, completely serious. “So you’re going to want to look again, right?”
Quinlan closed his eyes and rolled on his side toward Dustin. “The selfies were really nice,” he whispered. “As romantic gestures go, that’s a good move.”
“Thanks.” Dustin clasped his hand and rubbed the back gently with his thumb. The skin was dry, dry and papery, moving over the flesh beneath like it could disintegrate at any moment. “But you’re the only person I want to use it on. You’ll have to get better so I can use it on you some more.”
“Where is this going?” Quinlan asked, and he sounded so exhausted, Dustin knew he never would have gotten to that question without the stomach flu. “The selfies were great, and… and I’ve always cared about you, but—”
“You care about me like family,” Dustin said patiently. “You’re going to care about me like a mate. A helper, or a husband, or a soul mate. You need to find that switch in your head, Q—’cause I’m not going away.”
“I’d miss you,” Quinlan mumbled and then fell asleep.
“Oh, baby,” Dustin whispered. “Did you think I’d just go away?”
He wasn’t awake to answer, but Dustin knew. He’d practically given Dustin a roadmap to his damage that long-ago day in the car, parked under a shady tree, waiting for the little kids to get out of school.
Quinlan did believe love just went away—if it was there at all.
His father had kicked him out of the house—had tried to take away his inheritance. Dustin didn’t know how much money you had to have to make you that mean, but he imagined Uncle Channing and Uncle Tino could probably wipe the floor with Quinlan’s father, and they hadn’t gotten mean yet.
But Quinlan’s father had been mean—and knowing how the relationship ended, watching Quinlan living so carefully on the outskirts of his life while pouring all his care, all his permanence, into the children in Dustin’s family—Dustin had a pretty good idea how it had played out while Quinlan had been welcome at home.
There hadn’t been a lot of laughter in Quinlan’s home—he always looked surprised when the family laughed together. There hadn’t been a lot of hugs, because he seemed to treasure the ones he got. Whoever had cooked for him, it hadn’t been a mother who cared about what he ate or how much, because after seven years, he was still shy about Dustin’s mother’s nagging. After watching Quinlan conduct his two relationships in privacy and quiet, Dustin would bet that love or kindness or attachment hadn’t been very important in Quinlan’s world. Wouldn’t want anybody to know he had a personal life, right?
After watching him fall apart after Sammy was out of the woods, Dustin was pretty sure he was afraid of all strong emotion, the good and the bad.
All Quinlan’s heart, all his emotion and attention, he’d poured into Dustin’s family, expecting nothing in return. Because anything in return could be taken away, and that terrified him.
He was the ice princess, locked in his frozen tower. He was the mute sibling to wild ducks, trying to make them human and allowing his life to be stripped away in the process.
Outside of Jacob Grayson, he was the kindest, most nurturing man Dustin had ever known.
Dustin knew exactly what he was getting in Quinlan. He was getting a father to the children they would adopt and a keeper of Dustin’s heart. He was getting a man who could make a home comfortable and warm.
And a hurt child who needed to know his world wouldn’t disintegrate if he walked through a different door.
“Have some faith in me, Q,” Dustin whispered. “I’m Jacob and Nica’s kid—I’m everything you’ve ever needed, I swear.”
Dustin stayed there on the bed for a while, listening to Quinlan’s breath labor in and out, until he heard the knock at the door.
Jacob got there first, and a stocky, cheerful, pink-faced EMT came in, a collapsible pole in one hand and an ice chest in the other.
Dustin showed him to Quinlan’s bedside, and in quick order he’d attached the IV, taken a blood sample, and quizzed a groggy Quinlan about his last treatment. When he was done, he packed up his ice chest and came over to talk to Dustin and Jacob.
“He’s going to need another one in a couple of hours—possibly another one after that. I took his temperature, and he’s still a little feverish, and while he’s not having trouble breathing, his energy is really low. I’m going to go run his bloodwork to make sure his kidneys are still functioning, and if he doesn’t improve by this evening, I’m calling an ambulance and admitting him. Any idea what got him so sick?”
Dustin shrugged. “A stomach bug in Kentucky, I think.”
“Bobbie texted while you were in there,” Dad said, surprising him. “Apparently the whole orchestra came down with it, but Q’s the only one who didn’t get better.”
“Yeah.” Dustin grimaced. “I asked him why he didn’t call us—he said he just wanted to be home.”
Jacob Grayson made a sound like he’d been hit. “God.”
“Yeah. Can’t even be mad at him.”
“You can’t, son. It’s my job to be a little pissed off.” Dad turned to the EMT. “So you’ll be back in time to change the bag?”
The EMT nodded. “Will somebody be here with him at night?”
“Yes,” they both said together, and Dustin caught the side-eye from his father and didn’t care.
“Good—I would have put in an order for a nurse otherwise. That was a good call, not moving him. It’s a scorcher out there, and exposure to all the bugs in the hospital when he’s this weak would be a bad thing.” A brief expression of compassion touched the man’s blocky, practical features. “Poor kid. I can’t imagine feeling that crappy and trying to get home from out of state. I put some antiemetics in his bag—hopefully his stomach will stop throwing everything back on general principle, okay?”
“God, I hope so,” Dustin said with feeling. “He didn’t have much to lose as it was.”
He got another one of those compassionate grimaces, and the guy tucked his portable ice chest under his arm and left.
Dustin closed the door and thought belatedly that he might want to put a shirt on. He was heading for the bedroom to do just that when another knock sounded at the door.
It was a super tall freaky-looking guy in a really pricey suit.
“Does Quinlan Gregory live here?” He had a long, narrow face with thinning blond hair and a lot of deep grooves in his forehead.
“No,” Dustin said, glancing at his father. “Who wants to know?”
“This is family business. I need him to sign some papers.” Reaching into his shiny patent-leather briefcase, Lurch—as Dustin thought of him—pulled out a manila folder. “Please give him these—”
“He said,” Jacob snapped, “Quinlan’s not here. Now give me your card, and I’ll have Mr. Gregory’s lawyer contact you, but if you try to hand me those papers without him here, I’ll throw them off the landing and you’ll be picking them up off our front yard. And then I’ll let the dog out while you’re doing that, because you don’t just drop papers in someone’s house when they’re not here.”
Lurch scowled, shoved the folder back in its slot in the briefcase, and pulled out a business card. “His lawyer,” he said skeptically.
“Yeah. Charles Wainscott. You know him?”
Apparently Lurch did, because his eyebrows went up an appreciative amount.
“I’ll let my party know,” he said before nodding regally and turning away. Dustin’s father slammed the door on his ass.
“Prick,” he muttered. “Dustin, go put a shirt on. I’ve got to call Tino and tell him we need his lawyer.”
“He’s a good lawyer, r
ight?” Dustin asked, because this guy reeked of the family Quinlan had so carefully not mentioned.
“Family law—he’s the one who handled all their adoptions,” Jacob said. Anybody else would have been surprised that Jacob would remember a detail like that—but Uncle Tino had been right about Dustin’s dad. He was one of the smartest people Dustin had ever met.
“Can we, uh… afford someone like that?” Dustin asked. He had savings—but he had plans for those savings too.
Jacob rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Dusty—do you really think Tino would let us pay so much as his retainer? Quinlan’s family. Shirt! Now!”
“Okay okay okay!”
Dustin let himself quietly back into Quinlan’s room, where he’d left his suitcase. Sure, with Quinlan he could remember he was a grown man, but one comment from his father and he was a little kid again. It wasn’t goddamned fair.
“That’s a shame,” Quinlan mumbled as Dustin pulled on his thinnest T-shirt. “But, you know. It’s tight, so that helps.”
Dustin grinned cheekily. “Yeah, I know. Chest is ripped. I like the gym, so sue me.”
Quinlan’s weak chuckle was his reward. “Shameless, Dusty. Shameless.”
Dustin sat softly on the bed next to him and wrapped his warm hand around Quin’s cold one, working hard not to jostle the tube from the IV. “You go too,” he said. “In the morning before the kids wake up.”
Quinlan hmmed. “Or running.”
“Yeah. You were a good object lesson. Better than PE class, right?”
“I had no idea.”
So self-deprecating. “You should have. How you feeling?”
“Tired. My stomach stopped cramping. That’s exciting.”
Dustin squeezed his hand. “We have to raise your bar for excitement.”
Quinlan smiled. “Not necessary. I… I miss hiking with you. That’s exciting enough for me.”
“We should go camping.” Dustin had equipment, but Quinlan was never available in the summer and not often in the spring. “Someday, when you’re not on tour, we’ll go. Or I’ll take you on spring break—the ocean would be great then.”
Quinlan nodded, and to his horror, Dustin saw helpless tears leaking out of the corner of his eyes. “What’s the matter? I’m supposed to be cheering you up.”
“Just….” Quinlan swallowed. “Sounds really good.”
“And you don’t believe it will happen,” Dustin murmured. “Okay, Q. I’ll forgive you for now. You’re thinking, ‘Hey, Dustin’s a nice kid, but I don’t think he can follow through.’ So you don’t want to imagine us camping, doing things together, being happy, because you’re pretty sure I’ll screw it up, and that will suck worse because you pictured the happy.”
“You’re not a screwup,” Quinlan muttered.
“No. I’m not. But you’re afraid. I get it. You spent a lot of years turning a garage apartment into a citadel to defend yourself from anything that threatened your balance. I threaten your balance, Q. No two ways about it.” He brushed another tear away. “But not now. Don’t worry about me now. Don’t worry about us. Worry about getting better. Worry about sleeping.” His phone, which had been tucked in the back pocket of the shorts he’d thrown on after Quinlan had walked in on him, began to buzz like an angry wasp’s nest. “Shit. Worry about what’s going to happen when my mom finds out you’ve been here and sick and nobody told her until right now.”
Quinlan groaned. “Your mom….”
“Is going to make you soup. It will be delicious, but somehow she’ll manage to make broth fattening. Be prepared.”
“I don’t want her to see me—”
Dustin stopped him with a quick kiss on the lips. “You’re not naked, baby. And she’s going to see you, because she’s seen all of us sick. That’s her job.”
Quinlan nodded, and more of those gut-wrenching helpless tears followed.
“Sh. Get some sleep. You and me, we’re going to talk more when they’re not threatening to cart you off to the hospital, okay?”
He sighed and turned his head away, but even sick, Dustin wasn’t going to let that slide. He grasped his chin gently and turned his head. “There are things about you I know for fact, Quinlan—like the sky is blue, and you love my family, and you are afraid of falling in love. And there are things I can guess at, like what the weather will be tomorrow and why you are so afraid of love. I am going to need you to fill me in on the stuff I’m guessing at some time when your throat isn’t crap from puking up half of Kentucky. You’re going to tell me. If you have to practice your speech in your head so it doesn’t hurt so bad, go ahead. Maybe it will give you something to do besides stress about my mom seeing you sick.”
“Sure.” But the tears didn’t stop.
Dustin sat with him until they did, and Quin fell asleep—then he checked his eternally buzzing phone.
He’d been right—the first chapter of texts was a sort of mom-screech about how could the entire family see him before she did and how could he have come home without telling them and why was he sick and what did the EMT say and was he going to the doctors and why would you do that to someone who just needed fluids and rest when it was 106 outside?
After that tapered off, she had simply resorted to one text, repeated.
When can I come?
Dad’s here now. Come talk to him. We’ll strategize.
What’s we? You work tomorrow—
Dustin added his father to the conversation.
Dad, can I have tomorrow off to take care of Quinlan?
Yeah—take the rest of the week. We’ll give the new guy more hours.
Thanks. Mom, we’ll strategize. I’m in on this.
There was a knock on the door, which meant his mother could walk and text better than Belinda or Melanie, which was fairly impressive.
Dustin slid back into the front room again, and Jacob opened the door.
She stood there, hair in a no-bullshit ponytail, wearing a tank top and yoga pants, phone in one hand, purse over her shoulder, and a bag of groceries in her other hand. “What in the fucking hell?”
Dustin’s dad kissed her cheek and took the grocery bag out of her hand. “Good to see you, my angel. Would you like to come in out of the heat and I’ll make you some ice water?”
“One of the things in that bag is a big jar of sun tea—mix it about one part to six. It’s got chamomile, spearmint, and rose hips in it, and it could pretty much cure anything, including aggressive dysentery with the super ninja amoebas.”
Jacob laughed and set the bag gingerly on the counter, where two large objects clunked. “Understood. And the other thing?”
“A thermos of strained beef and barley broth. It’s clear, but it should be hearty enough to help him put weight back on.” She set her purse and phone down, shook her hair out of her eyes, and glared at them. “Now why am I just hearing about this from his friend Bobbie? Hm? She told me she reached Jacob but wasn’t sure if I knew yet, and I thought, ‘No. If Quinlan was here and feeling like death, my husband and son would have told me and not locked him up in his room like a prisoner!’”
Jacob shrugged. “Dustin, you’re it.” Then he made the time-honored family thump-thump sound of someone getting thrown under the bus.
“Thanks, Dad.” Dustin rolled his eyes. “Because he got here, threw up, and I put him in the bathtub to wash him off and get his fever down. And I said, ‘I’m getting my mom,’ like the good son I am, and he said, ‘Please don’t let her see me like this.’ So we got him in bed and called the EMT first. So he didn’t look….” He swallowed, unable to joke about this. “Like microwaved death. When you see him. Like I said you were going to do.”
To his horror, her lower lip wobbled and her eyes grew bright.
Dustin looked helplessly at his father.
“Dad! Dad, do something!”
His father pulled her close and kissed her temple. “Babe, you always knew there was damage with this one. It’s one thing when your kids are mint in the box—you s
aid yourself, this one got taken out and thrown around a little, and there’s parts broken inside.”
“Why wouldn’t he want a mother?” she demanded. “I thought we were past this.”
Dustin and his father had a furious eyeball war then—Dustin wasn’t touching this with a barge pole. He had enough to do with Quinlan—he wasn’t telling his mom this one.
Jacob huffed and scowled, and Dustin scowled back and pointed.
Jacob rolled his eyes—but mostly because he’d lost.
“Because it was obviously pretty bad, babe. He’s going to need to hear it a couple of times.”
And then she started to cry in earnest.
“I don’t believe this,” Dustin muttered. He spied Quin’s luggage in the corner of the living room. “Mom, I’m going to go do his laundry, okay?”
And then he ran to the bathroom for the hamper.
The suitcase was a sad revelation. Some of the clothes had obviously been done via hotel laundry, but there were a couple of double-sealed plastic bags that would need to be washed on their own—with lots of bleach.
His performance outfit—a black shirt with black slacks—was beyond salvation.
Dustin passed his parents—still talking quietly—on the way downstairs, where the industrial-sized maximum-capacity washer and dryer sat in his father’s pin-neat and organized garage.
“Wait, Dusty—I’ll come down with you.”
Dustin nodded and followed his mother down, wondering what sort of parental interference this masked.
He didn’t have to wait for long to find out.
“So,” she said as he started to unload the laundry into the side of the machine, “if he’s okayed to spend the night, there’s still an extra bed in Conroy’s room, if you want to use it and get some sleep.”
“Nope.” He threw two little pods of soap in and reached for some bleach to put in the top.
“But I was going to take the couch so someone would be with him!”
“Sure.” Dustin put the bleach in the top thing and closed the lid, then started the cycle. “You’re welcome to do that.”
His mother put her hands on her hips. “Welcome?”
