by Mia Ashlinn
Both men’s deep growls and groans against each other’s mouths filled the desolate street, making them sound more animal than human. Katie-Anne’s voice seemed to change in correlation with theirs. As they sounded more feral, she sounded more breathy. “Landon, teach him a lesson. Show him that he can’t always be in control. Show him that he can’t always win. Sometimes, he needs to let go. He needs to own up to who he is and be the man we love, even if that means he is more like these people than he wants to be. Show him that he damn well needs us more than he needs to prove some stupid-ass point.”
Okay, it is time to stop this. Using more strength than necessary, Shane pulled his partner’s head backward. Their lips parted with a grunt from each of them. Panting, Shane bit into Landon’s bottom lip mercilessly, tugging it inside his own.
Landon slackened slightly, his breath coming out in short, choppy puffs. “You win, Shane. God, you win.” He closed his eyes and loosened his stronghold on Shane’s sweater. “You are stronger than me. You are more dominant than me. But I want to know something.”
This is not going to be good.
Landon sighed but never said a word. He went absolutely still and eerily quiet. After what felt like eons, he opened his eyes and stared straight at Shane. “Are you strong enough to surrender to me?”
Aghast, Shane barked, “What?”
“Now, Shane,” Katie-Anne murmured as she stepped back and away from him and Landon. “I’m sure he didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
Landon winced. “She’s right. That didn’t come out right. I don’t want you to submit your body to me. I want you to open yourself up to me in other ways. I want you to stop shutting me out.” Releasing Shane, Landon pushed himself away then turned and started pacing around in a circle, moving fast enough to make a stationary person dizzy. “Fuck, Shane. I was always your person. You told me everything, and you shared everything with me. You’ve done it for years but, now that we’re here, it’s gone. I can feel it. The moment we stepped off the plane, you changed. You shut me out and became something you’re not.”
“It’s not the same, I know,” Katie-Anne said softly, “but you are treating me like a stranger you just happen to be married to and fuck at night. You don’t talk, and you don’t share anything other than your dick. I can’t live like that. I’m not saying that I’ll leave because, at this point, I can’t. I’m just saying that we deserve more than you are giving and so do you, Shane. I’m proud of who we all are. We’ve all gone through hell to get to each other. Don’t send us back there. Don’t let these people and this town win.”
“I’m back in hell now,” Shane snapped. “Look around us.” He panned his hand from one end of the block to the other, indicating all of the places nearby. “This is my own personal hell.”
“I know, Shane,” she replied, “but it doesn’t have to be. You are choosing to let this place haunt you. You have to let it go.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Shane countered, repeating the exact words he’d said to Katie-Anne earlier when she’d practically begged for him to stop locking them out.
Landon cursed. “Fucking hell. Not again.”
Bending down, Katie-Anne removed her high heels with a sigh then walked over to a bench next to the street and plopped down. Placing her shoes on the seat beside her, she muttered, “It looks like we are going to be here a while. I might as well get comfortable.”
“Don’t worry about getting comfortable,” Landon told Katie-Anne. “We’re going home.”
Shane’s heart stopped, and Katie-Anne gasped. Home? They’re going home? Son of a motherfucking bitch. Unable to hold back his sarcasm, Shane sneered, “I thought love doesn’t run.”
Landon shook his head, obviously not going to rise to Shane’s bait. He walked over to Katie-Anne and swung her up into his big arms. “I’m not the one running away,” he said. “You are. And I did not say a damn thing about Serenity. I meant that we were going back to the room.”
Brushing a kiss to Katie-Anne’s forehead, Landon went on, “Unlike some people, I believe that my home is with you two. It’s not a town or an apartment. It’s with you.”
Shane put his hand out to stop Landon, but his partner shook it off. His rejection hurt far more than he wanted to admit right now. With the tension this high, he preferred to not ratchet it up anymore without a pretty damn good reason. Although, he figured Landon would provide a reason soon enough.
“No,” Landon said coldly. “You need to think long and hard about a lot of things before we continue this conversation. I think it’s time for you to take a few steps back before we all get in any deeper. Katie-Anne and I have said we won’t run, and we won’t. But we cannot make you stay. We can’t force you to let us in.”
A sob filtered through the air around them, the sound so forlorn that Shane wanted to cry along with her. But he couldn’t, and he wouldn’t.
Turning away, Shane ignored Landon’s shushes, his loving whispers, and his unconditional comforting. He couldn’t bear to witness it right now, not like this.
“It’s okay, kitten,” Landon crooned. “We’re leaving.”
Leaving, leaving, leaving. The words tore at his heart, and he could barely breathe. The sudden urge to cry filled him, but he warded it off, refusing to shed even one tear. He had to be the strong one. His job was to take care of Landon and Katie-Anne, not the other way around. Isn’t that what got you into this mess with them? Isn’t that what they want? They want to take care of you.
With a sigh, Shane turned a deaf ear to his thoughts and said, “I’m not going anywhere.”
Landon eyeballed him in patent disbelief. In the past hour, his partner appeared to have aged at least ten years, and it was Shane’s fault. I should be fucking shot.
“Are you sure that you’re not going anywhere?” Landon asked before spinning around and giving Shane his back. “From where I’m standing, you’re already gone. When you find our husband, give us a call.”
Shane needed to punch something. He needed to destroy it, pulverize it. His temper demanded an outlet. Yet he stood there, rooted to the ground. “How can you say that?” he demanded, his voice sounding high-pitched and outright panicked, which only pissed him off more.
With a sigh, Landon started walking—away from him—with their woman nestled in his arms. Each step he took was more painful to Shane than the last. “I can say that,” Landon said, “because you are too busy running from your past to stay in one place with us. I can say that because you won’t let us in. You won’t let us run with you, if that is what you need. And you won’t let us stay with you, if that is what you want. I can say that because the man you are pretending to be is a selfish bastard who would use the people he loves as pawns to get what he wants. That is how I can say it.”
“I don’t get it,” Shane commented, only it wasn’t an offhand comment. It was pure venom. “This didn’t start until we got here. You two haven’t said a word.”
Landon paused mid-step. Without turning around, he said, “No, Shane. It started the day you left. It started when you were twelve. This garbage was inevitable. You have let everything in your life be dictated by what happened here. When you finally manage to get your life straight, you come back and let them fuck it up again. Tell me that I’m wrong about all of it. If you can, maybe I’ll believe you.”
Shane couldn’t say the words. He tried to force them out, even going as far as opening and shutting his mouth several times. But it didn’t work. Neither his voice box nor his brain supported his denial because Landon was right, too damn right.
Shane had wasted all these years, escaping something inescapable. Now he’d come full circle. Was he willing to piss away another twenty-four years on people he didn’t give a damn about in a place that he never visited?
“I’ll take that as your answer,” Landon told him then walked away, calling out, “We’ll be in the room, if you need us,” behind him.
Shane had no doubt they would be waiting for him
. They loved him, and they would stay. It was time that he owned up to himself and to them, and he needed to start by facing the past.
He’d always heard that the truth will set you free. “Well, we’ll see about that,” he muttered to himself in the deathly silent street. If he wanted the truth, he knew exactly where to start. Stalking through the darkness, he went to the place he’d sworn he’d never go again. He went to see his grandmother at the McCulloughs’ mansion.
Chapter 28
Shane couldn’t seem to drag in enough air to satisfy the burn in his lungs. The wood-paneled walls surrounding him on every side appeared to be shrinking. They crept in on him, causing claustrophobia to set in, even though he had never struggled with that particular phobia before.
The black-robed judge sitting at the bar adjacent to Shane’s seat on the witness stand spoke, but he didn’t hear him. The roaring in his ears drowned out the Honorable Judge Smithson as well as every other noise in the courtroom. He couldn’t hear the low hum of people whispering or the titters of people laughing nervously. Nothing touched his ears, and nothing touched his mind because he was trapped in the true memory of his father’s death.
While testifying, another repressed memory had sucked him in, and he’d remembered it all, every single gruesome detail. The last two weeks of nightmares and flashes of random memories had all fallen into place. His mother hadn’t murdered his father. His grandfather had, and he’d committed the murder in the exact way and manner that he’d confessed to. The people that he’d incriminated with his confession, Shane’s nanny and her police-officer boyfriend, had also been his accomplices, just as he’d claimed.
It had all been over drugs. His father and his mother had been trying to get clean for Shane’s sake, trying to give up the dealing and the using for a real family life. But his grandfather had been livid because he’d been the one behind the whole operation. That was how he maintained his substantial estate. Bastard.
“Thank you, Mr. Jacobs. You may step down,” the judge repeated, and this time Shane heard him.
Getting to his feet, Shane stepped down from the raised platform then skirted around the wooden wall that had closed him in the cramped witness box. He walked down the aisle and pushed through the swinging gate doors of the bar. When he spotted Landon and Katie-Anne standing at the back of the viewing gallery, his heart sped up. They came.
Shane shouldn’t be surprised that they had come to support him, but he was, probably because he hadn’t seen them since Saturday night. Nearly two days had passed him by as he faced the past, as he faced the people who had molded him into the person he’d become, despite his fight to the contrary. He’d called Landon and told him that he needed a couple of days, but he hadn’t told him why. He’d told him that so that he could do the grand gesture, only not for Katie-Anne but for Landon. She didn’t need a grand gesture nor did she want proof. But, for some reason, he had a feeling Landon did. Yet he wouldn’t ask. So here it was—Shane’s grand gesture for Landon.
Waving at the woman in the first row to follow him, Shane stalked toward his lovers, heedless to the people, the room, or anything else around him. He went straight up to Landon, putting them right up against each other, and trapped him against the wall. “Our woman might not need a damn grand gesture, but I think you do.” Without another word, or even a breath, Shane descended his lips and kissed Landon boldly.
Landon gasped, but Shane didn’t pause. He covered his partner’s intake of breath with a low groan. Mindlessly kissing Landon, he dropped his hands to Landon’s side, snaking them around his back. He pressed their bodies closer together then slanted his head to the side so he had better access to Landon’s mouth, voraciously continuing his demanding kiss.
A feminine cough came from behind them, and Shane cut their kiss short. Wow, this is embarrassing. He’d wanted to kiss Landon, not jump him in front of everyone, especially not in front of the woman who’d broken them up. But the moment their lips had touched, Shane had been lost.
Pulling back, Shane twisted around to peck a kiss to Katie-Anne’s lips. Then he turned and faced the woman behind him. “Hello, mother,” Shane said.
Two gasps came from each side of him, but he brushed them off. Slipping one arm around Katie-Anne’s waist and the other around Landon’s, Shane spoke again. “I would like you to meet my wife and my partner…” Trailing off, he realized that partner didn’t do Landon justice anymore. Shane amended his statement to, “I mean, my husband,” with what had to be a sheepish smile.
Gasps and whispers swept through the entire courtroom, but Shane didn’t care. This moment wasn’t about showing anyone in this room that he had a kinky side or, to them, a perverted side. The whole world knowing that he lived in a permanent ménage à trois meant nothing to him. This was about pride in his life, in his family, and in himself.
The petite, dark-haired woman in front of him smiled indulgently, obviously undaunted by his public announcement. Of course, he had prepared her for his grand gesture beforehand while they’d talked numerous times over the last two days. They’d talked about everything, and he’d learned more than he could have imagined about her, his father, their life together, and his childhood.
After ten minutes in his mother’s presence, he’d known that she hadn’t killed his father. She’d been a lot of things through her messed up life, but a murderer was not one of them.
Besides, she’d obviously loved his father. And, even though she hadn’t seen him in more than two decades, she loved Shane. It was undeniable in the way she’d sobbed when she saw him standing outside her hotel room. It was irrefutable in how she talked to him honestly about the best and worst parts of her life. And it was unquestionable in the way she held onto him as though he were a dream she feared she would wake from when he hugged her for the first time since childhood.
Everything wasn’t fixed with his mother, but they’d agreed it was time for mother and son to get to know each other. It was time to forget the past and see where the future took them.
“Oh, my fucking God,” Katie-Anne exclaimed. In surprise, he—and everyone around her—whipped around and stared. “You’re…”
“Deke’s personal assistant,” his mother, Sharon Scott, supplied.
Katie-Anne’s face paled, her mouth working furiously as it opened and shut then opened again. “But I know you.”
“Yes, my dear,” Sharon said. “I know you, too.”
“B–b–but,” Katie-Anne stammered, still looking unhinged by his mother’s appearance. “You live in Kinky. You live in Kansas.”
“I do,” Sharon agreed. “I moved there to be close to Shane when he was fifteen. It took me three years to gather enough courage to find him, and it took me another year after I moved to Kansas to approach Beth while he was away at a summer camp.” She sighed. “His foster mother was a lovely lady. She kept me updated on him until the day she died.” Tearing up, his mother looked up into the light, presumably to stop the tears from flowing. “I miss her.”
Katie-Anne reached into her purse and pulled out a tissue. Offering it to Sharon, she murmured, “Why don’t we talk outside.” Glancing around the room pointedly, she added, “We are the freak show in here.”
Sharon smiled. “I’d like that, dear.”
Smiling back at her, Katie-Anne looped her arm around Sharon then guided her out of the courtroom. Landon stayed behind with him. Neither of them talked for a moment, just stood in their own little, silent world. Finally, Landon muttered, “This doesn’t fix everything.”
“I know.”
“It’s a good start, though.”
Shane grinned. “Let’s go outside and talk to the ladies.”
Landon nodded. Instead of moving, he indicated that Shane should go ahead and murmured, “After you.”
“You just want to stare at my ass.”
“I do.”
Laughing, Shane shook his head then left the courtroom with his husband right behind him. As soon as the door opened, he spotted
the women chatting on a bench across the hallway. Walking across the marble flooring, his dress shoes squeaked loudly, but he ignored the annoying noise, his heart too happy to think of anything other than the two people with him and the budding relationship between him and his mother.
When he was in earshot, Shane heard his mother telling Katie-Anne, “After Shane went into the system, I nearly died from an intentional heroin overdose. See, I couldn’t bear the pain I’d caused. I couldn’t stand that I had lost my husband and my son because of my addiction. But God had other plans for me.”
Folding her hands in her lap, Sharon continued to recount the past, “When I got out of the hospital, I checked into a rehab facility and spent three months there. It was the worst time of my life, but it was the best, too. I felt freer than I had ever been by the time I left, and it was unbelievable.”
Stopping in front of the two women, Shane stood awkwardly while his mother told Katie-Anne all the things that she’d already told him. Landon approached Shane, sliding his arm possessively around his waist, and Shane smiled. Life is looking pretty fucking good.
Katie-Anne took Sharon’s hands in hers. “Why did you start working for Deke? Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”
Sharon blushed. “Deke hired me when Beth died. She’d requested on her deathbed that he give me a job so I still had someone to keep me connected with my son.” Tears filled his mother’s dark eyes. “My son.”
Sharon sniffled. “Anyway, Deke hated me at first, but, after a while, things improved. I guess I proved myself to him or something.” She laughed. “That man is insanely protective of the people he loves. When he and I became friends of sorts, he told me all about you. Beth had told me a little but not nearly enough. Then one day you showed up in town to see Deke, and you had this beautiful yellow sundress on and you were so nice to me. I just wanted get to know you better. I knew that if I told you who I was, I wouldn’t have had a chance.”
