by Jory Strong
“There’s no medical evidence that blue balls actually kills.”
“Ha ha. Very funny.”
She laughed, loved watching his sensuous mouth tip upward.
Their second stop was a bust.
Their third was a quaint postal place with a tea shop to the left and a curio shop with a front window full of figurines on the right.
“Double the bet?” Shane asked. “If this is it, you walk away with four hundred.”
She laughed. “Nope.”
Shane clucked like a chicken.
She rolled her eyes and grinned, couldn’t avoid noticing that when she was with him, life became a lot more fun.
“Not going to work,” she said.
Two middle-aged men who looked like tourists came out of the tea shop and claimed a wooden beach underneath a slim tree, sitting close enough to be a couple.
“I like this part of San Francisco,” she said. “Where are we?”
“Castro District, more commonly known as The Castro. Wonder if this says something about Bio-dad, or if it was the easiest place to get a box without leaving a trail.”
She got out of the Jeep, wondering the same thing. The Castro was famous for being the center of gay, bi, transgender and lesbian activity.
Did that mean Bio-dad was gay? Bi? Was he out, or living a lie, another case of desire denied, of dreams obliterated, like the broken drum sticks?
Was he saying this was another thing he had in common with her, besides the music? Or that he’d dug deeply enough into her life to know about Elijah, to have discovered that Eli was bi, though none of their classmates or bandmates or friends had known.
Elijah hadn’t been openly bisexual in Richmond. They’d met, they’d fallen in love, and as far as she knew, no one other than his immediate family knew that when he’d lived in Florida, he’d had a boyfriend, not a girlfriend.
Shane snagged her wrist, pulling her hand off the arm she’d been rubbing without being aware of doing it.
He entwined his fingers with hers. “You could always quit. End the bullshit and make him come to you. He must want to meet you pretty badly, otherwise he wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.”
She looked at him, warmth pouring into her from the press of their palms, from the concern in his eyes and the edge of anger in his voice on her behalf.
“Would you take that gamble?”
He huffed out a breath. “Probably not.”
“Then let’s see if you owe me another two hundred or if we’re even.”
His smile flashed. He reached for the door. “Last chance to raise the stakes.”
“Forget it. Besides, I’m sure there will be plenty of other chances to take your money.”
The guy manning the store was in his early twenties, dark-haired and wearing a leather vest with no shirt beneath it. He looked up from a newspaper spread out on the counter. “Help you?”
The boxes were set in a wall to the right. Madison scanned the numbers as they walked past them, nothing even close to 2903.
She pulled her driver’s license out and showed it to him. “This is going to sound strange, but do you have a box rented under my name?”
He reached for the license. “You mind?”
She released it and he moved to a computer. Tapped on the keyboard.
The sudden lift of his eyebrows kicked her heart rate up.
“And we’ve got a winner,” Shane murmured.
“Me.” Though the thrill of the two-hundred-dollar win against Shane was overwhelmed by the anticipation of what Bio-dad had left for her.
The clerk moved out of sight behind a partial wall, then returned to the counter offering a key and her license.
She took both.
He said, “Box one-fifteen. Bottom row, far right.”
She pocketed the license. “Were there any other names besides mine?”
“Nope.”
“When was it rented?” Shane asked.
The clerk stepped to the computer. “Five months ago, almost to the day. Rental period is six months, paid in cash. Mind telling me what’s up?”
“Scavenger hunt,” Shane said.
“Cool.”
They moved to the wall of boxes, both of them crouching in front of number 115.
Madison slipped the key in, glanced at Shane. “What? No bet?”
He grinned. “Pass.”
She opened the box and pulled out an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven envelope curved to fit in the narrow space.
They took it outside. The gay couple was gone.
They claimed the bench in front of the tea shop, Shane asking, “Why wait five months?”
She paused in opening the envelope. “Maybe because he knew five months ago nothing he could offer would have made me leave Richmond.”
“Why?”
“Dad was still undergoing treatment for cancer.”
“The worried thoughts on the way to the first rental place,” Shane said, draping his arm along the back of the bench, his fingers playing with her hair. “He okay now?”
“As far as the doctors can tell.”
“What kind?”
“Lung. He was a heavy smoker.”
Guilt rose, thick and heavy and raw inside her throat. He’d managed to quit smoking when she’d been in kindergarten. He’d started again when she’d been hospitalized after the wreck. He’d only stopped for a second time when enough of her grief and self-destructive behavior had passed that he’d been able to get her interested in restoring the VW bus that’d come to be known as Myrtle.
Madison took a deep breath. She couldn’t undo the past, not any of it. All she could do was make good on the promises she’d made because of it.
She finished opening the envelope and tilted it so the contents dumped onto her lap.
A folded piece of paper was on top.
Shane groaned. “That’s going to be another clue.”
She unfolded the paper but didn’t bother concentrating on the words when she saw he was right.
She put it on the bench, anchored it with her thigh and picked up a check, flipping it over to see the amount.
Twenty-five thousand, written on the same San Francisco law firm account as the last one.
Shane whistled softly. “That makes forty-five total.”
A photograph now lay on top of the stack.
He reached over, flipped it and she was looking at a blonde-haired teen holding a baby.
Me?
Her heart fluttered and her skin tingled. She studied what she could see of a baby wrapped in a pink blanket, her hair little more than blonde fuzz, her eyes closed, one tiny hand grasping the blanket and holding it against her mouth.
“You with Bio-mom?” Shane asked.
“That’s what Bio-dad wants us to believe.”
But why would he lie?
She tore her gaze from the baby and studied the teen.
There was nothing in the girl’s face that she recognized in her own. Even the hair and skin tones were lighter. But that lack wasn’t what caused Madison’s stomach to tighten.
“She doesn’t look nineteen.” The age Bio-mom was supposed to have had her.
“Sixteen tops,” Shane said. “But she might just look younger. It happens. Does your family have any baby pictures?”
“No.” Of that she was absolutely certain. Since she’d come home from Miami, they’d pulled out the old photographs, watched the old videos together.
Shane flipped the picture over then back again. “No date. Nothing to give the location away.”
It could have been taken in a house, an apartment, even a storeroom. The background consisted of a wall with dull white paint.
Madison turned the last item over. Her eyes drawn instantly to the thick, bold, red lettering stamped in the center. FORGERY.
“Oh shit,” Shane said. “I take it Bio-mom’s name is supposed to be Suzanne Turner?”
Madison’s gaze jerked to the top of the page, to what was supposed to be her original birth c
ertificate, the one Bio-mom had provided as part of the legal documentation, as part of the proof of who she was, of who Bio-mom was supposed to be.
FORGERY.
That couldn’t be right.
If this birth certificate was a forgery, then it would mean the woman who gave her up for adoption wasn’t the same one who’d given birth to her.
Madison’s heart thundered in her ears, the beat so hard and loud she felt light-headed. Because that’s exactly what Bio-dad was telling her with the document and the picture of a girl who looked sixteen, not nineteen.
Shane crowded closer. The arm along the back of the bench shifted so it lay across her shoulders, his hand rubbing her upper arm.
“We can figure this out. Maybe Bio-dad has it wrong. Fuck, maybe there is no Bio-dad. Maybe whoever is behind this is some twisted fucker who saw you play in Miami and became obsessed to the point of trying to find a way to insert himself into your life.”
She didn’t believe that. She didn’t think Shane did either.
Her stomach roiled. She swallowed down the urge to hurl.
Shane rubbed his cheek against hers. “You’re forty-five grand ahead. You could walk away from this right now.”
“I don’t think I can.”
He caught a lock of her hair. “You said your parents never met Bio-mom. But their friend did. Does she still work for the lawyer?”
“I’m not sure.”
“If you can make contact, you can send her the picture. If she can’t remember what the girl who surrendered you looked like, there’ll be photos in your file. She can compare them to this one.”
Madison felt as though her heart was caught in a tightening fist. As if her lungs couldn’t hold air.
She didn’t want to risk this getting back to her parents before she could talk to them about it. She didn’t want to risk there being legal ramifications, though she would absolutely never believe her parents knowingly adopted a child who’d been—what? Sold? Stolen? Given away?
“Not yet,” she said.
His eyes met hers. Probed. Worried over this revelation.
“I’m good. I can deal with this.” It helped that she had a solid belief in her parents. They hadn’t been a part of anything illegal.
“What do you want to do?” he asked, the tone of his voice saying, Your call. No pressure.
What did she want to do?
Chapter Six
It was easier to come up with what didn’t she want to do.
She didn’t want to hurt her parents.
She didn’t want to worry them.
But she also didn’t want to quit without discovering the truth.
What if another family still grieved over her disappearance? What if finding Bio-dad meant healing that wound?
But if that was the case, that’d make him a total asshole for not coming forward, for not telling them where she was—except maybe he was protecting her.
Maybe he hadn’t wanted them to show up while her father was battling cancer. Or maybe there was no one who missed her, maybe he was doing her a favor—
Or maybe she was going to drive herself crazy with possibilities when she couldn’t know, wouldn’t know until she had answers instead of an endless string of questions.
Madison tugged the clue out from beneath her thigh. It read: The way forward remains two steps into the future and five steps away from it. Blanketing clouds obliterate and fog the fruitful promise that will one day turn golden. Time spent with T and E and J is haze and rain, though beneath the soil there is unseen growth, a seed that refuses to wither and die, to be strangled by oak roots and obligation though it has not yet escaped the darkness.
The words felt as though they passed through her eyeballs and disappeared, obliterated in a different kind of fog.
She knew she should concentrate on figuring out what they meant. She couldn’t.
She wanted to act, to do something that was her idea, her choice, not Bio-dad’s.
“Let’s go back to Oakhurst Prep,” she said. “Let’s see if someone recognizes the girl in the picture or if she’s pictured in a yearbook.” It wouldn’t cost them that much time and she’d feel better, freer.
“Worth doing. If she’s really closer to sixteen than nineteen, there’s a stronger chance of her being one of Bio-dad’s classmates.”
“Do you think he’s always known where I was?”
“Odds are in favor of it.”
She wet her lips. “Why’d she wait until I was two to get rid of me?”
“Mad.” He touched his forehead to hers. “You can’t let this screw you up. Would you rather she hadn’t given you up?”
“No.”
“So don’t spin it like you were somehow unlovable.”
He gave her a hard kiss then said, “Maybe her family kicked her out and she had to make it on her own. Could be that it took her two years to figure out how tough that is when you’re a teen mother. We’re talking about people with a lot of money, about a girl who might have been accustomed to living the good life and who decided she’d rather get back into her family’s good graces. And if not that kind of girl, then one who finally accepted a life-changing offer of money. Either way, easy enough to arrange for forged documents and a trail that doesn’t lead back to the bio-parents.”
Ache blossomed in Madison’s heart, at war with her rational mind.
“We’ll get to the end of this and you’ll have answers,” he said. “You are definitely not unwanted. You know that right?”
“Yeah, I know that.” And she did.
There was video footage of the day she’d arrived at the pale yellow Cape Cod owned by Pete and Lara York. She didn’t have to close her eyes to remember the expressions on their faces, the love and joy, the fierce commitment to be her parents that had never wavered.
She swallowed against a throat tight with emotion—not feelings of abandonment linked to a girl she didn’t remember, but by the montage of images that followed what had been day one as Madison York.
She had parents who loved her. She had parents she loved.
Madison tucked everything back into the envelope then pulled out her cell, restoring order to her life by searching for bank locations so she could walk the deposit in, so the money would be there to help her parents.
Showing the screen to Shane, she said, “We’re close, right?”
“A few blocks.”
He stood, his fingers entwined with hers and keeping the chaos from returning to fill her head. She wasn’t alone. She didn’t have to deal with Bio-dad’s quest and his revelations alone. She had Shane. And Tyler.
“This way,” Shane said, leading her past glass-fronted shops doing plenty of business, though she couldn’t always tell the tourists from the locals.
Gay couples. Lesbian couples. Straight couples. She felt at home in The Castro. Could easily imagine herself partying there with Shane and Tyler.
They turned a corner and had to veer to the left to avoid slamming into a pair of model-gorgeous men in an ass-grabbing, crotch-grinding clench.
Heat flared between her legs, a further distraction from the birth certificate and picture, and she welcomed it.
She glanced at Shane, but couldn’t get a read on whether seeing two guys together turned him on or turned him off.
Ask him directly?
The feelings she’d had in the Jeep returned in a rush, and she didn’t dare. If he answered yes, it’d only make returning to Richmond, and later, the life she’d led in Miami, even harder.
But she couldn’t completely leave it alone.
“My first serious boyfriend was bi. Elijah and I used to look at gay magazines and manga together.”
Shane startled, not visibly, but she felt it through her palm. And that made it impossible not to add, “When I first saw Tyler, I thought he could have stepped off a page of gay manga.”
Shane nearly choked on the sudden panic. What the fuck am I supposed to say to that?
He fought the impulse
to jerk his hand from hers, afraid his heart was pounding so hard that it was pumping the truth into her where their palms touched.
Had she guessed at the fantasies that’d pretty much been raging through both the big head and the little one since he met her?
Was she telling him she thought Tyler was bi?
They passed a shop with plenty of leather in the window. Vests. Cuffs. Floggers. Crops.
A couple of ball-gags.
He might as well have had one of those stuffed into his mouth. He couldn’t bring himself to ask her if that was her read on Tyler. He wouldn’t be able to pull off casual, wasn’t sure he wouldn’t reveal his own desperation.
Believing that Madison was meant for him, that the three of them were meant to be together, didn’t make it easier to reveal something no one he cared about knew. Once that truth was out, there’d be no taking it back. Once he’d acted on that truth—assuming Tyler was interested, at least in doing it with him because of Madison—there’d be no hiding it, not from a family that picked up on tells as easily as other people took in spoon-fed news.
He felt suddenly overheated, his T sticking to his skin. It was a measure of how mentally fucked he was that he’d been telling himself there’d actually be a choice as to whether or not he’d come out as bi.
If he acted on the desire for Tyler. If, then his brothers, his cousins, his parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents would all figure out what was going on—despite how hard he and Tyler pretended the relationship with Madison was like Dante and Benito sharing Calista, or Quade and Lucca sharing Kiera, or Mace and Cade sharing Grace.
Entering the bank, Shane let her hand go so she could deal with making the deposit.
He felt like banging his head against the counter, not that it’d provide clarity. He was pretty much fucked when it came to Tyler.
Right now the real danger would be getting naked with Madison at the same time Tyler was. As long as he avoided that situation, he’d be golden.
She finished her transaction.
He snagged her hand, liked the feel of it in his. “Ready to go back to high school?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Unlike the night before, Oakhurst Preparatory wasn’t silent or empty. And unlike the night before, arrangements hadn’t been made to make getting in and getting what they were looking for easy.
