Beyond Complicated (17 page)

He needed you and you weren't here."

"How do you know?" I couldn't stop the doubts I had bubbling in my brain. "How do you know he needed me? I was never part of his life before. Just a weekend—not even a weekend—Saturday morning to Sunday before dark. And those days were resented. I was just some guy he had to spend time with. He doesn't even think of me as his father. So, okay, maybe that's fine. Maybe… why does Declan look more like me than Kel does? Grace doesn't have our coloring but I see you in her and you aren't realy as dark as I am, but Declan looks more like me than he does Greg. Kel doesn't look a thing like us. I don't see anything of me in him. But I see Greg in Declan despite his black hair and eyes."

"I've wondered. I know the medical stuff and al but I didn't think you wondered. Did she lie? Hel, I wouldn't put it past her, because Sabrina is and always has been a drunk whore. She sleeps around on Ken now. Of course, so does he. Hel, I'm surprised any of those kids are his. They al look like her so it's hard to say. White trash trailer park is what those two are. Or should be. Would be if it hadn't been for you. Damn, Liam. Why are we talking about them? Kel is a great kid. He loves you. He made it through his teens without any real problems, which is more than you can say." I'd never heard her so angry.

"I didn't know you kept up with the Joneses?" I tried to joke it off, I tried to pretend that this was al just a normal conversation and it wasn't Kel who'd kept me awake al night. That it wasn't Kel who probably just became the greatest lay of my life. Oh, Jesus Christ on a raft.

"It's not hard to hear the gossip. We run in different circles but she stil lives in the neighborhood.

Her kids go to the same schools we went to and Deak and Grace are going to. People cal her my sister-in-law when I say I'm Kel's aunt. Nah, just the baby daddy's sister. Okay, I have never said that. People know. They don't think bad of you. They did the math. You were a kid and she was a scheming whore trying to make Kenny Jones jealous. And he didn't give a shit and joined the Navy. Probably to escape her. Damn, her boobs are fake as hel, and she smokes so much. I hope like hel I don't look that old when I'm forty."

"Not a chance," I said trying to forget she'd caled her son Deak and I just wanted to stop thinking about al the horrible things I've done or had done to me and just be at peace. Some sort of peace that wasn't sitting behind a desk at a job I hated and pretending I liked hearing about the perfect lives of coworkers while dodging the unwanted attention of the twink
du jour
.

"We have great genes. We wil look thirty when we're sixty. Just look at Da. He's sixty-nine and stil has a head ful of black hair."

"And a bottle of Grecian Formula hidden in his bathroom. He thinks I don't know. He's not fooling anyone." She ran her hand through my hair, playing with my curls much as Kel had the night before and I shivered. "But you don't. This is real. No dye jobs for you. And your face." She caught my chin in her hand and turned me to look at her. "So goddamned gorgeous. You broke a lot of girl's hearts when you came out."

"I never actualy came out. Ken outed me, remember? In the mal. And my friend Brandon couldn't keep his mouth shut. Doesn't matter. I caught a lot of men because of this face."

"Oh, hel, Liam, I so do not need to know that you were a man slut." Moira looked pained and for a second I thought maybe it was the baby but it was me and my messed up life that had her nearly in tears. "I just want to see you happy. You haven't been happy.

Ever, realy, that I can remember."

I sighed just as a big bundle of slobbery dog barreled into the room and into my lap. "Oof. Damn, Bertha, but you are fast," I said, happy to find a reason to put the conversation aside before she had Seth and me married and looking for kids to adopt. I didn't want kids. Or marriage. Or happily ever after. I just wanted not sucky. Just sex and a life that didn't suck with a past that I had to keep secret. But I couldn't even have that much. "I'm happy. About as happy as I'm ever going to be. I guess. You want some lunch or something?"

I saw her bely jump as she contemplated me and the dog, her eyes sad. "You said the magic words and baby Sean in here starts going nuts."

"Okay, I can manage lunch." I rubbed the dog's head, aware that she was looking up at me with these liquid brown puppy eyes, begging me to fal in love with her and that's when I remembered. The combination of lunch and in love which triggered the scene in the kitchen this morning to come racing through my brain and I couldn't breathe. Kissing Kel, making a lunch date. Kissing him again. Tasting his tongue. And wanting to take him back to bed and do things to him—

"Liam? Liam? Hey, are you al right? You went al pale on me. What's going on?" Moira was snapping her fingers in front of my face when I remembered I wasn't alone. Shame washed over me and I pushed the dog out of my lap and scrambled to my feet.

"Nothing. I promised Kel I'd meet him for lunch. I should go text him to cancel." I checked the time, just before eleven. Kel would stil be in class. I sent off a quick message and was just tucking my phone in my pocket when it rang.

"Hey," I answered, dreading what he would say.

"What's going on? I thought we were having lunch or meeting for—" Kel sounded upset like he was running.

"I'm over at Moira's, she's having a crisis. Think we can do this later? Are you running? You sound winded."

"I am not having a crisis, I'm just pregnant and outnumbered," Moira shouted over Kel's reply.

"Sorry, ba—Kel, didn't hear you. Crazy sisters.

You understand." I nearly caled him baby, god fucking damn, right in front of my sister.

"Yeah, sorta, I was just headed back home.

Thought about surprising you, I was hoping to find you stil in bed and I was going to lick you until you came." I could hear traffic around him, the sound drowned out by the rush of my blood racing behind my ears. "Sorta couldn't stop thinking about you." Holy fucking hel.

"Want you inside me, Liam. Are you there?"

"I'm here, can we talk about that later?" I hope I sounded normal. I tingled with arousal. His voice so low on the phone, why did I never notice how sexy he sounded? Fuck, shit. I wanted to drive home and strip him down and do al kinds of dirty things to him against the front door. Over the kitchen counter. Against the refrigerator. On the kitchen floor. "Kel. Fine. So here, talk to your aunt while I go see what she has to eat." I heard him chuckle as I handed the phone to Moira.

"Hey, baby boy, I haven't heard from you in a long time. How's my sweet Kel doing?" I left her smiling at my phone while I went into the kitchen and stuck my head in the freezer. The dog hot on my trail. I could hear her droning on in the background while the kids played outside with the dog toy and I tried to keep it together. I wasn't seriously wanting to go home to molest my son. Holy fucking hel. I was a sick, sick man. "Why don't you drive out here for lunch?" I tuned back in at those words, my heart ratcheting up a few notches. "Come on, Kel, Deak and Grace would love to see you and you're about halfway here already.

Come on. I've got Liam waiting on me hand and foot and I think the dog is in love with him."

Kids and damned dogs, what did I smel like, sausage? Wait, don't answer that. I closed the freezer and went to the phone on the wal, scanned the list for the nearest pizza place and dialed. Cheese and pepperoni for the kids, a veggie lovers for Moira, and I escaped to the bathroom to puke my guts up. "Kel's coming for lunch," Moira shouted as I sat on the floor, wishing I had something in my stomach to actualy puke.

But I'd scraped my breakfast in the trash that morning.

And al I heard was Kel's coming and I knew what that sounded like and tasted like and I died inside.

I must have caught the pizza place at the exact right time because the delivery guy was just leaving when Kel's rumbling beast of a motorcycle puled into the drive. The delivery driver stopped to admire the paint job, which I hadn't seen yet and he and Kel did that fist bump thing before he walked away. I stood in the door waiting for him to come inside. He walked toward me with a sexy smile that I hoped no one would think anything of. His beautiful blond hair windblown and wild and I wanted to sink my hands deep… I choked down a groan just as the kids raced past me yeling his name. The dog almost made it but I grabbed her colar, her happy barks turning to whines. "Whoa Bertha, not you, come back here." I dragged her through the house to the kitchen with my crazy sister laughing the whole time.

"You could get up and help. This is your mess after al," I growled as I closed the latch on the huge cage in the laundry room.

"Not on your life. I'm enjoying this way too much. Bring me about three slices and a Coke. Hey my beauty, look at you? Damn, Kelton you get prettier every time I see you. And look at you al glowing and happy. The new boyfriend seems to agree with you." I heard my sister say in a happy voice.

"Hey, Mo." He paused for hugs and a moment of smal talk. "And you need to stop reading my Facebook. Most of that is BS."

"Wel, whatever, something has you glowing and that can't be bad. Look at you blush. I swear between you and Liam and new love—"

"Uh, where is Liam?" I heard a moment of panic in his voice, the same that raced through my veins probably. How could she possibly know? "Do you need me to get anything for you?"

"Nah, go on out to the kitchen see the brother/dad and you two get off Kel and go wash the dog off your hands."

I heard lots of mumblings and grumblings from my perch by the sink where I was drying my hands from my own bout with the she hulk then thundering hooves folowed by "and don't forget my soda, if I have to lie here al day with my feet in the air, I deserve at least one Coke."

And then he was in the kitchen and I couldn't breathe and his arms were around me and I couldn't stop breathing fast. His mouth touched mine, my eyes closed, and god he tasted so fucking sweet. His tongue teased me. Once, twice, folowed by a soft moan. "If you were at home."

"Yeah," I agreed. I didn't know what the hel I was agreeing to. If I were at home, we could do this until he had to leave. I wished I was home. I wished my heart wasn't about to pound out of my chest. I wished he wasn't so damned beautiful. "Where's your damned helmet? Seriously, Kel, don't make me take the bike away."

"You can try, old man," he said with a huge smile on his face but he took the hint and stepped away.

He tugged his jacket down to cover the erection I'd felt push against me and I turned to the sink under the guise of looking for glasses to hide mine.

"Mo, where the hel do you keep your glasses?"

I shouted over the thundering in my ears.

We sat on the floor in the living room and had a pizza picnic around my swolen and grumpy sister. The younger kids told Kel al about their new school year and Declan couldn't stop raging about footbal and how they usualy have Saturday games but not today and Kel should come next week before they came back to the house for Grace's boring old girl party. And Grace, for her part, climbed into my lap to be cuddled.

"Hey, that's my lap," Kel scolded his much younger cousin, playing with her for my attention.

"My uncle Li-Li, get your own." Grace pouted, but Kel tickled her until she laughed and kicked and squirmed.

"He is mine," was said with an undertone that only I understood. Or thought I understood. "I'm older than you and he was my Li-Li first."

"Nu-huh, Uncle Liam, tel Kel you're mine and that I love you best."

"I love him best."

"He's mine."

"Okay fine, if you take my Li-Li then I'm going to take your Mo-Mo. Because she was mine first too."

Kel poked the little girl in the arm as he looked pointedly at me and winked which I felt al the way to my dick. Grace had to get up now or… Kel crawling slowly across the floor toward Moira, who was laughing as he chalenged the kid, solved that problem.

And then Kel had a bigger problem. A forty-pound princess, who thought he was a pony, on his back.

During al the play, I heard Kel's phone buzz many times but he ignored the summons for the hour he was able to stay. Lunch over, roughhousing over, which eventualy included the dog who the kids were now caling Bertha. Poor dog. But at least it solved the name issue. "Can we get a dog?" Kel asked seriously, which caused Moira's eyebrow to lift in question. "I'm moving into Liam's spare room until the end of the semester."

Kel noticed and supplied with a shrug as if it hadn't happened yet and was no big deal. "It's part of that complicated thing. Can't stay in the dorm, can't go home, so whatcha gonna do?"

"Wel, good. I'm glad. Liam needs you around.

Whether the two of you know it or not. It's good to have each other."

Kel cleared his throat, and I noticed the color seep into his cheeks as he glanced my way. His pocket buzzed again he ignored it again and walked around the room on his hands and knees playing the good pony while Declan and Bertha folowed him, nipping and neighing. I couldn't help watching as my little family interacted, wishing with al my heart he'd been more a part of this than he was. And wondering how he got along with his real family which reminded me. "Are you going to meet Kacey and Kim today?"