Mine (25 page)

“Yeah, of course, but—”

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is that your mother just left without saying goodbye to Landry!” I shouted, upset for my boy and the rest of them. What the hell? “She didn’t go say goodbye to him or hug him or tell him she loved him! She just left! I can’t believe she just left!”

“Why?”

“Because she didn’t even see him after he was kidnapped! She didn’t squeeze the crap out of him and gush all over him and kiss and tell him she loved him!” I railed at him.

“But she’s been sick.”

“So the fuck what? If my mother was sick, it would not keep her from coming to the hospital and sitting at my bedside and holding my hand and being the second face after your brother’s that I saw when I woke up!”

“Why are you comparing your mother with mine? I don’t get that.”

I just stared at him.

“She is how she is, Trevan. You’re not gonna turn her into June Cleaver, you know? It’s not her. She loves us, and for now she’s gonna love us from Paris. Nothing’s stopping us from going to her, and we probably will at some point, maybe after New Year’s, but seriously, the whole hold your hand when you’re sick bit, that’s never been her. We had the nanny for that.”

I left him then, walked downstairs, stalked through the gardens, and finally came to the guest house I had shared with Landry. I packed all his things, checked everywhere, missed nothing, moving fast in my anger-spurred frenzy, and then slammed out through the door.

When I returned to the living room, having walked back up the same long stairs to the immense panoramic-view patio, I found Scott there as well. He was dressed for work, I assumed from his tailored suit.

“Are you coming to the hospital to say goodbye to Landry?”

“I am.” He smiled, taking the duffel bag from me, leaving me with Landry’s garment bag. “And I’ll drive. I paid for your cab.”

“Thank you, you didn’t have to do—”

“I know,” he assured me. “I have to pick up my father this morning. He stayed at a hotel last night while my mother was still here, but he can come home now that she’s gone.”

I nodded. “Are they going to charge him?”

“Yes. They’re charging him with obstruction and being an accessory either before the fact or after, I don’t remember. I mean, I don’t expect him to do any jail time. I expect many hours of community service.”

I didn’t doubt it. He was a pillar of the community. How did you put a pillar in jail?

“So I’ll see you at Thanksgiving, okay?”

My eyes flicked to his. “That would be great.”

He smiled suddenly. “I’ll be sure not to bring any women that want to sleep with you along. I know Landry found that annoying.”

I sighed deeply. “I’m sure that—”

“No excuses, let’s just forget it.”

But he had brought it up.

“And you won’t bring your father,” I said flatly.

“No Trevan, you’ll never see my father again.”

“That’s how it has to be. He and Landry, that’s not gonna happen.”

He nodded.“Agreed. Shall we go?”

I reached for Chris, and he stepped in close and hugged me tight.

“Thanks for everything, Trevan. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but it was for the best. We were all living a lie, we just didn’t know it. The truth was gonna come out sooner or later, and if it hadn’t been Landry, it would have been one of the rest of us.”

He was right. Brendan Arnold wanted money. It had been promised to him, and his father would have made good on his word eventually, but not in the timeframe that his illegitimate son was counting on. He had been holding out for something that was never coming, and had Landry never shown up, then it would have been Scott or Christian. Why Jocelyn wasn’t ever a consideration had come out the night before. She, apparently, had been the only one ever to give Brendan the time of day. He liked her, so he wasn’t ever going to kidnap her. It was amazing.

The whole thing had come to a head because of the money, yes, but also, it was simply too much to bear after a lifetime of being kept a secret. Brendan Arnold had needed to be recognized as Neil Carter’s son. I could only imagine what it must have been like to see your father right there in front of you but never be able to just run up to him and hug him without permission. It had to have been like a knife in his heart.

“Trev?”

I realized my mind had been drifting, and came back to the present, where Chris was standing there looking at me. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m gonna call Landry now, but I’m sorry, I just don’t think I can go back to the hospital. Are you pissed?”

“No,” I assured him. “You were there last night, all night, until the hospital staff kicked you out, just like Jo. You were there, I know you love him.”

He nodded. “I do, and I’ll see you at Thanksgiving, okay?”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

His smile was bright as I turned to Scott, who was standing with the front door open, ready to leave.

“I’m surprised,” I said as I walked beside him toward his black Jaguar, “that there weren’t reporters at the end of your drive when I got here.”

He grunted. “My father has friends in the district attorney’s office—he’s a generous campaign supporter—so the report of his arrest and arraignment wasn’t released until this morning. I suspect they’re going to start converging soon, and I have men meeting me at his hotel, and my assistant is taking care of security for the house and grounds as we speak. It’s probably best you and Landry are leaving today. It’s going to be a circus around here.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “Did you fuck the maid?”

I looked at his profile, saw the muscles in his jaw cord; he was more upset than he sounded. “No, but I’m still sorry.”

“I’m sorry Landry’s name will be included in the media dump.”

“It’s okay. If we see any reporters when we get home, I’m sure Landry will use it to his benefit from a marketing standpoint. Buy the kidnapped guy’s jewelry, you know?”

He chuckled and ended with a sigh. “I’m so sorry for all this,” he told me.

“Did you fuck the maid?” I threw back at him.

There was a snort of laughter and then a rare smile. “No, I didn’t either.”

“So see, neither of us is to blame.”

“No, we’re not,” he said as he turned at the end of the drive. We passed three news vans on the road.

“Excuse me while I make a call,” he said.

I listened as he spoke to his assistant, Candace, on speakerphone in his car and explained that they needed the security now. She assured him that they were on their way and she had already called Chris and told him that and advised him not to open the front door.

“Thank you,” he told her.

“Of course,” she said softly. “I’m at your father’s hotel in the lobby. I’ll see you soon.”

When he hung up, I told him that Candace sounded hot on the phone.

“She’s even better in person,” he informed me.

“And?”

He scowled. “She’s my assistant, and I, unlike my father, actually respect the people who work for me.”

I couldn’t argue with his logic.

At the hospital, I was happy to find Jocelyn already there, and, surprisingly, Hugh. Landry was talking to them, and when Scott came in, he lifted his arms for his brother. Up to that point, I had not thought that Landry and Scott were close, but the hug they shared said different. They spoke softly together, and I moved away, giving them their privacy as I faced Jocelyn.

“So.” She nodded, her eyes glistening with tears. “Thanksgiving.”

“Absolutely,” I said, reaching for her.

She hugged me tight, leaning heavily.

“Thank you for being here for Landry. Now that he and his father are done and with your mom basically bailing on him, you and Chris and Scott are all he has.”

“My mom didn’t bail on Landry, she left her life here. She’ll be back.”

They were all making excuses for her. “Its fine, like I said, he has you guys. It’s more than enough.”

“He doesn’t give a damn about us,” she told me.

“That’s not—”

“Yes it is.” She was adamant. “And you know it is. He cares about you, he loves you, I can see the difference, I’m not stupid. But if we work on him, if Chris and Scott and I show him that we’re constant, I think we can eventually change his mind. Don’t you?”

“I do.”

Her smile was huge.

After Scott left and Landry went into the bathroom to shower and change, Hugh went to get him and Jocelyn some coffee.

“So what’s with that?” I asked her, tipping my head after her husband.

“You know, I’m not sure,” she told me. “I called him last night when I got home just to warn him that he might have reporters skulking around his brother’s place where he’s been staying, and he just showed up back at our condo and we talked all night.”

“You did?”

“Yeah.” She smiled at me. “I thought that we were done, you know? I mean, we’ve never been…. I’ve always loved him, but I’ve never been in love with him like you are with Landry and he obviously is with you. We’ve always been buddies, but not—”

“Not honest.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, nodding.

“But now?”

“I don’t know. We talked two years’ worth in one night and then—” She paused and shrugged, blushing. “You know.”

“Oh.” I arched an eyebrow for her. “You guys worked it out, huh?”

“Oh God,” she moaned, face in her hands. “I mean, my mother’s life is falling apart and everything that happened and Landry and the kidnapping and this whole thing where I know we’re gonna be dragged through the mud, but… I mean….” She looked up at me. “He wants to trudge through it with me. How the hell do I deserve that?”

“Maybe you were looking for something Hugh wasn’t providing, with Marc?”

“But there’s no excuse for cheating.”

“No, but there’s reasons for cheating. You’re just supposed to tell the person you’re with before you act on them.”

She sighed deeply.

“Unless, you know, you’re a sex addict or something and need to seek professional help.”

She swatted my arm. “I am not a sex addict!”

“Well then, yeah, you fucked up, but maybe with some counseling, some forgiveness, some great make-up sex, you guys can get through this. If that’s what you want.”

“Ohmygod, I want,” she said, suddenly breathless. “I was so dispassionate at brunch that day, but the reality, once Hugh left, of him being gone—Jesus, Trevan, I didn’t know it was going to feel like that. I’m such an idiot.”

“Only if you don’t recognize the truth and only if you do nothing about it.”

She nodded furiously, and Hugh reappeared with coffee for the three of us.

“Awww, shit man, you’re a fuckin’ saint.”

He waggled his eyebrows at me before he put an arm around Jocelyn’s shoulders and drew her close to his side. “So, Thanksgiving, Jo says?”

“Yeah.” I nodded, watching her eyes fill. “Thanksgiving.”

W
HEN
it was just me and Landry again, later that afternoon, waiting for the doctor to release him, he put his hands on my face and looked into my eyes.

“What?”

“You know, I don’t need my family to love me; I have you and your family for that.”

“Yeah, but your mother—”

“You are the only one who loves me unconditionally; you’re it, and you can never stop.”

“Of course not,” I assured him, my voice bottoming out.

His smile made my stomach hurt.

I didn’t understand Cece Carter running away, taking a vacation like her family had not come apart at the seams, but Landry reminded me that as nice as she was, as warm, as kind, she was also the woman who had let him walk out of her life for eight years. She was not as emotionally invested in her children as my mother was in me or my sister.

“But that doesn’t make her a bad person,” he told me. “It just makes her different. You can’t judge her based on your mother.”

“This isn’t what you said when this all began,” I reminded him. “You said she didn’t care about you, didn’t love you, and that’s why you didn’t want to even come.”

“And I was wrong,” he confessed. “I forgot what she was like, and I blamed her and my father for the separation, but the truth was it was just as much my fault as it was theirs. You can’t get blood from a stone, you know? All my life, I was searching for more. I needed more, and I wasn’t even sure what that was before I met you. But now I know that what I needed was to feel love, to hear it, taste it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean your family—Jesus, Trevan, I get mauled every time there’s a get-together at your mom’s place. Your uncles make me sit by them, your aunts drag me into the kitchen and make me taste food, your cousins make me play baseball in the street or show me their new videogames or try and shock me with what they posted on their blogs. Your mother makes me play Escoba with them, and I’m still lost most of the time.”

I chuckled, my hands closing around his wrists, and stared into the gorgeous blue-green eyes that I loved.

“At your grandparents’ place, your aunts ask me to help in the kitchen, your grandmother sits and shows me her photo albums, and everyone includes me, and they’re loud about it, and they grab me and hug me… it’s amazing.”

I nodded. My family, on both sides, they all loved Landry Carter.

“I’m accepted and loved and no one gives a shit that I’m gay. The only thing they see when they look at me is Trevan’s partner. I’m the same as a wife or a husband. I’m just a part of the family to be loved and pushed around and told to get ice because no one else remembered to get it and we were the last ones there.”

I nodded, too choked up to speak. He loved me, he loved my family… what the hell else could I ask for?

“God!” he yelled suddenly, letting me go, hopping off the bed, starting to pace again. “Seriously! I want to go home!”

I went to the nurses’ station to find out if anyone knew when the doctor would be in. Landry was very close to just leaving. They promised they would page Dr. Han again.

He was fuming when I returned. “I have a life to get back to.”

And he did. He was overdue to be leaving. He had wanted to be out of Vegas that morning, Sunday morning. In his original timeline, he was supposed to be on a plane instead of sitting in a hospital room. What was worse was that he was being kept from going, and Landry caged was never a good thing. Since Detective Baylor had given us the okay to leave town, he wanted to bail.