The Foster Family

Readers Love Jaime Samms

Wings of Faith series

“The style of narration, the decadent word choices, and the atmospheric mood all combine to create a very powerful piece. It resonates with anguish and hope on every page.”

—Cameron D James

“
Angel Elegy
 is a beautifully gritty, well-written story of dark despair, hope, faith, forgiveness, and love.”

—Top 2 Bottom Reviews

Still Life

“I’d recommend this to everyone who enjoys a romance with a great deal of angst between two guys who need to be together. Thanks, Jaime, for another thought-provoking journey…”

—Rainbow Book Reviews

“If you’re looking for an engaging and realistic story about two people who are lucky enough to get a second chance and all that entails, then I think you will be pleasantly surprised with this story.”

—The Armchair Reader

By
J
AIME
S
AMMS

N
OVELS

Better

The Foster Family

Not As Easy As It Looks

Off Stage: Right

Stained Glass

N
OVELLAS

Angel Elegy

My Rugby-playing Twink

Renegade

Still Life

Published by
D
REAMSPINNER
P
RESS

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

Published by

Dreamspinner Press

5032 Capital Circle SW
Suite 2, PMB# 279
Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886

USA

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Foster Family

© 2014 Jaime Samms.

Cover Photo

© 2014 DWS Photography.

[email protected]

Cover Design

© 2014 Paul Richmond.

http://www.paulrichmondstudio.com

Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/.

ISBN: 978-1-62798-552-9

Digital ISBN: 978-1-62798-553-6

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

February 2014

To those readers who have always inspired me

to find new and exciting ideas.

S
O
I
crashed his celebration. It wasn’t like he didn’t want me there. Well. Okay, maybe he didn’t want me
there
there. On that night. At exactly that time. But he would have wanted me after. At the hotel. Or my place. Or hell, up against a convenient wall.

“Fucking bullshit, Kerry. You’re a jerk. A stupid, idiot jerk,” I said all under my breath to myself but got no argument. Because it was true. I was an idiot. How stupid could I be to come out here now, walk the beach, and talk to myself? Alone. Target practice for some punk to come and hit me over the head for fun.

That I’d ever decided the asshole in the party would admit anything about me and him in front of anyone, let alone the entire football team, was insanity. What idiot voice in my head had convinced me that just because he liked his dick up my ass meant he liked anything else about me? Two years of high school bullying should have been enough to get through even my thick-ass skull that a biology geek was utterly beneath him. And me actually
being
beneath him while he was unloading into a condom had nothing to do with anything, least of all me.

I’d made it to the boardwalk, but even here, couples who had snuck out of the party were so busy being romantic in the moonlight it made my teeth hurt. Veering to the left of the long wooden path as it meandered up the lighted slope, I headed for the darkness and the scent of the sea. Wrapped up in velvety black and the soft shushing of waves, I could pretend this was where I’d been headed all along. Eventually, the sounds of music and laughter faded. The soft slide of calm ocean over smooth sand filtered in to take their place.

The boardwalk rose in a series of steps and ramps to follow the edge of the bluff above my head as I skirted the base along the narrow strip of sand between ocean and rock. I knew it turned inland to join a network of paths through the park adjoining the golf club, and then, eventually, to the quiet streets of the expensive neighborhood along the bluff. Down here, though, it was just sand, surf, and quiet darkness.

“Stupid kid,” I muttered at the sand underfoot, unsure if I meant him, a year or three younger than me, or myself. I wasn’t really a kid anymore, but tonight, I felt like one. I lifted the mickey of Jack I was carrying to my lips and tipped my head back to drain the last drops from it. Sand shifted and almost spilled me on my ass for the effort. The bottle was dry. So what? Dropping it, I fished in my suit-jacket pocket for the second one I’d brought. One each was going to be enough to give us both a little buzz. But since he clearly didn’t want to share, now it was more than enough to obliterate the fact he’d not even bothered kicking me out of his party. He’d just ignored me.

“Shit.”

Dress shoes on beach sand didn’t make for firm footing. The plastic shrink-wrap sealing the mickey of scotch hated me and my bitten-to-the-quick nails that couldn’t get under it to rip it away. Andrew Shelton-Bishop was a spoiled, rich, football jock prom king, and so gorgeous it hurt to look at him straight on. And he’d picked
me
to be his first gay fuck.

Four years ago, Andrew, a ninth-grade nothing from my not-so-illustrious childhood neighborhood suddenly reappeared out of nowhere at my high school, tried out for and landed a first-string spot in our high school football team. After I’d moved to a new foster home when we were kids, he and I had lost touch. I didn’t know until I saw him again in high school that his mother had remarried rich. Thanks to stepdad’s football uniform donation and his own precious right arm, Andrew flew straight to the top of the social heap. By some cruel twinkle in a god’s eye somewhere, he set his mocking sights on me. I spent two years ducking his attentions, his taunts, and his friend’s elbows and fists, mostly unsuccessfully. Then, just when I thought I might escape by hiding out in the biology lab, my senior year turned to shit the day I turned eighteen. For the first time in my life, I’d landed in a decent foster home, and suddenly, I was too old to stay.

Really, I should have known, the moment Andrew stepped onto that field, that I was doomed. It had been the perfect cap to a miserable high school career.

Then, with perfect timing, just when I got my college legs under me after freshman year, got my life together and myself on my own two feet, he showed up again. He’d won a scholarship to the same college I attended and appeared one day in the library, begging for a campus tour. He appealed to our long-lost childhood friendship, assured me all the high school crap was over and done, and we should stick together. Because we knew one another. Andrew had been scouted as soon as he made the age cut and was now halfway across the country from everything he knew. He was scared. Or so he said.

And I had been dumb enough to believe him. That night, he screwed me silly, and every time after that, when he called and told me I was the only one he could really be with, I bent over. More fool me. My preoccupation with the high school jock who had made my high-school career a living torment drove my grades into the toilet and flunked me out of my future.

Then tonight, he’d looked at me across the dance floor, smirked, and walked off with Jenny fucking Schlaz… Schlazinhoff—whatever. Fucking prom queen from hell. He hadn’t left any of his all-American privilege behind. Not even his pretty, blonde, fake girlfriend who had tossed me a frightening, triumphant grin over Andrew’s shoulder as he led her off. The college threw him a party for winning the game, and there she was, his beard, smirking at me, mean-eyed and spiteful. Nothing had changed.

Deftly enabled by the smooth underside of my dance shoes against the sand, I took an abrupt seat in the soft grit. The bottle dropped from my fingers—well, flew, really, since the sitting didn’t happen particularly gracefully and my arms pinwheeled just before I smacked down. I watched the bottle disappear into the night sky. A moment later, somewhere off to my right, the tinkle of broken glass reached me. So much for oblivion. I was stuck, halfway to nowhere. Again. I flopped onto my back, defeated.

“Fuck.”

Damp seaweed stink soaked into my suit pants. Probably served me right, having a soggy ass. Considering what lengths I’d gone to get it pounded the first time. Considering the idiocy of thinking, as it kept happening, that the situation had anything at all to do with me—that it might be a real, live relationship—I guess I deserved the seaweed soaking.

“My life sucks!” I shouted it up into the darkness after the bottle. The complaint fell back down around me in the same sprinkling of glittering shards. I covered my face with an arm, but it didn’t help. Virtual laceration was still bloody, even if I was the only one who knew I was bleeding out, alone in the dark, as I sank into alcohol-aided sleep.

F
UCKING
HELL
,
it was freaking cold. Matthew had been in my room again. He must have, the bastard. He liked coming in and opening all the fucking windows to “air the place out.” He’d even open the one right over my bed when he figured I was hungover or aching from a nighttime visit from Andrew. It must have rained all night this time, because I was soaked. “Worst. Fucking. Roommate. Ever. Goddamn hotshot grad student can fucking well buy me a new fucking mattress now.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone swear that much.”

“You think we should wake him?”

“What the fuck!” I jolted upright. Grit scraped against my palms. Light speared my eyeballs, and I shuffled back toward the cold wall. Only there was nothing there, and I tumbled onto my back again. Chill seeped up around my shoulders to swallow me.