The Love Series Complete Box Set (157 page)

Chapter 24 ~ Dylan

Chapter 25 ~ Conner

Part Three ~ Forever

Chapter 26 ~ Conner

Epilogue ~ Dylan

Bonus Scene—Dylan

Acknowledgements

Other Works

Social Media Links

Dedication

For those who deserve to be loved . . . no matter who they love

Prologue

May 15, 2015

“You sure you’re okay, Lizzie?” The tears tracking down her cheeks completely belie the subtle nod of her head. For the last few months, I’ve been meeting with Lizzie, a high school senior whose best friend was bullied so badly after he “came out” that he felt the need to run away. She received a letter from him this morning and she was more than a little shaken up over it, so she called me.

Swiping at her face, she looks up at me, her eyes red and puffy. After taking a deep, shuddery breath, the kind you take after crying for far too long, she grabs a tissue and blows her nose. With the renewed determination that’s usually on her young face, she sits up a bit straighter in her chair. “Yeah, I
am
okay, actually.” I think her words shock her more than me. “It sucks that Cane’s not here with me, that those guys were so mean to him that he had to leave, but he’s safe and that’s what I have to focus on. I’m trying to convince my parents to let me go visit him once school is over.”

“I think that would be great for both of you.” I glance over her shoulder at the clock above my office door. Shit, I’m really late. I’ve definitely missed the graduation ceremony, and if I don’t get my ass in gear, I’ll miss the party too.

Lizzie stands from her seat and I walk around my desk to escort her out. “You can call anytime. I’m here for you.” She awkwardly wraps her arms around me. After a quick hug, I can tell she feels better after having talked things out. This is why I love my job. Even though kids are bullied every day, and there’s no way to eradicate all of the ugly meanness in the world, I know when I counsel a kid who’s struggling, I am doing something good in the world.

“Thanks, Mr. Hopkins. I really appreciate it.” She grabs her bag from the floor where she dropped it rather unceremoniously two hours ago. “I’ll tell Cane you say hello.”

After Lizzie leaves, it takes me less than five minutes to get my crap together and close up the office. I check my phone once I get into my car and I’ve three missed calls and one angry text from Reid. He knows I’m a workaholic, so being late to a family event shouldn’t be that much of a surprise, but this is a big one, and I wasn’t even supposed to be at work today, either.

Dude, where the hell are you? Don’t bail on us again. This means a lot to Maddy and me.

Knowing they’re from Reid, I don’t even bother listening to the voicemails. Reid is my first boyfriend’s brother. We were childhood friends who lost touch for far too long, but in some twisted way, we found each other again. Now, Reid has become family to me, something he should have been a long time ago. Today, though, I’ve let him down. It’s his wife’s college graduation and I put work first. I don’t think Maddy will be too pissed, but apparently, that’s not the case with Reid.

The party is at Lucy and Evan’s house. Maddy moved in with her and her daughter after her aunt died during her senior year. Maddy’s parents died in a car accident when she was ten, so for all intents and purposes, Lucy is Maddy’s mother. Luckily, Lucy and Evan’s house isn’t all that far from The Bridge, the Gay Straight Alliance counseling center where I work. When I pull up in front of the house, I can hear the music playing from the backyard. Smoke is billowing up from what I’m assuming is the grill. It must mean Reid is cooking.

I take a minute in the car to put on my ‘family face.’ We all have it—the one you carefully slide into place when you want to hide what’s really going on, when you want to look like you don’t have a care in the world, even though the exact opposite is true.

After I click the gate at the side of the house closed, I walk toward Maddy, who is facing away from me, talking animatedly with her best friend, Melanie. She jumps a little when I drape my arm casually over her shoulder. Giving me the side-eye, she smirks. “Look who the cat dragged in.” She leans over and pops a quick kiss on my cheek. “Glad you could finally make it.” Girls are definitely not my strong point, but I can hear the snark in her words. Melanie hears it too, and after giving me a quick hug and whispering “good luck” into my ear, Melanie excuses herself to go find her boyfriend, Bryan.

I guess an apology is in order.

Crossing her arms across her chest, she stands there and waits for it. “I’m sorry, Maddy. I didn’t mean to miss everything.”

She sighs and unfolds her arms, some of the tension dissipating between us. “It’s not just about today, Dylan. The last few months you haven’t been yourself. Today’s supposed to be a happy day, and when you’re not here, we’re not happy.”

I find that hard to believe. Even though I do feel like part of the family, especially since my own parents recently moved down to Florida, saying that upstate New York was too cold for them. “Does it help that I bought you something?” I offer up her gift as an olive branch. She’s right; I haven’t been myself, but now is not the time to get into it. Needless to say, talking about
it,
whatever
it
is, with my best friend’s wife is not going to happen.

“It does if it’s sparkly.” Even though she tries to hide her excitement with a frown, her lips quirk up into a small smile.

I hand over the small box. “You’ll have to open it and find out.” A chuckle bubbles past my lips as she tears through the paper like a kid on Christmas.

Holding the silver charm bracelet out in front of her, she looks at it dreamily. “It’s beautiful. Thank you so much.” With another quick kiss to the cheek, she says, “You’re forgiven.” I latch it onto her wrist and she plays with the charms, watching them catch little glints of the sunrays.

“But,” she draws out the word as she looks over my shoulder, “I doubt he’ll be shut up as easily,” she mutters as she tips her chin at Reid. For the second time in less than ten minutes, I’m wished “good luck.”

Reid claps a hand on my shoulder and squeezes . . . hard—harder than he should and I know he must be pissed. He should know better, though. We work together. He sees the shit I see. He knows firsthand what it’s like to deal with the bullies, to witness someone so disgusted by who they are they’d rather . . .

Pushing those thoughts back, I turn to face him and hold up my hands, palms out. “Before you say anything, Maddy already laid into me. I gave her jewelry and she’s okay now. I shouldn’t have been late and I’m sorry.”

Reid drops his hand and he manages a tight smile. “Fine. As long as she’s not pissed. That’s all that matters.” Crisis averted. Sometimes Reid just lets himself get all worked up over nothing. He hands me a beer and walks us over to table on the edge of the yard. They’ve got one of those party tents and bunch of plastic tablecloth-covered tables. There are balloons everywhere and groups of people are littered around the yard, lost in casual conversation—all here to celebrate Maddy and her accomplishment. All here for her because for so long, no one ever was.

I really
am
an ass for missing this for her.

“What the hell is going on with you lately?” Reid’s concerned question snaps through my thoughts. I take a pull on my beer and scrub a hand through my hair.

“Nothing,” I deflect, with a roll of my shoulders, even though I know what he’s getting at.

An irritated huff fills the space between us. “You’re full of shit. You know that, right?” The mood lifts a little and I lean back in my chair.

Reid flashes me an inquisitive look. “Where’s Matt? I thought you said he was coming with you.”

I pause at the sound of his name, my beer a few centimeters from my mouth. I choke back the reaction I want to have and offer up the simplest explanation I can. “We broke up,” I say quickly with as little emotion as possible.

Reid shoots me a look. “You sound pretty okay about that.”

Rolling my shoulders isn’t enough of an explanation, so I say, “Yeah, actually I think I am.” And that’s the truth.

“Then what is it?”

“Nothing, okay?” I snap. There’s a don’t-bother-asking-for-more-because-I’m-not-saying-anything-else tone to my words. Reid catches it and luckily drops that line of questioning.

A few minutes pass in silence as we watch Maddy playing with Braden, their almost two-year-old son. A pang of sadness fills my chest. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that—a family, a love of my own, but it seems like that just isn’t written in my cards.

We both finish our beers and Reid leans forward in his seat. “Then if it’s not about Matt, whatever it is that’s bothering you lately, that’s making you all sorts of pissed off and angry, I just want you to know that I’m here to help.” His anger about my being late is gone. A sad look passes across his face, but he swipes it away as he scrubs a hand along his jaw. “Is it about Shane?” he asks uneasily. We’ve been rehashing the past recently so talking about him has been happening more than I’m comfortable with.

Hearing
his
name feels like I’ve just been punched in the stomach. My emotions knot my throat and I grind my teeth together. Through a clenched jaw, I grit out an angry, “No.”

Reid slips into counselor mode; it’s subtle, but I notice it. “Like hell it isn’t. Have you ever talked to anyone about him, about what happened? About what happened after . . .” His question trails off, not wanting to go
there.

I don’t say anything. Not saying anything, I avoid making eye contact with him, afraid he might see the emotion in my eyes. I can’t say I’m surprised he sees the true cause of my problems. After all, he was the only one who went through it with me. Shaking my head, I rake a hand through my hair, beyond frustrated at this conversation.

Shane is a part of me that I keep buried. It’s easier that way.

“I think you should. It’ll help.” There’s compassion in his words, no judgment; there never has been from Reid.

“What are you some kind of expert or something?” I attempt to joke.

Reid laughs and stretches his legs out, leaning back in the chair again and interlocking his fingers behind his head. “Yeah, actually I am—got a degree and everything.” He gets serious again before casually adding, “And it’s been helping me, so maybe it could help you.”

I brush off the reference of him going to counseling, especially since I was the one who recommended it to him. Irony is a bitch like that. “I doubt it, but thanks for your professional opinion,” I spit out with more sarcasm than I initially intended.

“Fuck the professionalism, Dylan. We both know you feel guilty over what happened, maybe even more than I do and that’s saying a lot. Nevertheless, you’re miserable. You can’t move on. You drown yourself in work and make every excuse in the book to avoid any kind of relationship. I’m not getting all girly and shit on you talking about feelings and whatnot, but you need to talk this out. You need to let it go and move on.”

No matter how much I want to tell him he’s wrong, and I’m fine—that I don’t blame myself—it’d all be a fucking lie. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I do need help.

For close to a decade, I’ve done nothing but blame myself. Hell, it’s even why I chose the career I did. If I help enough kids, maybe it’ll help alleviate the guilt I feel at not being able to help the first person I ever loved.

We sit silently for a few moments, the sadness over losing Shane weighing us down. “I miss him,” I admit quietly. “I failed him and it’s my fault. I miss him so much. I just want to go back and take back all that shit I said to him. I want to take it all back and maybe, just maybe, things could be different. No amount of talking to someone will change that,” I mutter barely above a whisper, afraid that if I speak any louder, my anger will boil over.

A pained look flashes on Reid’s face, but it morphs to one of compassion before he opens his mouth. “I feel the same way but there’s no sense in letting life pass you by over something that’s never going to happen. You can’t go back in time. You can’t take your words back, but you can be happy.” Reid’s face splits into a wide smile and I hear Maddy and Braden walk up behind me.

Braden nearly jumps out of Maddy’s arms as Reid walks over to them. “He stinks and I’m off diaper duty today.” Before Reid can even protest, Maddy is walking away from us and the stench that is Braden’s diaper.