Page 21 of Snake

“I’m adopted, so no. Not in the way you mean.”

For the first time, Cox was actually interested in something Autumn had to say. His interest had been creeping slowly nearer for a while, he realized. His first impulse was to back off, but then he also registered that he felt a lot less uncomfortable with this damn assignment while they talked. So he went with it.

“Adopted, huh?”

She cast a slanted look sidelong at him. “Yes. As an infant. I figured you knew that. I assume you guys did oppo on me.”

“Oppo?”

“Research on the opposition. Looking for things that could hurt me.”

“Dom did, yeah. I don’t recall much of it being talked about at the table, though.” Or maybe he hadn’t been listening. He paid attention to the particulars of the work, but he was quickly irritated when talk in the Keep got gossipy. He tuned most of that shit out.

“Well, yes. I was adopted a few days after my birth. By a gay couple.”

Surprised, Cox stopped short. Autumn took another step before she stopped as well and turned around to shoot him a challenge in a look. “Are you scandalized that I have two dads?”

“Why would I be? It’s not 1950.”

“You pulled up short. And this?” She gestured around them with both arms, encompassing Signal Bend the night before a major town event—the banners and decorations, the pastel mini-lights framing most doors and windows on Main Street, the boardwalk beneath their feet. “Is 1950.”

“It’s not, Autumn. Maybe we’re slower than a big city about comin’ around to change, and maybe we don’t think all change is a good thing, the way city folk seem to, but we get there on the right shit.”

“And you think LGBTQ+ is the right shit?”

“I think anybody who tells anybody else how to live their own damn life is a fuckin’ asshole. That’s as far as my opinion matters. Doesn’t affect me, don’t got a place to talk about it.”

She stared up at him, her eyes sparkling in the streetlights, her pretty lips parted like she was about to reply, but she didn’t. She simply stared, until Cox had the out-of-nowhere sense that she might kiss him.

His cock stirred, and that shook him out of the moment right quick. He took a short step back, then continued down the street. She kept up with him, and they carried on in silence for a while.

“Was it hard?” he asked eventually, because the question sat in the middle of his head and wouldn’t budge.

“Being raised by a gay couple?”

He nodded.

“No. My dads are amazing, and they gave me a wonderful life. They’ve shown me love every day of my life, they’ve supported me and cheered me on and been wonderful. Sure, they drive me crazy sometimes, but only in the way good parents drive their kids crazy.” They walked a bit farther, coming to the end of the shops, before she added, “But if you’re asking if the world was hard because Norman Rockwell never painted a family like mine, sure. I’ve had to fight some things people in straight families don’t. But seeing as my bio-mom was a fifteen-year-old who’d been raped by her stepfather, I think I got the better end of the family deal.”

“Fucking Christ!” The words burst from Cox’s mouth, loud enough to make Autumn shrink back. When she glanced down, he realized his fists were clenched—and slightly raised. He shook them out. “Sorry. I got a thing ... trigger, or whatever you want to call it, about kids gettin’ hurt.”

For a few more seconds, she regarded him warily. Then, with a nod, she started walking.

They came to the end of the boardwalk. The sign for Marie’s glowed up ahead. As they stepped off onto the dirt shoulder of the road, Autumn said, “You don’t have to answer, obviously, but I’m curious, so I’m going to ask. Do you mean a real trigger, like something bad happened to you as a kid, or do you just get mad when kids are hurt, like everybody should get mad?”

That was not a question he would normally answer, because he didn’t answer such personal questions—and also because he didn’t have much of an answer at all. For reasons he could not reach, however, he found himself making words, and giving something as close to an honest answer as he’d ever given.

“Nothin’ like that happened to me as a kid, no. Or to anybody else I was close to back then. But it’s more than regular mad. I don’t know. I guess ... I guess I just remember what it felt like to be a kid, how the world felt bigger than I could wear, and ...” He trailed off, not sure how to say more, and silenced by the intensity of Autumn’s focus on him. Something he’d said had capture her interest especially.

They’d stopped walking again, and somehow she’d stepped onto the macadam. There wasn’t a lot of traffic in most of Signal Bend after dark, but they were nearing the loose cluster of open-late establishments: Marie’s, the Chop House, No Place, Valhalla Vin. This was the only night life in town, and cars and trucks had been rolling by throughout their walk.

Cox understood that she’d stepped backward onto the road half a second before he understood how quickly a set of truck headlights was bearing down on them. He reached out and grabbed her, yanking her toward him, out of the road, just in time for the loud blare of a horn and a whoosh of sudden air as a heavy-duty pickup flew past them, close enough to touch.

He didn’t know if he’d pulled her that sharply or if she’d buried herself so tightly against his chest of her own volition, but now she was tucked within his kutte, her face pressed to his shirt. He still held her arms; she was trembling.

“Jesus fucking shit,” she muttered.

Cox almost chuckled at the clank of those words in her soft, cultured voice. “You okay?”

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