Page 11 of Subtracting the Heart

“Sorry to interrupt, but Kincade’s here,” Ford said.

The room was painted dark red with black carpet. There was a huge media center off to the side where several gaming systems sat.

When Jax flipped a handle on his recliner and spun around, Cade giggled. “Wow, this has everything a thirteen-year-old, or a thirty-one-year-old, boy could want.”

There was a black chair off to the side that was unlike the others in the two rows. It had a pillow and a folded blanket resting on the seat, but he recognized it easily. He and Jax had watched television in that chair a time or two when it resided at his apartment. “Oh, I remember that one.”

“Jackson sleeps there a lot… never mind. Let’s go downstairs and have some homemade ice cream and cookies. Miss Winnie made peppermint today.”

Jax and Ashton bolted out of the chairs and walked toward the door. Cade didn’t expect Jax to pick him up and toss him over his shoulder as they headed downstairs. “You need to gain a little weight, chére. You’re too thin. I’m afraid I’ll crush you.” The big man shuffled downstairs. Cade glanced up to see Ford and Ash following, both trying to hide laughter.

“It’s not funny.”

He slapped Jax on the ass, laughing when the man said, “Oooh! Do it again.”

Finally, Cade gave up. He was laughing too hard to be an effective disciplinarian.

The four of them tucked into sugar cookies and chocolate-peppermint ice cream with chopped up candy canes. It was a jovial atmosphere for a few minutes as Cade prepared to speak with his brother.

“Ash, I called your mother today, and she told me you were still in Milwaukee. They’re expecting to pick you up tomorrow. What’s going to happen when you’re not there?” Cade’s comment shut down the teasing Ford and Jax were doing with the boy.

Ashton chuckled without humor. “Ferguson will call when he gets to Fernwood and inform them I’m not at my dorm. They’ll call the headmaster, who will tell them I left because of a family emergency. After that, they won’t have the slightest idea where I am, but I ain’t going to some fucked-up boarding school in Kent so Hudson can pretend he doesn’t have a gay son…another gay son. I heard enough shit about you over the years to know he wouldn’t tolerate it from me either, so I split. Amy’s the favorite anyway. She goes to St. Mary’s Academy near the penthouse. No worries. They still have the princess.” Ash shrugged as if he didn’t care. Cade knew he did.

Cade wished he’d called Liam O’Malley but his salary didn’t exactly provide funds for a lawyer, plus he didn’t want to ask the man for favors because he felt it might encourage him to pursue a relationship.

“When they find you, and theywillfind you, Ash, we’re going to jail for kidnapping a minor. We should have… I should have turned you over to Mrs. Stubbe today. How the hell did you even know where to find me?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Cade saw Ford stand, pulling Jax’s hand. He turned to them. “No. Stay. We’re together, so this isallour problem.”

He turned back to his little brother. “How?”

Ashton took a deep breath and pushed away his empty dish. Obviously, it was going to be a protracted explanation… one Cade wasn’t looking forward to hearing at all.

Chapter Five

Jax

Jax sat listening to the kid and did his best to hold his temper. It was beyond anything he could ever imagine happening in his simple life in St. Tammany Parish. People didn’t do the things Ashton Hayes was sharing with them.

“He’d wait until he had me totally alone and tell me what a sick pervert you were and how he didn’t know at the time when you babysat us that you were queer. He asked me over and over again if you molested me when I was six, and I told him, ‘no’, but he always acted like he didn’t believe me. He sent me to Fernwood where he thought it would toughen me up because I’m not a sports kinda guy and the school is very athletically inclined. Hell, even I knew you didn’t send a kid you thought might be gay to an all-boys school.

“Then, when I was home for the fall break in October, I was on his computer and saw in the browsing history he’d been researching schools in England to ‘retrain’ boys believed to have homosexual tendencies. I knew it wasn’t Mom doing the research because nobody’s allowed in Hudson’s study, but I know how to pick locks. I read the emails he’d sent to the school asking about treatment therapies, and it scared the hell outta me.”

Jax sucked in a breath. “Yeah, I bet.”

The boy continued. “At Thanksgiving, I broke into his office again to see if there were any more emails, but he’d erased everything. As I was leaving, I knocked into a drawer that was always locked, and it opened a little. I wanted to find my birth certificate and passport to hide them because I didn’t want to go to England for Christmas, and I figured if they didn’t have my stuff, I couldn’t go. As I was rummaging through the drawer, I saw a file with your name on it.

“Father told Mom he’d tried to get you to live with him after you turned gay so he could get you some help, but your mom wouldn’t even let you visit. He told Mom he didn’t want anythingmore to do with you because he was worried about what you’d done to me when I was a kid. As far as I knew, he hated you.”

Cade offered a humorless laugh. “He did, trust me.”

“When I found that file inside the drawer, I was surprised, but I needed time to look at it. I didn’t know when they’d be back home so I took it to my room and hid it. I locked the desk drawer with a pair of tweezers so he’d think he locked it. He wouldn’t open the office again while I was home, so I had Thanksgiving break to figure out where you were.” Ash stared at Cade, who gave no reaction.

“Well, what was in the file?” Jax chuckled at Ford’s lack of patience.

“Pictures of Cade over the years and the pictures and newspaper clippings with you guys. Weekly reports on what you all did, where you went, where Cade worked, and shit like that. After the pictures of only the two of you showed up in the file, the reports changed to only include Cade’s stuff. There wasn’t anything more about you guys and the reports stopped for a while,” the boy said, pointing to Jax and Ford.

“That must be after we, um...” Cade’s face fell.

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