Page 10 of His Stepdad Wears Leather

Ultimately, he’d needed it to buy the bus ticket—so he was glad they hadn’t.

Noah stood there, contemplating another moment. Once the clock struck midnight, he was officially an adult.

And that deserved a little celebrating, right?

Yet, he had somewhere to be.

Somewhere he dreaded.

If he didn’t get it done and over with, he might never have the balls to go. Yet hehadto go. To know why… why his mother had abandoned him. To know why he had those warm, fuzzy memories… only to lose them.

Maybe not knowing is better.

Just as he had himself convinced to keep walking past, someone opened the front door to the club. Light and a bass thump poured from the opening, chasing away some of the darkness, filling the silence of the night. Hand in hand, two leather-clad men drifted into the moonlight. Noah’s stare was drawn like a magnet, noting those joined hands.

A smile came to his lips.

Before the pair got far, one of the men pinned the other against the outer brick and stole a kiss. Noah’s heart sped a little as he played voyeur to their little intimate moment. The kiss became heated, their bodies writhing against one another… and a spark of yearning simmered low in his belly. His focus was on them… and not the car that had sidled up beside him.

“Sure you don’t want that ride, sexy?”

Noah jumped at the man’s voice. He spun his head and glimpsed the car. In the dark, he struggled to see… but an inside light flicked on. The man from the tienda hung outside the rear window—but he wasn’t alone. A carload of fourbigmen ogled him, danger in their glares. His heartbeat quickened, a warning signal racing up his spine. There was no way he was going anywhere with them—no one would have any idea where he was, and he could end up another statistic. “No thanks,” he murmured and kept on walking.

The car rolled on, slowly keeping up with his steps.

“Oh, come on… there’s no reason for you to walk that far. We’ve got room,” one of the supposed ‘cousins’ said.

“I’m about to meet a friend inside,” Noah said before jumping the narrow ditch separating the road and the parking lot.

“We could be friends, too,” the guy from the bus said.

Noah took a few more steps away, putting a little more distance between them. “Can’t leave him waiting… thanks for the offer, but I gotta pass.”

The car stopped, and Greyhound guy got out. Without another thought, Noah ran across the parking lot, as quickly as he could. He approached the front door and scrambled inside. Heart slamming into his chest, he paused a moment to simply breathe. His body trembled as the fear claimed him—but the loud, pulsating music swallowing him might’ve been part of the reason for some of that tremble.

“You alright, my man?”

2

Noah spun to see ahuge, mountain of a man standing not far from him. He nodded, unable to speak quite yet.

The mountain gave him a scathing glower before he moved back to a podium a few feet away. Behind him, Noah saw a hint of the revelry inside. He smirked as he saw the dancefloor in the distance—his parents would havea coronary—particularly Abbie Lee.

“You coming in—or you just gonna stare?”

He turned his attention back to the mountain. The guy’s skin and clothes were dark, and he almost blended in with the dimmed interior. Noah glanced at the words SECURITY emblazoned on his polo shirt and immediately felt a little safer if that was what was protecting him from what was outside.

Noah dug the fake ID from his pocket and glanced at it in the muted glow of the overhead lights. Tonight, he would be Christopher John Douglass and twenty-two. The guy in the picturesort oflooked like him.

Ifthe mountain squinted.

Noah handed the ID over and waited. Inside his mind, he could hear his parents’ proselytization. He drew in a shaky breath, forcing their words from his mind. Reaching for the heavy front door, he yanked it open.

The towering, big barrel-chested guy seized it and flipped out a little flashlight to examine it.

Shit. I’m done for.

The bouncer lifted the flashlight to his face. “Christopher… when’s your birthday?”

---