Page 3 of Outcast
He’d eyed me up and down suggestively. We’d been dancing around the obvious attraction between us. Mostly, Dallas dropped innuendo and waited for me to take the bait. I’d been wary. This wasn’t the sort of town I fit into well, much less if everyone knew I was gay.
But after weeks of this tentative foreplay, I was jonesing for some action.
When Dallas stood so close that night, his breath heating my face, I broke. With a snarl of need, I grabbed his neck and yanked him into a kiss. I was a horny teenager, and opportunities didn’t come that often.
“Suck my dick,” Dallas had rasped into my ear.
I all but fell to my knees, mouth watering.
Which was when the old man walked in and caught us. He’d come to check that I’d finished the tune-up.
One look at us—me on my knees, Dallas’s jeans already undone—had sealed my fate.
“He’s trying to molest me,” Dallas blurted. “I told him I wasn’t a deviant!”
He shoved my shoulder hard enough to send me sprawling on my ass, then hopped into the pickup and peeled out.
My foster dad stared at me with such a look of hate that I’d wondered briefly if he might kill me where I knelt.
Instead, he’d told me with eerie calm that I was going to hell, and he didn’t need my kind of evil infecting his other kids.
I left that night with little more than the clothes on my back and a handful of twenties he’d given me. If Mom had been alive, it might have gone differently. But she was dead, the old man was drinking more than ever, and he’d been right about one thing.
Staying would have tainted everyone in the family.
My brothers would either hate me for what I was, or they’d hate Dad for throwing me out. Either way, it’d ruin the remaining crumbs of family they had left, and I couldn’t do that.
So I’d gone.
Holden carried lunch to the office space crammed into a corner of the garage. There was a metal desk covered in a laptop and dozens of invoices, a large toolbox, and tires piled in one corner.
Holden sat in the comfortable office chair and started unpacking the sandwiches and chips Axel had brought over. “Looks like we’ve got roast beef and cheddar today.”
Bailey took one of the two chairs in front of the desk. I hung back, figuring Jose needed a seat more than me. I’d just spent hours on my ass on the road, anyway.
Holden held out a cellophane-wrapped sandwich, and Jose took it. “I’ll leave you all your family business.”
“You don’t have to go,” Holden said.
He grinned, showing a gap where he was missing two teeth on the upper right. “Aw, I think it’s best I be left out of all this.” He patted my shoulder. “Welcome home.”
My insides recoiled.
Home? I wasn’t home. I was just here to find some closure. To mend fences with my brothers, maybe finally put my past to rest.
“Sit down,” Holden said. “Jose’s right. We should talk.”
“Do I have to be here for this?” Bailey asked, taking the sandwich Holden handed him. “I’ve got other things to do.”
“You should stay. This is family business.”
“Axel didn’t stay,” Bailey said, though he kept his ass in the chair.
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t go making Axel your role model, or god help us all.”
Bailey laughed. “No worries, man. I don’t want herpes.”
“Herpes?”I exclaimed.
