Page 42 of Touch of Innocence
Ruby ran by, stopping to grin and wave at him, her blonde hair flowing behind her in the wind. She was followed by Shadow, his huge, black form bounding after her.
Shadow. What was he going to do about Shadow, if he went to Harvard? And he hadn’t even managed to send that email, he realized, about getting back in there.
A realization was creeping up on him, but he wasn’t sure that he was ready for it. So he slipped out of the car and shut the door hastily, as though he could hide his own actions, even from himself. Trying to deny what he was coming to believe was true.
He had made choices already, but he ran from them still. Ran past Ruby, who was scratching Shadow’s stomach, ran past Isaac and Ben, who were sitting together, disgustingly cute as they cuddled on the loveseat and watched some show or another together. So very together, irrefutably so. Proof that love could exist between two men, and that it could be something real.
Even when Sam reached his room, he didn’t quite feel safe. He glanced down at his phone, which still displayed a comparison between UT of Austin and Harvard. A huge, huge difference.
All of a sudden, he felt the urge to scream. To throw the phone against the room, to scream and cry and rail against his own brain which stubbornly, logically persisted in pointing out the facts.
He had choices. Way more than he had ever allowed himself to think before, and part of him, a part that was wiser than his pride, seemed like it had been making plans for quite some time now.
* * *
How much time passed, Sam didn’t know. He didn’t look. His mind whirled, and all he really knew was that the sun was going down outside his window. One more day had passed, one more day without Gunner. And there were going to be a lifetime of those.
Sam sat on his bed, staring out the window, letting the setting sun sting his eyes. Letting the brightness grow and barely allowing himself to register any of it. His stomach grumbled, and he knew that soon, he would need to go get himself some food, but he didn’t really think much about that, either.
A knock came at the door, and at first, Sam ignored it. It sounded again, a little bit faster, as whoever was knocking got annoyed, but Sam didn’t really care. He was on the brink of something, and he knew it, and he was equally torn between the safe course, the course he had followed for more than a decade now, the only thing he had really ever thought about, and flinging himself off into the unknown, allowing a new path to open up under his feet.
He had no time to play with Ruby or come down for dinner or whatever. So he ignored it, hoping that they would just go away, but maybe he should have known better. He lived with a houseful of people who were as stubborn as he was.
“Sammy, open up,” Ben growled, his voice coming clearly, only slightly muffled by the door. The truth was, there weren’t too many people that Sam would actually listen to, but he knew very well that he owed this man, who had saved him from years of being in and out of foster care, who had given him a home, no matter how unconventional it might sometimes be.
Maybe there wasn’t another person in the world that Sam would have gotten up off of the bed for, even if he sighed as he did it. But he did it, and he went to the door and opened it enough to peer through.
“What do you want, Ben?” Sam asked, and then the door was being pushed open and Ben was walking in as though he’d been invited. Not only that but to add some insult to injury, Ben’s arm was very firmly around Isaac’s waist.
They didn’t even pretend anymore, Sam thought resentfully. When he’d been younger, they’d kept it under wraps, at least a little. Isaac had let the world think that he was Ruby’s father, for instance, but as time had passed, and Sam had gotten older, the fiction had ceased.
Probably in part because Ruby didn’t seem to care at all. She didn’t seem to be bothered that people knew that two of the adults raising her were men who were married, and it had naturally just seemed to stop, the pretense.
“I think this has gone on quite long enough, Sammy.”
Ben sat on Sam’s bed, and Isaac, of course, settled down beside him. It was a little bit gross, really, how sweet they were on each other. How even after being married for a decade now, they were still all over each other every chance that they got.
“So I guess we’re going to have a heart to heart now,” Sam said, sighing a little bit willing to give in to the inevitable. “But I don’t want him here.” He looked at Isaac, saw the hurt flicker in those bright blue eyes and knew that he was being a jerk, not even speaking directly to Isaac.
“Sammy, don’t you dare …” Ben started, already bristling like a porcupine. If there was one thing that would piss Ben off, it was someone being mean to Isaac, and Isaac was the one who reached out and touched Ben on the shoulder gently, soothing him.
“No, it’s okay. I can speak for myself,” Isaac said, with his eyes fixed on Ben for a moment and so much love in them that Sam’s heart gave a painful little lurch. He had never had anyone look at him with that adoration, but sometimes, now and then, Gunner would …
“Sam, do you think that I care any less about you because we’re not related by blood?” Isaac asked, his voice still gentle, but a sort of steely gray determination forming in those sapphire blue eyes. Isaac tended to be quiet, and polite, but that didn’t mean he should be underestimated, clearly.
“I never thought …” Sam started, but Isaac raised his hand, cutting him off before he could say any more, and Sam, surprised, did stop speaking. He just wasn’t used to Isaac behaving like this.
“I don’t know what happened between you and Gunner, but whatever it is, you’re only hurting yourself,” Isaac informed him. Sam couldn’t stop staring at Isaac, who had never dared to speak to him like this before. “If you fought, or whatever you think happened that’s so bad that you won’t even say his name now, I think you need to consider getting the hell over it.”
Wow. Isaac never said that word, hell. And he never stared straight, challengingly, at Sam, either. There was a lot ofnevergoing on here, and Ben just sat there with a smile of amusement on his face.
“He’s right, Sammy,” Ben said quietly. “I know you think you can’t be with another guy. I know you think people will judge you. And some people will. But the people that you care about, and who care about you, it won’t matter to.” Ben squeezed Isaac’s hand in his own. “We’re living proof of that. This town has accepted us, you know?”
Sam blinked and then dropped his gaze, uncomfortable with the love between his brother and Isaac. His stomach clenched, and he had to come face to face with the thought, for the first time, that he might have made a horrible mistake.
“It’s not just that. Gunner didn’t tell me something that he should have,” Sam protested, but his voice was weak, and it didn’t come out in a way that could even convince Sam himself.
“So he made a mistake,” Isaac said, his eyes unrelenting as he caught Sam’s with his own. “Everyone makes mistakes. And the people who love us forgive us for them.”
“So here’s the thing, Sammy,” Ben continued from where his husband left off, his green eyes holding Sam’s every bit as much as Isaac’s did. “Whatever he did, that’s between you and him. It’s not our business to know if he didn’t tell us. But whatever it was, was it enough that it’s worth losing everything between the two of you?”
The question hung in the air between them, and Sam shook his head, not because he was denying the words. Not because he didn’t know, but because he knew all too well.
He had made a mistake, and now, he had no idea how to go about fixing it.
