Page 87 of Just Business
Holy shit.“That’show your parents found out you were gay?”
“Yup. So next thing I knew, my parents were yelling at me. In my hospital room.”
No wonder Eli reacted like he had at the Silk Elephant. “That’s—wow.”
A dark laugh. “It gets worse.”
“How? How the hell can it get any worse than that?”
“Because my parents did the math. On Noah’s birthday, he was eighteen and I was fifteen. Legally...”
Justin sat up. Stared at Eli. “No.”
“Yes.” Lines of anger cut so deep into Eli’s expression. “Of course, Noah wasdead, so they couldn’t charge him with rape. Or corruption of a minor. Or whatever they would have nailed him with... so my loving parents sued Noah’s family. Formy benefit, of course.”
“That’s...”Unconscionable. Horrifying.“Holy hell, Eli.”
The anger shattered, leaving behind something so raw, so broken, it didn’t belong on Eli. Tears ran down Eli’s cheeks. “This house? All the things you see?” he whispered. “The car? My education? They were all bought withNoah’s blood.”
Justin swallowed bile. Swallowed a second time. Kept it together because all he wanted to do was double over in shame, but he didn’t have that right, not after this. He’d been so very wrong about Eli.
“On my eighteenth birthday, I received a trust fund that contained all the money that would have been Noah’s—and then some. I tried to give it back to Noah’s parents, but they knew I had no part in what happened—hell, they knew I’d walked out of my parents’ house that morning and I wasn’t ever going back.” He wiped away the tears. “They had no other children. The least—they said—they could do was see that I was cared for. Especially since Noah had loved me. They asked me to keep the money. Get a good education. A good job. Do all the things that Noah couldn’t, in his memory.” Eli closed his eyes and leaned against the couch pillows. “That’s the entire story.”
To live through that, to be constantly reminded by an injury that would never heal, an inheritance that belonged to someone else... “Eli, I don’t know what to say. ‘I’m sorry’ seems—wrong.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” Eli cupped his hand around the back of Justin’s neck and Justin couldn’t help the shiver that ran through him, nor the instinct that drew him back into Eli’s arms.
“Just... be here. Please. For a little while.”
Justin whispered into Eli’s shirt. “As long as you need.”
A hollow laugh. “No lies, Justin. Not tonight.”
Now the tears were in Justin’s eyes. He spoke around the hole in his heart, the tightness in his brain. “As long as I can be, then.”
Eli didn’t speak, just stroked his thumb against Justin’s neck.
There was nothing Justin could do. No way to fix the mistake he’d made, the words he’d flung at Eli, the wounds he’d opened in both of them. The tears wouldn’t stop, so he closed his eyes, listened to Eli’s heartbeat, and tried not to think about how they’d both have to be apart for the rest of their lives.
Chapter Seventeen
Eli let Justin weep. Hell, his own tears fell, though he’d shed more than enough in the eighteen years since that night. But Justin’s tears, his shaking frame, weren’t entirely about Eli’s story, and for the first time in a while, the despair that engulfed Eli whenever he saw Justin or heard his voice shifted away.
Justin might have been crying, but he was in Eli’s arms and world feltrightagain, despite all the shit between them, the unanswered questions, and the words thrown at each other.
He loved Justin. Desperately. Perhaps it was stupidity, but he couldn’t help it. There wasn’t much left in him but love. All the fear, the anger, the sadness had been poured out. Love and hope. That’s what remained.
He stroked Justin’s neck, drifted his hand down to Justin’s waist, and asked the question he’d wanted to ask so many times before. “What did I do?”
A hitch of breath and Justin’s body slid along his, deliciously so. “Nothing.”
Fuck. A creeping sensation wormed through Eli. “That wasn’t a reaction to nothing.”
Slow breathing. Justin didn’t move away. Quite the opposite, he relaxed into Eli, which was odd. Gratifying, but very odd given the conversation they were having. He stroked Justin’s hair. This had to come from Justin in his own time, not be forced out with a command or hurried along with annoyance.
When he finally spoke, it was a whisper. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I couldn’t stay.”
Still not the right time to speak, even if he itched to do so. He pressed a kiss to Justin’s forehead.
