It Takes Three to Fly (37 page)

“Are you sure that you’re not going anywhere?” Landon asked before spinning around and giving Shane his back. “From where I’m standing, you’re already gone. When you find our husband, give us a call.”

Shane needed to punch something. He needed to destroy it, pulverize it. His temper demanded an outlet. Yet he stood there, rooted to the ground. “How can you say that?” he demanded, his voice sounding high-pitched and outright panicked, which only pissed him off more.

With a sigh, Landon started walking—away from him—with their woman nestled in his arms. Each step he took was more painful to Shane than the last. “I can say that,” Landon said, “because you are too busy running from your past to stay in one place with us. I can say that because you won’t let us in. You won’t let us run with you, if that is what you need. And you won’t let us stay with you, if that is what you want. I can say that because the man you are pretending to be is a selfish bastard who would use the people he loves as pawns to get what he wants. That is how I can say it.”

“I don’t get it,” Shane commented, only it wasn’t an offhand comment. It was pure venom. “This didn’t start until we got here. You two haven’t said a word.”

Landon paused mid-step. Without turning around, he said, “No, Shane. It started the day you left. It started when you were twelve. This garbage was inevitable. You have let everything in your life be dictated by what happened here. When you finally manage to get your life straight, you come back and let them fuck it up again. Tell me that I’m wrong about all of it. If you can, maybe I’ll believe you.”

Shane couldn’t say the words. He tried to force them out, even going as far as opening and shutting his mouth several times. But it didn’t work. Neither his voice box nor his brain supported his denial because Landon was right, too damn right.

Shane had wasted all these years, escaping something inescapable. Now he’d come full circle. Was he willing to piss away another twenty-four years on people he didn’t give a damn about in a place that he never visited?

“I’ll take that as your answer,” Landon told him then walked away, calling out, “We’ll be in the room, if you need us,” behind him.

Shane had no doubt they would be waiting for him. They loved him, and they would stay. It was time that he owned up to himself and to them, and he needed to start by facing the past.

He’d always heard that the truth will set you free. “Well, we’ll see about that,” he muttered to himself in the deathly silent street. If he wanted the truth, he knew exactly where to start. Stalking through the darkness, he went to the place he’d sworn he’d never go again. He went to see his grandmother at the McCulloughs’ mansion
.

Shane couldn’t seem to drag in enough air to satisfy the burn in his lungs. The wood-paneled walls surrounding him on every side appeared to be shrinking. They crept in on him, causing claustrophobia to set in, even though he had never struggled with that particular phobia before.

The black-robed judge sitting at the bar adjacent to Shane’s seat on the witness stand spoke, but he didn’t hear him. The roaring in his ears drowned out the Honorable Judge Smithson as well as every other noise in the courtroom. He couldn’t hear the low hum of people whispering or the titters of people laughing nervously. Nothing touched his ears, and nothing touched his mind because he was trapped in the true memory of his father’s death.

While testifying, another repressed memory had sucked him in, and he’d remembered it all, every single gruesome detail. The last two weeks of nightmares and flashes of random memories had all fallen into place. His mother hadn’t murdered his father. His grandfather had, and he’d committed the murder in the exact way and manner that he’d confessed to. The people that he’d incriminated with his confession, Shane’s nanny and her police-officer boyfriend, had also been his accomplices, just as he’d claimed.

It had all been over drugs. His father and his mother had been trying to get clean for Shane’s sake, trying to give up the dealing and the using for a real family life. But his grandfather had been livid because he’d been the one behind the whole operation. That was how he maintained his substantial estate.
Bastard.

“Thank you, Mr. Jacobs. You may step down,” the judge repeated, and this time Shane heard him.

Getting to his feet, Shane stepped down from the raised platform then skirted around the wooden wall that had closed him in the cramped witness box. He walked down the aisle and pushed through the swinging gate doors of the bar. When he spotted Landon and Katie-Anne standing at the back of the viewing gallery, his heart sped up.
They came.

Shane shouldn’t be surprised that they had come to support him, but he was, probably because he hadn’t seen them since Saturday night. Nearly two days had passed him by as he faced the past, as he faced the people who had molded him into the person he’d become, despite his fight to the contrary. He’d called Landon and told him that he needed a couple of days, but he hadn’t told him why. He’d told him that so that he could do the grand gesture, only not for Katie-Anne but for Landon. She didn’t need a grand gesture nor did she want proof. But, for some reason, he had a feeling Landon did. Yet he wouldn’t ask. So here it was—Shane’s grand gesture for Landon.

Waving at the woman in the first row to follow him, Shane stalked toward his lovers, heedless to the people, the room, or anything else around him. He went straight up to Landon, putting them right up against each other, and trapped him against the wall. “Our woman might not need a damn grand gesture, but I think you do.” Without another word, or even a breath, Shane descended his lips and kissed Landon boldly.

Landon gasped, but Shane didn’t pause. He covered his partner’s intake of breath with a low groan. Mindlessly kissing Landon, he dropped his hands to Landon’s side, snaking them around his back. He pressed their bodies closer together then slanted his head to the side so he had better access to Landon’s mouth, voraciously continuing his demanding kiss.

A feminine cough came from behind them, and Shane cut their kiss short.
Wow, this is embarrassing.
He’d wanted to kiss Landon, not jump him in front of everyone, especially not in front of the woman who’d broken them up. But the moment their lips had touched, Shane had been lost.

Pulling back, Shane twisted around to peck a kiss to Katie-Anne’s lips. Then he turned and faced the woman behind him. “Hello, mother,” Shane said.

Two gasps came from each side of him, but he brushed them off. Slipping one arm around Katie-Anne’s waist and the other around Landon’s, Shane spoke again. “I would like you to meet my wife and my partner…” Trailing off, he realized that partner didn’t do Landon justice anymore. Shane amended his statement to, “I mean, my husband,” with what had to be a sheepish smile.

Gasps and whispers swept through the entire courtroom, but Shane didn’t care. This moment wasn’t about showing anyone in this room that he had a kinky side or, to them, a perverted side. The whole world knowing that he lived in a permanent ménage à trois meant nothing to him. This was about pride in his life, in his family, and in himself.

The petite, dark-haired woman in front of him smiled indulgently, obviously undaunted by his public announcement. Of course, he had prepared her for his grand gesture beforehand while they’d talked numerous times over the last two days. They’d talked about everything, and he’d learned more than he could have imagined about her, his father, their life together, and his childhood.

After ten minutes in his mother’s presence, he’d known that she hadn’t killed his father. She’d been a lot of things through her messed up life, but a murderer was not one of them.

Besides, she’d obviously loved his father. And, even though she hadn’t seen him in more than two decades, she loved Shane. It was undeniable in the way she’d sobbed when she saw him standing outside her hotel room. It was irrefutable in how she talked to him honestly about the best and worst parts of her life. And it was unquestionable in the way she held onto him as though he were a dream she feared she would wake from when he hugged her for the first time since childhood.

Everything wasn’t fixed with his mother, but they’d agreed it was time for mother and son to get to know each other. It was time to forget the past and see where the future took them.

“Oh, my fucking God,” Katie-Anne exclaimed. In surprise, he—and everyone around her—whipped around and stared. “You’re…”

“Deke’s personal assistant,” his mother, Sharon Scott, supplied.

Katie-Anne’s face paled, her mouth working furiously as it opened and shut then opened again. “But I know you.”

“Yes, my dear,” Sharon said. “I know you, too.”

“B–b–but,” Katie-Anne stammered, still looking unhinged by his mother’s appearance. “You live in Kinky. You live in
Kansas.
”

“I do,” Sharon agreed. “I moved there to be close to Shane when he was fifteen. It took me three years to gather enough courage to find him, and it took me another year after I moved to Kansas to approach Beth while he was away at a summer camp.” She sighed. “His foster mother was a lovely lady. She kept me updated on him until the day she died.” Tearing up, his mother looked up into the light, presumably to stop the tears from flowing. “I miss her.”

Katie-Anne reached into her purse and pulled out a tissue. Offering it to Sharon, she murmured, “Why don’t we talk outside.” Glancing around the room pointedly, she added, “We are the freak show in here.”

Sharon smiled. “I’d like that, dear.”

Smiling back at her, Katie-Anne looped her arm around Sharon then guided her out of the courtroom. Landon stayed behind with him. Neither of them talked for a moment, just stood in their own little, silent world. Finally, Landon muttered, “This doesn’t fix everything.”

“I know.”

“It’s a good start, though.”

Shane grinned. “Let’s go outside and talk to the ladies.”

Landon nodded. Instead of moving, he indicated that Shane should go ahead and murmured, “After you.”

“You just want to stare at my ass.”

“I do.”

Laughing, Shane shook his head then left the courtroom with his husband right behind him. As soon as the door opened, he spotted the women chatting on a bench across the hallway. Walking across the marble flooring, his dress shoes squeaked loudly, but he ignored the annoying noise, his heart too happy to think of anything other than the two people with him and the budding relationship between him and his mother.

When he was in earshot, Shane heard his mother telling Katie-Anne, “After Shane went into the system, I nearly died from an intentional heroin overdose. See, I couldn’t bear the pain I’d caused. I couldn’t stand that I had lost my husband and my son because of my addiction. But God had other plans for me.”

Folding her hands in her lap, Sharon continued to recount the past, “When I got out of the hospital, I checked into a rehab facility and spent three months there. It was the worst time of my life, but it was the best, too. I felt freer than I had ever been by the time I left, and it was unbelievable.”

Stopping in front of the two women, Shane stood awkwardly while his mother told Katie-Anne all the things that she’d already told him. Landon approached Shane, sliding his arm possessively around his waist, and Shane smiled.
Life is looking pretty fucking good.

Katie-Anne took Sharon’s hands in hers. “Why did you start working for Deke? Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”

Sharon blushed. “Deke hired me when Beth died. She’d requested on her deathbed that he give me a job so I still had someone to keep me connected with my son.” Tears filled his mother’s dark eyes. “
My son.
”

Sharon sniffled. “Anyway, Deke hated me at first, but, after a while, things improved. I guess I proved myself to him or something.” She laughed. “That man is insanely protective of the people he loves. When he and I became friends of sorts, he told me all about you. Beth had told me a little but not nearly enough. Then one day you showed up in town to see Deke, and you had this beautiful yellow sundress on and you were so nice to me. I just wanted get to know you better. I knew that if I told you who I was, I wouldn’t have had a chance.”

Katie-Anne nodded. “I understand. Even though I didn’t know the truth, if I had, I probably would have been a total bitch to you.”

Sharon laughed. “See.”

“Mrs. McCullough—” Landon said.

Sharon cut him off. “Mrs. Scott.” His mother had told him about how she’d moved to the Missouri and Kansas state line, letting the McCulloughs believe she’d died or ran away or whatever their twisted minds wanted to think. She’d changed her last name then got a job at the local market.

“Oh,” Katie-Anne said, sounding completely confused but too polite to ask. “Well, Mrs. Scott, would you like to join us for lunch? I’m sure we could find somewhere nice to eat.”

“Yes, Katie-Anne,” Sharon agreed enthusiastically. “I would love that, but I need to take a quick nap so I’m going to head over to the hotel.” Peering down at her watch, she suggested, “How about we meet in an hour at Chez Bastien? Well, it is something else now, but you know where to go, Shane.”

“Sure,” Landon agreed for Katie-Anne and Shane. Smiling, he said, “We’ll see you there.”

Taking the hint that Landon wanted a private moment, Sharon smiled then disappeared from sight.