Tequila Mockingbird (11 page)

He’d grown up wanting that… thinking one day he’d come home to a little boy and a woman who’d kiss him on the mouth while teasing him about his big feet. There’d not been a moment he’d doubted his future. Not the uniform. Not the badge. Not the woman. Then suddenly, his future tilted, and Connor couldn’t find his feet underneath him.

So he did the only thing he knew to do during one of those times: reach for his da.

He just didn’t know if his da would reach back.

If Connor had to be honest—so fucking brutally honest—he’d have said the biggest fear he had in his life wasn’t death. Death just meant leaving things unfinished. What frightened him the most was the look on his father’s face when Donal suddenly realized the son he’d raised wasn’t the man he’d wanted him to be.

When he was young, hearing his father say “I’d have thought better of ye, Connor boy” killed him. There were blackened nuggets in his soul, dusty, foul stones of disappointment and regret Connor couldn’t step around without feeling dirty. Each of those moments burned to ash inside of him had come from a certain look on his da’s face, and the shame of those nuggets weighed heavily with every breath he took. Especially since he wasn’t going to be the son Donal Morgan expected, not the first born who’d one day step into his father’s shoes, and Con knew it would kill him even if life went on around him. He would die from the depth of his failure.

“I’ve fallen, Da.” Connor snagged a bottle of Irish whiskey from the study’s shelves and joined his father on one of the room’s couches. He’d asked his father for some time during a Sunday family gathering. They’d finally gotten rid of the threat of a cold-blooded killer hunting Sionn’s lover, Damien, and the Morgans were doing what they did best—eat, argue, and drink. “Fallen in love, I mean.”

“And that’s got you worried?” God, his father looked so happy. Donal’s face lit up when he smiled, and to Connor, it always felt like his father’s happiness warmed the family, broad sweeps of sunshine pouring over cold mountains. He would be dimming that light, and his gut grumbled from the sour pouring into it. Donal must have seen something on his face, because his da frowned slightly as he poked at Connor’s arm. “What’s wrong? Is she married? What’s her name?”

Connor wondered how Quinn and Kane made speaking the truth look so easy. They’d both done it together, sitting at a Sunday dinner table and casually dropping a gay bomb all over the roast chickens their mother’d made that afternoon. From what Connor remembered, he thought nothing of Quinn’s postscript mention of his homosexuality. Kane’s had come as a surprise because he’d never imagined having two gay—or in Kane’s case, bisexual—brothers. Now he was sitting on the other side of that line, and saying those words—such oddly damning words—aloud made him appreciate how strong his younger brothers had been.

Because he was scared shitless to speak the truth he’d been avoiding the fuck out of for the past couple of weeks as a madman stalked his family, and he tried to be as nonchalant about checking up on Forest as he could. If saying out loud what he thought made his heart clench, he couldn’t even imagine what he could say to the drummer about why he’d been avoiding him.

If confronted, Connor would have made up some bullshit story about a man named Parker targeting his family’s loved ones, but that would leave so much of Con open to be picked at, and he couldn’t risk those wounds being opened at a time he needed to focus.

It would have also meant he would have had to acknowledge what he was about to share with his father—Parker had been going after anyone connected to Damien. His assault on Miki proved that, and attacking Sionn’s pub manager proved it didn’t matter how nebulous a connection was, Parker would exploit it, and Connor couldn’t risk putting Forest in that sick bastard’s line of sight.

Because Con would have had to admit there
was
a connection between them, and he hadn’t been ready to even think about it out loud.

Until right now, and not to the man who’d drawn him in with a fierce vulnerability and brown eyes. No, the first time Connor spoke about his growing attraction to a blond drummer, it would be to the man who made him and could potentially break him as well. And he would do it in the womb of his family’s home—in the safety of a room he’d come to so many times before to work out his anger or confusion.

“His name is Forest, Da. Forest Ackerman.” The
his
stung. It was out. A pretty demon with unknown powers to scald him and flog his soul clear off his body. Stumbling over his tongue, Connor continued, working his fingers together into a knot. “I met him on a case and, well….”

Donal Morgan was many things, but dumb ranked nowhere on that list.

“But… he? You said he.”

Connor couldn’t look at his father, but when Donal’s hand touched his thigh, he looked up to stare into his da’s perplexed face.

“But, Con, yer not gay.”

“Yeah, I know, Da.” He picked up the fine Irish whiskey he’d set on the table near the couch and took a hefty mouthful. It burned the edges of his gums, and his tongue tingled and sparked under the fiery liquid. Swallowing was difficult because he had harder things to do besides get drunk—one of which was break his father’s heart. “I know. Fucking hell, don’t I know that, but here I am. In this.”

The silence nearly killed him, and Connor wondered how long it would take to die from alcohol poisoning before Donal finally exhaled. After taking the bottle from Con’s hands, he set it down and then yanked Con into a suffocating bear hug.

“Well then, I guess we’ll work through this,” he murmured. “Ye and I… we’ll find a way to make it work. Because yer my son, and I’ll be damned if ye shouldn’t be happy in love.”

Wings under my skin,

Fighting to break free.

I need a razor to cut them out,

So I can live as I’m meant to be.

A drop of music, A sip of wine.

Watch the sky when I fall

I’m sure I’ll be fine.

—
Falling

H
E
WOULDN
’
T
cry. Connor’d promised himself that, but it was hard going, especially when his father pulled back and gripped his shoulders tightly. Shaking, Con let go of the dank, foul fear he’d held in his lungs, and Donal reached a hand up to cup his face, his broad fingers tapping Con’s cheek.

“Yer trembling, son. Why?” If Connor thought his father’s
disappointment was his greatest fear, it was nothing compared to the pain in Donal’s eyes when he whispered, “Did ye think I’d stop lovin’ ye for this? Did ye really think so low of me, Connor boy, that I’d walk away from ye because of who ye are? Have I done such a bad time of it being yer da?”

The tears came then, hot and silent, as Connor pressed his mouth together and grabbed his father back into a hug. He couldn’t speak. It was too much effort to get around the emotions clotting his throat with their thick, viscous tendrils.

“No,” he choked out, but the word was barely audible over his clenched-back crying. “No, Da. I just don’t… I didn’t know what. This is all fucked up, and I don’t know what I’m doing with this. I never wanted
this
. I don’t
want
this now, but here it is, and I’m drowning in it. I want this fucking shite to go back to wherever it came from, but I can’t stop from thinking about him—worrying ’bout him, and it’s making me crazy.”

“Let’s be talking first about why ye’d think I’d be disappointed, Con.” Donal pulled back and wiped his eyes, smearing away the tears his son’d brought to his face. “What were you thinking, boyo?”

Connor’s face ached, pressure from the vent of emotions inside of him. There were too many threads of whys and why-nots in his mind, reasons he’d felt he failed his father in this one thing Donal asked of him—to be a man like Donal—to be someone others could look up to, a man who’d pick up the family’s burdens on that one horrific day when they’d need him the most.

And the words came, pouring from him as if he were a five-year-old confessing to eating the last donut, a horribly heavy and dense donut he’d baked solely to anchor himself in life.

“I needed to be you, Da,” Connor heard himself whisper. Every word grated in his throat, raking barbs through his heart and soul before bleeding off his tongue. “I don’t know when, I don’t know why, but there it’s been. In me. All this time. Everything I do—everything I am.”

“Oh, Connor boy, I never meant for you—” A look of horror crept over Donal’s face. “Are ye a cop because ye think that’s what I’d want for ye? Please tell me—”

Connor gave his father a rueful look. “Maybe. In the beginning of it all.”

“Ach, Connor.” Donal said something in Gaelic, too low and too soft for his son to hear. “I’d never have wanted any of my children to take up the badge if they didn’t want it.”

“I was a little boy, Da,” he explained. “And you came home wearing a uniform and carrying the world. How could I
not
want to be that man? Be you? And yes, I probably wanted to be a cop because you were one, but I love it. It’s who I am. It’s the part of me I don’t question.”

“But ye question this man in your life? That ye love him?”

“I don’t know if I love him. Maybe. Maybe I’m just… I don’t know.” Connor collapsed back into the soft couch, rubbing his face in frustration. “Everything’s gone cattywampus and upside down. I had a plan—career, house, and then a wife. Children. And now….”

“No one is saying ye can’t have those things. Well, except for the wife. This Forest boy might be having a problem with that,” Donal teased as he ran his hand through his son’s hair.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for that. For this.”

“I’m going to ask ye a question, and I want ye to think about it before ye answer,” Donal said gently. “Is he the first man ye’d thought about this with? To be with?”

Connor leaned into his father’s touch, a comforting, firm hand on the back of his head. They’d sat so many times in the same position, often in the dimly lit study while his father watched footie games on the television or while working on his reports. Donal’s touch anchored Connor as much as his dreams had, a forever kind of tether to the world around him.

He’d feared he’d lose that touch, that anchor, when he’d spilled his secrets to his father, and now in the light of a Sunday afternoon, Connor found himself adrift, even with his father holding him steady and firm.

“I’d watch Rafe,” Connor admitted softly. “When we were in school. Something about him. Before we were really close, and he was just Sionn’s friend, I’d watch him. I used to tell myself it was because he was… lost, because he needed saving of some kind, but now I don’t know.”

“Rafe’s a handsome boy,” Donal replied. “A bit of a fuck-up, but he’s worked hard to be back on his feet. He’s had a rough time of it from the start.”

“I couldn’t fix him, Da. And we tried.” Connor shook his head at the years of frustration he’d had with Rafe in his life. “But he was the first, I think. The first time I wondered, but then I put it all away. I couldn’t… think on that. There were women—and I love women. I love the way they smell and feel on me and how their skin tastes on my tongue, but there’s been times when I’ve wondered—when I’ve thought about how it would be.”

“Lately?” his father asked. “Before yer Forest? Or just about him?”

“About Miki—but just for about a second, Da,” he confessed, shunting his gaze away from his father to stare at the opposite wall where their lives played out in framed photos. “I wondered how it would be with him—just for a few moments when Kane introduced him. Something about him kicked me in the gut, and I had to take a step back. I’d never touch him—he’s Kane’s—but it was there. That wildness about him. I could see why Kane wanted him, and I’d never had that before—that recognition of
why
a man would touch some part of me.”

“And now Forest.” Donal sighed and rubbed at Connor’s head once more before sliding his hand down his son’s back to pat at his shoulders. “Ye can’t let him go, then? Do ye even
want
to?”

“He haunts me, Da. Worse than a sunburn I cannot wait to heal but at the same time tightens my skin so I can’t
not
feel him. I see him, and I want to touch him, to hold him, because I don’t think he’s been held enough or been told someone cares about him. He’s had a shite hippie who took him in off the streets and who probably loved him but didn’t
give
him any kind of self.” Connor pulled himself away from the wall of family and friends. “He’s not had any of this, and I want to give it to him. I want to lie in bed with him when it rains and listen to the water hit the roof. I find myself wondering how the coffee foam on his lip would taste on my tongue or if I could make him smile by blowing a raspberry on his belly. It’s not just want, Da. It’s
need
. I
need
him. And for the life of me, I fucking don’t know what to do with that. I wanted to be like you, Da. And I don’t know—”

“All I want is for ye to be Connor,” Donal cut in and looped his arm around Connor’s shoulders, giving him a quick squeeze. “Ye don’t
need
to be me. I don’t want ye to be me. I want ye to be the best
Connor
ye can be. That’s the man I raised, not this Ken doll ye’ve built around yerself.”