Tequila Mockingbird (16 page)

“I’ve had shittier.” He wanted her off the phone. He’d taken in as much as he could handle, and calling his mother turned out to be a trip down a rusty-tack-strewn memory lane. It was never going to change—she was never going to change. It all came down to how much she could get out of people and how much of his ass she could sell—because selling her own tail wasn’t enough. “They’re coming to do more tests on me in a bit. You going to be around later?”

“I dunno. I might change this phone. This one’s crackly.” It sounded fine to him, but reception and hearing was on her list of complaints before she ditched a phone she more than likely stole. “Hey, you got something you can spare? To tide me over. I’ve got a party I’m going to this weekend. Guy’s paying me some bucks to be there. If you can front me, I’ll shoot it back to you.”

Another small part of him died. Not because his mother hit him up for money. He’d expected that. What hurt was that she saw him as another mark to lie to, as if he hadn’t grown up suckling on her lies for sustenance. Hell, her breast milk had been a lethal mix of coke and delusions, and he’d been weaned off that into working the system. To have her pull one on him—a tired old lie at that—angered Forest as much as it saddened him.

He wouldn’t give her anything—he couldn’t—not unless Forest was willing to contribute to her cooking herself to death.

“I don’t have any extra.” It wasn’t quite a lie, mainly because he didn’t know where his wallet was, but she’d suck him dry if he let her. “I would if I could, you know?”

“Maybe they’ll figure out a way you can get some cash off of Frank’s shit.” She laughed right through his lie. “Then we won’t have to worry about anything.”

He almost offered her a place to crash. They’d spent so much time looking out for one another, it was ingrained. He had someplace safe. He was supposed to bring her into it. It was a habit or just how they’d run together, but Frank’d been right then, and he was right now, even in death. She’d kill him if she got the chance—even if it was by accident, his mother would be the end of him if he opened the door to her poison.

“Keep me in mind, okay?” His mother coughed, and someone said something indistinct next to her. “Look, I’ve got to go. Seriously, when Frank’s stuff comes in, hook me up. I did you more than a few solids before, right? I’ll let you know what my new number’s going to be.”

She was gone before he could say good-bye or even deny any solid she might have done. The cold was back, but this time, it burbled up from inside of him, streaking out of his damaged heart and into his fingers. His hands grew numb, and Forest flung the receiver, tossing it onto the floor with a clatter. He let the tears hit, feeling the sobbing break out of him in an uncontrollable wave.

Forest swallowed, unwilling to let her have the last good bit of him, but it was already gone, marred by her greasy touch even as he tried to wrestle back what little hope he had of being loved. Rolling over, he curled up on his side and drew his knees in, making himself as small as he could. Even as the IV needle tugged at its taped-down perch in his arm, he pulled in even tighter, anything to keep himself from shattering apart.

“God, I fucking hate you.” He bit down into the pillow, tasting the cotton and fiber on his tongue. His sobs shook him, and they grew guttural, animalistic as he fought down his pain. “And why the fuck do I even want you to care?”

Death kissed me low

Left me on the road so black

Took my brothers up with him

They ain’t never coming back

Heaven saw me cryin’

Tearing up my soul inside

Reached down into its golden grace

To bring a Sinner to my side

—
Saving a Sinner

T
HEY
FOUND
the chapel.

It was as empty as Quinn said it would be, but there were small meditation niches nearby Connor steered his brother to. The brothers found a space with a raised platform filled with large cushions upholstered in what someone decided were peaceful colors. Connor thought they looked more like a game of guess-what-candy-Bobby-puked, but then he’d also nearly coated the walls of his house in a shade of sad brown-cream before his mother stepped in with a shake of her head and paint swatches.

It took Quinn about a second to shed his shoes and plop down into a boneless heap. Connor was much more cautious, easing into the pod-like area, briefly wondering if anyone’d used the space for sex and if he was sitting where he shouldn’t be. Then his brother nudged his shin with a sock-covered foot, and Connor lost control of his mouth in a silly grin at Quinn’s crossed eyes and wiggling brows.

“Your face is going to get stuck that way,” Connor remarked, pushing his brother’s foot away.

“You should know. Yours did.”

“Oh, so funny,” Con snorted, moving a pillow out from behind his back. “Thanks for the coffee. And the company. I meant what I said, Q. You’re never the second string. Riley might be, or Brae and Ian, but that’s because they still laugh at fart jokes.”

“Con, even Da laughs at fart jokes. You’ve gotten old,” he teased, settling farther down into the cushions.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the mature one? College professor and all that?”

“Nope, where do you think I learn all those fart jokes?” Quinn winked and sipped his coffee. “So tell me, why are we down here in the hospital? Who are we waiting for?”

“A… friend of mine.” Connor picked at the plastic lid on his cup. “Shit’s been going down around him, and well, Kiki’s pulled his case. Long story short, looks like someone’s fucking with him. Or maybe even trying to kill him. I don’t know—someone sent a fucking van through his coffee shop. I don’t know if they meant to hurt him, or it was just stupid luck he was inside
right
then.”

The realization about the danger Forest was in punched Connor in the gut. Suddenly, the coffee turned sour in his stomach, and his mind raced for any bit of information he could share with Kiki. Nothing emerged from the confusion in his thoughts other than wishing he could wrap Forest up someplace and keep him safe—a thought more terrifying than a murderer stalking Forest.

And sitting next to him was his oddly constructed brother with a mind more complicated than a twenty-sided Rubik’s puzzle but with a mouth seemingly sealed shut against leaking any secrets.

It was an opportunity for Connor to shake loose some of the troubles he’d come up with, and more importantly, what he said wouldn’t work through the Morgan grapevine. He wasn’t ready to deal with his mother—no sane man would be—but as he stumbled through his growing awareness, Connor needed a sounding board, not advice, and Quinn was like a gift come down from the heavens.

Or at least from the Morgan living room, sent by a father who always seemed to know what his children needed—even when they couldn’t find their way out of an open paper bag.

“How did you know you were gay?” It wasn’t where he’d planned to start, but his brain obviously had other ideas, picking up the ball and running off in a wild stumble. “I mean… shit….”

In true Quinn fashion, his brother didn’t blink at the curveball he’d been thrown. Instead, he chewed on his lower lip for a second and replied, “Guess I never thought about it. It just always was there. The first time I acted on it was when I kissed Chance Delany when we were seven.”

“You kissed one of the Delany boys?” He sat up and stared at his brother. “Dude, we spent years warring with them as kids.”

“How do you think it all got started?” Quinn saluted Con with his coffee cup. “The one and only time my preinstalled gaydar worked. He’s a go-go dancer or something down in San Diego now. He came by last summer to apologize for siccing his brothers on me.”

“Well, fuck. Those assholes screwed with you every time Kane and I weren’t around.”

“They thought I was going to make their brother a faggot.” Quinn dropped the word as if it meant nothing, but Connor winced at hearing it ring out between them. “He was that way when I found him. I just wanted to see what it felt like to kiss a boy.”

“They made your life miserable, Q.”

“They didn’t.” His brother shrugged off the years of sporadic bullying. “Instead, they made their brother feel like shit for being different. Now his whole family pretends he’s dead, while mine just makes fun of how I think sometimes. Who’s the one with the miserable life?

“Until they started in on Chance, I didn’t even know I was different—not like really different. I just thought my wife would be a husband when I grew up,” Quinn continued. “I saw what they were doing to Chance, and I thought that’s how the family would be to me too. It’s why it took me so long to just say it out loud—that I liked other guys.”

“You never should have been made to feel that way,” Con replied softly as he drew his brother into a fierce one-armed hug. “You’re a fucking Morgan. We don’t do family like that, Qbert. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Then or now. Da had to remind me of that today. I seemed to have forgot.”

“I wasn’t ashamed of being gay until the world told me I should be. I’m over it now.” He shrugged at Connor’s disgusted snort. “So then, big brother, if I’m not something to be ashamed of, why are you having trouble admitting you like this Forest?”

Once again, Quinn laid him out, and Connor fought to breathe. Quinn studied him—as if Connor were a brightly colored bird having just flown out of a gray-fogged San Francisco morning, a splash of movement in the still, dead quiet. Connor had to look away from his brother’s nearly emotionless face. Everything he’d been wrestling with—from his attraction to Forest to the panic he’d lose the blond to a pile of falling bricks—overwhelmed Connor, and he couldn’t fight off the swaddle of fear choking him.

He stumbled over his tongue, caught in a spiderweb trap laid out by the family’s master spinner, and Connor nearly congratulated his brother on his successful capture. But then, perhaps all of the accolades belonged to their father, the man who’d sent Quinn on his path.

“Don’t look surprised, Con.” Quinn made a face at him. “This gaydar thing is like a broken clock, only right twice a lifetime. If it worked better, I wouldn’t have such a shitty social life.”

“How’d you know?”

“Does it matter? Are you thinking of hiding it?”

He thought about it for a second, then said, “I don’t know what I’m thinking. Things are moving way too fast for me, Q.”

Quinn might not have chosen to be a cop like the rest of them, but it didn’t mean he hadn’t picked up their father’s tricks along the way. He stayed silent and merely waited, letting Connor fill the empty space between them.

Connor spilled, uneasy with the role reversal, but he had to admit, between the two of them, Quinn would be the one who could help him sift through what he was feeling. Even if his baby brother sometimes had an odd way of scraping tender parts of a person’s psyche until everything felt bleeding and raw.

“I met Forest right after he found out his da was murdered. I didn’t even talk to him. I just held him when he cried. God, he cried. So fucking much.” Connor shoved his welling emotions down, but they rose up anyway, cracking through his stoicism. “He was so damned alone, and something in me—reached out, and I just…
liked
what I saw. So I kept going to him, to see if he was okay, or even just to watch him wake up in the morning and stumble out for coffee. I’m surprised he didn’t get me arrested for stalking him.”

“You’re good-looking and huge,” Quinn snorted. “And he’s gay?”

“Yeah, that was pretty obvious after the first couple of times I saw him at the Amp. Some of his customers are… very expressive. He flirts right back with them, but shy. Quiet.”

“Then yeah, he wouldn’t arrest you for stalking him. You’re hot. Hell, I’m surprised you didn’t admit you were bi before now so you could get laid twice as much.”

“It’s not like that, Q. He makes me feel… something inside. I don’t know what. Like I can’t shake the thought of him,” Connor confessed. “I don’t even know him. It was just one night… one fucking moment and I was lost. It scares the shit out of me. I’m man enough to tell you that. Scares me down to my balls.”

“Sounds like the flu.” Quinn chuckled. “Or a really scary roller coaster. But is it bad? This thing of yours?”

“I don’t know what to do with him—well, yeah, that part,” Con amended when Quinn rolled his eyes at him. “That part’s not important, and see, that’s where the scary fucking shit comes in, because how does
that
part stop being important?”

“Have you ever felt like this before? About anyone else?” His brother was a soft presence next to him, but even a feather became torture when applied properly—and Quinn Morgan certainly knew how to apply himself properly. “Or are you just scared to say you want him
because
he’s a guy? Because you think that makes you less than a man? Less than who you thought you’d be?”

“Oh, brother, serpents envy your fangs,” Con murmured.

“I do not inject a poison into you, brother, but rather I seek to free you from it,” Quinn replied.

“Who said that?” He glanced over at his brother.