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  “You can’t sell it again?” I questioned.

  He shook his head minutely. “Self-help books are ridiculous.” He stacked together a pile of papers and opened a drawer. He was back to tidying up, no doubt as a way of keeping busy and not having to face me.

  “America disagrees with you,” I noted. Self-help books were popular as hell. Even I had a shelf with the latest romance novel and “Be Your Own Dr. Phil” book in my shop.

  “I suppose I have no interest in selling books to mainstream America.” He bent down to stow away something under the counter.

  “Then why would you have the book in your store to begin with?”

  “I buy up stock from companies that are going out of business. I don’t get to pick the titles. I just wait for the countless boxes to arrive, and then I have to sort through them.” He rose again and cleared his throat. His eyes didn’t look as red anymore. “I no longer need shelf-fillers.”

  I guess the one I’d bought had been a shelf-filler.

  “Okay.” I’d run out of things to say on the topic, yet I couldn’t bring myself to wrap it up. I didn’t want to be a stranger who ignored that he’d been upset, nor did I want to introduce myself as his nephew’s friend’s older brother. I wasn’t ready. I wanted five minutes in the spotlight before Ty took over. Here we go. “Can we skip the part where we pretend this isn’t awkward, and I ask you what’s wrong? You were upset in there.” I pointed toward the office.

  Despite that the sharp look he gave me lasted less than a second, I could tell he wasn’t happy about my bringing that up.

  “Sorry,” I said, half embarrassed. It wasn’t any of my business. “I’ll just…” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder toward the door. “Right. Thanks.” I turned and twisted the door handle, wondering how the fuck I was gonna return now to tell him the truth, that I actually had a purpose for coming here. I had to tell him about Ty—

  “Wait,” he said.

  Relief smashed into me, and I glanced at him over my shoulder.

  His expression was contrite. “Two days in a row, and I’ve started each of your visits with an apology. I haven’t given you a very good impression of me.” He looked out the window, then back to me. “I noticed the Mariners sticker on your truck when you left yesterday. Are you just visiting LA?”

  I nodded hesitantly.

  He nodded once too. “Please, let me buy you a cup of coffee at Martin’s next door and send you off with a slightly better opinion of Topaz Pages.”

  The fuckyesokay was already on the tip of my tongue. Luckily, I managed to hold off an extra second and then say, “Yeah, all right.” All cool and shit.

  He offered a quick, polite smile and rounded the counter to lead the way. God, the man even wore flip-flops. Had he really been a banker?

  “My name is Henry.”

  “Zach,” I replied. Standing next to him, I gave him a discreet once-over as he opened the door and stepped out. He looked comfortable in his army-green cargo shorts, flip-flops, and a tee that was navy blue today. His threads were well-worn and fit his body perfectly, showing a hint of the strength hidden underneath.

  I’d never asked Ty how old his uncle was, though I suspected he was in his mid-forties. Henry had faint laugh lines around his eyes and mouth, and some silver strands in his dark hair, all of which I found strangely pornographic.

  “So you don’t wanna talk about what got you upset, huh?” Me and my stupid mouth.

  He gave me a narrow-eyed look, only to sigh and gesture toward the pastry shop next door. “What gave you that idea, young man whom I don’t know?” For that one, he only got silence from me, and I stifled a smile. “It was my nephew’s birthday last week,” he admitted, visibly uncomfortable, and fuck, now so was I. “We are, sadly, not on good terms, so it was upsetting to see the photos he uploaded from his birthday party.”

  A ripple of pain pummeled through me as I replayed the sounds of his muffled cries from earlier. The man was fucking torn up about not being in Ty’s life, and I was being a selfish dick because I wanted five minutes alone with his holy hotness to explore whether or not I was into men? Clearly, I fucking was. On some level, anyway.

  “I can’t do this,” I heard myself say. Yesterday, those words had stayed in my head. Now they were out of my mouth. Along with the truth. “My name is Zachary Coleman. My younger brother—Matthew Coleman—is your nephew’s best friend.” That had Henry’s attention. He went from confused to shocked in an instant. “I’m sorry,” I added quickly. “I was gonna tell you this yesterday.” But then I met you, and you were so fucking stunning that I couldn’t form words. “I don’t know what happened,” I lied. “I chickened out. Guess I was nervous.” Great, now I was rambling. Shit, my hands were getting sweaty again. “Anyway, I drove down from Camassia to see you ’cause I think you need to come home and talk to him.”

  Henry’s shock faded slowly, something else taking its place. Resignation, maybe even impatience. Or whatever it was that gave him that stiff, closed-off expression.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. Sweat beaded above my upper lip, and I wiped it away. California heat and anxiety didn’t go well. No wonder people loved getting stoned here.

  “Is there something wrong with him?” he asked tightly.

  I frowned. “Well, yeah. He’s turning into a douchebag.”

  I put that mildly too.

  Henry scowled. “Excuse me? I don’t know what that means. Is Tyler okay?”

  “Douchebag means—”

  “I know what a douchebag is,” he snapped. “I’m sorry.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, reining it in, I guessed. “What I meant is, if someone comes from another state to tell me I need to go see my nephew, my initial reaction is to wonder if he’s dying, hurt, or otherwise harmed. But he’s okay?”

  I licked my lips and nodded. “He’s fine. But he won’t be for long. Can—can we get out of the heat? I’m melting.”

  He inclined his head and gestured back toward his shop, rather than the other place. “Martin is a queen and a gossip. I don’t need his drama for this.”

  I kinda wanted to meet Martin. That was my first thought. I’d never met a…you know…queen.

  On the way inside again, I mulled over the approach I’d take with Henry. I noticed I wasn’t as nervous anymore, probably because I’d come clean and was ready to get this over with. And there was a short route to take. There was no need to drag up all the sordid details with Henry. He already knew them.

  According to what my brother had shared, Henry and Thorne Bennington had both been perfect sons, and having met their father, I knew they’d been raised to fear rather than respect their parents. Not a hair or a grade out of place. Business majors, then holders of master’s degrees from some fancy Ivy League school.

  Henry was the bachelor, and Thorne married a woman their folks approved of. Then Henry eventually revealed he was gay. Their parents freaked out and disowned him, and Henry quit everything. He went from living in New York and visiting Camassia on holidays to…this. He moved to California with a hefty inheritance he’d received from his grandparents.

  If I wasn’t mistaken, he hadn’t come out until later in life. Ty had been around, I knew that much. The rest of the details as to how close Henry and Ty had been were fuzzy at best, so I hoped Henry could shed some light on that.

  It was clear as day Henry and his brother had been very close, though. Because when Thorne and Shelly died in a car crash, Henry was given custody of Ty, who was twelve at the time. Yet, somehow, Ty ended up living with Henry’s parents.

  Whoever had made that decision needed to have his kneecaps blown off.

  As Henry led the way to his office behind the counter, I stopped short in the doorway. That’s got to be the fattest cat I’ve ever seen. The gray, stripey spectacle was sprawled out on his back in an old chair. The room was otherwise fairly empty, except for a corner with a littered desk, another chair, and filing cabinets.

  “Did your cat eat another ca
t?” I blurted out.

  Henry’s face flashed with amusement. “That’s Eagle.”

  “I don’t think anything could make that thing fly.”

  He waved a hand. “It’s a golf term. I found him a couple years ago on a golf course.” Then he continued, opening a door that led up a narrow set of stairs.

  “Could’ve named him Double Bogey,” I mumbled under my breath.

  The second floor opened up to a messy-as-hell apartment. Or maybe it wasn’t messy, but there were books everywhere. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had more books up here than in his store. The space was open, with only a long bar separating the kitchen from the rest. His coffee table consisted of stacks of books covering a glass top. His burgundy couch housed more books, each one with a bookmark sticking out.

  There was no TV. There was one shelving system that was filled with framed pictures instead, and it took me a few seconds to realize they were all Ty’s photos. Henry had saved them from Ty’s social media, and he’d printed them out. It was the only way he could keep Ty in his life.

  Where does he sleep?

  As soon as the question entered my head, I saw a nook next to a door I assumed led to a bathroom. The alcove was just big enough to fit a bed and one nightstand.

  “Coffee?” Henry went behind the kitchen bar. “There’s juice, water, and soda too.”

  “Juice, thanks.” I didn’t drink coffee unless I was desperate to stay awake.

  While he got started with the coffeemaker and pulled out a carton of OJ from the fridge, I sat down on a stool on the other side of the bar.

  “So tell me what’s going on with Tyler,” he requested.

  “Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out,” I replied. “Your parents are raising him. Who do you think he’s turning into?”

  Henry flinched and kept his back to me.

  “I know your folks don’t accept you ’cause you’re gay,” I revealed, “and if you don’t intervene soon, Ty will be just as ignorant.” It was a slippery slope, and I’d heard and seen enough to be concerned. Ty was slowly turning into a guy who measured success in terms of money. A few weeks ago, he casually mentioned that Mattie was lucky to have good grades because they provided him a scholarship to attend the same private academy where Ty was. There wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be able to afford private school. It was all Mattie’s hard work and straight As. “He uses the word fag like a joke,” I added to the list. “He dumped a girl because she drove a shitty car.”

  “Jesus.” Henry had given up on the coffee-making, and now he was standing still with his head hanging low, his hands planted on the counter. “I never wanted that for him.”

  I believed him, but what did he expect would happen? Henry’s parents were…well, they certainly screamed of old money. Which came with Jackie O suits, underpaid gardeners, banquets, and bigotry. Next year, they were sending Ty to an Ivy League on the East Coast, something I wouldn’t balk at if it weren’t for the fact that I remembered Ty’s dreams. He’d once said he wanted to get into animation. Now his grandparents were hoping he’d major in business.

  One perfect son had died, the other was gay, so they were gonna try with their grandson.

  “When was the last time you saw him?” I asked. Ty and Mattie had been friends since they started high school, and I’d known Ty for most of that time. He’d been out of town a handful of times; perhaps he’d seen Henry then, but Henry sure as heck hadn’t been in Camassia.

  “A little over two years.” Henry swallowed, and I saw him scrubbing a hand down his face. “I’m lucky if I get to speak to him on the phone once or twice a year. He wants nothing to do with me.” At that, he finally faced me. Looking ten years older all of a sudden, he leaned back against the counter and put his hands down in his pockets. “I send him messages every week. Texts, emails… He rarely responds.”

  “Because you’re giving him too much choice.” I tried to stay patient, but it was fucking hard. “Not to sound like a dick, but Ty doesn’t know better. He’s seventeen—a kid. He’s sheltered and easily influenced. He’s angry.” I stopped there, fully aware that every word I spoke could be a blow to Henry’s heart. “I think he needs you. He just won’t admit it.”

  His glare was brief but venomous. “What do you suggest I do if he won’t speak to me?”

  “Why won’t he?” I had too little info there.

  He shook his head, his expression grim. “You need to realize that from the time Tyler was six to when my brother and his wife died, I was the uncle he only saw a few times a year. I adore the boy, and he loved visiting me here, but I wasn’t there every day like my parents. They lived on the same street.”

  I could understand that, but Thorne and Shelly must’ve chosen Henry for a reason.

  “I can’t defeat my parents,” he went on, and the hurt was visible in his eyes. “When my brother died, I moved up to Camassia temporarily. I did everything I could to be there for Ty, but my parents are manipulative people. They made him think I didn’t want to look after him. I lived so far away, I never came home, I made poor life choices, I wasn’t family-oriented… The accusations rained down, and it got to the point where I had to defend my actions whenever I had Ty. He wasn’t necessarily accusing me, but he was questioning. He didn’t know what to believe—or whom to believe—and regardless of how I feel about my parents, I refuse to badmouth them in front of Tyler. It’s cruel, and the only one who suffers is the child.”

  So in the end, Ty chose to believe his grandparents. I felt for Henry. Being attacked and worked against, then having to try to explain it to an angry teenager who was still grieving… I couldn’t imagine that.

  “The biggest mistake I made was when I gave up,” he said quietly, gaze downcast. “We had a fight one evening, and it ended with him screaming at me—that I should move back to California and let him live with my parents. I was at my wit’s end, and I stupidly let it happen.”

  Everything made much more sense to me now. I couldn’t hold shit against him for moving, either. We all had our limits, and verbal attack was just another term for abuse. Henry’s parents needed to be fucking gone.

  I stared at him, the entire apartment drenched in his defeat and despair. It was easy to say he simply should’ve stayed, or that he should’ve forced Ty’s grandparents out of their lives somehow, but then you didn’t know the Benningtons. Or Ty, for that matter. If there was something he didn’t want, he wasn’t gonna do it.

  “You still have custody, right?” I asked.

  He nodded once. “I don’t see how that changes anything. I’ll show you.” He retrieved his phone from his pocket and showed me the one-sided conversation he had with his nephew. “If he will barely answer my texts, how will he respond if I force him to live with me?”

  I scrolled up, up, up. Past messages of Henry telling Ty he loved him, missed him, asked when they could see each other… Last time Ty had replied via text was March. It said, “Happy 46.” I assumed that was Henry’s birthday.

  I lifted a shoulder. “We could do one of those hostile takeover things.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, we.” I was stubborn about it. I cared, okay? I’d liked Ty—once. Mattie was crazy about the guy—not to mention upset that Ty was becoming an idiot. “Giving Ty too many choices has obviously not worked. He needs to be made to listen.”

  Henry didn’t answer, though I could tell I had his attention. The man still hoped.

  I believed it could work. For some reason, Ty had kept his uncle’s address by his desk in his room. That had to mean something, didn’t it? I found myself rambling a bit to Henry, telling him what I knew and the conclusions I could draw. If Ty hated Henry so much, why keep the address? Why share bits of information here and there?

  “What did he say about you driving all the way down here?” he wondered.

  Well… “He doesn’t know,” I admitted. “I was gonna call you, but Mattie couldn’t think of a reason to ask for a number that’s stuck in Ty’s phone witho
ut him getting suspicious. So all I had was that address and your name. I searched for you online, but did you change numbers?” Because there was one number attached to this address, and it didn’t work.

  “I canceled my private landline since I have a separate one for the store,” he confirmed. “I’m sorry you had to come all the way here.”

  “We’ve apologized way too much.” I only wanted to move forward. “Look, Henry. You have one year before he’s legal and can do whatever he wants. You’ve had a few years to stew in your misery, and shit hasn’t gotten better, has it? Giving him space won’t make him see the damn light. You gotta fight again, and maybe you gotta fight dirty.”

  Henry grew even more introspective. As long as I saw resolve taking over, I was happy. It was better than the suffocating depression. Busying himself with the coffee, he listened as I did my best to explain a bit about Ty, which wasn’t easy because I didn’t wanna insult Henry. He hadn’t missed out on anything good these past couple of years, and some of the bad shit would hopefully work in our favor.

  “How would any of this work in our favor?” he asked, baffled.

  I scratched my nose. There was no way to put this nicely. “Take this the right way, but your nephew is kinda dumb.” I ignored his cocked eyebrow. “He relies heavily on technology and gets everything handed to him. He was driving with Mattie a couple weeks ago, and the car broke down. They had no service, so Ty freaked out, ’cause if he couldn’t call AAA, then there was nothing else to do.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Henry muttered, rubbing his mouth as he cringed. “What happened?”

  “They were in that ten-minute strip of forest between the Valley and Camas.” I referred to two of the five districts in Camassia. “Mattie walked to the nearest body shop.” I shrugged. It had been no issue whatsoever. Yet, Ty had been clueless.

  “All right.” He got weary. “Where are you going with this?”

  “Just sayin’. If you take him to some remote cabin, he won’t be able to leave. Hell, you can probably keep him in one place right here. Take his phone and credit card, and he’s stranded.” Even though there were a hundred ways to get away from Topaz Pages. “What I think you two need is alone time. Away from your folks, away from other shitheads who might influence Ty. There are a few of them at their school.”