For the better, no matter how it had ended.
Where he was a lanky and awkward teen, Garrett kept his compact, slot receiver’s frame in constant motion, barely restrained energy always crackling beneath the surface and flashing in his stunning hazel eyes.Add in the easy smile and headful of chestnut hair that flamed red in the sun, and Nic had thought Garrett Scott was the most beautiful boy he’d ever seen.And there was no way such a beautiful boy would have anything to do with him, especially after he’d watched Garrett fuck a gorgeous waiter at a party one night.Wishing the whole time with every cell in his teenage body that he could be that waiter, that they could swap places.
But that wasn’t all Nic had wanted, and somehow, miraculously, he’d gotten what he wanted for a change.Garrett never looked down on him, had made it his mission to make Nic laugh, drawing him out day by day, whether in the cypress grove with his mother, in the kitchen with Mary, or just the two of them tossing around a football.Or watching movies curled up on the couch, closer and closer each night.Nic hadn’t and still didn’t warm up to people easily, but Garrett had been like a magnet, irresistible.Nic had been in love with him before that first summer was over, and his love for the beautiful boy had only grown by leaps and bounds during the years that had followed.Their relationship had been illicit and dangerous, right under Curtis’s nose, and until recently, those had been the best years of Nic’s life.He’d loved and been loved for who he was, happy for the first time since his mother’s death.
He’d taken something for himself, that happiness, and drawn Garrett and Victoria closer, loving them with all his might, and in doing so, plunged them into an uncertain future.He’d cost Garrett the dream he’d had since he’d first picked up a football, Victoria her job.Hell, for all he knew, he had well and truly destroyed their lives.
A hand came gently down on his thigh, bringing him back to the present and to the other man who’d stolen his heart almost as quickly.“Sorry,” Nic apologized, covering Cam’s hand with his own.“Spaced out there for a minute.”
“After the day you’ve had, it’s allowed.”Cam wove their fingers together.“Are you sure you’re up for this tonight?We could go ho?—”
“I need to talk to Mary.”
“About what was in Vaughn’s lockbox?”Cam shifted in his seat toward him.“Do you want to talk about it?You didn’t say much this afternoon.”
“I’m sorry.I had a status conference on another case.”True, but he’d also used that as an excuse to duck out before anyone asked the hard questions.Questions and truths he didn’t want to talk about ever again, but more and more of his life—his past—kept getting drawn into this case.And he was going to have to ask Mary some hard questions tonight.Aside from asking Vaughn directly, she was the next best person to help tie together these latest revelations.
Cam’s thumb swept across the back of his hand, redirecting his wandering mind again with a whispered “Baby.”
Nic shook off the cobwebs and focused on the man in the truck with him.
He wasn’t sure how much of this story would come out by the time this case was over, but Cam deserved to know it.Should be the first to know it.“I have no idea why he had pictures of Victoria.”
Cam’s fingers tightened around his.“I meant do you want to talkaboutVictoria.One look at those pictures and it was like you’d seen a ghost.”
“Because I had.I haven’t seen Victoria since high school graduation.”
Cam inhaled sharply and drew down his brows, the investigator putting it together in a second.“You took the punch forher?”
Hand still in his, Nic gazed out the window again as the picture reel of that awful day played through his mind.“She told him she was leaving, that she’d packed my bags too, and he went ballistic.I stepped in the middle.”
She’d had all their bags in the foyer, packed and ready to leave.After two weeks of utter hell, he’d felt as light and bright as a hot-air balloon, ready to take off into the future with the mother he never thought he’d have again and the boy he never wanted to be without.And then his father had charged in, demanding to know what the hell was going on.He’d accused Victoria and Garrett of trying to steal his son, of tainting the Price name, of milking him for a place to live in the lap of luxury.Never mind that they weren’t married yet.Never mind that the so-called luxury had begun to dim the day after he’d put an engagement ring on Victoria’s finger, first with emotional abuse, the sort Nic was all too familiar with, and then with the more physical manifestations of power, thinking he owned everything and everyone under his roof.Never mind the nightmare of the two weeks after he’d caught Nic and Garrett together under the cypress trees Victoria had brought back to life.Never mind that nothing and no one would have changed the fact that Nic was gay.Curtis was never going to have the heir he’d wanted; Victoria and Garrett Scott were just convenient punching bags.
“I’m guessing her trying to take you only enraged him more.”
“I suspect he wished he’d let me go once I screamed in his face that I was gay and that he didn’t have the power to change that.”
“Then why didn’t you?”Cam asked, drawing his gaze back with a tug on his hand.“Why didn’t you go with Victoria instead of to the Navy?”
“I wanted to get them out safely.I didn’t want him to follow me.Turned out he was happy to get rid of all of us.”
Cam’s brows snapped together again.“Them?All of us?”
Shit, that’d been more of the story than Nic had intended to tell tonight.
And Cam, goddamn brilliant investigator that he was, kept putting the pieces together.“Wait, is GS related?—”
For once, Aidan’s obnoxiously loud car was right on time.The gleaming black Aston Martin roared past them and into a spot two cars ahead.Nic withdrew his hand.“Aidan and Lauren are here.”
Cam reached for him with a “Nic, wait,” but Nic beat him to the door and out of the truck, Cam’s muttered “Damn it” echoing behind him.Cam caught up with him before he made it to Aidan’s car, drawing him around with a hand at his elbow.“This isn’t over.”
Nic chuckled, Cam’s persistence a comfort as much as it was a menace.“I didn’t figure it was, Boston.”
Cam wasn’t laughing.He stepped closer, into Nic’s space.“Remember what you promised earlier?”
“Not to keep things on the case from you.”
“And now this may be related.”
