“That fucker can’t walk into my life after ignoring me since I was a child and think I’m going to follow his orders like a puppy dog.”
“But—”
“No, no buts, Tyler. I’m not going to see her. I’m sure he’s exaggerating; it’s what he does to get his way. He doesn’t give a shit about her or me. He’s doing it to save face.”
Marcus stormed over and grabbed him by the shoulders. “He wouldn’t even acknowledge you, did you notice? Imagine living like that every day of your life.”
That explained so much about Marcus. All this hurt he internalized and kept bottled up for years now spilled over like an angry, raging river.
“Is that how it was for you? Your father ignored you?”
Tyler hadn’t heard a laugh so bitter in years.
“Ignored me would have been good. He didn’t know I existed. And lucky for my mother, she had Zach’s house to ship me off to so she could concentrate on making everything perfect and right for her husband, without the pesky interference of her child.”
Marcus let go of him and stalked to the bar, poured himself a double shot of something, and drank it down. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and poured another shot. “God forbid she should put her child’s needs ahead of her husband’s.”
“Your mom didn’t spend time with you? Don’t bite my head off,” he added hurriedly when he saw Marcus open his mouth as if to snap at him. “I’m simply trying to understand.”
Marcus had collapsed on the sofa and was staring off into space. Tyler joined him, close enough to touch, but he kept his hands off. “I’m not only here when the times are good, like me celebrating signing a lease. Or the sex. I can get that anywhere.”
“The fuck you say,” Marcus growled at him, and Tyler couldn’t help but laugh.
“You know what I mean. Sex is easy to get. Love, not so much. And I told you in the beginning this relationship is a two-way street, so if we’re going to have any chance of making this work, you have to trust me to help you. I’m in it for the long haul.”
Marcus stared into his glass. “How’d you get so smart?”
He took the glass out of Marcus’s hand and set it down on the table. “I knew you’d have to love me for my brains as well as my body.”
“Not gonna lie,” Marcus said, nibbling on his neck and causing him to sigh with pleasure. “That ass of yours caused me many a cold shower.”
Reining in his burgeoning desire, Tyler pulled away from Marcus’s questing lips and hands. If he didn’t stop now, they’d end up naked on the sofa, and while he was all in favor of an afternoon quickie, Tyler understood what Marcus was up to. With great restraint, not to mention a balls-deep ache, he edged over to the opposite end of the sofa, breathing heavily.
“I know what you’re trying to do, and you can forget it.”
Marcus lay down fully on the sofa, hugging a pillow. “Come on, Ty. Lillie will be home soon, and I want you now. I don’t want to wait until tonight after she’s asleep.”
“This is going nowhere until we settle the issue of you seeing your mother.”
Stubborn ox that he was, Marcus set his jaw in a mutinous angle and glared at him with hostility.
“I’m sure it’s nothing serious, and right now I need all my concentration to be on you and Lillie, not my mother. She’s probably run-down from living on the edge, always waiting for him, wondering where he is. If it were really serious, he would’ve told me, mainly to guilt me into seeing her. We have the preliminary hearing in Lillie’s case coming up in two days. I’ll deal with it after that.”
Tyler relented. “Okay, you have a point. But I’m not going to forget.”
Marcus yanked him close and began unbuttoning his shirt. “Oh, me either. I promise.” He dipped his head and kissed a path down Tyler’s abdomen, pausing only to pop the tab of his jeans and lower the zipper with his teeth.
*
More nervous thanhe’d ever been, Tyler wondered if he had time to run to the bathroom and throw up. Everything depended on him today. Marcus may stand staunchly by his side, as he knew he would, and Julian, Zach, and Sam had also shown up to support him, for which he was grateful, but in the end, Tyler knew everything rested on his shoulders.
He adjusted his tie for about the thousandth time, and Julian, who’d sent him over his outfit, to“make sure you look your best,”as the accompanying note read, slapped his hand away and fixed it himself.
“Stop pulling at it. You look perfect; like a runway model. Leave yourself alone.” Standing back and facing him with a critical eye, Julian nodded. “You’ve got this in the bag.”
“Don’t be an ass, Juli,” Marcus snapped, and Tyler could tell his nerves rested on a hair trigger. “Tyler’s not going to get granted custody because he’s good-looking.” Marcus too had dressed in a rich charcoal-gray suit so dark it looked almost black. His pristine white shirt had thin black and purple vertical lines, and his tie was a solid swath of heavy violet silk. Used to only seeing Marcus in his solid-black club outfits, once again Tyler wondered what someone with the looks and money Marcus possessed saw in him.
“I’ll ignore your rude and obnoxious behavior because I understand how tense you are,” said Julian mildly, tweaking Marcus’s tie. “You’re in a fragile state right now, so I can’t tell you to go to hell.”
