Rue shut his eyes, feeling them ache with the desire to cry at the concern. The love that came unconditionally and had from the beginning.
Did he deserve it?
“Rue?”
His eyes flickered open to glance about. “I’m not sure,” he answered truthfully. Dad and Popi were possibly the only two people on the planet he was completely honest with.
“Is this to do with Monty?”
He released a bitter laugh at being so damn fucking obvious. “Sort of.” In a moment of weakness, and several whiskeys, he’d confessed about what happened after the awfulness in Drinkwater and his visit to Monty’s apartment when he’d gotten home.
“Son.”
The one word held a weight that left Rue struggling to hold himself together. How had one night turned him into a basket case?
“Dad… I’m… fuck!” Rue yanked on his hair and kicked at a rock as he looked forward, seeing none of the beautiful scenery. Just Kendrick and Monty in bed together. “It’s complicated.”
“Can it be uncomplicated?”
His laughter came out twisted and pained. “I don’t see how when I can’t even explain why I’m feeling… feeling torn up inside from one night with…” he couldn’t say it, despite knowing Dad wouldn’t judge his choices. No, he was doing that all by himself.
In three days he’d head home—back to normality.The thought left him cold at his core.
“It’s okay, Rue. We’ll figure this out together, like we always have.”
The assurance made it worse somehow, when it would make no difference. What he’d experienced last night was like licking the icing off a delicious cake that had many layers left beneath for him to taste, only to have to throw it away because it was too big to handle. The hint at what it could be like to have Monty in his life, what Kendrick could bring to them if they had time toexplore what was between them, gave a bridge to a relationship with Monty he’d not been seeking, yet he’d found anyway.
Life was cruel.
His life, his commitment to his family, to business—it’s why he’d left the army. Why he had come home when Dad and Popi needed him—when his brothers needed him. They came first, and that meant what was in Bayfield was only fleeting. It had to be.
“Not this time, Dad.”
Chapter Eleven
Derick
Derick sat back in his office chair and stared at the room, not seeing it. The anguish in Rue’s voice hurt as much as the words themselves as they repeated in his head.“Not this time, Dad.”They squeezed his chest at how much Rue believed them.
Recalling vividly his own frustration at Lane breaking his promise of not adopting another lost boy, Derick chuckled at how it fled the second he’d met Rue. One look into those haunted eyes and Derick’s heart engaged in the same way it had for each of his sons. Rue was big for his age, so a person could have missed the defenselessness, but Derick had not. Offering truthfulness as the foundation for their sons' growing up, some had struggled more with this than others. Rue had taken more than a year before deciding to allow the adoption, the longest of all their adopted sons. Derick suspected Rue’s inability to share with them was a part of that.
The youngest of their sons, he hid his vulnerability behind a protective wall built out of what he believed was necessity. The blood he’d been covered in when rescued might have washedoff easily. But his guilt at not protecting his family, his younger brother, left an indelible mark on his soul. Rue had never mentioned his brother, not once.
Derick had discovered, after he’d gotten his investigators involved, that the child, no more than five, had been slaughtered with Rue’s parents. There were photos taken in the aftermath, but Derick had never shown another soul, including his husband. The brutality of the attack Rue had witnessed firsthand left Derick gutted to his core.
Rue would cringe at Derick defining him as gentle and kind, but despite the trauma he had a capacity to love bigger and bolder than many who hadn’t experienced such loss. He used bluster, indifference and aggression to shield himself.
Rue carried guilt with him. They could tell him a thousand times he wasn’t to blame for what happened to his family. His size did not mean he could have stopped the other crash members, of which there were ten, from brutally murdering his divergent parents and brother.
They’d gotten Rue a therapist, like they had for all their sons when they’d needed them, but he was the only one who hadn’t benefitted from it. He’d closed himself off from the past and held the guilt like a shield over his heart. Nothing they had done changed that, and Derick felt this keenly, much like Lane.
They loved him. Cherished him. Was it enough?
Derick wasn’t sure after the call.
Rue was only truly open and honest with him and Lane, yet he held back anything connected to relationships. The one time he’d spoken about someone had been liquor-fueled.
Derick’s love for Lane was something he accepted from the moment he’d figured out his feelings. Rue had strong feelings for Monty, and the liquor freed his tongue. There was no other reason for the guilt he felt after sleeping with him. Not that Derick could find… unless.
