ONE
LELAND
“I need to talk to you about something.”
I freeze and slowly look over at Waylon as he stands in the door of my gun shrine where I’ve been busy staring at my latest beauty. “Did you knock someone up?”
His face scrunches up. “No! Oh my god!”
“Did you start selling drugs at school?” I ask.
“I wanted to talk to Jackson! I thought Jackson was in here!” Waylon says before he storms off in a perfect rendition of a teenage tantrum. After we illegally made the fifteen-year-old our son, Waylon has been in our wonderful care. He’s a good kid with a brain that got him in extreme trouble when he followed his stepfather’s instructions to create a drug that ended up killing people. Because of it, his brother Bennett was sent to prison, which meant that Waylon had nowhere to go.
Since living with me is not the safest place for a fifteen-year-old, we’d considered sending him to someone else. But people know what he can do, and we’re afraid that it’s only a matter of time before someone tries to take him from us. A normal family wouldn’t be able to protect him like Jackson and I can.Hell, we’re surrounded by people who would move mountains to protect the teenager.
“What’s going on?” Jackson asks as he steps out of our bedroom and into the hallway, looking handsome, as always.
Waylon rushes over to him. “Oh, thank god, the normal one.”
“Excuse me? My husband is not normal in the slightest! Have you seen him climb fences? Nonormalman climbs fences like that,” I assure him.
“I just…” Waylon wavers some more, telling me that we might not be prepared for what he’s about to say.
“Who’d you kill, knock up, or drug?” I ask.
He gives me an exasperated look, like he’s not the one over here struggling to get out what he did. “Why does it have to be one of those things? What kind of… okay… maybe… maybe I did some shit in the past, but I’m being good!”
“You shouldn’t cuss,” Jackson comments, brown eyes scrutinizing him, like that’s the issue here. He really is too good and sweet.
“I feel like that’s the least of his worries when we don’t know what atrocities he’s committed!” I say. “Blink if you’ve started a gang and then got caught by another gang who said they’d pay you off, but you’ve realized that it was a scam all along so you went to the police who are now forcing you to work as an undercover gang member, but you fell in love with the head of the DEA’s daughter and you two are aware it’s forbidden love but nothing can stop your love for her.”
“How am I supposed tonotblink?! I didn’t… I haven’t… I was just going to say that my friend… his parents are having friends over so he’s hoping he could stay somewhere else, heavily implying that he wanted to stay at my house… so I was wondering if the two of us could stay at Cassel’s or Henry’s from tomorrow until Sunday.”
I grab my chest. “Jackson… Jackson, I have this… there’s something in my chest that really hurts. There’s… it’s a pain. There’s a pain, Jackson, what’s this called?”
“Drama?” Waylon asks.
Jackson rubs my shoulder. “Honey, it’s fine. If he wants… to stay with others… because of our house…”
I gasp as I realize what it is that burns so brightly in my chest. “Betrayal. I have Papa’d you so damn good, and then you do this to me?”
Waylon looks a little flustered. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. It’s just that sometimes… please don’t be upset.”
I swipe away a fake tear. “Fine. Go stay with someone else. I will cry myself to sleep tonight. Jackson… where are the Kleenexes? I will need a whole stack of them.”
“I thought we were watching a movie and popping popcorn?” Jackson asks, like he’s not at all affected by this betrayal.
“Just the popcorn for me. I will need the salt to replenish my tears,” I say.
Waylon sighs very loudly. “Hey, Leland, my friend Cam would like to come over tomorrow. Do you mind if he spends the night?”
I freeze and slowly look over at him. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t quite hear that over my sobbing.”
He gives me a look. “You heard it just fine. Do I tell him yes or no?”
“We’ll pick him up at five AM,” I say. “Tell him not to be late.”
Waylon’s face scrunches up again, like there could possibly be a problem. “Why so early? No… can it be a normal time? What about ten? I’m going to regret this so much,” he whines.
