Chapter Two
Three years later...
“Mr. Ellison? Mr. Davis is ready to see you now,” the pretty blonde behind the unnecessarily huge reception desk said, nodding to a glass door off to the side of the room.
Rusty stood, stretching his arms high above his head, winked at the receptionist, and headed for the door she’d indicated.
L. M. Davis,it said in gold foil letters, vertical blinds blocking the view into the office. Every lawyer in the world seemed to have the same office.
Rusty went through the door without knocking, finding his father’s lawyer staring out the fifth-floor window at the harbor.
“Rusty,” Larry Davis turned to face him, his hair more grey than black now, his face tired as always. He’d been a figure in Rusty’s life for a long time.
What kind of man invited hislawyerto his kid’s birthday parties?
Well, Rusty knew the answer to that. His father.
Rusty sat in the plush leather chair on his own side of the desk, leaning back and throwing one leg over the other to make himself comfortable.
“Haven’t seen you in a while. I hear you moved back to Melbourne.”
“Mm,” Rusty said. They all knew why he’d moved. He doubted that Larry really wanted to talk about it.
“Nice place?” Larry asked, moving to stand next to his chair, but not making a move to sit yet. It was the only way he could be taller than Rusty these days, so it was probably meant to intimidate him.
“Works for me,” Rusty said. “Did you summon me to Sydney just to make small talk, or…?”
Larry rolled his eyes, finally sitting down. He opened his desk drawer and extracted a folder, tossing it across the desk.
Rusty reached out to take it, confused. His dad hadn’t died or anything, so he had no idea what all this was about.
“You should’ve told me you’d gotten married,” Larry said. “I would’ve sent a toaster.”
Rusty didn’t doubt for a second that he would have done exactly that, but he wasn’t…
He reached out for the folder, heart in his throat as he flipped it open.
Oh.
Shit.
“Shit,” he said aloud. “That wasn’t… they gave us a novelty certificate, it couldn’t have been… it was years ago, and we only just passed…”
“Marriage equality, yeah. Which means that not only is it legal in the US, it’s legal in Australia, now, too. I take it you and your husband aren’t together anymore.”
Rusty wet his lips.
“He was an artist,” Rusty said. He remembered Blake—how could he forget a man he’d chased as hard as that—but he hadn’t thought about him in a while.
Months, at least.
Maybe days.
He’d been hard to forget. That wasn’t the point.
“He’s a project manager for a construction firm,” Larry said. “You’ll find his address and place of business in there.”
Rusty flicked through the papers in the folder, his foot tapping nervously on the polished marble tiles.
