“Guys, you’re coming to Jan’s party, right?” she asked.
“Sorry,” Rob answered automatically. “We have plans with our family.”
Cindy, who Rob knew had a massive crush on Neil, tried to hide her disappointment with a laugh. “Alright then, you guys don’t be strangers.”
“Plans?” Neil asked, raising an eyebrow.
Rob grinned, flashing his teeth at Neil like a wolf. “Baby, do you think you can keep something like that from me? Please.”
Startled at Rob’s nickname—they only addressed each other affectionately in private—Neil let out a deep, rumbling laugh. God. What a sexy sound. Even though he’d heard it a thousand times, hearing Neil laugh made his insides melt.
“Well, I’m bad with surprises anyway.” Neil eliminated the inch of space between them, the hard muscles of his body colliding against Rob’s lean frame. So solid, unyielding and all his. Rob’s breath hitched in his throat, groaning when he felt Neil’s erection jutting against his jeans and toga. “There will be hell to pay for you snooping around my things, brother.”
Rob shuddered, nearly losing his control then and there, but somehow managed to keep himself upright. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot? I need to stop by the men’s room.”
“Don’t take too long,” Neil reminded him.
The moment Neil parted from him, Rob wanted to bridge the gap between their bodies again. When had he become so needy and dependent? Rob supposed love was like that. It hits you right in the gut and never cares for mercy. Imagining all the exciting and filthy things Neil would do to him, Rob headed for the toilet with a grin on his lips and stopped short when a thin arm lashed out, nails digging into his skin.
“Hey—” Rob retorted, cut short when he stared into his mother’s face.
She looked like a wraith, able to slip from this world to the next any moment. The white dress didn’t help, neither did her hair, once golden but now threaded with more gray than yellow. Fury stared at Rob from those hard eyes, taking him aback.
“Mom.” Rob breathed out the word.
Neil often told him there was no reason to be afraid of one old woman, especially one who’d given up on living a long time ago.
“Don’t speak.” Clarissa’s words sliced through the air like razors capable of cutting deep into the bone. “I saw you together.”
The three damning words rang in his ears, but Rob didn’t taste defeat on his lips. For years now, he’d wanted to tell her. Maybe she’d suspected it all along, but had never opened her mouth. Rob could fix this. Convince her that nothing would change his mind about a future with Neil.
“I love him,” Rob said simply, wincing as her sharp nails broke skin, drawing blood.
“It’s wrong. You’ll burn in hell for this, Robert. I won’t stand for this,” she hissed in his ear, as if terrified someone would overhear them.
“Hell?” Rob let out a little laugh. She drew back, looking at him in awful wonder, as if she questioned whether she was speaking to a doppelganger who had replaced her real son. “We’re already going there for what we did, but guess what? At least Neil and I are going together.”
She slapped him then, nails raking across his skin, and began to repeat the motion, but he caught her thin wrist.
“Don’t,” Rob said simply. “I’m twenty-four and Neil’s twenty-five. We’re adults. Hell, we made that transition the day we buried him in the backyard. You can’t do anything to us.”
Rob didn’t plan on leaving her, despite knowing Neil wanted to move far away from their hometown. After tonight, he knew Neil would propose they leave behind the trappings of the past and start somewhere new. Each time Neil spoke about what awaited them, a world free of judgment from Clarissa’s poisonous words, he caved in a little. Only a thin barrier walled his heart. They deserved to be happy, too.
“Is that what you think?” His mother let out a cruel laugh.
Clarissa, Rob corrected. She’d ceased being his mother the day they’d come to her defense and made that terrible but necessary decision together. Still, her blood flowed in his veins. He steadied himself mentally, because Rob was certain whatever ammunition she’d bring out would be a killing blow. Funny how her words still had an effect on him, even now.
“You and your filthy step-brother won’t be free of me,” she crooned in his ear. “I’ll ruin you both, wreck him the most. It would be so easy to show the police the bones in the backyard, but I think the press would be interested in the pictures I have of both of you, fornicating, sodomizing each other under my own fucking roof.”
Rob froze. “What pictures?”
“Should I show them to you and all your innocent little friends, Robert?” She reached for her purse and pulled out a plain brown envelope.
Rob felt like he was stuck in a horror show-and-tell. He felt helpless, like he’d been at eighteen when Don had nearly beat Clarissa to death, and would have ended Neil too, without a second thought. Grabbing the bastard’s old service revolver had been the only solution.
His step-father’s contorted face, full of rage and disbelief, still haunted his dreams. The old nightmares haunted Neil too, even though sleeping side-by-side helped drive those foul memories away. Neil wasn’t just his anchor, his sole reason for living, but also his talisman against the dark. Clarissa should have followed the fucker, if she missed him so much.
Guilt rammed into him, but she’d just threatened to destroy the man he loved. The first photo peeked out from the envelope—the bedroom Neil and he shared and a hint of tangled limbs. Snatching the envelope, Rob furiously stuffed the photos back inside.