Chapter Eight
Lucas stared at Susan, eyes wide. Andrew wasn’t sure what to make of it, until the boy said, “I love your hair.”
“Thanks.” She grinned. “My dad hates it, but everyone else likes it. I’m thinking orange next.”
“I wish I was that bold.” Awe filled Lucas’s voice.
“I’m not bold at all.”
Lucas leaned closer to her and lowered his voice. “You’ll need to learn if you’re spending time with him.” He nodded at Andrew.
Andrew wasn’t sure he wanted to know what that meant. He touched Susan’s arm, to draw her attention, and his mind stalled when she turned in his direction. He shook blank thoughts aside. “I need to talk to Kandace for a minute. You two be all right until we get back?”
“Sure.” She looked more at home settling onto the leather sofa than he’d ever felt, and he bought the house.
He blocked out her conversation with Lucas, about how she got the blue to stick, and led Kandace into the kitchen.
“She’s a little young to be in porn, isn’t she?” Kandace asked as soon as they were out of earshot.
He wasn’t in the mood for this. “She’s twenty-one, she doesn’t work for me, and you know not all of my associates fuck for a living.”
“I do know it, but to hear you talk, they do. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Why?”
“You haven’t made a single smart-ass quip since you walked in the door. Are you sick?” She raised the inside of her wrist to his forehead.
He swatted her hand away. “I don’t have a fever. And she’s Mercy’s younger sister.”
“Ah.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He winced at the edge in his own words.
Her frown said she noticed. “You really are on edge. What’s going on?”
He breathed in, then counted to three as he exhaled, trying to chase away the tension. “I was serious on the phone the other day.”
“So was I. No therapy. Whatever we can do to avoid it.” She opened the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water and a beer, and handed him the water.
He accepted but didn’t twist off the lid. “We already agreed on that. I mean about telling Lucas the truth. He deserves to know.”
“No.” At least they weren’t dancing around the issue.
“I’m not asking permission. It’s going to happen.”
She leaned against the counter and took a long drag off her drink, before asking, “Have you thought this through?”
“I’ve had ten years to think it through. I’ve never been comfortable with the arrangement.” He didn’t expect her to yield without a little pushback, but the flat-out refusal caught him off-guard.
“Never? You didn’t protest too hard.”
When he was eighteen, she made good points for telling Lucas she was his mother. Lucas’s health and happiness were more important than Andrew’s ego. “It’s true I’ve made a lot of excuses, even after I got myself together. But he’s reaching an age where he can understand, and he’ll be happier if he knows sooner rather than later.”
“In your head, how does it play out once you tell him?” She crossed her arms and stared.
There weren’t a lot of options he was aware of, when it came to raising a kid. “He goes back to Georgia with me, and I enroll him in a school where they don’t tell kids they’ll go to hell for wanting to have sex.” He didn’t want to take Lucas away from home, but if he led with the worst case, they could negotiate from there.
“So you’ll take a boy who already thinks his desires are evil, remove him from the only home he’s ever known, and plunge him headfirst into the filth that is your world?”