Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Charma sighed as a picture of his mom appeared on his phone, letting him know who the incoming call was from.
His finger hovered over the decline button, but he’d been doing that for two days now, and he knew she was going to just keep calling.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to her, but the last week with Darcy had been so wonderful and fun and happy making and he hadn’t wanted anything to ruin that.
Not that she would do it on purpose, but he didn’t want another lecture about continuing the family line and him needing to get someone pregnant.
He stared at it a moment longer, then finally hit the green button and put the phone on speaker.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Charma! Finally! I thought you were dead.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m pretty sure you knew I wasn’t dead.” After all, he’d been declining the calls, not letting them just go to voice mail.
“Well, you could have been for all I knew. You never call.”
He sighed, not trying to cover it. “Mom…” This was why he didn’t talk to her.
“Well, you don’t.”
“No, because I know what you’re going to say.”
“You do not!”
“No? You’re not going to tell me about some girl I’ve never met before who you’re sure I would like enough to have babies with?”
“Not today, no.”
“Oh.” Okay, that was a surprise. And at least she hadn’t denied that that was what she usually wanted to talk to him about. “Okay. So what are you calling about? Everyone is okay, aren’t they?” Oh goddess, what if someone in the family was sick and he’d been ignoring her calls?
“Sandra saw you at the beach the other day. She said you were holding hands with a boy.”
“You know I’m gay, Mom.” The lack of incoming grandchildren was why they’d fought in the first place.
“Pshaw—of course I know you’re gay. But if you’ve got a boyfriend, why wouldn’t you tell me?”
“To be honest, I didn’t want another lecture on contributing to the family gene pool.”
“I wouldn’t do that if you have a boyfriend.”
“What?” Why would him proving he was gay instead of just saying it make a difference?
“It was one thing when you didn’t have anyone special. There was no reason for you not to help bring babies into the world. But if you have a partner, I would never ask you to be unfaithful to them, even just for procreation’s sake.”
Well, that was an odd line to draw, but he was just going to accept that she’d drawn it and was going to drop the subject now that he was with someone because if he was being honest with himself, he missed his family.
A whole lot. Thanks to Darcy, he wasn’t lonely anymore, but the compound was full of people who loved him, and who he loved, and he missed them.
He missed the big weekly dinners and the way there was always someone to talk to. The boisterousness of it all.
“Well, then. I have a boyfriend, Mom.”
“Is it serious?”
“We moved in together.”
“You moved in together and you never told me!” Now she sounded shocked.
“Yes.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“We’ve been living together a little over a week.” She didn’t need to know that he and Darcy had only met just a couple days before he moved in…
“Still, it sounds like news you’d like to share with your family.”
“It is news I’d like to share with you, Mom, I just didn’t know about the whole ‘won’t hassle you about grandchildren if you have a partner’ thing, and the last thing I wanted was that particular lecture with Darcy right next to me.”
“His name is Darcy, is it?”
“That’s right.”
“And…”
“And what?”
He swore he could hear her rolling her eyes at him. “And what else? A name tells me nothing. What’s he like? Is he treating you well? He’d better be treating you well or he’ll have the whole family to answer to.”
“He’s treating me great, Mom. He’s cute. He’s funny. He has the most beautiful smile.”
“He knows you’re a shifter, right? Some people have a problem with shifters.”
“He knows I’m a shifter. In fact, we met because he saved my shifted ass.”
“Oh, there’s a story there. I can tell.”
“Yep. You see, I was sunning on the beach,” he started.
“And your chameleon came out!” she interrupted.
“Yep. And some assholes grabbed me and we’re threatening to pull off my tail to see if I would grow it back.”
“Oh, son, you know it’s not safe to shift out in the open and all alone like that. There are too many ways to get hurt.”
“Well, I didn’t do it on purpose. Anyway, Darcy intervened and wound up putting me in his pocket and carrying me home.”
“In his pocket!” She chuckled. “He didn’t know you were a shifter then, eh?”
“Nope. He was just getting me as far from the jerks as he could and to somewhere safe, which just happened to be his apartment. He was shocked as hell when I shifted back to human.”
“Well, that proves he has a good heart, that he would care enough about a little reptile to rescue it.”
“He has a great heart, mom.”
“That’s such a cute story. I can’t wait to meet him. Bring him to the festival this weekend.”
He wasn’t entirely sure about that. His mom was a lot, his entire family and all their friends at the summer street festival in the compound was a whole lot more.
“I insist,” she told him in her best no-nonsense voice. “We don’t get many outsiders and everyone will want to meet him.”
“Interrogate him, you mean.”
“Well, of course. We have to make sure he’s good enough for our Charma. Especially as he’s not a shifter himself.” She paused. “He’s not, is he?”
It was a fair question. Just because Darcy hadn’t known Charma was a shifter when rescued, didn’t mean that Darcy wasn’t one himself. “No, Mom. He’s not a shifter.”
“So you’ll come on Saturday?”
“If we don’t have plans I don’t know about yet, we’ll come.” That gave him an out if Darcy didn’t want to go.
“You’ll come early?”
He rolled his eyes. “We’ll come after breakfast.”
She snorted. “You’ll come have breakfast here at home and we’ll go to the festival together.”
“We’re gonna want to sleep in, Mom.” He was not setting an alarm to get up on a Saturday before the sun even made an appearance.
“Of course, breakfast will be ready whenever you get here.”
“Even if it’s noon?” He hadn’t slept in that late without being hungover from the night before in forever, but you never knew how long they were going to want to linger…
“If you want to waste half the day sleeping, that’s up to you. Come to the house first and I will feed you, then we can all go to the festival together.”
He interpreted that to mean that she wanted to be the first to meet—and interrogate—Darcy. Charma supposed that was her prerogative, seeing she was the mom.
“Okay. Breakfast at yours on Saturday morning. Then the festival.”
“You promise?”
“Unless we have something else going on that I don’t know about,” he reminded her. “Other than that, yes, I promise we’ll come see you for breakfast.”
“Good. I love you, son.”
“Love you too.”
Darcy came in as he was disconnecting the call.
“Who do you love too?” Darcy asked. It sounded more curious than jealous or accusatory, which Charma liked.
“My mom.”
“Oooo. How did that call go?” Darcy took off his messenger bag and set it on his desk before coming to sit with him on the couch.
“We’re invited for breakfast on Saturday followed by the big summer festival at the compound.”
“That sounds like it could be fun,” Darcy said cautiously. “Do we want to go?”
Charma laughed. “It could be—the festival especially, and my mom’s a fantastic cook. However, the whole thing comes with strings attached.”
“What kind of strings?”
“Everyone is going to want to meet you, and you’ll get asked a million questions, some of which will—not might, will—be inappropriate.”
“Are you going to get hassled for me being a guy?”
“No. Apparently once I have someone special, the need to throw my genes into the pool is negated.” Charma shrugged. “I don’t know why that’s the reasoning, but I’ll take it.”
“You miss your family, eh?” Darcy stroked his thigh, fingers gentle.
“Yeah, I do. We’ve always been pretty close-knit.”
Darcy nodded. “I know you hated having to move out just to get away from being harassed about making babies. But if that’s not an issue anymore, it would be nice if you could see everyone again, wouldn’t it?”
He hugged Darcy hard. “Thank you.”
“What for?”
“You’re the one who’s going to get grilled like the main suspect in a series of grisly murders, but you’re more concerned with my feelings. Do you know how special that is?”
Darcy’s cheeks went pink. “I just care about you, so of course I want you to be happy.”
“You make me happy.”
“Good. And I think I can put up with some hard questions for one day. In fact, it’ll be nice to meet a family who doesn’t mind that we’re gay.”
Charma squeezed Darcy. “Well, I certainly have enough family to share.”
“Cool. I’m going to focus on that and not the grilling.”
“Sounds perfect.” He could worry about the grilling for the both of them.
Darcy wasn’t sure what to expect, so he was a little worried as he and Charma climbed out of their lift in front of Charma’s mom’s house.
His expectations were already proven wrong, given that ‘the compound’ had turned out to be a gated community rather than something more…
walled, he supposed, was what he’d been picturing in his mind.
Charma took his hand as they walked up the path to a very normal-looking, albeit large, two-story house. “It’ll be fine, I swear.”
Darcy nodded. Sure, sure. The fact that he’d never met anyone’s family before meant he had no reference for this, and Charma had said ‘grilling’. So. He was… trepidatious. Who knew where he’d dug that word up from, but he thought it fit the bill pretty well.
They hadn’t even made it to the stairs to the veranda when the front door flew open and a petite woman with the same facial features and wild curls as Charma flew out.
“Charma!” She came right down and wrapped Charma in a hug. “I’ve missed you so much!” Then she let go and turned to Darcy. “And this must be your young man.”