Chapter 10 #2
“It took you long enough to answer,” she shot back.
“We were in the bedroom. With the door closed. Asleep.”
Darcy had put the bat down on the coffee table and was standing by the couch, arms cross, slightly hunched. His lover was not handling stress all that well just now and frankly, he couldn’t blame Darcy one bit.
“Now that you know we’re okay, if I ask you to leave, will you go?” he asked his mother.
She looked so affronted that he almost laughed. Almost.
“Darcy needs more sleep, and frankly I could use some too,” he said gently. It has been a stressful and sleepless twenty-four hours and he knew she’d been stressed out, too.
“The least you could do is offer me some tea. I need to assess for myself and know in my bones that you’re both okay.”
“I’ll make it.” Darcy headed to the kitchenette.
“I really wish you hadn’t come,” Charma told her. “It took Darcy ages to fall asleep.”
“If you hadn’t turned your phone off…”
“I would still have had to been awake to either answer it or text you back, you know. In fact, you probably would have been even more worried if I hadn’t replied within a few minutes than you were knowing I’d turned my phone off.”
“It’s been all day.”
“And we were asleep all day.” Charma sighed and pushed his hair off his face.
Darcy came out with three mugs of tea and set them on the coffee table. “I know you’re worried about us, but we really just need some time to be together with nothing else going on. I’ve spent over ten years on my own, no one to count on. I’ve learned to be self-sufficient.”
“But you don’t have to be anymore. Charma’s family is your family now,” Mom insisted.
“And I really appreciate that, but you have to accept that I’m an independent adult. I’m not used to spending a lot of time hanging out with other people. And all this craziness aside, I am probably never going to want to spend all my time with other people. Charma excluded.”
He touched Darcy’s hand, glad his lover had made that exception.
“This was special circumstances. And I was worried when I couldn’t get in touch with you. I’m sorry I overstepped.”
“So when you’re done your tea, you can go home, secure in the knowledge we’re both fine,” Charma suggested.
“I’d be happier if you agreed to come back with me and stay in your old room for a while.”
Darcy shook his head, but Charma was way ahead of him.
“That’s not going to work, Mom. We need to get through this ourselves. Besides, when is it going to be a good time to come back here in your mind? In a day? In a week? In a month? How long before you deem it ‘safe’?” Charma put air quotes around the last word.
“Well, I’m not sure it’ll ever really be safe outside of the compound…”
“So we’ll start like we mean to continue—here. In our home.”
“You could have your own place if that’s the sticking point.” Mom sat on the edge of the couch, addressing them both. “There are several empty houses you could choose from. It would be cheaper than you’re paying here, I’m sure, and you’d be secure. Safe behind the gates with your family.”
“What about when we have to leave to do groceries?” Darcy asked.
Mom didn’t miss a beat. “You can get groceries delivered.”
Oh, this was a game he was not going to play with her. “And what about when we want to go out to a movie? To a party? To the beach? Or just for a walk to enjoy a beautiful evening?”
She actually opened her mouth to answer him and he had no doubt she was going to find staying in the compound alternatives for each of his points, so he just held up his hand to forestall her.
“My point is, that you are never going to feel we’re safe again even if we hole up at the compound. And frankly, neither will we if we let you coddle us like that. We have a perfectly serviceable apartment of our own and we plan to stay here.”
“There you go you said it yourself—serviceable.”
Charma wondered if she’d lost her mind. He had said serviceable, and it was, so if she was going to trash talk their home…
“At the compound you could have something far better than serviceable. You could have grand, beautiful, a masterpiece of a home. There’s a four-bedroom available at the end of the month. It would be yours just for the asking.”
“What would we do with four bedrooms?” Darcy asked.
“He’s right, Mom. That kind of home should be giving to a family with lots of kids, not a gay couple. Who. Don’t. Even. Want. To. Move. To. The. Compound.”
She pursed her lips, and he could see her mind whirling behind her eyes, looking for more arguments to get them to move out to the compound. Even if only temporarily.
“We are, however, quite willing to visit a lot,” he offered. “Don’t sour that by being unreasonable now.”
“You’re so stubborn.”
“Uh-huh.” Charma nodded. “And where do you think I get it from?”
“Are you suggesting I’m stubborn?” She did that outraged tone so well.
“I’m suggesting that stubborn isn’t a strong enough word,” he noted, voice dry as dust.
“Well, I never.”
That had him snorting. “Baloney. You know you’re a stubborn old shifter.” He left the ‘who already drove me away once’ unsaid. She knew her inability to let the whole continuing the family line thing go had sent him away from the compound in the first place.
“Don’t be calling me old.”
“Sorry, Mom.”
“Thank you.” She drank more of her tea. “I’ll make some cookies for you guys so you have something to go with your tea.”
Charma knew that translated into I’m willing to leave things as they are, for now anyway. He was sure she’d bring it up again. And again. And again. But for today they were done.
“What’s your favorite kind of cookie, Darcy?”
“Uh… yes? I mean you did mean homemade, right?”
“Of course.” She said it like she couldn’t believe Darcy thought she’d offer any other kind of cookie.
“I haven’t had a homemade cookie in so long I can’t remember what they’re like,” Darcy told her.
“Oh, sweet boy.” She wrapped him in a hug and kissed his cheek. “I will go home and make cookies. I’m coming back to deliver them tomorrow,” she warned. “I won’t be here before 9 am, but I will be expecting you to answer the door without worrying me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Charma figured over twelve hours without having to check in was a big concession on her part.
“You don’t have to do that,” Darcy protested.
“Of course I do! You don’t even know what homemade cookies taste like. That has be fixed as soon as possible.”
“Let her have this one,” Charma told Darcy. He knew Darcy was just trying to be nice and not make his mom work, but he also knew that she loved it and would be more than happy to spend the rest of the evening and possibly more, baking a shit-ton of cookies for him and Darcy.
“Well, if you insist, that sounds yummy.”
“Homemade cookies are.” She finished her tea and set her mug down on the coffee table. “Well, I’m off. You boys catch up on your sleep.”
He managed not to laugh, though it was a close thing; now that she had a mission—make all the kinds of cookies for Darcy to try—she was eager to leave and get that started.
She hugged them both before seeing herself off. Charma got up and locked the door, not because he wanted to make sure she didn’t come back or anything, but because he felt safer doing that. Sitting back down on the couch, he sighed.
“Sorry about that.”
“She means well.” Darcy leaned against his shoulder and twined their fingers together. “She just didn’t think we’d still be in bed.”
“I know. It’s still frustrating—that’s why I asked Nik to tell her I’d turned off my phone so she knew we didn’t want to be disturbed.”
“The banging was a little bit scary,” Darcy admitted.
“Yeah, a little. I hope it’s okay I made the decision for us not to go live at the compound.”
“You knew how I felt about it. I mean your family is great and they’ve really welcomed me like one of your own, but I don’t want to live with them. Or in the middle of them. If you know what I mean.”
“I totally do. I wouldn’t have said it before I’d moved off the compound, but I don’t want to, either.”
“But before then you liked it, eh?”
“Well, it was all I knew. Moving out was the hardest thing I’d ever done, to be honest. I had no idea what it was going to be like. Turned out not to be as scary as I thought it was. And it led to you, so I’m so glad I did it.”
“I’m glad you did, too.” Darcy let go of his hand and slid his arms around Charma’s waist, cuddling in tighter. “You wanna just sit here for a while?”
“Sounds good to me.” And it sounded like Darcy could probably fall asleep out here like this, so he wasn’t going to discourage it.
“Should I turn the TV on?”
“Sure.” Darcy already sounded more asleep than not.
Charma grabbed the remote without moving too much, and he turned the TV on to find something mindless to watch.
Darcy was already asleep when he settled on The Challenge and started the first episode.
Sunlight was just beginning to creep in when Darcy woke up.
He was disoriented and for a moment thought he was in the back of a vehicle again, but then he realized he was on the couch, lying on top of Charma.
The panic that had tried to take him over subsided and his more than full bladder made its presence known.
He did his best to get up without jostling Charma and he must have been successful, because Charma didn’t wake up.
Go him. He went to the bathroom and relieved himself, before washing his face and downing a couple of glasses of water.
For someone who’d peed like a racehorse, he sure was feeling dehydrated.
He drank another glass of water down and wandered back to the living room.
If he joined Charma on the couch, he’d probably wake him for sure.
Besides, he wasn’t feeling very sleepy anymore.
He’d pretty much slept since yesterday morning with a brief wakeful period when Charma’s mom had come.
He was glad Charma was on the same page as him in regards to moving to the compound.
He just wanted to live his life with his lover on their own terms.
He wandered to the window to watch the sun finish coming up over the buildings. He was about to go get himself something to eat when movement in one of the parked cars across the street caught his gaze. It was awfully early for someone to be up and about already.
He watched the car, waiting for it to drive off, but it didn’t.
Maybe he’d been mistaken about seeing someone moving in it.
Frowning, he kept watching. He hadn’t been wrong—there was definitely someone in the car.
They were just sitting there. Like a creep.
The more he watched, the more he worried.
It was too much of a coincidence to be just some random person outside his home, sitting and waiting and watching.
He told himself to calm down, but his brain was rabbiting and it was hard to convince himself that everything was okay when there was someone in a car out there, awake when no one else was, just sitting there, creeping. He shivered, worry making his insides feel tight and hard.
He should call the cops.
First he went and woke Charma.
“Charma. Charma, wake up.” He shook Charma’s shoulder.
“Darcy? What?” Charma sat up, blinking, looking confused.
“I think we need to call the police—maybe the officer who gave us his card?”
The sleepy look on Charma’s face vanished. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s a car parked outside with someone in it. I mean maybe it’s just a coincidence…”
“That’s an awfully big coincidence.” Charma got up and went to the window, staying to the side of it and peeking down. “Oh for fuck’s sake!”
“What?”
“It’s someone from my family.”
“What?” he said again.
“I recognize the car. One of the many cousins.”
“What are they doing creeping at our place?” Darcy asked, looking again.
“I have a pretty good idea.” Charma grabbed his phone and jabbed at it, then put it to his ear. It took a moment, but then it was answered. “I swear to the goddess, Mom, I will never speak to you again if you don’t call off your watchdog and promise not to sic anyone else on us.”
He listened for a moment, shaking his head.
“I don’t care what time it is, do you know what kind of heart attack you gave us when we saw someone lurking about in a car outside our place?
I mean it, call him off and don’t do it again.
Darcy was ready to call the cops and I will let him if whoever you sent doesn’t drive away in the next five minutes. ” Charma hung up the phone.
“Did your mom really send someone to spy on us?”
“She called it protection, but you know, she says potato, you say potaato. It amounts to the same thing.”
They both looked out the window and about two minutes later, the car started up and drove off.
Darcy sighed. “I think I need to call my parents.”
“You need to do what now?”
“I have to call them and tell them to leave me alone. I can’t spend my life freaking out every time I see a parked car with someone in it, or if a truck pulls up to the curb near me.
Or if a burly guy in camo comes toward me.
” Darcy shook his head. He didn’t want to talk to them, but he needed to let them know that he wasn’t going to put up with them trying to turn him straight.
“Are you sure?”
Darcy nodded, that tight feeling inside him again. He took Charma’s hand. “For my own peace of mind, I do. Sit with me?”
“Of course!”
Darcy took a deep breath and looked at the numbers, realizing he didn’t remember the number anymore. He laughed softly, tickled that for his part, he’d entirely put them out of his mind.
“What’s funny?”
“I don’t remember the number.”
“Because you don’t need it, so your brain let it go.”
“Yeah.” He smiled at Charma, feeling suddenly stronger. He could so do this.
He looked their number up on the web and called it. He didn’t care that it was only just after six. His parents had fucking kidnapped him, he did not owe them a shred of curtesy.
His father answered the phone. “Who is this?”
“Darcy. And you don’t have to say a word.
In fact, I’m not interested in anything you have to say.
I am no longer your son—you made that abundantly clear.
I have a life and I love my life and it doesn’t include you guys and it will never include you guys.
And if you ever—ever—send anyone to kidnap me again, I will make you pay.
” He had no clue how, but he would make sure it happened.
“Do not call me. Do not text me. Do not try to see me. You disowned me, remember? Well, hear this, Frank, I disown you and Gertie—the two of you are dead to me.” He hit the button to end the call, then blocked their number, just in case Frank decided to call back.
“Wow. You just did that.” Charma sounded impressed.
He grinned at Charma, nodded, something heavy that had been on him since the kidnapping seeming to fall away. “I did. I’ve truly closed that chapter of my life.” He thought he had already, but this felt different. This felt better.
“I love you,” Charma told him.
“Yeah, well, I love you too.”