Chapter 13
Thirteen
Cam ditched his coat and tie in his office, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and was leaning against the far corner of the room when Nic returned from seeing Garrett out.
Cam had a million questions, all battling to get out, but seeing his normally stoic, perfectly put-together boyfriend shut the door and fall back against it like it had been the longest day of his life and it was only noon, the third such day in a row, Cam bit his tongue.
He crossed the room and took Nic in his arms. Just as Nic grounded him, Cam wanted to do the same for him, which he did, judging by the way Nic’s body sagged against his, arms tightening around him like Cam was the only thing holding him up.
“I’ve got you,” Cam murmured, and dropped a kiss on his temple.
“Just when I thought things were turning our way . . .”
Nic dropped his head on Cam’s shoulder, and Cam was sure Nic could feel his heart about to beat out of his chest, equal parts worry at the dejection in Nic’s voice, so foreign for him, and adoration, because he let Cam see that, not hiding anything from him, for better or worse.
“One setback.” Cam carded his fingers through Nic’s hair, more of the sexy gray showing every day.
“Three, if we’re counting.”
“Stop counting,” he playfully chided with a swat to Nic’s ass. “Unless it’s your breaths, in which case, take a few extra to settle.”
Nic took the recommended inhales, plus a few more, then rested their foreheads together. “Thank you.”
Cam waited for his eyes to open. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” Finally, a smile, if an exhausted one, right before Nic brushed his lips over Cam’s.
It was a slow, gentle kiss, probably the only thing that would be in this already rough-and-tumble day, and Cam let Nic take all that he needed.
Cam needed it too—this reminder of their connection, the threads of the rope being reinforced.
Cam would hold Nic to his word. Nic hadn’t let the rope go for him when Cam had needed him to hold tight, and Cam wouldn’t let go now either, nor would he let Nic, or anyone else for that matter, cut through it with a KA-BAR.
Giving him a quick peck, Cam stepped back and nudged Nic toward the table. “Sit and catch me the rest of the way up.” Nic grabbed a chair and Cam claimed the adjacent one Nic pushed out for him. “He’s Garrett Scott, yes? The GS on your back. Your almost stepmom’s son?”
Nic’s eyes narrowed. “You looked into it?”
Cam jutted a thumb at himself. “Professional investigator.”
“Nosy, more like it.”
“About you, yes.” He took Nic’s blush as a good sign.
“I admit I’ve been looking for GS since April.
” Nic’s brows snapped together, and Cam waved him quiet before he could object.
“You can be mad at me about that later, but I didn’t get anywhere.
Until the pictures of Victoria. Once I had a name, Victoria Scott, I figured GS had to be connected.
There were some trace records of her son, Garrett Scott—team pictures, high school ROTC—but then they both disappeared twenty-seven years ago.
Right about the time of your graduation. ”
Nic nodded. “They moved across country, changed their names, hid from my father.”
“Until Garrett approached him.”
“Blackmailed him. Let’s call it like it is.”
Well, in that case, if they were calling things like they saw them . . . “You two were in love.”
Nic stared at him head-on, a deer in the headlights, some emotion Cam couldn’t pinpoint giving Nic’s blues a panicked edge. “Cam, I—”
“Let’s call it like it is,” Cam returned softly. Because that explained the intimacy he’d witnessed between the two men when he’d walked in earlier. “His initials are on your back. If nothing else, judging by your other ink, he was important to you.”
Nic pushed back from the table and stood, hand rubbing over his left hip.
Cam worried for a second but there was no limp or other sign of injury as Nic began to pace the length of the room. “Before you, he was the only other man I’d loved.” Nic hung his head. “Fuck, I’ve never told anyone that, outside of Garrett and Victoria, and my father and Mary.”
“You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.”
“It’s not shame. More like fear. I was halfway around the world in the Navy, and I was still afraid a mention of them would somehow get back to my father and set him off. That he’d go looking for them if I dared to utter their names. And now with Vaughn . . .”
Cam rose, splaying a hand on Nic’s lower back. They’d talk about how to deal with Vaughn, with that fear, in a minute. For right now, though, he wanted to know more about the past, and he sensed Nic needed that out too. “Tell me about him.”
“He was everything I wasn’t as a kid. I was quiet and reserved. The beanpole dork in the corner who didn’t say anything.” He flapped one arm and stretched out a long leg. “I hadn’t grown into these, and I didn’t want to draw attention to my severe lack of coordination.”
“For fear of drawing your father’s?”
“Every now and then he’d asked why I hadn’t made this or that sports team. I never told him I didn’t bother trying out. I’d shove my report card under his nose and that usually did the trick.”
“Straight As?”
“Usually, except for French, which is why I wasn’t valedictorian.
Another disappointment on Dad’s list.” He rested against the table edge and Cam sank back into his chair, giving Nic space but also still close, letting Nic know he was there.
“Victoria had Garrett when she was very young—his dad wasn’t in the picture long—so it was just the two of them for a long time.
They were more like best friends than mother and son.
She loved him unconditionally and let him be who he was, which was a little wild, a lot flirtatious, and supremely confident.
He was popular, athletic, charming, but also kind and loyal. Open. And always moving, hyper-like.”
“I bet they both drew your father’s attention.”
“Victoria did, the good kind at first. You can’t help but be drawn to her. I’m not surprised Vaughn was in love with her. Hell, my fifteen-year-old self was half in love with her, and I’m gay.”
“And you were in love with her son.”
Nic shivered, like the thought had run up his back and out the branches of the cypress tree tattoo.
“Garrett wasn’t around the first few months, but then he started working with Victoria over the summer.
I remember this party one night, a fundraiser Curtis hosted for the local conservation society, trying to impress Victoria.
I wandered outside and found Garrett fucking one of the waiters in the gazebo.
” Nic’s faraway eyes came back to the room, focusing on Cam.
“I stood in the shadow of the cypress trees, watching, and I knew then. Accepted it. That I was gay, that I wanted him, and that he was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen. ”
Cam thanked all that was holy for his undercover training.
He wasn’t sure he’d have been able to keep his emotions off his face otherwise.
He shouldn’t be jealous; he’d had other lovers too.
Nic’s affair with Garrett had been three decades ago, and earlier Nic had made clear to Garrett that he and Cam were together.
Cam’s gut still burned, jealousy roiling with second guesses.
Despite what Nic had said, would Cam ever live up to the memory of Garrett?
Especially when the memory had come to life again?
Had he made the wrong call committing to San Francisco and Nic instead of returning to Boston? There were other reasons to be here, of course, but without the biggest one, the man he loved, would it be worth staying?
Christ, he thought they were past this, thought he was past this, but doubts resurfaced, loud and nagging. What did he have to offer? A broke FBI agent versus a decorated Marine major and the family he sensed Nic had always wanted.
The squeak of the chair as Nic sat next to him snapped Cam out of his spiral. “How’d it turn to the bad kind of attention from Curtis?”
“He was gone more and more with work, which suited the three of us and Mary fine. He’d proposed, and Victoria and Garrett had moved in.
I had a happy life, a happy home for the first time since Mom died.
But as Dad’s staff grew to love Victoria, he started tearing her down.
He couldn’t have someone else be the center of attention. ”
“Physical abuse?”
“Emotional, at first. Snide remarks, cutdowns, controlling her life. Asking her to quit her business. Dictating when, where, and what she could do, most of which she ignored the second he left, but word got back to him and the physical abuse started. First with smaller exertions of power—grabbing her by the arm too hard, dragging her where he wanted her. He had to own her.”
The way Nic spat the words, there was nothing small about it, at least in his mind. And so much of his work—fighting for victims’ rights—made sense to Cam now.
“Garrett was worried,” Nic carried on. “So were Mary and I, more and more so as the abusive behaviors escalated. Then a couple weeks before graduation, Curtis came home unexpectedly. He found me and Garrett together under the cypress trees—dancing, kissing, and half undressed already.”
Cam forced down the resurgent sting of jealousy, focusing on his anger at Curtis. He was the reason Nic wouldn’t dance with him; Curtis had ruined it for him, associating it with a bad memory in Nic’s mind. “Curtis blamed Victoria?”
“He fucking blamed everyone because Lord knows Curtis Price couldn’t have a gay son. He already thought me weak. Seeing another man lead me in a dance, kissing me, undressing me, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She took a hit for me that day.”
“And then graduation day happened . . .” Cam could only imagine the two-week spiral of hell that had preceded that final confrontation.