Chapter Thirteen
Rian
We sit down at the table with our plates and each with a glass of orange juice.
Our conversation from just moments ago is fresh in my mind. I’m surprised we had it, surprised he asked questions and seemed interested, but more than that, is the fact that I shared with him.
It’s strange the way I am with Abbott. It makes me think of what Conan said earlier.
Do I want to fuck him? Is that what this is?
It’s not something I’ve ever thought about doing with a man before.
I haven’t been attracted to a man that I’m aware of.
I can acknowledge when a guy is attractive in general, and Abbott is…
well, he’s so fucking pretty, but that isn’t the same thing as wanting to put my dick in him.
On the flipside, I’ve fucked women since losing Moira. I haven’t been a saint. There’s nothing emotional about it, nothing tender or meaningful. It’s a way to get off, a way to find release for both them and me. We fuck and walk away. The end.
I never talked to them the way I just did with Abbott. Never shared anything about my son. About how terrible a father I’ve been to Cillian and how I hope to make amends.
Maybe because Abbott will die, and my words will die with him. I can share with him because he’ll never be able to tell anyone else, and he won’t be around long to judge me for it.
“Can I at least talk you into taking some ibuprofen?” he asks. “I know you don’t want to take any narcotics, but you should at least be alternating between that and acetaminophen again. We need to keep your pain down.”
I’d like to keep my pain down, but what I don’t understand is why he cares if I’m in pain or not.
Most people would want me to suffer, but not Abbott.
The pinch in his brow as he looks at me says how honest his concern is.
None of this is an act for him. My brain can’t compute, can’t make sense of someone like him giving a shit about someone like me.
Abbott reaches toward me, and on reflex, I pull back sharply.
“Sorry. I just wanted to make sure you don’t feel like you’re running a fever again.”
“I’m fine,” I argue.
“Then it won’t hurt for me to see.” This time, when he reaches, I don’t stop him. His hand is warm against my forehead, then my cheek. I swear I can feel the blood pumping through his body when he touches me—like heat rushes to the tips of his fingers so he can transfer it to me.
He’s warm and alive and…kind. Why is this man so kind?
“You don’t feel warm. I’m getting you some ibuprofen, though.”
I expect an argument to fall from my own lips, but it doesn’t. There’s a bottle on the kitchen counter. Abbott opens it, shaking a couple into his palm before walking back to me.
The question is on the tip of my tongue, one simple word trying to fall free…but I swallow down the why. It is just who he is.
I take the pills, then Abbott sits back down and takes a bite of his eggs.
“You need to eat too. We should make sure you’re getting enough protein. You need to fuel your body. Plus, taking all the pain relievers and antibiotics will be rough on your stomach.”
“Why surgery?” I find myself asking.
“I guess to prove I could,” he replies, while I do as he said and begin eating.
“I doubt that.”
“It was part of it, though. I’ve never felt quite good enough. My father is never satisfied with me, and I have this need to try to prove him wrong.”
“Your father sounds like an asshole. I can’t imagine a father not being proud of you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know enough about you,” I answer. “You’re good, Abbott. And smart. Be proud of that.”
He looks away, then clears his throat, a far-off expression in his eyes. “I, um…thank you.”
“It’s true.” I shrug. “Now, why else? The surgeon thing.”
“I guess it’s probably also because of my mom.
She was alive after her attack. She was taken to the hospital, and a surgeon saved her.
A few days later, she ended up with an infection, which is what killed her, but…
” Abbott lets his words trail off, pushing the food around the plate with his fork.
“But I was fascinated with what he had done. That he had gone inside her body and fixed it. I wanted to be able to do that with people.”
He is…not what I expected, though I don’t know what I did expect. Every second I spend with him, I just become more fascinated. “So you did,” I say.
He looks at me, a small, confused smile pulling at one side of his mouth. “So I did,” he answers.
“Again, a reason you should be proud.”
“Stop trying to pretend you’re a nice guy.” He gives a small, unexpected smile that tells me he’s joking. What a strange turn of events this all is. “Your son, you said he’s got a boyfriend?” Abbott continues.
“Yes.”
“And that’s okay with you…in whatever world this is you live in?”
“The human world,” I tease. “And yes. All I want is for Cillian to be happy, and Ollie makes him that way. And if there’s anyone who has a problem with the two of them together, I’ll slit their throat.”
Abbott, taking a drink as I speak, sucks orange juice into his mouth and begins coughing. I laugh, and he does the most unexpected thing by giving me the finger.
“It’s wild to me that I’m sitting with someone who would say that, and I believe them.”
“You get used to it when it’s all you know.” I shrug. I probably shouldn’t have given him their names. That was a mistake, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. At least dead men can’t speak. “Did your father care that you’re gay?” I figure that must be why he brought it up.
“My father cares about how things look, and what it can do for him, so at first it was something for him to figure out. It was never about me, or about him feeling strongly one way or another about being queer. It all came down to him trying to figure out how he could capitalize on it.”
“He sounds like my father.” I try to scoop some eggs onto my toast with one hand.
“Do you need help?” Abbott asks.
“No,” I say more testily than I planned. “Sorry. I don’t like it when I can’t do something.”
He chuckles. “Most people don’t.” I eat a bit separately rather than together as I’d wanted. “So, where are Ollie and Cillian?”
I tense, eyeing him. “Why?”
“Um…because I’m making conversation. If we’re stuck together, it seems like at least talking to each other is a good idea.”
“Don’t try to use my son against me, Doc. Don’t try to think of a way to hurt him. If you think—”
“Let’s not threaten me again, please. I know how this ends, Rian.
And I wasn’t trying to think of a way to use your son against you.
I was just…curious. It’s clear how much you love him.
It doesn’t fit with who I thought you would be.
Just like I suppose, most people would assume my father is a good one, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. ”
My teeth grind and my palms sweat. I’m not surprised his father is an asshole.
Most politicians are. Hell, most people in general are, but the thought of him hurting his son, of him hurting someone like Abbott, who only seems to care about helping others, about being kind to them, fills me with a sickening rage.
“Did he hurt you?” I can’t stand the thought of a father putting his hands on their child, and if I’d known Sloan did it to Tiernan before he died, I would have been the one to kill my brother myself.
“What? No. Not physically. I don’t want to talk about him.”
What did he do to you? I might have to pay the governor a visit after this is all done.
Abbott turns away, but I see the pain in his eyes before he does, the years of hurt that build up when the person you love isn’t who they were supposed to be. When they didn’t love you the way they were supposed to. I recognize the look because it’s the same one my son has when he looks at me.
“College,” I allow myself to say. “Cillian is at college. It’s where he met Ollie, who is going to be a lawyer one day, if you can believe that. He’s a smart kid—good head on his shoulders. And he loves my son. They’ll be good to each other.”
“Then I’m glad they have each other.”
“Me too,” I admit. I just hope Cillian never loses him. The pain of that never goes away.
“How does that work? If they last—”
“They’ll last,” I cut in. Cillian is like me in that way.
Once he knows, he knows, and there is no changing that.
There’s no falling out of love or even wanting someone else.
Many of the men I know have their wives and fuck others on the side.
I could never have done that. Not only would Moira have literally chopped my dick off, but from the second I saw her, I never wanted anyone but her.
“Okay, well then, how will that work? Him a lawyer, and you, doing the things you do.”
I don’t mention the fact that my son does them as well. That’s none of Abbott’s business. “We’ll find a way. They’re determined, and like I said, there’s nothing I won’t do to make sure my son is happy.”
“That is…very noble of you.” He picks up his fork again. “You should finish eating.”
I don’t feel hungry, but I think he’s right. I need to fuel my body, so I do as he says and eat most of my eggs and toast.
“I’m not sure anyone has called me noble before.”
“I guess you caught me on a good day.”
Abbott finishes before me, but waits until I’m done, then takes both of our plates into the kitchen.
He rinses them off, then starts washing the pan, and I find myself watching him—studying the flex of his muscles when he moves and how he sometimes reaches up and tugs on his earlobe in a nervous gesture or like it’s a comfort to him.
“Are you feeling okay?” He turns off the water when he’s finished.
“You ask that a lot.”
“It’s my job.”
I shrug. “I suppose it is, and yes, I am.”
“Thank you…for breakfast.”
I almost call him on his bullshit line of appreciation, but I realize he means it.
Abbott is actually thanking me. He’s so…
not what I’m used to. Part of me wants to tell him he should tell me to fuck off, and never stop trying to escape.
That the first opportunity he gets, he should try to kill me before I kill him, but I also can’t die.
Not yet. Not before everything is the way it should be between Cillian and me.
“You think I’m weak,” he says in this soft, but steady voice.
“What makes you think that?” I don’t. Maybe I should. Maybe his thanking me would be seen as a sign of weakness to some people, but not to me.
“I see it on your face. You think because I don’t treat you the way you treat me or the way your friend treated me that I’m weak. I’m not, Rian, and fuck you for believing that.”
Abbott is breathing heavily. My hand shakes, but I make a fist, trying to make it stop—or at least, make it less noticeable.
I stand up, walk over to him, and don’t stop until I’m right in front of him.
Abbott doesn’t back down, doesn’t look away, doesn’t even show the slightest bit of fear as our gazes meet.
And when the tingle starts at my nape, it doesn’t come as a surprise.
Still confusing, yes, and even more unwanted, but it’s there, and I expected it. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
“I don’t think you’re weak,” I tell him.
“You’re honest, kind, and most of all, brave.
If we had met under different circumstances…
” I don’t finish the sentence because I don’t have the words to.
What would have happened if we’d met under different circumstances?
Would we have become friends? Probably not.
It’s not as if we have anything in common.
I don’t have friends who aren’t in my family.
Would we have fucked? Maybe, but that wouldn’t have gone anywhere.
He would be alive, though, and he wouldn’t know this side of me.
I would be the guy he met, and maybe hooked up with, instead of the man who changed the course of his life.
I would much rather be that to him, would much rather have gotten this strange and consuming…fascination? Obsession? Out of my system in a way that didn’t include kidnapping and murder.
“If we had met under different circumstances, then what?” he asks, a breathlessness to his voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “But you’re a good man. Better than I could ever be, and you don’t deserve this.”
“Then don’t do it,” he pleads. “You don’t have to do this, Rian. I don’t think you want to do this. That man last night. He wanted to kill me. You don’t. You will, but you don’t want to.”
“What makes you think that?” He’s right, of course, but I need to know why he thinks it—what he sees in me that shows him that truth.
“I don’t know,” he answers. “But I’m right. I don’t understand you.”
“Why should you be able to? We’re nothing alike.”
“No.” Abbott shakes his head. “We’re not. But there’s something about you that makes me feel like I should get you. I don’t understand it.”
I don’t understand it either, and I don’t want him feeling that way. Not about me.
As a whole, I don’t sit around disliking myself for the way I’ve lived my life, for the things I’ve done.
Thinking about it that way won’t change anything.
I regret that Moira loved a man who didn’t deserve her.
I regret that Cillian deserved a better father and a chance at a different life, but the rest of it…
just is. I can’t imagine what I would even do with my life if I didn’t live the life I was destined to have.
But that doesn’t mean I want it for others, that I don’t know the things I do are wrong, and that I don’t deserve any of the good things that have happened to me.
Abbott believing he should understand me feels like him thinking there is some good to me that he doesn’t see, that there’s a reason I do the things I do, when in reality, there isn’t.
“Don’t romanticize me.”
“I’m not.” He shakes his head.
My eyes find his mouth, study the bow shape of it, notice again the scruff, the freckles that decorate his face, one larger and a little darker, close to his ear.
I hear his breath catch, see his pulse beat in the base of his throat, and…
fuck, what would that taste like? How would it feel for it to beat and throb against my tongue? What is this pull I feel to this man?
I step back, needing some space, needing to break whatever this moment is, before I do something I can’t take back.
“Come on.”
“Where are we going?” Abbott asks.
“For a walk. You should get some fresh air.” We both should. He’s already going to spend most of his final days locked in this cabin.
The least I can give him is that.