Chapter 6

Kid’s good, Miki. Young but good. Frank’s finally got a decent drummer in here.

Yeah, Dave. He’s okay.

Keeps up with me fine. He could be your drummer after we hit it big and I go raise llamas or something.

You’re not going anywhere. And who the fuck in their right mind wants to raise llamas? They look like they’ll bite your head right off.

—Conversations at the Sound

THE LONG-GONE morning after the shooting, pancakes, and unrequited lust, Forest had woken up alone. Alone with two empty whiskey bottles, an empty sleeping bag smelling of Irish cop and bacon. His dick was rock hard, and it clearly remembered being so close to that cop but having nothing done to it.

But Connor Morgan was a ghost, or at least that’s how it seemed to Forest over the next couple of weeks.

There were text messages—small notes long enough for Forest to know Connor was alive but hardly conversation. Especially since they mostly revolved around how the shop was getting fixed up and that Con’d fielded his sister Inspector Kiki’s questions about the day of the shooting for him.

Oh—and to call him Con. That was the cherry on top of Forest’s shit sundae. He didn’t do platonic. Hell, he could barely pull off casual acquaintance without shoving his foot in his mouth. Con texted at least once a day, and Forest hated the little jump of his heart when his phone pinged him with a message. And he didn’t even want to think about the happy dance he’d experienced when the cop said to call him Con.

Like a damned twelve-year-old girl. Next, he’d be writing i’s with little hearts instead of dots.

“Wait, he doesn’t have any i’s in his name—and why the hell am I even thinking shit like that? Get your head in the game.” A glass shard of reality shoved through him, driven in by his own words. Alone. He certainly was that. “Frank’s not coming back, dude. Just own this shit. You’re on your own in this.”

The this was Marshall’s Amp, and the shit was definitely what was left of it after being used for target practice.

So he dragged himself down to the coffee shop on Sunday afternoon and stared at the remains of his inheritance.

The bakery case was shot—literally—and he stood in front of the wait counter’s remains while trying to make sense of the drawings the contractor gave him to choose from. The familiar ching-ching of the Amp’s door hitting a short string of bells jerked Forest’s attention away from the plans, and he cracked a smile, the first one in forever it seemed, when Jules came through the door.

“Shit, it is good to see you.” The plans hit the counter’s single standing surface, and Forest crossed over the floor, ready to hug her, when he stopped a few inches short. “Um, hi!”

“God, you suck at people,” Jules said cheerfully, enveloping him in a hug and banging his ribs with her cast. “Hug me, you asshole.” He got a mouthful of hair and another bruising embrace before Forest could even think about peeling himself away. “What are you doing here on a Sunday?”

“What are you doing here on a Sunday?” He relaxed into Jules’s hug and sighed. “God, I am so fucking glad you’re okay.”

“Yeah, I’m good.” Laughing, she let him go and looked around, taking in the stripped-clean interior. “Wow, gutting the place?”

“Sorta had to,” Forest replied, rubbing at his side, where he was sure he’d end up black-and-blue from her cast. “One of the espresso machines still works. Want one?”

“Yeah,” Jules replied, picking up the proposed plans. “Can I take a look? That is if I still work here. Randy told me you were at the hospital and that he was a jerk. He should have made sure you stayed. I love him, but sometimes I think he’s more socially inept than you are.”

“Yeah, I love you too. Go sit down at the one table we’ve got left. I’ll bring you some coffee.”

It took him a bit to juggle two large cups of espresso and the bag of Oreos he’d brought down with him from his apartment, but after a one-sided salsa around a broken cabinet, Forest made it to the round table Jules spread the plans on. She had a purple Sharpie, tapping at the plans with it as she stared at the drawings.

“Did you agree to this yet?” Jules looked at him when he got near. “And oh God, oh God—real coffee. My mom uses instant. And not like good instant like Vinacafé. Sanka instant. With Sweet’N Low. She doesn’t believe in sugar. Like it’s a unicorn or something.”

“You’re staying with your mom?”

“She insisted.” Jules made a face, then gave Forest a rueful smile. “It made her feel better. I got released from maternal custody yesterday. And we’ll talk about why you didn’t visit me in the hospital for my short vacation afterwards, but now, answer the question—did you agree to this yet?”

“Do you still want to work here?” He slid into his own chair and took his first sip of coffee for the day.

“Why wouldn’t I?” She stared at him, then waved her cast at him. “This? Are you kidding? How the hell could you have seen this coming? Besides, the insurance company paid for everything, and they had the nerve to ask me if I was going to sue you because you didn’t have bulletproof glass. Where the fuck do they think we work?”

“Mrs. Li died,” Forest said gently. “It’s why I couldn’t come see you. I went to go get flowers from her stand, and they were packing everything up—her family was. I just… couldn’t, you know?”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” She leaned over the table, clasping his hands with hers, and squeezed as much as the plaster would allow her to. “I totally understand. God, you must have known her as long as you knew Frank.”

“She hated my guts, you know? She hated my damned guts, but when they told me she was dead, I just couldn’t take any more of it. I even told Con that.” He refused to cry, even going so far as to lean his head back and blink, but the tears came anyway. “Fucking hell. This is so stupid. I can’t stop crying over this crap, and fuck, I don’t want to do any of this. Not the coffee shop. Not the studio. I just want to play the drums and write music.”

“Well, I can help with one.” Jules picked out a tissue from her backpack and wiped at Forest’s face like he was a toddler. “You know jack shit about the coffee shop and what it needs. Do you trust me?”

“Are you kidding? I’m wondering why Frank didn’t leave you the damned shop to begin with.” He rubbed at his nose. “Do you want to buy half of it? A partner or something? You practically run the place. Okay, you do run the place. I just sneak in to steal coffee and sign the bills once in a while.”

“You’re serious.”

“As a fucking heart attack. We get along fine. I’m the first one to say I don’t know what to do with these plans. How the hell am I supposed to rebuild something if I don’t know what’s going to work?” His hands were shaking, and Forest had to put his coffee down. “There’s already lawyers and shit picking at me. Might as well have them do something to sell you half the business.”

“Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but make sure I only own 49 percent. Keep a controlling interest. I love you. You love me in your own weird little Forest kind of way, and I know you’re sincere, but never ever hand over all of something you own. Always keep control of it in some way.” She used a tissue on her face, smearing her mascara on her fingers. “And shit, I came here to ask if I still had a job, and now you’re trying to sell me half of it.”

“Anything, so long as I don’t have to figure out what the hell to do with the banquettes.” Forest read down the list of things to be replaced. “I don’t even know what that is.”

“The booths.” Jules laughed. “Okay, I’ll take these and look things over. Now how about if we sit here, and you tell me all about your guy, Con.”

VERY LATE Sunday afternoon, Forest found himself still without a coffee shop but with a reasonably chipper shop manager slash friend poring over the notes she’d made about the Amp and what she wanted to do with it—providing Forest ponied up the cash instead of waiting for the insurance company to get off its ass and pay the bills. They’d already gone over the proposed plans, and she’d tanked most of the designers’ suggestions, pointing out none of the names on the bottom of the blueprints actually worked in a coffee shop.

“You know we should go all retro and do a sixties theme,” Jules mumbled around her pencil. “Kind of like a tribute to Frank.”

“If this place became a tribute to Frank, you’d end up wearing camo pants and tie-dye shirts,” Forest snorted as he steamed milk for his coffee. “And does air freshener even come in skunkweed?”

“No no no, less Humboldt and more mod,” she complained. “Mod is cool.”

“Frank hated the mod thing. Said they all went on to become faux skinheads just to stay relevant.” Forest shrugged away Jules’s outraged gasp. “Hey, take it up with him when you see him. I had to listen to him rant about how mod wasn’t about the working class and was some jacked-up, pretentious offshoot of beat poetry elitists. And you never wanted to get him started about new punk.”

“Well, I love the mod look. Your take on history is jacked up, there, sweetie.”

“Better than what I was taught in school,” he replied. “Not all of us had apple pie and Thanksgiving dinner families like you and Con.”

“You guys are so cute.” Jules caught the nickname before Forest could even wince at saying it. She grabbed at his wince and ran with it. “You sound all sweet talking about him.”

“It’s his nickname. People have nicknames. You have a nickname,” he pointed out. “If anything, I’m the weird one ’cause I don’t have one. And he’s not… he’s just a guy who was there when the shooting happened. Nothing else.”

Even if he’d promised to be something else, something more, but Connor’s words meant jack shit because, other than the texts, Forest might not have even known the man was alive.

“Okay, so wait, he pretty much saved your ass, took care of you, then made you dinner.” Jules tapped off her points on her fingers. “And afterwards, got drunk with you then slept on the floor and was gone before you even woke up?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Forest agreed from across the room as he steamed more milk for their refills.

“Does he know you were a whore? Not that it matters, ’cause you were like twelve. Really. What the hell were you thinking?”

“Fuck. Jules. Come on, trying to carry things here.” He stumbled on the same broken cabinet he’d been stepping around for about a week—or at least that was the lie Forest told himself when he pitched forward into a lurching stop. Sliding away from Jules’s penetrating gaze, he sat down and mumbled, “I was thinking I wanted to eat.”

His phone rang, a roll of music from a band he’d once loved and whose remains were smeared all over a blacktop in Los Angeles following an accident. Forest almost slid it over to voice mail, not wanting to deal with any of Sound’s crap, but a quick glance at the number heated up the simmering want he’d started for Connor Morgan.

“Shit, I—um—I’ve gotta take this,” Forest mumbled and pushed his chair back quickly. He heard it fall but didn’t care. All he wanted was to find someplace quiet so he could listen to the roll of Irish coming through the phone or maybe even spit back a few where-the-fuck-have-you-beens he’d been storing up since he’d last seen Connor Morgan.

Forest hit the button to answer the phone, and one damned word undid him.

“Hey,” Connor rasped.

Any bitching out he had planned was shot. A single drop of Irish cop whiskey growl, and Forest had to prop himself up against the remains of the back counter, or he’d have been on his knees begging for more. It was back to heart-dotted i’s and wondering how the man’s long, thick fingers would feel stretching him apart. He didn’t even like getting his ass played with, and Forest found himself fantasizing about Connor holding him down and peeling him open with those rough, graceful hands.

“What are you doing?” Connor’s voice broke through Forest’s thoughts. “Tell me you’ve at least eaten some lunch.”

“No, working on coffee shop shit. Jules is here. I’ve decided I know crap about retail, so I’m kind of handing things over to her to fuck up.”

“Good to have a partner in the fucking… up.” That last word came too late, barely on the heels of the one Forest focused on.

“Hey, you should come by and take a look at what the designers came up with… and um, Jules too. You drink a lot of coffee. Maybe from a customer’s point of view.” He saw a bread knife pinned to the wall by a blade magnet when he glanced at the kitchen cut-through and wondered if he could somehow hold the knife up long enough to fall on it. “Shit, you’re probably doing family things, right? Sunday stuff? No worries. We can—”

“Nah, it sounds like something fun. I like doing stuff like that. I’m restoring a Victorian I bought. That kind of stuff interests me.” Connor’s deep purr made Forest rethink the whole fall-on-his-sword thing. “Give me a little bit. I’ve got to talk to my da, and I’ll be right there. So I’ll see you soon.”

“Sure, won’t be soon enough,” Forest murmured back. Hearing himself, he curled into the edge of the wall, hoping its hard edge would lend him its strength, considering he’d lost his spine somehow. “Not soon enough, you know? Jules might be gone. Um… but I’ll be here. I’ll wait.”

He hung up, then contemplated the espresso machine’s power cord, debating if it could make a good loop to hang himself with. Sighing, Forest settled for hitting his head with the edge of his phone and grumbled to himself, “Jesus. What the fuck, dude? You’ve made out with rock stars, did all-nighters with hard-core musicians, and you’ve come to this? Spooging over a fucking cop? Jesus H. Christ.”

“You talking to yourself over there? Or are you having phone sex?” Jules called out, startling him. “’Cause if you are, I want to listen! Maybe even record it. You’re hot. I could make some bucks on the video.”

“No, no phone sex, but shit, I need help. I act like I’m an idiot around him. I can’t wait for him to lose interest in whatever the fuck he thinks he can save me from and go away. Then everything will go back to normal.” He again meandered back to the shot-up dining area. “Come on. Let’s go over this stuff so I can give it to the designers this week. Sooner I get this place fixed up the sooner customers can come back.”

“Customers like Lt. Connor Morgan?” Jules wiggled her eyebrows at him, grinning when he flicked a bit of her curls away from her shoulder. “Because you know, if I had to worry about one customer coming, it would be him.”

“God, why do I want you back here?” Forest grimaced.

“Because I’m your friend.” She winked. “And who else is going to tease you about crushing on a straight cop? Teasing you about it is just a perk—kind of like taking vacation days. I don’t always do it, but when I do, it’s sublime.”

CONNOR’D SPENT his entire life carving himself into a man his da would be proud of. As life went on, it seemed Connor dogged Donal’s every step, matching the Irish-born cop stride for stride. They shared a love for the job—even as a kid, wearing the blue and a badge was all Connor had ever wanted. He’d stayed up late at night to watch his father come in after a long shift, peering through the window, then sneaking downstairs to watch him take off his gun belt and lock up his weapon for the night. He’d seen his parents dance in the kitchen and laugh over a shared midnight meal, catching up on their day and basking in each other’s humor.

He’d grown up wanting that… thinking one day he’d come home to a little boy and a woman who’d kiss him on the mouth while teasing him about his big feet. There’d not been a moment he’d doubted his future. Not the uniform. Not the badge. Not the woman. Then suddenly, his future tilted, and Connor couldn’t find his feet underneath him.

So he did the only thing he knew to do during one of those times: reach for his da.

He just didn’t know if his da would reach back.

If Connor had to be honest—so fucking brutally honest—he’d have said the biggest fear he had in his life wasn’t death. Death just meant leaving things unfinished. What frightened him the most was the look on his father’s face when Donal suddenly realized the son he’d raised wasn’t the man he’d wanted him to be.

When he was young, hearing his father say “I’d have thought better of ye, Connor boy” killed him. There were blackened nuggets in his soul, dusty, foul stones of disappointment and regret Connor couldn’t step around without feeling dirty. Each of those moments burned to ash inside of him had come from a certain look on his da’s face, and the shame of those nuggets weighed heavily with every breath he took. Especially since he wasn’t going to be the son Donal Morgan expected, not the first born who’d one day step into his father’s shoes, and Con knew it would kill him even if life went on around him. He would die from the depth of his failure.

“I’ve fallen, Da.” Connor snagged a bottle of Irish whiskey from the study’s shelves and joined his father on one of the room’s couches. He’d asked his father for some time during a Sunday family gathering. They’d finally gotten rid of the threat of a cold-blooded killer hunting Sionn’s lover, Damien, and the Morgans were doing what they did best—eat, argue, and drink. “Fallen in love, I mean.”

“And that’s got you worried?” God, his father looked so happy. Donal’s face lit up when he smiled, and to Connor, it always felt like his father’s happiness warmed the family, broad sweeps of sunshine pouring over cold mountains. He would be dimming that light, and his gut grumbled from the sour pouring into it. Donal must have seen something on his face, because his da frowned slightly as he poked at Connor’s arm. “What’s wrong? Is she married? What’s her name?”

Connor wondered how Quinn and Kane made speaking the truth look so easy. They’d both done it together, sitting at a Sunday dinner table and casually dropping a gay bomb all over the roast chickens their mother’d made that afternoon. From what Connor remembered, he thought nothing of Quinn’s postscript mention of his homosexuality. Kane’s had come as a surprise because he’d never imagined having two gay—or in Kane’s case, bisexual—brothers. Now he was sitting on the other side of that line, and saying those words—such oddly damning words—aloud made him appreciate how strong his younger brothers had been.

Because he was scared shitless to speak the truth he’d been avoiding the fuck out of for the past couple of weeks as a madman stalked his family, and he tried to be as nonchalant about checking up on Forest as he could. If saying out loud what he thought made his heart clench, he couldn’t even imagine what he could say to the drummer about why he’d been avoiding him.

If confronted, Connor would have made up some bullshit story about a man named Parker targeting his family’s loved ones, but that would leave so much of Con open to be picked at, and he couldn’t risk those wounds being opened at a time he needed to focus.

It would have also meant he would have had to acknowledge what he was about to share with his father—Parker had been going after anyone connected to Damien. His assault on Miki proved that, and attacking Sionn’s pub manager proved it didn’t matter how nebulous a connection was, Parker would exploit it, and Connor couldn’t risk putting Forest in that sick bastard’s line of sight.

Because Con would have had to admit there was a connection between them, and he hadn’t been ready to even think about it out loud.

Until right now, and not to the man who’d drawn him in with a fierce vulnerability and brown eyes. No, the first time Connor spoke about his growing attraction to a blond drummer, it would be to the man who made him and could potentially break him as well. And he would do it in the womb of his family’s home—in the safety of a room he’d come to so many times before to work out his anger or confusion.

“His name is Forest, Da. Forest Ackerman.” The his stung. It was out. A pretty demon with unknown powers to scald him and flog his soul clear off his body. Stumbling over his tongue, Connor continued, working his fingers together into a knot. “I met him on a case and, well….”

Donal Morgan was many things, but dumb ranked nowhere on that list.

“But… he? You said he.”

Connor couldn’t look at his father, but when Donal’s hand touched his thigh, he looked up to stare into his da’s perplexed face.

“But, Con, yer not gay.”

“Yeah, I know, Da.” He picked up the fine Irish whiskey he’d set on the table near the couch and took a hefty mouthful. It burned the edges of his gums, and his tongue tingled and sparked under the fiery liquid. Swallowing was difficult because he had harder things to do besides get drunk—one of which was break his father’s heart. “I know. Fucking hell, don’t I know that, but here I am. In this.”

The silence nearly killed him, and Connor wondered how long it would take to die from alcohol poisoning before Donal finally exhaled. After taking the bottle from Con’s hands, he set it down and then yanked Con into a suffocating bear hug.

“Well then, I guess we’ll work through this,” he murmured. “Ye and I… we’ll find a way to make it work. Because yer my son, and I’ll be damned if ye shouldn’t be happy in love.”