Innocent (Inequitable Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  Before we make the final approach a little before three that afternoon, the flight attendant who’d put me on the plane stops by my seat. I made the final leg seated alone in my row.

  She kindly smiles. “Who’s meeting you at the airport, sweetie?”

  I sniffle. “Mimi. My grandmother.”

  She pats my shoulder and, when we land, she comes back, grabs me first, and walks me off the plane herself and into Mimi’s waiting, open arms, where I sob with relief to be with her again.

  Mimi never would tell me exactly what transpired while I was on the way to Florida. I’m guessing phone calls, where my father angrily screamed at her, and she likely screamed back.

  But sitting in her car at the airport, with the engine and AC running, she puts her phone in speaker mode and calls them.

  My father answers. “What do you want?”

  I’m a little shocked, because he’s never spoken to her like that before.

  Mimi stares forward, through the windshield and out over the sunny parking lot. “He made it here safely, Alfred.”

  “I told you, you’d better put him on a plane and send his ass back here right now. Our pastor got us the info for that camp. He’s going. No son of ours is going to be gay.”

  She looks at me, eyebrow arched, and I tearfully shake my head.

  “That’s not what’s going to happen, Alfred,” she tells him. The calm chill in her voice could freeze the whole damn airport, even in the hot Florida sun.

  I’m fully aware she’s using “Mom” voice on him and not the sweet “Mimi” voice she uses on me. “There’s nothing wrong with Jordan,” she adds.

  “We’re not having a queer for a son! I’d rather he be dead!”

  Her lips purse. “Then my lawyer will send you forms overnight. Take them to the bank, sign them where indicated while in front of a notary, and send them back in the pre-paid envelope I’ll include.”

  “What?”

  “You have two options here, Alfred. I know you and Melissa are barely surviving it as it is. Either I can file charges against you two for abandoning your son, and fight you in court in a long and extremely expensive custody battle that will probably make you lose your house, as well as all your churchy friends will learn your son is gay. Or, you can give me custody of Jordan and quietly walk away without a look back. Your choice, asshole.”

  My eyes widen as I realize this is the woman who, for nearly thirty years, worked for the state of New York as an investigator for their child welfare division, checking out reports of child abuse called in to their hotline.

  Definitely not a woman I’d want to fuck with.

  Certainly a side to her that my sweet, cuddly Mimi had never shown me before.

  “Is he there?” Mom asks.

  “Yes,” Mimi says. “Jordan, do you want to speak to them?”

  I was going to shake my head no, but I find words spilling out of my mouth. “You’d rather me be dead than gay? Really?”

  There’s another moment of silence from them before Mom speaks. “We’ve worked our whole lives for you, Jordan. How can you do this to us? This is how you repay us? Of course I’d rather you be alive, but not if you’re gay. You’re damned to Hell! If you die now, maybe you’ll still go to Heaven. If you repent and forget this…this nonsense, our pastor said he can get you into that camp and they can save your soul!”

  Mimi’s slowly shaking her head, and I know it’s at my parents, not at me.

  An eerie calm descends over me. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Mom,” I manage, my voice trembling. “I’m gay. Even if I came home, I’d never go to a camp. I’d run away and keep running away. You don’t want me, and I don’t want to be there. Give me to Mimi. If you try to make me return, I’ll run away and come back here anyway.”

  Mimi takes over. “Well? What’s it going to be?”

  My father starts to say something, but Mom interrupts him.

  Her cold, hard tone chills me. “Send the damn papers, Miriam. I knew letting him go visit you all those times was a mistake. This is all your fault. You never did like me, and you’ve stolen our son from us and damned his soul in the process. I hope you’re happy with yourself.”

  Mimi coldly smiles. “Papers will arrive first thing in the morning. You both have to sign them. I’ll be tracking them, too. Take them to the bank as soon as they open tomorrow, sign them in front of a notary, put them in the pre-paid overnight envelope, and return them. If I don’t have those papers in my hands by the close of business the day after tomorrow, I’ll file an emergency order here in Florida to seek custody and cite child abuse. You force me to do that, I won’t stop until I have full custody of him. He’s old enough to testify and tell a judge where he wants to live and why.

  “Do not fuck with me or this boy, and you can tell everyone I got him a scholarship at a high school for the arts in Tallahassee, that the weather’s better for his health here, and you can still protect your precious reputation. Everyone will think you’re perfect parents, and I won’t tell anyone up there any different. If you fight me, you’ll wish you hadn’t.” Mimi punches the button and hangs up on them.

  She takes a deep breath and smiles. “You all right, baby boy?”

  Not really but I nod anyway. “Are we going to see your lawyer now?”

  She laughs as she drops her phone into her purse. “Sweetie, he drew up the papers for me three weeks ago. As soon as your father called me this morning to scream at me, I went to the UPS Store and sent them overnight. Early morning delivery.”

  My eyes widen. “You saw your lawyer weeks ago?”

  “When you asked to ship me stuff, I figured you’d drop it on them right before you got on the plane. I had him date them for today.” She sighs. “Buckle up. We need to get home. We’ve got a houseful of company coming over for dinner in less than two hours, and I need your help getting everything ready.”

  “C-company?”

  “Yes. Your coming out and welcome home party.” She grins. “Bought your favorite Publix cake, too. Marble cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. Pretty rainbows on it.”

  I start laughing, she starts laughing, and I spend the whole ride back to her house crying and laughing and feeling like, for the very first time in my life, I can finally figure out who Jordan Remington Walsh really is outside of my disguise.

  And that’s how Mimi ended up showing me she had her own disguise.

  She taught me that, sometimes, you have to play dirty and skirt the thing that’s legal to do the thing that’s right.

  That playing dirty was easier when you had an innocent disguise to hide your movements, and to never let anyone know how dirty you can really play. To always keep that part of you hidden until you need it.

  That when it comes to taking care of the people you love, you stop at nothing to protect them, even if it means spending years fooling people in the process and convincing them how innocent you are.

  Even if it means doing hard, dirty work.

  Even if it means lying and breaking the law to protect them. That when you truly love someone, you go to the mat for them and do whatever it takes to take care of them, to protect them.

  It is a valuable lesson that will come in handy later in my life, in ways I could never predict back then.

  Chapter Five

  Then — Six Years Ago

  November

  This is my first semester post-grad. I’m a functionally broke grad student who works as a TA to help pay my bills. I mean, I have money in my savings account. Way more than enough to get me through college. I refuse to spend it unless absolutely forced to.

  Everything I have in savings is going toward earning my master’s degree. This means I have to take what I can get in terms of on-campus housing, if I don’t want to pay out the ass for an apartment or be forced to move in with a roommate off-campus. Meaning I’d need a car—another expense I don’t want to shell out money for.

  Because I took what I could get, I have a roommate who, on some day
s, I wish I could jettison off the dorm roof. David is a third-year engineering major, and a major tool. I know I’m damned lucky to be in a dorm room in the first place. The original student assigned here withdrew. I was able to snag it for a fraction of the cost I’d otherwise pay for on-campus housing, because one of the department heads went to bat for me with a friend of theirs in the admin office.

  Not sure yet what I’ll do next semester, but I really hope I don’t have to dip into my savings. One of my professors has offered to let me rent a room from her. Unfortunately, she doesn’t live within walking distance of campus, and she’s not on the bus line, meaning I’d have to buy a car. Something else I really don’t want to do right now.

  Today, my roommate stands in the tiny efficiency kitchen that takes up a corner of the room we share, with the fridge standing open. He’s staring into it like it holds answers to secrets of the universe.

  “What are you doing?” I finally ask, because I know this game.

  It goes faster if I play it by David’s rules.

  Well, if I let him think I’m playing it by his rules.

  He’s still staring into the fridge. “I’m just totally gobsmacked that we don’t have anything to eat.”

  “Stop being so fricking pretentious,” I snap. “Besides, we’d have something to eat if you’d go to the store every once in a while.” He has a damn car his parents pay for.

  His rich attorney parents, who give him a more than adequate weekly allowance.

  Yet he eats my food and bitches there’s nothing in the fridge.

  I’ve learned to keep non-perishable food in a locked tub under my bed, or else it disappears down David’s gob.

  Which I’d love to smack, and hard. Except he’s way bigger than I am.

  He has the audacity to look wounded as he closes the fridge. “Pretentious? How am I pretentious?”

  “You’ve never been farther south than Tampa, and you damn sure aren’t an Aussie. Stop trying to talk like Billie.” Billie resides in the room across the hall from us and is authentically Australian.

  I’m sitting cross-legged on my bed and almost hoping David tries to approach me to see if I have food to share.

  I’ll shank a bitch over my Oreos.

  “So shut your gob,” I add without looking his way, “before I smack it for you.”

  “Bitch,” he mutters.

  “That’s Queen Bitch, honey,” I snap back.

  He rolls his eyes. “I’m going down to the cafeteria.”

  “That is where they keep the food, genius. Since you’re too cheap to shop for your own and resort to stealing mine. Which I can’t afford, by the way. You still owe me nearly forty bucks for my food you’ve eaten, fricking cheapskate. Hit an ATM while you’re out and give me my money or replace my food.”

  Yes, I keep track of how much it cost and how much he owes me. Never let it be said that I’m not a petty bitch.

  He storms out in a huff. Now that he’s gone, the cycle complete, I can focus again. Right now, I’m working on a design plan. I’ve been given an unpaid student internship at a local interior design company. They’ve foisted one of their problem-child clients onto me, since I’m free labor.

  But I’m determined to pull it off.

  The client has an impossibly low budget, impossibly high standards, and are impossible to work with, according to a couple of the company’s admin assistants I bribed with gourmet cookies to give me the 411 about them.

  Meaning my supervisor is setting me up both to fail and to be the scapegoat he’ll blame when the customer departs in an angry huff and fires them.

  Except I’m determined not to fail.

  Plus, I’ve met the client in person, and I got along fabulously with her.

  Not that I’m going to tell my supervisor any of that. I plan on blindsiding the fuck out of him.

  Mostly because everyone thinks I’m far more innocent and sweet than I really am.

  Again, I’m a petty bitch. Catching people off-guard is far more satisfying. It’s their fault if they underestimate me.

  For starters, if I can succeed, it’ll mean a valuable addition to my design portfolio. It could also lead to a paying position at this design company, because I’ll run an endplay and bypass the asshole supervising me and go right to the company owner with my results.

  It’ll also be a way I can give a silent fuck you to my supervisor. I suspect the guy is deep in the closet. Yet while giving me the assignment, he also managed to make three snide remarks which I definitely took as being low-key homophobic.

  If I’d refused to take the assignment, I probably wouldn’t be an intern there any longer. I can’t risk being labelled as difficult to work with by any of the firms partnering with FSU’s College of Fine Arts. And I need to finish my graduate studies. I want my damn master’s.

  I’ve worked too fricking hard to get where I am to blow it all now.

  I also do work for the theater department, helping with set and art design. It all goes into my portfolio.

  My eventual goal is to have my own design and interior architecture firm, maybe in Orlando or Tampa or Miami. Or maybe even somewhere outside of Florida. Atlanta, LA, Las Vegas—there’s a whole world out there. My dream is to live my life and make a decent living so I can sleep at night, pay my bills, and enjoy a calm, peaceful, successful future.

  Absolutely a fuck you to my parents.

  Not that they give a shit about me, or even want me to have a peaceful life.

  Hell, they don’t want me to have a life at all.

  Which is yet another reason I’m determined to succeed, if for no other reason than to make their heads explode one day.

  Living well is the best revenge, right?

  I suppose getting as far as I have, despite my parents discarding me when I was twelve, is a good start on that revenge.

  * * * *

  As a TA, I’m usually the one in our department who ends up saddled with problem children students for the professors, too. Undergrad students, of course. How that usually goes is someone starts sweet-talking me, telling me how great I am with people. Then, before I know it, I have another name added to the roster of students I’m advising.

  I mean, I’m not complaining. Not at all. It’s part of the gig. The little I earn pays for my cell phone and other assorted living expenses, like food and laundry. I mean, I get a basic food plan through school, but it’s really basic.

  Sure, I have money in savings. Except I need to hold on to that, too, ya know? It’s meant to actually pay for school, books, those sorts of things. If I’m lucky, I might have enough left over by the time I graduate with my master’s to buy a decent car.

  I already know today will mean an annoyingly tedious series of meetings with students to check in with them on their various projects.

  I’m not a morning person, either, so I’m careful to schedule these for late mornings and afternoons.

  I’m not an idiot.

  After I do a little more work on my laptop, I save my progress, grab it and everything else I need, tuck it all into my messenger bag, and leave our shared dorm room. No car, but I live on campus and it’s a mild early November day.

  FSU in Tallahassee wouldn’t have automatically been my first choice of universities. When my grandmother offered to pay for my college education anywhere I wanted to go, and I learned FSU had an interior design undergrad degree and a master’s program, this was my logical choice.

  Especially after they accepted me for admission.

  Again, I’m no idiot.

  And it was warm, and far from upstate New York, where I was raised.

  Far from my parents.

  Close to my grandmother.

  It was where I was loved and accepted by my Mimi, and where I first discovered what peace feels like.

  It’s where, free from the restrictions of my parents’ small-minded view of the world, I was able to discard most of my old disguises and develop new ones. No one here knew I was the premature baby, the
sickly kid who almost died, the chronically ill child of delicate physical disposition.

  Here, I’m Jordan, a sweet, nice guy who’s willing to help people out. I don’t make a big deal about being gay, but I don’t hide it, either. I don’t have to hide it. The good thing is that I’m a chameleon, and have learned over the years how to quietly blend in.

  Other than the painful ache in my heart over my grandmother’s death last year, just before I graduated with my four-year degree, I’ve led a charmed life since Florida became my full-time home.

  Mimi taught me a lot after I moved in with her.

  She worried about me, wanted me able to survive and protect myself.

  Wanted me to succeed and never need to go crawling home to my parents. She taught me so much, and I will be forever grateful to her.

  I want to live my life making her proud.

  Therefore, failure isn’t an option, and I’ll do whatever I have to do to make it.

  * * * *

  Work is great, because I don’t have a boyfriend to monopolize my time and distract me. I’ve briefly dated a couple of times, but while I disagree with nearly everything my parents believe in, there is, ironically, one small ideal that settled deep within me for my own reasons.

  I’ve never slept with a guy, and I don’t have any plans to, at this time.

  Has nothing to do with “purity culture,” either.

  Oh, I’m not celibate. I’m a pretty freaky dude—inside my head. I’ve got toys, too. But I don’t want to hand over my life and heart to someone only to realize I let my libido get the better of me and it led me into a situation that won’t last.

  Sure, I’m realistic that the first serious relationship I have might not be for life. That’s not the point.

  I’m not “saving myself” for a special person.

  I’m saving myself for me.

  Whoever I let punch my V-card, it will be because they’ve rocked my world and heart in a variety of ways beyond being sexy and good-looking. I’m turned on by brains, a sense of humor above a fourteen-year-old’s level, and good conversation.