Chapter 2
Damon let his head fall back against the ridiculous purple sofa and watched with slitted eyes as Cain turned to face him, his arms crossed over his chest.
Well, well, well.Seemed the Shaw kid had a pair of balls after all, despite all appearances to the contrary.
My name is Cain, not kid, because I’m not a kid, and I’m definitely not your kid. Got it?
Damon got it, alright. Though this was hardly the first time he’d met Cain Shaw - they’d both been present for Jack Peabody’s bombshell confession a few months back, and they’d seen each other a couple of times after that - tonight he couldn’t help but see him with new eyes.
Right now, Cain definitely wasn’t looking like a kid. His cheeks were flushed, and his blue eyes were dark and stormy with anger.
It was the kind of look that, in another lifetime, would have set Damon on fire. Even now, he felt a brief, unwanted pull of attraction, before his own anger rose up to quench it. He’d had a perfectly good plan working back there, and the kid had cocked it up completely.
He brought his aching right leg up onto the sofa and flexed his toes back and forth as much as he could, given the boots on his feet. He wanted to reach down and knead the pain away through his jeans, but he’d be damned if he’d do that while the Shaw kid watched. His life was fucked up enough without showing weakness and, honest to God, if this kid looked at him with pity, that would be the last straw.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Cain demanded, shattering the silence like the words were being pulled from him. He started pacing the floor, hands thrown up in some overdone caricature of frustration.
Damon opened his eyes fully. Thekidwas angry athim.Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“And I know you’re not drunk, Damon, so don’t bother pretending!”
Interesting.
“And how the hell would you know that?” Damon demanded. God, he hated the sound of his own voice - the grating noise of a poorly-oiled engine, croaky and out-of-tune from disuse.
Cain opened his mouth like he was about to speak, then snapped it shut like he’d thought better of it. He shook his head instead. “Irrelevant,” he said, though his cheeks burned even redder. “At least the guards bought it, and I was there in time to save you before they caught on.”
Damon frowned up at him in blatant disbelief. “Save me?”
“Uh, yeah. They were two seconds away from calling the police on you.” Cain stopped his pacing a step away from the couch, and folded his arms again to glare down at Damon like he’d been personally offended by Damon’s actions. “Seriously, man, what were you thinking?”
Damon imagined if he’d ever had a real mother, rather than the lackluster collection of foster parents he’d had forced on him during his tenure in the system, she would have scolded him with the same expression Cain was wearing now - utter disappointment in both his life choices and his lack of gratitude.
But seeing that expression on the face of a man at least a dozen years younger, several inches shorter, and fifty pounds lighter than Damon, was so entirely incomprehensible that, despite the slow-simmering anger that had been dogging him for weeks and his outrage at the way his plans for tonight had been ruined, he threw his head back and laughed out loud.
It was such a weird and unexpected sound, more like a deep bark than anything else -God, how long has it been since I laughed, if I don’t even recognize the sound?- that Cain’s face lost its frustrated expression. He uncrossed his arms and looked down at Damon in concern.
“Are you okay?”
Which set Damon off again.God, what a fucked-up night. What a fucked-uplife.
He felt the strange pull toward Cain Shaw flare again - found himself looking at Cain’s mouth, the anxious frown that pursed his lips, and wondering what he tasted like. Of all the people in the world, why should this kid - this kid who’d fucked him over and refused to do the right thing - be the one to summon up emotions Damon hadn’t let himself feel in fucking forever? It was ridiculous.
“Yeah,” he said finally, sitting up and wiping at the tears leaking from his eyes. His stomach felt hollow, like he’d overdone a workout, and he wondered if it was possible to be out-of-shape from lack of laughter. He sucked in a deep breath that was more like a sniff. “Yeah,” he repeated. “I’m good. I’m fine. You caught me off-guard.”
“Are you sure? Should I call someone? Cort, or…”
Damon’s laughter fled as quickly as it had appeared. He scrubbed a hand over his eyes.
‘Cort, or…’ There wasn’t anyor. Damon had no one else to call. God knew, even his own long-lost sister wanted him to stay away from her. Hell, the one and only time he’d tried to call her - the dictionary definition of an awkward call, right from the, “Uh, hi, I’m Damon. I’m your… brother? The media found your name and camped on your doorstep when they thought I was dead?” - she’d hung up on him. She’d refused to open the door when he’d tried to visit, and hadn’t even acknowledged the money he’d had Sebastian Seaver send to her and her little girl, a niece Damon would never know.
So,no, Damon had no one but Cort. And now Cort had Cam, so Damon needed to extract himself from the equation. He was tired of relying on his little brother, and he wouldn’t drag Cort down with him.
“Nah. I’m good,” he said belatedly. He adjusted himself more comfortably on the couch, and couldn’t help wincing at the ache in his leg. “Believe it or not, it was going to be even better before you interfered.”
“How the hell do you figure that?”
Cain grabbed a chair from in front of the long, mirrored vanity and dragged it over to the sofa. He frowned as he sat down and propped his feet on the edge of the sofa near Damon’s waist with his knees bent and his arms crossed over his chest. His position was half-armadillo, half-bodyguard, like he wasn’t sure whether Damon was going to hit him, or try to escape back to the lobby, but he wasn’t going to let either thing happen. It was infuriating andintriguing, and left Damon wondering whether he’d underestimated the Shaw kid.
