“It’s okay.” Dalton smiled reassuringly. “I’m over it. I mean, it’ll always hurt, I guess, but I spent a while seeing a therapist and I learned how to accept it.”
“So, like . . . you don’t have a relationship with her at all?”
“No.” He shook his head as Sam continued to give him that sad face. “Neither of my parents could accept me when they found out, and they’ve never tried since.”
“What happened?” The broadest of questions—but of course he’d be that curious.
“Well.” He picked at his lunch with the fork, using the tines to rearrange the leaves as he spoke. “Just after I turned eighteen, they caught me kissing my high school boyfriend and freaked. I thought Stephen and I were in love and we’d stand strong against our oppressors. Except when my parents called his, and they demanded he not be ‘homosexual,’ he agreed to their terms.” A sad smile leaked out of him. “If I’d told my parents I was just experimenting, or maybe agreed to ‘get over’ my little problem, they might have let me stay, but I just . . .” He shook his head, because he still couldn’t explain it. “I wouldn’t back down.”
“So . . .” Sam’s brow scrunched up into his hairline. “They, like, kicked you out?”
“Uh-huh.” Dalton sighed and sat back, but not so far that he’d have to raise his voice to be heard. He didn’t have to share it with the world. Or their neighbors on the other side of the palm plant. “They said I could come back when I came to my senses. They thought it was tough love.” He suppressed a shiver, remembering it all. “I thought my life was over. I walked out of the house with all the cash I could find, as many clothes as I could carry in my backpack, and my cell phone. It took me a while to work up the courage, but eventually I called my brother Peter. He’s the oldest. I was afraid he’d agree with my parents, but his wife answered and told me to come over. She had Peter awake—he was working night shift—and up to speed by the time I got there. You know what they said when they answered my knock?”
Sam shook his head.
“Nothing, they just hugged me, both of them.” Oh God, he was tearing up. But that part still got him. Maybe it was because they’d already had children or just the way they were that they accepted him, but Dalton hadn’t expected it from his analytical, responsible, parent-approved older brother and sister-in-law.
“That’s so sweet,” Sam whispered, wiping his eyes.
Dalton nodded, swallowing hard around the painful lump in his throat.
“And you stayed with them while you went to college?”
Choke. His whole body leaped into awareness, adrenaline surging. He should have expected more questions from Sam, but he’d been caught up in reliving the love he’d felt then and not what happened after. Looking into Sam’s very sincere, slightly teary gray eyes, Dalton went with his gut and confessed. “No. I found a boyfriend to move in with after I graduated. He pretty much supported me, and I . . . met his needs.” Hugh had had a lot of them, beginning with requiring an outlet for his massive sexual appetite. Even at eighteen, five or six times a day, every day, was too much for Dalton for more than a few months. “He wasn’t that much older, just thirty, but he was one of those dot-com millionaires. And when that relationship ended, I found another guy just like him. A guy who needed someone like me.”
A few heartbeats of silence passed before Sam’s whole face screwed up. “So, like, you were, um, financially dependent on them?”
Dalton suppressed the butterflies in his stomach by pressing against it with his palm, under the table. “Yeah.”
Sam gasped, pulling back and covering his open mouth with his fingers, glancing around.
Oh no.
But when Sam dropped his hand, Dalton could see the titillated smile he’d been trying not to let out. “Oh my gawd!” The force of his exclamation propelled his body forward until his huge grin was nearly in Dalton’s salad. “I’ve never met an actual kept boy before.” Then he lurched back, “I’m sorry” floating out from behind the palm trying to hide his now-horrified expression.
Dalton blinked, totally disoriented. He’d always seen that period of his life as a serious blot on his past, but apparently Sam thought it was more . . . an adventure? “Sorry for what?”
“For calling you a ‘kept boy,’” he said, leaning back across the table.
An indelicate snort slipped out. “It’s okay, that’s what I was. I’m not anymore,” he hurried to add. “I never want to go back to that kind of life, but for about four years after being rejected by my parents, I sort of, well, survived that way. I’d find men who needed me and could, you know, meet my needs. When I walked out on the last one, I was twenty-two.”
Sam’s huge grin broke out again and he sat back in his seat, bouncing a couple of times. “So can I ask you all about it? If I get too, like, personal, just tell me to shut up.”
Dalton couldn’t possibly be offended by someone this cute. “Yeah, you can ask me about it, but, um, please don’t tell anyone. Not even Ian.”
Sam had been nodding along until Dalton said his boyfriend’s name. Then he pursed his lips. “Oh, that’ll be hard. Maybe you shouldn’t say anything else. I mean, I really can’t promise not to tell him. Well, I could promise, but, you know, I’d probably slip.”
Dalton worked his jaw, but before he could respond—and thank God, because he really couldn’t talk about it if it meant his boss finding out—Sam saved them from the awkwardness.
“Let’s change the subject.” He burst into enthusiastic motion, digging through his backpack under the table. “I have that list of recommended romances for you.” He handed over a computer-printed sheet of paper that included the titles, authors, and even the ISBNs of a lot of books. “Some of them are electronic only.”
“Thanks.” Dalton folded it and put it into the pocket of his coat hanging on the back of his chair. He planned on reading at least a couple, because he had a feeling there’d be a test in the future.
“And now we should gossip,” Sam announced.
“What are we gossiping about?”
“Tierney,” Sam said, in a “duh” tone of voice.
Uh-oh. “Tierney?” he asked carefully.
Sam tilted his head. “I thought you’d want to discuss him.”