Page 2 of Shades of Henry
And then he was gone.
Henry groaned and banged his head silently on his fist.Shit. Shit shit shit shit.Sigh. Shit was a thing he had to get together in a paper bag right now or he was going to become one with this truly horrific bed.
Nine years in the Army. Nine years of learning how to pull himself up from his bootstraps and do the fucking job, and he was going to stop now?
He stood, back straight, and dropped the sheet, then grabbed the towels Martin had left on the floor. He had his brother’s address in his phone and enough money for a cab and some breakfast. And he was damned if he was going to let a glitch in his plan like Martin No-Last-Name derail him from moving on with his life.
Funny how what fate planned and what we plan for ourselves are very rarely the same thing, right?
Right?
“HENRY? SERIOUSLY. Is that you?”
Henry hefted his duffel bag over his shoulder and tried a smile. Davy, his brother, had always been the one with the charming grin. Henry had learned to keep his own features stoic and even in the last nine years.
“Davy?” Oh, this was harder than he’d thought.
His brother David lived in a cute little house in a nice residential area in the city proper. From Davy’s letters years before, Henry knew that the property values in Sacramento were pretty high, and the yard was small and the house only had one full bathroom and a spare bedroom, but he hadn’t expected it to be so… cute. The gutters and trim were painted green, the stucco painted a pale cream color, the fence recently stained, and from the looks of it over the fence, the backyard had some landscaping done.
The lawn was cut even with the driveway, and the shrubs in the front yard had been recently trimmed.
It wasn’t some trashy den of iniquity, as his father had sneered about ever since Davy had come out—not just as gay, but as a former porn model. It was a home, right down to three sets of galoshes on the porch, one set a mud-covered and tiny pink color, with little umbrellas all over it….
Davy’s boyfriend—husband, dammit, husband!—had a niece who they cared for. Henry had forgotten about that until he’d walked up onto their porch, and suddenly he couldn’t decide who was dirtier, his brother for coming out to the family and walking away or Henry for getting kicked off the farm and dragging all his problems with him.
But then Davy opened the door, and Henry stopped asking himself stupid questions.
“Henry?”
Henry tried to give an ingratiating smile, but before it could even morph into a scowl, his brother—whom he had sneered at with their father for being a fag and a whore and a disgrace to the family—smiled at him with tears in his eyes and took Henry into the kind of embrace Henry had always dreamed of getting from his family, but never had.
AN HOURlater—after Carlos, Davy’s boy… erm… husband had taken his niece to school, all while giving Henry a lot of suspicious looks that Henry had more than earned—Henry sat at the breakfast table, eating pancakes and drinking coffee and feeling both happier and guiltier than he ever had in his life.
“Does Dad still call me names behind my back?” Davy asked. Something in his voice seemed to hurt, as if he hated himself for asking.
“Yeah,” Henry said with a sigh, the pancakes suddenly tasting like tire rubber. “I… I have to admit, Davy. Until very recently I did too.”
David had the family blond hair and blue eyes, with high cheekbones and a strong chin, a lush mouth, and a sort of innocence around his eyes that belied the fact that he’d readily admitted to putting himself through business school as a porn model.
Henry had a hard time reconciling his brother—the one who had always taken care of the younger kids, the nursemaid, the one who’d saved their youngest brother from drowning and who’d kept their sister from freaking all the boys out with her turbulent adolescence—had worked in porn. Hestillworked in it, if Davy’s letters to their older brother were to be believed. Behind the camera or in front of it—porn. Not something Henry would have ever thought of. Even though Davy was beautiful, stunningly beautiful as few men could ever lay claim to, he seemed more suited to fatherhood and life at the office, the bulging muscles in his arms and chest notwithstanding.
And somehow that beauty made his look of understanding harder to bear.
Henry shoved at his plate and stood. “Look, you know, I should just go. You don’t need me, with all of Dad’s shitty attitude, crashing your life here. I should probably—”
“Sit down and finish your breakfast, Henry,” Davy said quietly. Henry’s knees actually buckled, he was so excited to obey that order. “You look like hell. Who did that to your face?”
Henry opened his mouth to lie, but he couldn’t. And he couldn’t meet his brother’s eyes either.
“Dad,” David said softly. “Well, I had Kane to protect me when he tried that shit. Who’d you have?” Kane. Sometimes Davy called his husband Kane, and Kane called Davy Dex—it really did mess with Henry’s mind, and he didn’t even want to think about the fact that the alternative name habit started when they’d fucked each other in porn.
Henry just shook his head. He hadn’t been there when Davy had come out, Carlos by his side. He remembered that sick feeling, though, that terror, that if he ever had to do the same thing, nobody would speak up for him, because he hadn’t spoken up for anybody else. Not in their family, where as far as Henry knew, only their oldest brother, Travis, had anything to do with Davy at all.
David nodded. “Do you want to tell me why?”
Henry shook his head. “No.”
“Would you believe I could guess why?” David arched an eyebrow, and Henry’s flush turned into an instant sweat, pouring down his armpits, stinging his eyes.
