Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 70115 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 351(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70115 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 351(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Maybe he was full of shit. That was more likely.
He didn’t respond. William would tell him what he wanted eventually. He did not play the silent game well. Then again, compared to Solomon, no one did. Talking was overrated and got a man into trouble. He’d seen it a hundred times on the job.
You have the right to remain silent. People would save themselves a hell of a lot of grief if they took that right a little more seriously.
Dogs didn’t need to talk. Maybe it was time to commit to a canine companion. His brother Rory’s boyfriend—one of them—had a sister who’d given several puppies to the family recently. Cute little things that needed a lot of attention, but made up for it by being loyal and obedient. And if he said something foolish, he’d be forgiven as long as he kept a treat in his pocket.
As if his thoughts had conjured up an example, they ran passed old Mr. Evers as he walked slowly to his mailbox, his shoulders hunched against the cold as his poodle circled and yipped at his heels. The man’s expression said he was rethinking his choice in companions. He glanced up, recognizing Solomon, but his watery eyes narrowed when they focused on the waving William.
“We had a neighbor like that once.” He sounded a little winded, Solomon noticed with satisfaction. “People didn’t know he’d kicked it for more than a week until his deliveries started piling up. When they found his body, they were horrified to see that his sweet, pampered terrier had eaten one ass cheek and the meat of his left leg clean off.”
“Jesus.”
“It’s the truth. And that small, noisy mongrel could be planning his last meal as we speak.”
Fine. He’d put off getting a dog. Now might not be the best time for it anyway.
It’s never the right time for you to have something you want, is it? You put things off, bottle things up and set them to the side for a day that never comes. Or comes too late to make a difference.
It was how he’d always been. He’d concealed his sexuality for most of his life, not because he was ashamed, but because he’d genuinely believed it was the best way to keep the peace in his family. And that faulty logic had come with repercussions that were still reverberating through his life and those of his five younger brothers.
The familiar self-recrimination surged inside him when he thought about what secrets had done to his family. Too many secrets, generations of them, and he and his brothers had continued the tradition.
You did say you were consistent.
Leaving William behind, he started to run faster, pushing his straining muscles to the limit to escape the boil of resentment in his blood. Sweat dripped in his eyes and his lungs filled with ice, but he welcomed the discomfort. Needed it.
“Sol! Oi, wait up,” William called out in surprise.
I’m not Sol.
His father was gone, but he was still a weight around Solomon’s neck. An albatross loaded down with the guilt he’d agreed to carry back when he’d committed his original sin of letting things lie.
“I’m gay too, Dad,” he’d whispered that final confession in his father’s ear at the end. A small act of defiance when what he needed was someone healthy and whole he could punish.
Standing in that hospital room, he’d wanted to force Elder to apologize to Rory. Some part of him held out hope, right until the last, that he’d see an ounce of regret, a shred of decency in the parent who’d raised them. A single spark he could grab on to and say, “I came from that.”
He supposed his father sending him for the journals that documented his youngest child’s abuse could be seen as his way of telling the truth. But he couldn’t shake the cynical belief that Sol had given him that job to ensure the secret was kept, not shared.
Because he believed you understood him. That you were like him.
For a time, he’d thought so too. Solomon the Younger had always followed the rules. He’d kept his siblings fed, clothed and in line in an attempt to save them from their father’s wrath, and done everything Elder expected a perfect son to do. From excelling at football to volunteering at the department as a high school student and signing up for the police academy as soon as he was eligible—he did it all to pacify the old man. To keep the peace.
Not all of it was selfless. Being a cop never bothered him the way it did his brothers. He understood it and he was good at it. He would have been happy to make a difference in relative obscurity for the rest of his career, but then his father had been the one to inexplicably retire, and he’d chosen Solomon to be his successor.