Free Nobody's Son by Shae Connor Page A

another one.”
    “I kind of wanted one a few years ago.” Shaun’s gaze wandered back to the design. “I never settled on what to get, though, and the urge faded.”
    “I don’t hate it.” Con shrugged again. “But if I had it to do again, I probably wouldn’t. And not just because it hurt, either.”
    Shaun gave him a slow smile. “Not into pain, then?”
    Con laughed again. “Not that kind of pain, for sure. Whips and chains do not excite me.”
    “Oh, honey, you are missing out!” Shaun looked up to find Xavier standing in front of them, a beer in each hand. He shook his hips at them. “A little slap-and-tickle never hurt anyone.”
    “Slap and tickle is a far cry from cuffs and flogging,” Con pointed out.
    “Eh, six of one….” Xavier winked and handed Shaun a bottle, and as he turned toward Con, Shaun’s gaze caught on the thin raised white line running diagonally across Xavier’s wrist. Shaun looked away quickly, not wanting to get caught staring, but his heart beat faster anyway. He knew what that scar represented.
    Xavier walked away, oblivious to Shaun’s discomfiture, and Shaun took a sip of his beer, though he didn’t really taste it. Absently, he rubbed two fingers against his own wrist. Con’s soft voice interrupted his thoughts.
    “I remember when that happened,” he murmured. Shaun jerked his head up to meet Con’s gaze, and Con nodded toward where Shaun’s fingers still lay against his wrist. “I probably shouldn’t tell you, for a lot of different reasons, but the truth is, his family kicked him out when he told them he was gay. That’s the escape he tried.”
    Shaun swallowed, hard. That was his greatest fear, that if he told his gran how he’d been feeling, then he’d lose the only real family he had left.
    “I know how he felt.” Con’s voice was voice low and smooth. “It took me a long time to tell my family the truth. Hell, it took me a long time to tell myself the truth. When I was a teenager and first started figuring out that guys did it for me, I told myself it wouldn’t matter. I liked women just fine, so all I needed to do was find one to marry, and the family never had to know about any of it.”
    “Yeah,” Shaun found himself saying. “I’m not…. My gran….”
    He couldn’t finish the thought, couldn’t force out the words my gran doesn’t know I’m gay , especially not when he couldn’t even use the last two words to describe himself out loud. But Con just nodded, and his voice stayed soft with sympathy.
    “Trust me on this one,” Con said. “If you tried something like that, you’d be miserable. You’d spend the rest of your life fighting who you really are, or you’d end up breaking up your not-so-happy marriage because you can’t keep up the lies anymore.”
    Something in the way he said that last made Shaun turn his head to look Con in the eye. He saw the truth there.
    “I got out before we had kids, at least,” Con admitted. “Deanna got over me and found herself a good man. But I hurt her because I was lying to everybody. Especially to myself.”
    He turned back toward the pool, where Xavier and Taylor stood in the water, arms wrapped around each other. “Everybody’s got scars,” Con murmured. “Some are just easier to hide.”
    Shaun let that sink in. It wasn’t anything he didn’t know already, but sitting here by the pool on a gorgeous summer night, surrounded by happy, laughing men, made it hard to grasp that every one of the party guests had their own wounds. The scars on Xavier’s wrists were no more, and no less, important than the things no one could see.
    He knew some of what Mikey had gone through with his father. He knew Jimmy’s family was out of his life. He’d bet several of the others at the party had struggled with coming out—maybe still were struggling with it, like he was. And he’d bet they had other worries too. Jobs. Money. Health problems.
    It’s just life , he thought. It marks you. Good and