Free A Younger Man by Cameron Dane Page A

counselor at their local high school shone through every part of her. “Now you’ve been their openly gay son for fifteen months. Intellectually you have to understand it will take time for them to adjust.”
    “You didn’t need time,” Noah shot back, knowing he could still say anything to her. Christ, he missed this closeness with another adult. “If you hadn’t been so fantastic we would still be gearing up for a battle in divorce court, rather than already settled and moving on.”
    A shot of laughter escaped Janice, and she quirked a dark brow. “Maybe you’ve conveniently forgotten how I tore up our bedroom when you told me. I threw some very nice things at your head, more than once.”
    “I know,” Noah conceded. “But you never stopped talking to me, even when it was yelling and crying. You never treated me like a stranger, or as if it might burn your fingertips off if you touched me.”
    “I also knew you’d had that one experience with a guy; your parents didn’t.” Janice went quiet then. Her gaze changed to cloudy, as if she’d drifted away. “Maybe buried deep in some secret part of me,” she said, her voice gone soft, “I was always waiting for that shoe to drop, for you to tell me that you needed the freedom to try something with a man. I think some part of me always knew you would have to leave me one day.”
    Guilt flooded Noah, and he second-guessed the decision he’d made more than two decades ago to tell Janice of his one-time slip with another guy. “Were you worried the need might get so great in me that I would cheat on you?”
    Her focus sharpening once more, Janice shook her head. “It’s not in your DNA to cheat on a person you’re committed to, man or woman. Beyond that, we were both so freaking busy with work, the kids, and making sure we were saving money, you never would have had the time to stray.” She chuckled again, this time in commiseration. “Me either, for that matter.”
    Noah suddenly put a laser focus on his ex. “Did you ever think about cheating on me?”
    “Nothing more than the occasional fantasy every couple has but never admits to feeling.” She raised a brow. “You?”
    With a shrug, Noah admitted, “The same.”
    “Daaaadddd!” Matt leaned out the window and wailed loud enough for the entire town to hear him. “Come on!”
    Noah rolled his eyes at Janice. “He must be hungry again.” The kid burned so much energy he sometimes consumed more in a meal than Noah did. “Let me get him to the diner before he threatens to pass out on me.”
    “Have him home by nine.” Janice waved as she walked backward to the open front door. “He has school tomorrow.”
    “Will do.”
    With that, Noah jogged to his truck and strapped himself in, along with a promise to Matt that he would get the kid to some food as fast as he could. As Noah drove past his parents’ car parked in a drive a few houses away, his heart once again squeezed with unbearable tightness. He had a glimmer of hope he might get his mother back in time, but with each tense moment that passed between him and his father, Noah feared the strong bond he’d shared with his dad for so many years was gone for good. Another crushing wave of loss bore down on Noah, suffocating him.
    He’d never experienced such pain in his life.
    * * * *
    Pausing to wipe sweat from his forehead, Zane eyed Noah from across the spare bedroom. The man painted the disgusting wall—Zane didn’t want to know what the previous renters had done to create such stains—with such efficiency he might as well have been a robot. More than once in the last two hours Zane had found his gaze straying Noah’s way. When he found himself fixating on Noah’s strong back and shoulders, staring at the man’s muscles moving with such precision as he rolled a brush across the wall, he would avert his attention. The guy might as well have been naked from the waist up for all the good his thin T-shirt did to conceal his muscular