Page 1 of Adonis (Salt and Starlight #1)

Connor was royally screwed.

Horizontally. Vertically. Hypothetically. Literally… Okay, technically, the literal option had ended up out of reach. Wanting to have his first time with his boyfriend Austin on his eighteenth birthday had been a pipe dream of romantic delusion.

Connor braced in the passenger seat of his dad’s Jeep, teeth rattling as they bounced and jolted their way down the dirt road that led to his mom’s house. He swore this road was paved the last time he was here. Had they torn it up?

“Why can’t I stay with you?”

Connor demanded. He’d asked politely, hinted gently, and his dad was either oblivious or pretending to be. Connor was too worn out and sore to worry that he was being a pain. His parents always found him to be a nuisance. That was why they’d shipped him off to boarding school on the other side of the country as soon as summer break was over.

It wasn’t summer yet, and Connor wasn’t used to seeing the area with sheets of rain falling on it. Maybe that was why the road was bumpy? Winter frost and rain had churned the dirt into something uneven and chaotic. During the summer it was only ever flat dirt. Connor remembered now. It had always been dirt.

“I don’t have the space at the moment,”

his dad said. He cursed under his breath as the wheel went into a deep puddle.

Connor jolted, cringing at the pain that shot through his ribs. He cupped them and copied his dad’s curse, adding “stupid Peter”

to the end.

“You live in a mansion. There’s plenty of room for me,”

Connor said. Pain made his voice sharp and bladed. “Just let me stay with you. I’m eighteen, not a child. I can take care of myself, and I’m not going to get in the way of your work.”

His dad was a researcher. Connor had been at his workplace a few times, a partially submerged lab that was hard not to be impressed by. You took an elevator down and then you were in a building with one long stretch of glass walls holding back the ocean. His mom despised the lab, refusing to even set foot on the property above ground, but Connor had grown up diving and swimming with the ocean’s creatures. He’d never been afraid of the water pressing in.

“It’s an important turn in our development. My boss needs constant updates, and,”

his dad waved a dismissive hand at Connor, “I don’t have time to meet all the conditions of your release.”

By release, his dad meant from jail.

Connor sank down in his seat. “You can just sign off that I’m doing it.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I don’t need all the crap they want me to do. I didn’t beat up that kid because he was gay.”

Connor had almost been charged with a hate crime. His saving grace had been the fact that the guy he’d beaten up claimed it happened before midnight. Before midnight, when Connor had still been a minor and therefore couldn’t be charged as an adult. That took his potential punishment from jailed assault to what he had now: his parents signing off forms to say he was reading selected material to help him overcome his bigotry.

People were furious about his light punishment. Before turning off his phone for good, Connor read articles about how being a privileged white boy let him get away with murder. As if there weren’t scuffles every day in a thousand different schools. None of them had their faces blasted on every news outlet known to man.

“I know,”

his dad said.

Connor looked at him in surprise. His dad’s focus was on the road, and the comment hadn’t been pointed or reluctant—just a simple fact. Connor’s dad never, ever coddled. If he said he believed Connor, he meant it.

Everyone thought that was why. Former friends, former best friends, and his teachers—who he reckoned knew him better than his parents—had refused to step forward in his defence. His boyfriend had vanished when Connor was charged. Yet his dad knew it wasn’t a hate crime.

“Edith isn’t going to know that,”

Connor said. “She believes it. I know she does.”

She’d always thought he was a bad kid. Always fussed about him doing anything at all. Any mess in the house? Connor did it. Milk left out to spoil? Connor did it on purpose. Money missing from the house? Connor took it. Connor scowled to himself. As if he had to steal money when his dad would hand him hundred euro notes for ice cream.

“You can explain what happened yourself. Give her your side of it,”

his dad said, distracted. “I believe there was an article about it?”

His voice was unsure.

“Jesus, dad. There’s a huge scandal about me not getting jail time—there are dozens of articles about it, and every LGBT person out there has a million posts written about how I—and the entire criminal system—am a monster.”

“That may have been what Arthur was talking about.”

His dad nodded, seemingly satisfied.

Okay. Maybe his dad believed him because he couldn’t be bothered enough to consider otherwise. Connor stewed on that, trying not to think that his version of events went: I was having a drink with my friends. It felt like someone punched a hole through my consciousness. I woke up in a jail cell.

“You know I’m not getting into college now, right? Nobody will have me after all this outrage.”

“Possibly,”

his dad said, paying little heed to Connor.

Connor gritted his teeth. It wasn’t like he had big college aspirations. He’d applied, sure, because that was what everyone did. He was more interested in the locations of the colleges. If he were honest, he didn’t think he’d ever come back to this town. He’d made plans with Austin to be live-in workers overseas so they could pay their way somewhere hot in Europe until the college semester started. That obviously wasn’t happening now.

His mom’s house came into view, a two-storey farmhouse that overlooked a private beach. It had been the prized possession of the Holter family for generations. It was familiar, but it didn’t feel like coming home. Home was reserved for the dorms at school, where he’d spent nine months of every year since he’d turned twelve. He probably would have been sent away as young as seven if the law had allowed his parents to do it; they’d never had any interest in raising him. Connor often wondered how someone as meticulous as his mom had ended up with an unwanted pregnancy. He’d noticed over the years that anytime the news discussed abortion she had it turned off in nanoseconds.

“Alright.”

His dad pulled up at the front door. “I’ll see you…”

he trailed off.

That sounded about right.

Whatever.

Connor got out, cupping his ribs when they burned at his fast movement, and retrieved his duffle bag from the back seat. It had been thrown up on a mountain of equipment and now radiated the stench of seaweed. That wasn’t going to be avoided here; the ocean breeze was already imparting a salty greeting. It was good, though. It was one part of home that he liked. When he was younger, his dad would bring him to work when there was no babysitter free, so Connor had spent a lot of his childhood in the water. Summers had been surfing, kayaking, going out with fishermen’s sons on boats, and as Connor got older, wealthy tourists’ kids on their yachts. It hadn’t all been bad… Connor dragged his gaze from the distant ocean to the front door. Longing curdled to apprehension. None of the good had ever been in this house.

The front door opened and his mom stepped out onto the porch. She was in her fifties now, but she looked young with her wide grey eyes and hair that shone black with no hint of greying. She wore a cardigan and cupped her elbows as if she were chilled. From behind her came a hulking man in excellent shape. He placed both hands on her shoulders in what Connor guessed was a reassuring gesture. That was Edith’s new husband, Trevor.

Connor hadn’t gone to the wedding, even though they’d bought him bus tickets, and Trevor had said in a phone call he couldn’t wait to meet him. Connor hadn’t been against the remarriage by any means. Not even when he discovered that Trevor had two sons, one a year older than Connor and one a year younger. What pissed him off was that they all moved into the house together.

There was to be no boarding school a thousand miles away for his mom’s new children.

Connor skipped the wedding. He used the travelling expenses to buy vodka, tried to get drunk, and before they’d been married even a day, his mom had gotten calls from the principal about Connor’s behaviour. The whole situation was made worse because Connor couldn’t even get drunk in the end, no matter how much he binged.

To this day, Connor didn’t know if he’d skipped the wedding because he was angry or because he knew he’d ruin her day by showing up.

Trevor was bigger in person.

Connor placed the duffle strap onto his shoulder and started toward them. There was no point in dawdling around in the rain, was there? His dad wasted no time putting the Jeep into gear and taking off down the muddy road. Connor climbed the stairs, examining his mom’s fretting expression, thinking that maybe she was grabbing her elbows in anxiety and not coldness. She didn’t meet his eyes.

“Connor,”

she finally spoke, her voice packed with trepidation. Trevor gave her shoulders a squeeze.

“I’m Trevor,”

her new husband greeted. He guided her gently to the side so that he was the one facing Connor and then offered out his hand. Connor worried as he took that large, calloused hand that his was about to be crushed. Trevor didn’t grip him hard. A gentle smile accompanied one tiny squeeze, and then his hand was free. “My boys—Nick and Laurence—are out getting some takeaway for dinner. They should be home in about an hour. Why don’t we head in? I’ll show you to your room.”

Connor followed them in, frowning but trying not to be too bitter. “I was here a few months a year. I remember where I slept.”

Not “my”

room. Where he slept. Did his mom catch on? He didn’t know. She was busy fussing with her elbows again. It was warm inside, and there was no excuse for it this time. It was nerves.

“Ah.”

Trevor’s friendly smile became pained. “Well, actually—”

“One of your kids got it?”

Connor didn’t need a second to guess. He wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t hurt. This was why he’d been lobbying to stay with his dad and not mom and her new family that had permission to actually live in the house with her. She’d always been a terrible mother; he wasn’t expecting it to change. “I figured. Did you build a shed for me? Is there a basement to lock me up in, maybe?”

Trevor’s smile faded. “We did up the old storage room upstairs. It was a quick job, so—”

“You mean the cupboard?”

Connor looked at his mom. “Why didn’t you just tell Dad there was no space for me?”

Anger flashed in her eyes. Oh, Connor knew that look. He knew she’d tried that already, but while she would have objected and fought, his dad would have answered with a resounding, unyielding no. There was no changing his no into anything else. Never was.

“There wasn’t anything else we could arrange on short notice,”

Edith said, her voice high-pitched and unhappy. “Trevor worked all night to make it liveable, so you can at least be thankful for the effort that went into trying to make you comfortable.”

“Right,”

Connor said. “Thanks, Trevor, but I’m not sleeping inside a room the size of a coffin.”

He strode past them into the living room. “I’ll just take the couch.”

“You can’t take up the living room.”

His mom followed him closely. “We’ve prepared a room; you can use that. Enough with this attitude. You haven’t even been in the house two minutes.”

Connor flopped down onto the couch and sighed. “You can have the cupboard, Mom. I’ll sleep in the bed with Trevor.”

His mom’s face went red. He knew the casual remark enraged her.

Before she could explode, Trevor put his hands on her shoulders. “I can talk to the boys. I know they’ll object, but Laurence can stay in Nick’s room until we sort out another arrangement. That way, you can have your old room back.”

“No,”

his mom objected. “It’s not fair that they have to lose out because of Connor’s—his—behaviour.”

She said behaviour like it was a dirty word.

“Suppose you planned on me never coming here again, didn’t you?”

Connor asked. “Didn’t think not having that extra room would ever be a problem.”

“That isn’t—”

“You didn’t even worry about me spending Christmas alone at the dorm, so this is news to nobody.”

Trevor’s brows pinched tight together. His mom was pissed.

“You told us you weren’t coming home for Christmas on Christmas day!”

she shouted.

Connor didn’t shout back. His anger had never been a loud thing; it was something that seethed and boiled under his skin. It didn’t explode out of him unless it had the potential to ruin his life, then he lost his temper and got himself accused of hate crimes. Apparently. “You didn’t send me any money to get the bus, didn’t ask me did I have a way of getting down—but again, that was the point of sending me so far away, wasn’t it? Driving to see me would never be an option.”

Trevor squeezed her shoulders again, and whatever she’d been about to yell at him was cut off. Connor watched the battle on her face. This was new. His mom regaining her composure before telling him what a horrible boy he’d always been, and not after. The obvious reason for this change was her new husband.

“How about you make some tea?”

Trevor suggested. “I’ll talk to Connor.”

She made what Connor considered a tactical retreat while Trevor made a tactical advance… onto the couch next to Connor.

Oh boy. Connor, naturally, was very uneasy about this. Trevor was a big guy, and while fights with his mom were normal in his life, this was the first time her new husband was present for them.