Dirty Thoughts - Megan Erickson Page 0,44

friends. I have nowhere to go. I dug out your address from my mom’s address book, and here I am.”

Cal stared at him. “Why do you need a place to stay?”

That chin lifted higher, like the kid needed more courage to say what he was going to say next. “Dad’s drunk a lot, and Mom’s always making excuses for him. For a while, it was better, but since we moved to Virginia, he’s gotten so much worse. He comes home at odd hours. He’s driven drunk with me in the car, but this last time . . . he picked me up from the mall and almost ran off the road because he was plastered. I don’t”—he swallowed and blinked rapidly—“feel safe with them anymore. I try to refuse to get in the car, but then he gets angry. So angry. And . . . I . . . I’m scared.”

Jenna wanted to run to this kid and gather him in her arms. Get him a slushy and curl up with junk food on the couch, watching silly movies. No kid should feel unsafe with his own parents.

Cal hadn’t moved, but the tenseness had returned to his shoulders. His fists were clenched. And Jenna knew him well enough by now to know he was pissed.

And then the kid threw his knockout punch. “Mom always said you were probably a better parent to your brothers than she could have been.”

Jenna felt the tears. They were hot and they were prickly, and shoot, she was going to start bawling.

Because Cal still had that soft inside he always had. He hid it so well with his gruffness and his stares and scowls. But he’d shown her his belly this weekend. It was still there, just a little more scarred.

And that kid had gone right for it. Freaking little genius, Jenna thought.

“And you came here thinking . . . what? That I’d take you in? Be your parent?” Cal’s words were harsh, but his tone was soft.

Asher blinked at him, and then his lip started trembling. But Jenna knew by the slump of Cal’s shoulders that the kid had won this round.

“How old are you?” Cal asked.

“Sixteen.” Asher wiped his nose with the back of his hand and sniffed again. “I just need a place to stay until I can figure out what to do.” Jenna began to see some resemblance in the shape of their faces. Asher’s body was more like Brent’s—on the lean side—but those eyes were all Max and that face was Cal’s. Unmistakably Cal’s.

Cal jerked his chin toward the bag. “That all ya have?”

“Yeah.”

He stepped away from the door. “Come in, then. Take off your shoes, because I don’t want you tracking dirt in my house.”

Chapter Fourteen

JACK PAYTON WAS going to have a heart attack. Because standing in the foyer of Cal’s house, in a pair of faded Converses and a beat-up duffel bag, was a teenager staring back at Cal with Max’s eyes.

With Jill’s eyes.

Cal didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

How his sorry excuse for a mother hadn’t informed her other three children that she’d had another child was a mystery. But yet, here he was, nervously licking his lips, looking like a mash-up of Max, Brent, and a third guy who must be his father.

Cal knew what it was like to be let down by someone he thought he could depend on. He wanted to drive to Virginia and beat the shit out of this kid’s dad, but what good would that do? He thought the best thing to do would be to send the kid home. Asher wasn’t his responsibility, but by the time he found the bus schedule and got the kid to the bus station, it’d be dark. And Cal couldn’t bring himself to drop off a scared teenager at a bus stop to travel to Virginia at night.

He’d have to give the kid a place to sleep tonight, and then he’d call Jill in the morning to arrange a way to get the kid home. But it niggled in the back of his mind that it must be pretty bad at home for this kid to leave and show up on a stranger’s doorstep.

Cal looked pointedly at the kid’s shoes, and Asher hurriedly toed them off. He stood and looked around awkwardly. “Um, I like your place.”

Cal didn’t respond.

Jenna stepped forward. “Hi, I’m Jenna.”

Asher eyed her. “I didn’t know Cal was married.”

“Oh, he’s not. I’m just a friend.”

Asher raised his eyebrows, like he