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Quinn waved and stood. “Hi, Abe.”
Now that he was here, his churning gut told him it was a bad idea. All eyes in the room were on him as they waited expectantly for his reason for just showing up out of the blue.
He flashed back to that last kiss next to Dom’s front door, when his lips had been sore and Dom had run the pad of one finger gently over his bottom lip. “I’ll never get enough,” he’d whispered as he leaned close and soothed Abe’s lips with his tongue.
He shut his eyes, heavy emotion a hard knot lodged in his throat. Risking Dom’s anger was nothing compared to how he’d feel if something bad happened to him.
A hand touched his arm. “Dad, is everything okay?”
Opening his eyes, Abe smiled, then squeezed his son’s shoulder. It was time to come clean. He walked to Quinn and handed him the sheets of paper. “I wanted to see if you could help me figure out what these mean.”
Quinn looked at each page, his brow creasing. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt with a wrinkled blue button-down left open over it. His eyes suddenly shot wide. “Hey, I’ve seen these before. Hollis brought in a message and I couldn’t do anything with it—not without more to go on. How many do you have? Are there more?”
“Just the ones there. Three and a partial.”
“Where did you get these?” Quinn frowned at him.
Abe shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He looked at Shane, whose face was twisted with real concern. And confusion.
“Okay. Just hear me out, because this feels like a betrayal,” he said, his voice rusty. He cleared his throat. “Coming here like this. But he’s not answering his phone, and we were supposed to talk earlier. He was coming over. You should have seen his face when the first one showed up on his door. He was terrified, but he tried to hide it from me.” Fuck, he was rambling.
Shane stepped close. “Who tried to hide it from you, Dad?”
He took a deep breath. “Dominic Walsh.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Quinn’s mouth fall open, but his gaze was glued to his son’s face as his confusion increased before understanding smoothed it out. And like Abe had expected, a frown followed.
“You’re the guy Dom’s been pining over for a year?” Quinn asked, chuckling. “Go, Dom,” he murmured.
Gidget and Cole had both stopped working—the room eerily quiet.
Shane crossed his arms. His mouth opened, then snapped shut. He opened it again, the pause so long, it grew uncomfortable. Some kind of electronic device kicked on and yet still, that silence went on. “But he’s my age,” Shane finally got out.
Abe scrubbed his hands over his face. “You think I don’t know that?”
“But…he’s my age,” Shane repeated. “I think he might even be younger than me.”
“Same age, Shane,” Abe growled in warning. He didn’t want his son fixated on Dom’s age. He was just getting past it himself, and there were bigger issues to worry about.
His arms dropped to his sides, then he shoved his hands into his jean pockets. He pulled them out and ran one through his hair.
“Look,” Abe said, “This isn’t how I wanted you to find out.”
“Find out?” Dark eyebrows went halfway up his forehead. “It’s serious? Like dating? Are you dating Dom Walsh, Dad?”
“Yes,” was all he’d admit. If he was serious, if they both were, then Dom should hear that first. No matter how much he loved his son and didn’t want to upset him. “It’s not a hookup.”
“A hookup? How is that even coming out of your mouth? Hookup?”
Abe narrowed his eyes, his temper perking a bit. “Look, I know this is weirding you out. I knew it would, which is why I hadn’t said anything before.”
“So you wouldn’t have said anything if I hadn’t been here? Quinn would have known?”
The sigh Abe let out was loud in the silence of the room. Silence broken only by the whir of hard drives and the muffled noises of a busy office outside the room. “I would have gone straight to you after asking for Quinn’s help. I wouldn’t do that to you, nor would I do that to Quinn. I’d never ask him to keep something this important from you.”
“This important? So it is serious.”
“What it is, is between Dominic and myself. When we figure it out, I’ll let you know.”
Shane’s face darkened in a way Abe knew only too well. He braced himself, wondering if his son was about to piss him off.
Quinn shuffled his feet loudly, drawing both their gazes. “Shane, remember me telling you Dom had it bad for someone who wouldn’t give him the time of day?” Quinn looked at Abe. “You said no a long time, eh?”
“Eighteen years is like this giant, yawning chasm of time—time he hasn’t yet experienced. Of course I said no. But he’s—” Heat crept up his neck. “Persuasive.”
