Stand in place, p.1
Stand In Place, page 1
Stand In Place
Mary Calmes
Stand In Place
Copyright ©2019 Mary Calmes
http://marycalmes.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of author imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted on the cover is a model.
Cover art Copyright © 2019 Reese Dante
http://reesedante.com
Edited by Desi Chapman
Content/Copy Edit by Lisa Horan
Proofreading by Judy’s Proofreading
Assistant Jessie Potts potts.jessie@gmail.com
Created with Vellum
Contents
Acknowledgments
Stand In Place
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
A note from the author
Also by Mary Calmes
About the Author
Acknowledgments
This one is for my grandmother, Phyllis, and for my Aunt Barr, both of whom helped bring the matriarch of Kaenon’s family to life. It’s also for all the wonderful women who have mothered me over the years, and to others who have allowed me to mother them. Love you.
I couldn’t do this without my team behind me, thank you for supporting me even when I drive you all nuts. Like really, really, nuts. And thank you to all my amazing readers; I appreciate you all so much.
Stand In Place
One summer won’t be enough….
Kaenon Geary was done fighting the small minds in his sleepy Texas town when he made his escape and never looked back. But now, for the first time in more than a decade, he’s returned to Braxton to spend the summer with his beloved grandmother—her final summer—and no longer recognizes the home he’d left behind all those years ago.
Everything has changed.
Everything but the man he’s never stopped wanting.
Brody Scott was the local football hero who became a gridiron champ, but he retired from the fast lane to forge a new life as the Chief Constable of Braxton. He longs to put down roots in the community he is now sworn to protect. Though he’s not at all sure he can protect his heart from the quiet, earnest boy he once knew. The boy who has come back a man.
Starting something would be a mistake. Kaenon plans to fly away at summer’s end, but his love is something Brody desperately wants to have…and to keep. Their days together are numbered. Unless some simple hometown magic can make all the right things bloom and show them the true definition of love.
One
The only thing on my mind was coffee as I stumbled off the plane at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. A quarter to six in the morning was much too early for anyone to be awake, but that was when the red-eye from Connecticut got in. Had it not been a life-or-death situation—the latter being the case—I would never have returned to Texas. The idea of seeing the town of Braxton again would have made me sick to my stomach if I were even somewhat conscious.
Thankfully, there was an open Starbucks in the terminal, and I was able to get a regular coffee with three shots of espresso that the nice barista was worried might kill me. He made me take a large cup of water to hydrate, which was kind and completely unnecessary, as caffeine and I were well acquainted. In fact, the coffee was gone before I made it to the Budget counter to pick up the rental car that my buddy Baz had ordered for me.
“How do you pronounce your first name, Mr. Geary?” the agent asked, looking at my name, Kaenon, uncertainly, as a lot of people did.
“Like Canaan from the Bible,” I explained, as I’d done about a billion times in my lifetime. “It’s just spelled weird.”
“Oh, I love it,” she said, smiling sweetly at me.
I thanked her, and she handed over one of those key-fob things and told me that the car was reserved with an open return date.
“I had no idea you could even do that,” I replied lamely.
Her brows furrowed, and it looked odd on her pixie face. “Did you not make this reservation?”
I hadn’t, no. “I did. I just forgot,” I muttered and rushed away, not wanting to come apart at a rental car counter.
Needless to say, I had been a bit annihilated at the thought of going back to the town where I’d grown up, and Baz and his husband, Simon, who both taught at the same private college as I did, had taken things into their own hands. One had packed my duffel, the other got online with my credit card and made travel arrangements. When Baz dropped me at Bradley International Airport, he’d hugged me fiercely—which was a bit painful considering the guy was an ex-defensive lineman—and told me not to worry about coming back.
“The hell are you talking about?” I asked, squinting.
Baz’s eyes rolled heavenward. “I mean, don’t worry about anything until the summer’s over. You have time before school starts back up, so do what you have to do. Simon and I will take care of your place, water your garden, and grab your mail. We may just stay in the guest room until you get back.”
“Why?” That made no sense. “Your condo is amazing, and it’s in that great building, and it’s close to downtown, and—”
“Who cares?” he told me. “Your house is like a sanctuary. Every time you have us over, we never want to leave.”
It was a really nice thing to say. “You just like my homemade tea,” I teased him.
“Your tea is epic, that’s true,” he agreed. “Everyone in the department is addicted to it, but really, your home, your space, is the real prize, so we’ll take good care of it so you don’t have to give it a thought.”
It was a comforting idea, having them house-sit.
“And George will love it. Let’s face it, he likes me better than you anyway, so I wouldn’t worry about him.”
He was not wrong. My cat, a shelter rescue two years ago, actually moved whenever Baz came over. The only thing I ever got was cool disregard and occasional judgment.
Baz grinned wide. “Look how cute he is,” he said, making a very uncharacteristic noise that sounded suspiciously like cooing as he flashed me a short video from Snapchat of his husband cuddling my asshole cat in my own living room. “He loves Simon.”
George’s eyes were closed as he rubbed the top of his head under the man’s bearded chin. “Ugh,” I groaned. “That cat’s a filthy traitor. Not even a moment of sadness over my leaving.”
Baz smacked me in the chest. “So, there. Everything’s settled. You can go and not be worried about anything here. Take however long you need to be with your grandmother and then…come home.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to be reminded about my grandmother.
“I don’t know what I’d do if it was my grandmother,” he said, taking a quick gulp of air so he wouldn’t get emotional.
“You’re not helping,” I informed him.
“I just…I know how important she is to you. I know she’s your whole family, and since you don’t know what you’re walking into and what she’s gonna need, I’m trying to tell you to take the time and spend it with her, and don’t worry about anything else.”
I shook my head, and not over the family part but, instead, over the rest of what my friend had alluded to. “I’m not staying there. No one wants me there. You have no clue how bad it was.”
He nodded. “I’m sure, but just don’t add to it by being hard on yourself, okay? Take it easy, Kae, and whenever you get back, everything will be here waiting.”
“Okay.”
“Except Aidan,” he said cheerfully with a sinister smile. “Aidan will be in Boston, right? There’s no chance of you guys getting back together.”
“No. No chance. But there wasn’t anyway, you know that.”
“I wasn’t sorry when you broke up with him.”
I knew he wasn’t. None of my friends were. They had all hated him. Every last one of them. The entirety of the people I knew in Connecticut all wanted the man gone. Simon, the sweetest man on the planet, offered to throw me an emancipation party.
“Lemuel wanted to push him off the balcony of his apartment,” Baz reminded me.
“I know,” I grumbled, because I did.
“Lemuel studied with Tibetan monks, Kae.”
“I know,” I groaned again.
“The man took a vow of silence for two years!”
I let my head fall back before I closed my eyes, letting the full weight of the horror that the situation was wash over me.
“He’s a pacifist, for fuck’s sake, and he wanted to kill your boyfriend. Let’s let that sink in for a second, shall we?”
Jesus.
“Kill. Aidan Powell brought out murderous intent in an almost monk.”
God.
“Could it have gotten any worse than that?”
“Yes.” I answered what I knew wa
“Yes!” Baz yelled dramatically. “For crissakes, Kae, he lectured Maya on the plight of the black man in America!”
Yes, he had.
First, Maya Grayson taught at the same exclusive private college with the rest of us, had a PhD in urban geography and gender studies, was in charge of educational leadership and policy studies at the college, was also director of the doctorate in educational leadership, and lectured all over the country on race relations and how educating everyone was the cure for all manner of stupidity. Second, she was black. When Aidan started mansplaining things to her at dinner, she did a slow pan to me, and the look of pain and horror on her face made me cringe. Her husband, James, kept opening his mouth to say something, but Maya lifted the index finger on her right hand to let him know she had the situation covered.
“Are you done?” she asked Aidan when he finally took a breath.
As she waited for his reply, patiently, like a snake coiled to strike, he finally recognized in her face that he’d overstepped, but by then it was far too late. Once he nodded, she took him point by point through his entire argument, missing nothing, destroying—logically and thoughtfully—everything he’d said. Basically, she shut him up for the rest of the evening without ever raising her voice, not once.
“I’m so sorry,” I told her later, on her patio.
The fact that she forgave me for bringing my ass of a boyfriend to dinner, into her home, no less, spoke to our years of selfless friendship. “You deserve better,” she said, taking my arm as we had strolled together the following day, “and I don’t know why you can’t see that.”
The thing was, Aidan was smart and stylish—everything I wasn’t. When I finally realized, after dinner that evening, that being criticized and having someone try and make you over was not, in fact, in my best interest but, instead, for Aidan’s own selfish reasons, it had been time to go. When I told him it was over, I was surprised that he suddenly wanted us married and moved to Boston, like, yesterday.
“Why?” I asked, glancing around his loft for stray items that belonged to me. Not that there was anything. We had kept things separate, because that’s what he wanted.
“Why do I want to marry you?” he said, like it was the most ridiculous question ever.
“Yeah,” I answered softly, feeling the weight of the ending as I stood there in a place that had never felt like home.
“Are you kidding?” Aidan asked, almost leering, looking me up and down.
I got it then. It was my body he liked.
In bed, Aidan touched me constantly, marveling over the breadth of my shoulders, the hardness of my chest, my sculpted abdomen, and long, muscular legs. He praised my abilities in one place only, and that was in the sack. Aidan needed a dominant partner, and that was me. Outside the bedroom, it was apparent he thought I had little to offer, but between the sheets was a whole other story.
I huffed out a breath and was out the door seconds later. We hadn’t talked since. Not that I thought we would. After basically being told sex was all I had going for me, the writing was on the wall. And I hadn’t told anyone about our last encounter. I had my pride, after all. I wanted my friends to think the investment banker and a college English professor had not been a wrong fit from the start.
They were all lucky they’d never met Aidan’s family. Pretentious and entitled and snobbish didn’t begin to describe them.
The whole thing was on me, and I was smart enough to know why. I never liked to admit my mistakes. I liked to think all my choices were good and solid, and it was hard to suck it up and say yeah, I blew that one. Aidan moving to Boston was an easy out, and even though I was still in the headspace where I was performing the autopsy on the dead relationship—where did I go wrong?—I figured all the findings would lead to the same conclusion: we weren’t compatible. When all your friends, every single one, hated the guy you were with, it was time to wonder if he was, in fact, a nozzle.
“I should write the people of Boston a note and tell them that Wallingford, Connecticut, is sorry they’re getting the town jackass.” Baz snickered. “Jesus.”
Brought back to the present, I smiled at my fiercely loyal friend. “Just…enough. I get it.”
“I need to meet whoever you pick next before you make any long-term decisions, all right?” he said, shooting me a grin complete with deep dimples. “I think that would be best for all parties involved.”
“You’re speaking for everyone, then?”
“Yeah. I’m speaking for everyone.”
“Well, I don’t think you hafta worry about it. I mean, before Aidan, who have you seen me date?”
“That’s because you’re oblivious when someone is hitting on you,” he emphasized. “And your gaydar is nonexistent.”
That was accurate. I missed lots of things that others told me were clear as day.
“I don’t get how you don’t notice people throwing themselves at you all day long.”
I scoffed at him. Loudly.
“You’re the whole package, and I wish you realized it.”
He was a dear friend and had to say nice things. It was in the friend contract.
“You’re beautiful inside and out.”
The out part was what I’d heard most often from Aidan, that I had a beautiful body. I should have known something was off right then. I should have packed on the pounds and tested Aidan’s interest early, but it was far too engrained in me to get up and hit the gym. I’d been an athlete. Soccer carried me all the way out of Texas to Syracuse University in New York years earlier, and even though I got hurt in my junior year—compound fractures to both the tibia and fibula of my right leg, which still hurt even years later—I ran every morning. I went to the gym three times a week, lifted weights another two, and worked on my leg, keeping it strong and myself in good shape. It wasn’t something I could ever change, not that I wanted to. And besides, I was never giving up beer and cheese, so the tradeoff was exercise.
“Anyway,” Baz groused at me. “Go get on the damn plane and text me when you get there so I know you’re not dead.”
“That’s lovely.”
“Eat me.”
“Wouldn’t Simon get upset?”
He pointed at the terminal. “Get the hell out.”
I might have whined just a little.
“It’ll be fine,” he promised before giving me an almost-too-tight bear hug. “Go home, take care of your grandmother, get everything in order, and then come back.”
That was the plan.
Now, leaving the rental car counter, I realized that, truthfully, if anyone else had called—my parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins—anyone at all besides Joanna Geary, my father’s mother, the woman who, along with my grandfather and her sister, my Aunt Peg, had pulled me from the fire, I wouldn’t have gone. But she was the one who loved me. She was the one who moved to New York for a year when I got hurt. She was the one who stayed with me through the eleven operations I had to have just to be able to walk again as screws were drilled into bones that would never be the same.
After the surgery, waking up, groggy, my grandmother’s face was the first one I saw, the first voice I heard cracking a joke about how, if I wanted to see her so badly, I could have just called. Breaking my leg in four places was just a ridiculous, childish cry for attention.
I gasped first, groaned second, and winced last. “Don’t make me laugh. I’m dying.”
She smirked at me. “Not today, love.”
The entire time I spent recovering, she was there. My grandfather flew up every other weekend to make sure I knew he was there too. As if I ever had any doubt. Everyone who met them, Joanna and Harvey Geary, was in awe of their commitment to me, their youngest grandchild. I, of course, took it for granted. In the worst of times, I could always count on them. They’d come when I called, and now I was showing up in Braxton, Texas, because five years after the death of my grandfather, it was now my grandmother’s time. It was my turn to take care of her, and not because I was going to nurse her through anything. She didn’t need a lifeline or a caretaker. All she needed was her favorite grandson to bust her out of the hospital so she could die at home instead of in the care facility that everyone had planned on. I would not let her down.
