Devoted (9 page)

T
he walk
from his car up to the Callaghans’ front door was like a death march.

He knew he shouldn’t be so damn dramatic about it, but this could fundamentally change his relationship with Ryan. The last thing he wanted was to give him any cause for resentment, but Jake wasn’t sure there was any way to come clean about this without Ryan feeling at least a little betrayed.

By the time he made it up to the door, Russ was already waiting. He had a dish towel in his hands, and looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. His voice reflected every ounce of his exhaustion, and Jake just wanted to escort him upstairs and put him to bed.

“Hey, come on in.”

He shut the door behind him, and Russ went to put away the last of the now-clean dishes.

“So I’m guessing you saw the paper.” He shrugged out of his coat, hanging it on the back of a chair.

“Yeah. Carter of all people called me to congratulate us. Said he knew all along.”

Jake laughed it off, because Carter was never that observant, and he assumed Russ wasn’t putting much stock in it. Even so, his heart started to beat a little bit faster.

“Lynn was the one who showed me.”

“Ouch,” Russ said with a little wince.

Yeah. It definitely was. A part of Jake was still reeling from it, but he couldn’t tell Russ why. He couldn’t tell him how spot-on she was about his reasons for tying the knot, or what it was going to do to him when everything inevitably fell apart.

“Ryan upstairs?” He asked, trying to drag his mind away from his own little pity party and toward the task at hand.

Russ sighed. “Yeah. On Xbox with his friends. I told him we’d all talk about it tonight. He hasn’t pushed, but I just… I wonder what’s going through his head, you know?”

“Only one way to find out.”

Russ nodded, tossing the dish towel onto the counter. He raked a hand through his hair, and Jake could practically feel his friend’s anxiety. Russ hadn’t always been this way. He’d been pretty devil-may-care in college, and Jake had been the one prone to excessive worry.

But now that he had Ryan—and especially now that he was Ryan’s only caregiver—he’d definitely taken on more than his fair share of heartache.

The best thing Jake could do for him now was to try and be that balancing weight on the other side. If Russ was anxious, he would be calm.

“I think it’s best to tell him the truth; tell him exactly why we’re doing this. What it means and what it… doesn’t mean.”

He hoped to God Russ didn’t pick up on the crack in his voice.

“I just don’t want him to feel like he’s a burden. You know how kids internalize this shit. He’ll think we did this because of him.”

“That’s going to happen either way, I think. Best to just make sure we head it off before he can get deep into it. I’m worried that if we don’t tell him it’s because of the insurance, he’ll resent us both for trying to replace his mom.”

“Yeah.” Russ leaned back against the kitchen counter, tilting his head back and looking skyward. “Shit. I guess there’s no getting out of it, huh? I can’t crawl through the window?”

Jake caught Russ’s slight smile, and met it with one of his own, remembering exactly what his friend was referencing. Carrie had come to their dorm mad as hell once. Jake didn’t even remember what Russ had done to piss her off, but it’d been bad enough for him to feel it was necessary to climb out of their window and fall into the hedges below.

At least Carrie ended up laughing so hard at him that her anger mostly dissipated.

“’Fraid not. Come on,” he said, reaching out to clap Russ on the arm.

They headed upstairs, Russ leading the way. Ryan was lounged on a bean bag chair, his TV showing what looked to be one of the
Halo
games. His headset was on, and he didn’t seem to notice their presence at first.

“Hey, Ryan. Jake’s here. Think the three of us can talk now?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said distractedly. The sound of gunshots came through his headphones. The alien in front of him dropped to the ground in a physics-defying pile of green goo. “I gotta go eat dinner. Later guys.”

Ryan took off his headset and shut down the console, and Jake idly wondered if he’d still be so cooperative when he was a teenager. He supposed they’d find out soon enough.

“So, you remember what you asked me at the hospital? About what was happening in the spring?”

“Yeah.”

Jake looked from Russ to Ryan, wondering what exactly had taken place. He knew today was Ryan’s pre-op appointment, and still felt bad about missing it. But he hadn’t even gotten back to the clinic until after three.

“Well. Ah.” Russ looked toward him, a clear “help me” in his eyes. Oh, boy. This was going to be a long conversation.

“Your dad needed some help paying for everything. I’m sure you’ve noticed it’s been a little tight around here.”

“Yeah,” he said, in a way that made Jake think that he really did understand. At least on some level. “We eat in a lot more.”

“Right, you guys have had to make some cutbacks. But even that doesn’t take care of big expenses.”

“Like surgeries,” Ryan said.

There was a note to his voice that made Jake falter. This was what he hadn’t wanted. Ryan was a bright kid, and if this conversation was anything to go on, it seemed he already felt like a burden to his dad. Thankfully, Russ seemed to pick up on that, too.

“Not just surgeries. Any emergency. If the car breaks down, or one of my saws breaks, or anything.”

Ryan nodded, but looked at them both dubiously.

“There was a way I could help your dad with those emergencies; make it easier on you both, so you don’t have to cut back so much. But it meant your dad and I…” He looked toward Russ. Shit. Now he had no idea what to say. “Well, people who are married get certain things that single people don’t. So your dad and I went down to the courthouse and had them marry us.”

He expected anger. He expected the immediate backlash of Ryan telling him he wasn’t ever going to replace his mother, and having to run damage control while desperately hoping the situation wouldn’t blow up any worse.

What he got was… something else.

“So are you going to live here now?”

Jake just gaped, and Russ took over.

“We haven’t really talked about that yet. But are you sure you don’t have… other questions? Or concerns or something?”

He shrugged a little. “I’m not a little kid. I get it. When Tristan’s mom and dad got divorced, his dad got married to someone else.”

That Ryan could put such vastly different circumstances in the same frame of reference blew Jake’s mind. Especially since he was still trying to process the fact that Ryan seemed virtually unaffected. Kids were resilient, yeah, but he hadn’t realized just how resilient.

“This doesn’t change anything between us, okay? Your dad’s still your dad, and I’m still Uncle Jake. I would never try to replace your mom, Ryan.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Russ glanced at him, his eyes a little wide. Apparently Jake wasn’t the only one caught off guard.

“You’re not upset or anything, bud? You can tell us. We won’t be mad. You have a right to feel upset.”

“I don’t know. I don’t feel upset. Maybe if you’d just married somebody I didn’t know. But Uncle Jake is cool.”

Russ laughed, the sound tinged with disbelief. “Yeah, he is.” He took a seat in Ryan’s computer chair, leaning forward so he could be closer to his son’s eye level. “Listen, I know this is a lot to take in. So if you ever need to talk about it later, I’m here, okay?”

“Okay.”

He hadn’t expected a full monologue from Ryan, but he’d forgotten how little Russ’s son talked aside from the times he was talking about
Minecraft
or a cool thing he’d done in science class. It was almost refreshing, actually.

“You know I love ya, right?”

A goofy little smile showed Ryan’s age. He was trying so hard to hide his pleasure at hearing that, but Jake could see it easily.

“Yeah. Love you too.”

He felt that familiar ache of yearning as he watched father and son. He and Russ were legally married. Bound as tightly as they would ever be. And still he didn’t feel as if he had any right to say the words that raced through his mind; to tell Ryan that he loved him, too, and would do anything in the world for him.

Lynn’s words suddenly surfaced in his mind:

This must be killing you.

It was. Even with everything going right—or at least as right as he could hope for—it was.

R
uss was still
a little dazed when he and Jake headed back downstairs.

He hadn’t expected a shouting match. Ryan just wasn’t that kind of kid. But he’d thought there’d be
some
resistance. That’s the way it always was in the movies, at least, with the kid feeling resentful of the stepparent. Then again, Jake wasn’t really the stepparent in this case. As much as he’d been there for Russ, maybe he was still just Uncle Jake to Ryan.

Or maybe Ryan knew that it was temporary; that it wasn’t a real marriage.

Why did that make Russ feel so… unsettled?

“That was easier than I thought it would be,” Russ said, stopping at the bottom of the stairs.

“You have a good kid.”

He did have a good kid. Better than he deserved, really. But it was still hard for Russ to let go of that nagging worry that told him there was more going on than what he saw at first glance.

“I just hope he isn’t hiding anything from me, you know? Bottling up what he really feels.”

“Does it seem like he is?”

Jake’s expression wasn’t the slightest bit confrontational. Somehow when his friend asked questions he already knew the answer to, he managed to do it in a way that wasn’t condescending. He seemed to have a knack for guiding Russ toward the right answer. Lately that seemed to be something he desperately needed.

“Not really.”

Jake smiled, and Russ was instantly reminded of the smile he’d given him in the courtroom. Right before they’d kissed. A little tingle danced up his spine.

“I think you have a few more years before that starts happening.”

Russ groaned at the image of Ryan as a teenager. If Russ’s own adolescence was anything to go off, Ryan would transform from sweet kid into surly teen-beast almost overnight.

“Jesus, don’t remind me,” he said.

He walked with Jake to the door, stopping before he opened it. He didn’t necessarily want him to go, but it wasn’t like Jake didn’t have better things to do than hang around and watch him try to be a responsible adult. The fact that he’d already taken time out of his night to help Russ break the news was bad enough.

Russ reached up, tangling a hand through his hair. “Hey, about the being around more often thing… Don’t feel like you have to.”

Jake’s smile didn’t reach his eyes this time. “Sure, yeah.”

Shit. That wasn’t how he’d wanted it to come across.

“I mean, I’d love to have you around more. I just, uh… I know you have your own stuff going on.”

He felt like he was sixteen again, standing on someone’s porch, clumsily trying to ask for a second date. The comparison was pretty laughable, considering he and Jake were married now. Jesus.

“You seem to think I have more of a social life than I actually do,” Jake joked. “Work is the only stuff I have going on.”

Russ felt an odd twinge of relief at that. He knew Jake wasn’t big on partying. Neither of them had been, even back in college. But the idea that Jake probably went out on dates or at least out to bars to meet guys had crossed his mind.

“I do have some paperwork to finish up, though. I’ll be sure to drop by a few times before Ryan’s surgery, though, to see how you both are doing.”

“All right, man. I won’t keep you.”

He opened the door for Jake, and his heart started to thump loudly in his chest, not speeding, but just beating stronger than ever. His earlier analogy resurfaced in his mind, and all he could think about was that nervous energy that always surrounded the decision to go in for the goodnight kiss.

Christ, he was pathetic.

One taste—one totally platonic taste—and all of those long-buried feelings from college were cropping up again.

Jake started out the door, and Russ felt an overwhelming urge to stop him.

“I know I don’t say it enough, but thank you, Jake. You’re a lifesaver. I really don’t know what I’d do without you.”

It felt like a weightier confession that he intended, and the way Jake smiled at him made him question everything. Had he agreed to this marriage because it was the only way out? Or was there some other reason he kept clinging to Jake?

“I’m happy to help. You’ve always been like a brother to me.”

It should have been a huge compliment, but instead it was like a sudden punch to the gut. Russ practically staggered, one hand gripping the door frame. His jumbled emotions fell into a useless heap, and he wasn’t in any hurry to pick them back up.

“Me too,” he managed as Jake headed out onto the porch.

He leaned back against the door frame, watching Jake leave. He had no idea what he’d been hoping for there. Had he wanted the goodnight kiss? The butterflies swirling in his stomach as they agreed to make plans for the future? It was silly. He had so many other things to worry about; this budding attraction had to be last on his list.

But as he let the door fall softly closed, he couldn’t help but feel like he’d been given the equivalent of a quick peck on the cheek and a “let’s just be friends.”

And that stung a whole lot more than he wanted to admit.

R
uss didn’t sleep
the night before Ryan’s surgery.

He told himself it was just to make sure his son didn’t accidentally—or intentionally—sneak any food in the middle of the night, since he was supposed to go without until after the surgery. But Ryan was a good kid, and if he was told not to do something, he usually listened.

No, Russ was awake for one reason and one reason only: sheer panic.

Jake had tried to console him earlier in the day, even sending him tons of statistics about how very unlikely it was for anything to go wrong. But Russ just needed to tough this one out. This was his kid, and since Russ had never been put under before, he had no frame of reference. Nothing to tell Ryan to put him at ease.

That was what scared him the most.

Worse still, Ryan’s mood was obviously affected. When he woke his son in the morning and helped him get ready, he seemed even more withdrawn than usual. It went beyond introversion. Whatever he was feeling, he’d tamped it down.

Probably because his dad was a fucking basket case.

Russ resolved to get his shit together, going over everything Jake had sent him while Ryan finished getting washed up. On the car ride to the hospital he talked about all of the things they were going to do after the surgery. He’d planned a trip to Cape Canaveral later in the year, and that perked Ryan up a bit.

Until it didn’t.

“If they can’t fix my eye, am I going to be able to fly a plane?”

It had been Ryan’s dream to join the Air Force, just like his mom. Russ’s words caught in his throat as he glanced at his son. He knew the answer. The Air Force required near-perfect vision, and Russ couldn’t imagine them allowing a pilot who could only see out of one eye.

But he wasn’t stupid enough to say that.

“There won’t be any ‘if,’ bud. They’ll fix it. Dr. Patel is really good at what he does, and Jake and I will make sure he does everything right.”

Even then, Dr. Patel had made it clear it wasn’t a 100 percent chance. There could be lingering scar tissue. The eye could drop to a pressure that was too low to function. Dr. Patel had described about ten different “ifs” to Russ in private, and they all had him on edge.

It seemed his non-answer had Ryan on edge, too, because there was a weighty silence. He reached over and patted his son’s knee.

“Hey. It’s going to be okay, Ryan. We’ll get this over with, and then everything will be back to normal.”

Ryan just nodded, looking down at the floorboard. Russ didn’t like his son like this. He wanted to keep talking; keep trying to convince him. But Russ knew that was only really going to help him. It wasn’t going to do anything for Ryan.

So instead he turned up the radio a bit. Ryan really liked country—probably because Carrie had, too—and he flipped it to a country station on satellite. They didn’t say anything else to each other the entire ride to the hospital, and Russ tried his best not to freak out about it.

When they pulled up to the guest parking lot, he spotted Jake’s blue Prius. “Looks like Jake beat us here.”

Ryan looked up at that, seeming at least mildly interested. They made the walk up to the front doors together, and Jake was there waiting. He had a reassuring smile on his face that at least put Russ a little more at ease. He didn’t know where Jake got that power, but he was thankful for it.

“I took care of the paperwork already. They’ll just need to get you fitted for a bracelet and then they’ll take you back. The bed’s all ready.”

“A bracelet?” Ryan asked, making a face.

“Don’t worry. It won’t clash with your shoes,” Jake said with a grin.

He had no idea why he and Jake seemed to seesaw so much, with one of them sunk straight to the bottom and the other one buoyed up by some immovable force, but he was eternally gratefully for it.

“Thanks for taking care of all that. I really appreciate it.”

Jake smiled at him; a shy little smile that made Russ’s insides do a strange little tumble.

“Figured you’d like one less headache to deal with.”

His friend started inside, the automatic doors opening for him, but Russ suddenly remembered something.

“Shit, do you have your ring?”

He fished his out of his pocket and slipped it on his finger. When his gaze returned to Jake, he was getting the strangest look. Like Jake didn’t believe what he was really seeing.

“Yeah, I’ve got it.”

Jake’s tone was wary, and Russ hurried to explain.

“They won’t let you back with us if you’re just a friend. Best to stave off the worst of the questions, right?”

“Are you sure?”

He probably should have made a bigger deal out of it. But now that the paper was out, he assumed they were going to get called out either way. He was surprised his parents hadn’t given him an earful yet, honestly. And while he didn’t exactly relish the idea of being under that much public scrutiny, right now he had to focus on one thing at a time.

Today, that thing was Ryan’s surgery.

“Not saying we should take out an ad on closed-circuit TV, but yeah.”

Jake offered him a half-assed smile, then reached under his collar. A silver chain glinted in the sunlight, and when he pulled it all the way out, Russ saw the gold band hanging on it.

The fact that Jake kept his ring close made him feel… good. Better than he should feel, honestly. Just a moment of giddiness that seemed to justify the fact that he tended to keep his ring in his pocket whenever possible, too.

Jake pulled the ring off the chain and put it on his finger. Ryan was quiet throughout, and again Russ wondered what his son was thinking. It seemed he was always going to be wondering, and he knew it would only get worse in a few years when Ryan stopped giving him the benefit of the doubt.

But thankfully, with Jake here, he wasn’t as quick to worry about it. Irrational fears about his son hating him ceded into the background. He had to be strong today for Ryan’s sake. And Jake was the one who gave him that strength.

I
t took
no time at all for them to get Ryan situated in a bed. The nurse who saw to his operation prep was nice, if not all that engaging. She got the hard part out of the way—the IV line. Ryan had tears in his eyes at that, and he’d turned his head so Russ couldn’t see. But it was done now, and now Russ had to keep his cool while they hooked his son up to a bunch of different monitors.

No one asked them why Jake was there. Dr. Patel drifted in at one point, shook both their hands, but otherwise seemed wholly uninterested in their presence.

About an hour into it, and a half hour from Ryan’s surgery time, the anesthesiologist dropped in. He was a soft-spoken man with kind eyes, and thankfully he focused most of his attention on his patient.

“Hey, you must be Ryan. My name’s Dr. Weylan, and I’m your anesthesiologist. I’ll be the one in charge of making sure you sleep through the whole surgery.”

He moved to the side of Ryan’s bed, opposite where Russ and Jake waited. He gave them a smile, seeming completely unconcerned about the fact that it was two guys with him.

“Are you Ryan’s parents?”

Whether he’d noticed the gold bands or just seemed to sense it, Russ was glad. Even if he felt Jake stiffen beside him, hearing his friend suck in a breath. Russ just greeted the man with a smile.

“Yeah. I’m Russ, this is Jake.”

“Scott,” he said, reaching his hand over the bed to shake both of theirs in turn.

He returned his focus to Ryan then, whose attention had drifted to the TV. At least Russ knew he could count on his son not to try and explain the complicated situation that existed between him and Jake. It was much easier for everyone involved if the hospital staff thought they were just happily married.

Considering how much Russ had already needed to lean on his friend today, it might not be far from the truth.

“So I just came by to let you know what I’ll be doing during the surgery, and answer any questions you might have.”

“How are you going to keep me asleep?” Ryan asked.

“I have a special medicine I’ll give you through your IV. No new needles or anything, I’ll just put it in this tube right here,” he said, pointing to the tube attached to the IV needle, “and within a couple minutes you’ll get really sleepy. I’ll stay in the room with you and make sure you’re asleep the whole time, and then give you another medicine to wake you up.”

Ryan tugged his bottom lip between his teeth. “Will it hurt?”

He wasn’t surprised Ryan was asking so many questions about this part. It was the scariest element to the whole process in his mind, too. What if he wasn’t given enough medicine? What if he was given too much? They were questions Russ didn’t want to think about, and was afraid to even ask.

“It won’t hurt at all when I give you the medicine, nope. And you won’t feel what the surgeon is doing. Basically, I’ll give you the medicine, have you count backwards from ten, and then you’ll wake up after it’s all over.”

Ryan nodded, and the doctor looked up to Russ and Jake.

“Do you two have any questions?”

Not any Russ was willing to hear the answers to. He shook his head, but of course Jake actually had something of value to ask.

“What are you giving him to put him under? Propofol?”

The anesthesiologist nodded. “It seems to be the easiest for kids to handle. Less risk of nausea.”

“How many ccs?”

Russ tried to follow, but when Jake and the other doctor started talking in unitary terms, he was lost. Instead he searched out Ryan’s hand—the one that wasn’t hooked up to the IV—and gave it a little squeeze.

“You ready?” He mouthed.

Ryan just shrugged, but it wasn’t indifference Russ saw. It was fear.

When the anesthesiologist left, Ryan fidgeted a little in his bed. He rubbed at his arm, a sure tell that he wanted to say something. He’d been doing that since he was old enough to talk.

“What’s up, bud?”

His son looked up at him, and for a moment he saw Carrie’s bright green eyes. The faintest hint of moisture shone in Ryan’s, though, and it ripped through his heart like nothing else could. God, he wished he could just unhook him from all these machines and bust him out of this place.

“What if I don’t wake up?”

The question chilled him to the bone. It was one he’d thought about often; one that had kept him awake at night, and plagued his dreams when he did sleep. He didn’t know what to say, because he hadn’t been able to tell himself anything that would actually help.

He knew the rational answers. He’d told himself every one of them a million times. The odds of that happening were so small. It was more likely that the hospital would be swept away by a tsunami before that happened. But those answers hadn’t eased his fears at all, and he knew they wouldn’t ease Ryan’s.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jake reach into his pocket. He pulled out something small. “I was keeping this for myself, but I think you need it more than I do.”

Jake opened his hand, revealing a little wooden bear. God, he’d almost forgotten about that. He’d gone to the university bookstore and had bought it for Jake during their sophomore year, when he’d been afraid to tell his grandmother he was gay. It was just a silly little joke. A way to make him smile.

Russ had no idea he’d kept it all this time.

“What is it?” Ryan asked.

It looked well-worn, like it had been scraping around in his pocket for years.

Russ was beginning to think it had.

“Your dad gave this little guy to me when I had to do something scary. Said he would make sure nothing bad happened to me.”

Ryan rolled his eyes, the way kids did when they suspected they were being talked down to. “Yeah, right.”

“That’s exactly what I told him. It’s just wood, right? Not like it has magical powers. But I took it with me anyway, and… your dad was right. Nothing bad happened to me.”

Russ couldn’t help but smile. He wasn’t sure he’d go that far. Jake was still practically shaking when he came back. But his grandmother had taken the news all right.

Ryan, of course, looked skeptical.

“I held it in my hand the night you were born, too. And nothing bad happened then. I’ve had it with me for every scary thing I’ve ever had to face, and they’ve all turned out okay. So I want you to keep it with you. We’ll sneak it into the gurney with you.”

Russ knew they wouldn’t be able to do that. One of them would have to pull some sleight of hand and retrieve it before he went into the OR. But the intention was good, and it seemed enough to calm Ryan down. He watched his son’s chest rise and fall in a few deep breaths before he took the figurine from Jake.

“You think it’ll really work?”

“I do,” Jake said with a smile.

“So do I,” Russ added.

And then Ryan finally smiled, and the dark clouds hanging over Russ’s head—clouds that had been there for weeks—let up for a brief moment. Just long enough to let a bright ray of sun shine through. But he would cling to that and use it to get through the next few hours.

Even with Jake by his side, Russ knew he would need it.