Marisburg Connections by Emily Carrington

Author:Emily Carrington
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIN 010534-03423
Publisher: Changeling Press LLC
Published: 2022-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

Guilt (Marisburg Connections 3)

With Mike’s help, Aidan wrestles with his past. Can Mike’s love help him lose the shadow of guilt?

Chapter One

Aidan sat with his head in his hands at the end of his hotel bed. “Call Dad Mike,” Ash, their child, who was no longer a child, had said. Aidan had agreed that was wise. But he was ashamed. He’d let his anger and overprotective nature get in the way again. “Damn it,” he whispered. “Why do I have such a short fuse?”

That wasn’t quite accurate, and he refused to even give himself a pass by understating the problem. “Screw that. I’ve still got anger issues. Almost forty and I’m acting like I did when I was eighteen.”

He didn’t want to call Mike and share his latest idiocy. He’d thought himself past this. Hadn’t he been able to keep from taking after Rick the Dick Hanlon when that bastard had tried to intimidate Mike? Well, yeah, his mind whispered, but apparently you can’t handle when someone scares you.

He tried to argue with that voice. After all, it hadn’t been Aidan that Erik had laid hands on. The little liar had touched Ash. The fact that Ash had broken his hold should have given Aidan enough control. But it hadn’t. He’d shoved Erik, and Erik had fallen. Into some plants, by the sound, which probably meant he wasn’t hurt too badly. But this remained: Aidan had lost his temper.

It was like being eighteen all over again. When he was eighteen, he’d taken revenge on Erik by breaking his ex’s arm. He had told himself at the time that he wasn’t exacting a price for Erik calling him a liar on national TV and hiding their relationship. For Erik leaving him. But looking back on that time from almost-forty, Aidan admitted his motives hadn’t been completely pure. Sure, Erik and several other students had taken it upon themselves to harass and attack Kyle Morgan, Aidan’s fourteen-year-old protégé. Aidan hadn’t known Kyle all that well, but he’d felt protective of the younger student because Kyle had been abused. And because he and Kyle had shared the tendency to sneak out of bed and hide in the self-defense training room at the Golden Hills School for the Blind in California. Even more because Kyle had been afraid his father molesting him had turned him gay.

Aidan swallowed the pain that came when he thought of Kyle, now deceased. Not suicide, although his father had tried to make it look that way, but dead by his father’s hand.

And today, that old hurt couldn’t keep his heart prisoner. He had a much fresher, well, not sorrow but guilty deed to occupy his thoughts.

His cell phone rang.

Thinking it was Ash, that they’d been harassed by Erik again, and Aidan hadn’t been there to protect them, he answered the phone without bothering to listen to the synthesized voice announce who it was. “Ash?”

“Nope,” Mike answered, sounding surprised. “Isn’t Ash with you?”

“I… I let them go to the students’ luncheon without me.

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