Whatever Holt had done to him, Noah had tried to rationalize it, had found a way to convince himself that his father had loved him despite every hurt and injury he caused, had told himself it was a compulsion he couldn’t control. But the truth he could no longer avoid was that Holt had only loved Gary and had thought so little of Noah that he’d not only abused him and shared him with others but had intended to then hand him over to Gary so he could have his turn at doing the same. Noah was a commodity to them both.
And now, there was this new thing… A family. A mother who had somehow let him get snatched away and sold to a monster. A mother who had a new life and new kids in a new country. Noah knew nothing about who he really was. Had never imagined he might be Mexican. Had never even questioned where his mother might be. Had he asked as a child? Had Holt made up some excuse that Noah had just swallowed as easily as he’d swallowed everything else Holt told him? Were the answers to his questions swallowed up in the abyss that had also taken his bad memories, too?
He gazed at his reflection in the side view mirror. He looked nothing like Holt. His father had been a predator hiding behind the visage of a weak, mild-mannered teacher. Not his father. Shit. Holt had thinning blond hair and sharp green eyes hidden behind thick black-rimmed glasses. Noah had always just thought he looked like every other pasty white kid at his school and had maybe pondered as a child whether he looked like his mother. But Mexican? He hadn’t even taken Spanish as an elective. He wasn’t racist enough to assume every person of Mexican descent had dark hair and dark eyes, but that was all he ever saw on television. No fair skinned, freckle-faced boys like him.
He tried to shake the thoughts from his head. None of this even mattered. They had bigger problems than unraveling Noah’s complicated family history. There were men out there still hurting little boys. They needed to be stopped. Noah needed to stop them.
But no matter how he tried, his thoughts kept wandering right back to his new reality. For better or for worse, Noah had to spend the rest of his life knowing he had a mother somewhere, siblings somewhere, whether they wanted him or not. Adam had said he’d kept the information to himself in case Noah had been given up for adoption and had only told him because he wasn’t.
But there was no guarantee his mother wanted him back. She’d clearly moved on. Did Noah want to open up that can of worms? Did she want Noah ruining her rebuilt life? What if her new family didn’t even know he’d ever existed? What if she was horrible? What if she was a nightmare? What if she found out the truth of what he endured and thought he was tainted by it forever?
Then there was Adam. He had no doubt Adam could fake being charming. He’d seen it. He’d watched him easily slip the mask on without skipping a beat and had seen it come off just as quickly. But how would Adam take having to share Noah with others? Did Noah even want to be shared with others? He liked the cozy little bubble of their truly fucked up relationship.
“Hey.”
Noah startled, looking over at Adam. “Hey?”
Adam tilted his head, narrowing his gaze to really examine Noah. “You good?”
He wanted to say yeah. To just nod and smile and fake it like Adam, but he wasn’t like Adam. He was just Noah. “No. No, I’m not good. I’m so far from good I couldn’t locate it on a map.”
Noah watched Adam process this information, saw the way he appeared to be accessing some inner network, like he was trying to know what a person with emotions might say. Then he reached over and took Noah’s hand. “What can I do?”
Tears sprung to Noah’s eyes. “Just be here, I guess. Respect whatever choice I make regarding my mother. I don’t know how to deal with any of this. I didn’t ask for it and I don’t want it. You know? I wish I didn’t know Holt wasn’t my father. I wish I didn’t know that he wanted to give me to Gary like he was handing over property. I wish I didn’t know that I have a mom and she moved on from losing me. If you had just asked me if I wanted to know all this before you stole my DNA, I might have said no.”
Adam’s gaze flicked back to the road and then to Noah, squeezing his hand. “I’m not trying to take the blame off me. I should have asked you. That’s all on me. But had I given you the option of knowing who you really are, do you really think you would have said no?”
Noah pondered the question but didn’t get a chance to answer as Adam continued.
“I mean, what are we even doing here? We’re heading to a storage unit to look for information on the men who raped you because you can’t live with yourself knowing they might still be out there doing the same thing to other children. Even if what you're doing is ripping you to shreds, even if sometimes the memories are so violent they make you puke and shake and break your heart, you don’t hide from the hard things. That’s not who you are.”
Tears slipped down his cheeks, but he quickly wiped them away. “I think you overestimate me.”
“I think you underestimate you. You impressed a room full of killers. Hell, you impressed my dad. Do you know how hard that is? He likes you. Like, really likes you. The twins think you’re great and they don’t like anybody. I know that we’re not the family anybody would want, but we’re your family if you want us. But that doesn’t mean you can’t also learn about your own family, too. If you want. Or when you want. There’s no time limit.”
“And you’d be okay with that? Me having a family? A mother, siblings…?”
Adam was quiet for a long while. “I know I’m supposed to say yes. A normal person would say they just wanted you to be happy, which I do. But a selfish part of me wants to keep you all to myself. I have a family—people who always have my back—but I’m alone in all the ways that matter. It’s just how my brain works. At least, it was, until you. You are the family I’ll fight to keep. Nobody else. If you want to meet your real family, I definitely won’t stop you and I’ll do everything in my power to be whoever you need me to be around them. But the jealous part of me will always want you to pick me…just me, and that’s probably never going to change.”