I know the secrets that you keep... 3/9
By Marea67
About: William, Nora, Kevin, Scotty and a bunch of others.
Rate: G
Disclaimer: Written with love, not for money
Summary: When William Walker dies, his family gets confronted with a secret that he kept, which will have a huge impact on Kevin.
It is an AU, so the usual applies; Thing can/will be different. Don't like it? Don't read it.
*****
Somehow Scotty isn’t even surprised to see Kevin back so soon.
“I talked to my mother….” Kevin says.
“And?”
“She … corroborated your story…”
“I’m sorry.... it cannot have been easy for her.”
“For her? No. But not for me either. I’m trying to figure out what the hell is going on and what is expected of me. And all this… these revelations … are not making it easier on me.”
“Again.. I’m sorry. … You said on the phone that you wanted me to be there for the reading of the will. As you maybe can imagine I was not interested in going to your parents’ house…? Why was I supposed to be there in the first place?”
“He left you 10% of Ojai Foods.”
“That’s it?”
“Were you expecting something else?”
“Yes. The 40% of my restaurant that he owned. He swore to me that he’d leave them to me.”
“They now belong to my mother. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want her in my life or my restaurant.” Scotty replies shocked. “I don’t want her to insert herself in my life.…” He’s clearly horrified at the thought and it rubs Kevin the wrong way.
He loves his mother dearly and he knows that she struggles with the loss of his father.
“Well, perhaps you should have thought about that before you inserted yourself in her life by fucking her husband.” Kevin bites back sharply and perhaps a little louder than he had planned. Scotty seems to be taken aback by Kevin’s words.
Kevin feels slightly guilty. He knows how deeply hurt his mother is, but he cannot really dislike Scotty either. And now Scotty is clearly upset, which isn’t what Kevin had wanted either.
“I’m sorry.” Kevin apologizes with a sigh.
Scotty shakes his head. He’s not angry with Kevin. He turns his back to Kevin. He rubs his face and Kevin believes that he does it to brush away some tears. He turns back to Kevin.
“It’s alright. I’m fine. I guess I had that one coming.”
“You didn’t. Dad was just as responsible as you are.” Kevin tries to be reasonable.
“I never meant to hurt her. Your father and me…? That just happened. We never wanted to hurt anyone. Least of all your mother. Your father loved her very much.”
“Right.” Kevin laughs sarcastically. Somehow, hearing Scotty say those words, it sounds so ridiculous to his ears. “That was the reason why he was sleeping with you? Because he loved my mother soooooo much? If someone loves you that much, than you don’t really need someone to hate you, is it?”
“Your father did love your mother.” Scotty insists. “He loved her endlessly. He’s been upfront with me from the start. He made it clear to me from our first time together, that he would never leave her for me. He loved me, but he valued the life he had with her even more. She had given him everything he had wanted.
Through his marriage with her he got the respect he craved. She gave him the family he never had. He owed her more than he could ever repay her for.”
“And the best way he could think of to repay her was by having sex with a guy who’s as old as his youngest son?” Kevin points out the hole in Scotty’s statement. Scotty sighs.
“He was gay, Kevin. He had feelings, desires, that your mother couldn’t satisfy. I hardly need to explain to you that being with a woman is just not the same as being with a man.”
“It doesn’t make it right.. what he did to her.”
“She has known all along. We both knew where we stood. She never had anything to worry about. He would always go back to her. That is why William and I were very discreet. We both knew, that what we had, could end any moment...”
“And you couldn’t even bring up the dignity to not get involved with a married man?”
Scotty can hear the accusation in Kevin’s words. He shrugs.
“I did. For nearly a year. He was married. I wasn’t even sure if he was gay or straight. He was just a customer…. Always asking for the same. Coffee with a cupcake… But I had fallen in love with him…. Slowly… I couldn’t have stopped it if I tried.”
Kevin stares at his shoes. A thousand questions go through his mind, but one more present than any other.
“What changed? I mean, if you wanted to keep your distance, why… you and him? How?” He’s not sure he wants to know, and Scotty seems to hesitate as well.
“You really want to know?” Scotty asks. Kevin thinks over the answer.
“No. But I think I need to know. I can’t understand it. If you and mom are telling the truth, and I don’t doubt you do, then… I have no idea anymore of who my father was. I feel completely disconnected…” Kevin eventually says. Scotty nods slowly.
“I see…” He sits down and motions Kevin to do the same. Kevin sits down opposite of Scotty, waiting for Scotty to continue: “Your father would always drop in at the place where I worked. I was still a waiter at the time. It was a bit of a run-down place, but the coffee was good and cheap and we had quite a lot of customers dropping by.
I liked your father. He was always well-dressed, kind, polite, he seemed to appreciate my suggestions for the ‘cupcake of the day’ and he always left a good tip… It started with just a smile, a sentence here and there, a joke and it slowly turned into me knowing his last name and having coffee and a good cupcake ready for him when he came in.
I anticipated his coming and I quickly learned to read his moods. One day, he looked very upset and I gathered all my courage and asked him what was going on. The worst that could happen was for him to tell me to mind my own business. But instead, he seemed eager to talk.
He didn’t mention names, but he had just discovered that one of his clients, someone he trusted, was trying to con him out of his money…. He wasn’t so much upset about the money, but about the fact that a friend would do this to him… It wasn’t that busy, so I sat down with him in such a way that I could keep an eye on the others in the place too.
We talked about his friend, about how he had found out and then our conversation drifted to other topics and by the time that he would usually leave, he seemed more cheerful. He asked me my name. I told him and then he gave me his first name… And that was the start…”
Scotty gets up and turns to the coffee-machine to get hot water for his tea. He automatically takes a cup for Kevin too. Cinnamon. Kevin’s favorite. Strawberry cupcake from the display. Kevin loves strawberries. And Kevin can’t help but notice how easily Scotty seems to pick out Kevin’s wishes. He can imagine Scotty doing the same for William...
Scotty puts the drinks and the cupcakes on the table. He seems reluctant to pick up his story again, so Kevin waits.
“Are you sure you want to hear more?” Scotty eventually asks after his first sip of tea.
“No. I don’t want to hear more, but … I have to.” Kevin sighs. Scotty shrugs.
“We moved around each other for several months. It was all so slow and so careful. At first I thought that I was fooling myself. Like I said, I thought that your father was straight. He hid his feelings well, and I really thought it was all in my head… One afternoon however, it rained so badly, and it was dead-quiet in the restaurant.
I didn’t think William would show up, but he did. There was just him and me at the place, so he sat at the bar, so we could talk while I cleaned up, which was something I did ten times a day. But this time it was different. A thunderclap spooked me and I spilled the can with hot water all over my hand.
William jumped up. Held my hand under the cold running water and then took care of my hand. It wasn’t as bad as he feared, but he had been really scared for me. And… We just looked at each other and …” Scotty throws his hands in the air.
“What happened?” Kevin asks, not quite sure of what to read in Scotty’s gesture.
“We kissed.” Scotty doesn’t dare to look at Kevin, afraid of the disgust and disapproval he’ll see in those blue eyes. Kevin clears his throat. Too much info!
“Right.” Kevin manages to say, not sure where to look, but unable to look at Scotty and imagining his father kissing that beautiful mouth. Kevin blinks to chase the idea. “Go on.”
“We…. We were both freaked out about it… and I didn’t see William for about two or three weeks. I was afraid I’d never see him again and, then one afternoon he was back…. And when we had few seconds to ourselves… he asked me if I was interested in him… He told me that he had tried to forget our kiss, but that he couldn’t….”
Scotty seems lost in his memory. His eyes are half-closed and he smiles dreamily. He has forgotten Kevin’s existence.
“He told me that he wanted me… And we … we agreed to meet at my place… I gave him my address… All the way home I kept thinking of all the bad things that could happen.
He could have been a psychopath. He could be an abusive person. He could get me into a lot of trouble… And, yet, when he wasn’t there when I got to my place, I felt disappointed that he hadn’t shown up. I went inside, put the wine that I had bought away. And then there was this knock on the door.
William stood there, looking like some 15-year old, about to be kissed for the first time, and he told me that he had taken the elevator 6 times, at each time he changed his mind, feeling one side that he shouldn’t do this, but on the other hand…” Scotty smiles lovingly and tears fill his eyes.
Kevin can’t imagine his father being so vulnerable, but the look on Scotty’s face tells him that Scotty is reliving it all. Scotty closes his eyes. He tries to banish the feeling of loneliness and pain that wells up, but he can’t stop it. He has never spoken to anyone about his relationship with William. No one knew. But now it’s all coming back to him.
William’s hesitant kiss had left Scotty’s head spinning. From every touch he could tell that William was rather inexperienced or hadn’t done this in a long time. Each touch, each caress, every second of exploration had this build-in carefulness as if he feared that any single one of those gestures would send Scotty in a fit of rage.
He had sought eye-contact, his eyes imploring Scotty to tell him that it was all alright. Scotty had kissed him again. By the third or fourth kiss, William had finally surrendered, giving in to his passion, his lust and his desire with a hunger that Scotty found both intimidating and empowering.
Intimidating because William was so needy, there was so much longing for tenderness and, yet, at the same time, it had been empowering because he, Scotty Wandell, could awake all these feelings in this beautiful man… He would never who know who had swept who of his feet, but the bed had been close, so ending up there was all that had really mattered to him.
When Scotty finally looks up at Kevin again, his eyes are filled with tears.
“I you don’t believe me. But I loved him. With all my heart.”
“I believe you loved a William. I just can’t see the connection between your William and the William who was my dad.” Kevin answers.
*****
“Kevin, I really would like to know who this S. Wandell is and why he got 10% of our company. I know that you’re investigating, but I’d like to know how far you are with that.” Kevin sighs after listening to the message that Tommy had left. He should have known that Tommy would be the first to start raising questions.
“Kevin, I heard that Tommy already called you. We need information. Get back to us?” Sarah’s question sounds like an order and Kevin wonders what he should tell them. The message from Kitty isn’t helping.
“Went to see Café 429. Cute. Why and how was dad involved?”
Kevin listens to his other messages until his youngest brother Justin’s voice gets added to that of his other siblings.
“What the hell is going on, Kevin? You can barely be reached. Mom walks around looking like death warmed over. The division of the shares makes no sense. And who’s S. Wandell?”
He picks up his phone.
“Mom? The others need information. We need to talk to them. Tell them the truth…”
“I can’t.” Nora gasps.
“Mom, if you don’t, I will.” Kevin tells her coldly.
“Kevin! No! Please, we can’t. It would break their hearts to find out the truth!”
“I’m sick of this, mom. I’m not going to lie to my brothers and sisters. What they do with the information is their business, but I’m not going to lie about it. Dad was gay. Deal with it. And let them deal with it.” Kevin switches off the phone, before his mother will cry so much that he will change his mind.
*****
END OF CHAPTER THREE
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