An Inner Darkness Book 5 Bay City paranormal

www.samhainpublishing.com 11
    Ally Blue
hard she staggered backward a couple of steps. “Bye, Mom,” he said, small arms squeezing her tight.
“Bye, baby.” She leaned down and kissed the top of Sean’s head. “I love you.”
“Love you too.” He tilted his head up to give her a questioning look. “Where’s Lee?”
“Waiting in the car. I’ll tell him goodbye for you.”
“’Kay. Thanks.” Grinning, Sean let go of Janine, waved at Sam and Adrian and plunged back into whatever game he and his friends were playing. Janine turned toward the swing where Adrian and Sam sat watching her in silence.
Her shoulders were tight, the warm smile she’d worn for Sean nowhere to be seen.
“Adrian? Come give me a hug?”
    For a moment, Adrian just stared at her with such contempt Sam almost felt sorry for her. Then he shrugged, pushed to his feet, walked over to his mother and gave her a perfunctory hug.
    Janine put her arms around her son and kissed his hair. “I love you, honey.” If Adrian noticed the slight quaver in her voice, he gave no sign of it. “Me too. Bye.” Adrian drew out of Janine’s embrace, went to the door and disappeared inside. Sam sat still and silent in the swing, trying to be invisible. Dealing with Adrian was hard, but they were making progress. Dealing with Janine was a fucking nightmare, and that hadn’t changed one bit.
    Unfortunately, she had no apparent intention of leaving without one of her usual cutting speeches. She crossed her arms and pinned Sam with the cold, haughty glare that always made him want to punch her in the face. “What are you doing hiding out here?

    Pouting because Bo’s not paying attention to you right now?” Sam regarded Janine with as much calm as he could muster. “Someone needed to watch the kids.”
    “Oh, are you already bored with fucking my husband? Moving on to the next perversion?”
12
www.samhainpublishing.com
An Inner Darkness
    Sam shut his eyes and drew a deep, slow breath. She’s trying to goad you into losing your temper. She’s looking for an excuse to keep the boys away from you and Bo. Don’t let her.
    Opening his eyes, Sam pinned her with an ice-cold look. “First of all, he’s not your husband anymore. He and I are together now, and it’s about time you accepted that.” She flinched, and he felt a surge of dark satisfaction. “Second of all, you know damn well I’d never even think of a child that way.” He rose to his feet, hands tucked into the back pockets of his jeans to keep them from balling into white-knuckled fists. “Lastly, what Bo and I have together is good, and above all it’s normal. I don’t ever want to hear you call our relationship ‘perverted’ again.”
    She sneered, eyes glittering with a malevolent light. “Or what? You’ll give me a nice set of scars to match Bo’s?”
    That one hit hard. Even though Sam knew he wasn’t to blame for either of the times the otherdimensional creatures wounded Bo, he still felt a vague sort of guilt over it. He wasn’t entirely sure why, though he suspected his psychic connection to the portals and the things on the other side had something to do with it.
    Not that Janine knew any of that. Nor would she ever, if Sam had anything to say about it. She just liked to blame Sam for everything bad that had happened in the past year. He understood that, in a way. His struggle for perspective when it came to Janine was an ongoing one.
    Sam drew himself up as straight as he could. “Believe it or not, Janine, I don’t want to fight with you. I’d much rather we at least tried to get along with each other. If you want an argument, go pick one with Lee. I’m done.” He didn’t stop to see the murderous expression he knew would be on Janine’s face.
    Pivoting on his heel, he stalked down the steps into the yard and stood watching the boys play.
After a few seconds, he heard the back door open and close. When he turned to look, Janine was gone.
www.samhainpublishing.com 13

Chapter Two
    Bo came outside ten minutes after Janine left. He leaned against Sam’s shoulder.
“Sam, I’m an idiot.”
“Only sometimes.”
“Smartass.”
Sam slipped his arm around Bo’s waist. “Why are you an idiot?”
    “For letting Sean talk me into having this damn party.” With a deep sigh, Bo rubbed a hand across his forehead. “I knew better. I knew it would end badly. I just couldn’t tell him no.”

    “Well, at least you and Janine didn’t start yelling at each other