Wayward Son by Shae Connor Read Free Book Online

the car to reach the bottom, hoping his legs would hold him up long enough to get to his car. He wanted Cory with a desperation bordering on pain.
    He rolled his eyes. “Get ahold of yourself,” he muttered, shaking his head once, hard, as if knocking loose the cobwebs. By the time the doors opened on the first floor, he was able to walk out and through the doorway to the parking lot without feeling like he was going to faint or puke.
    But he still wished someone had been there with him.

Chapter 4

     
    M IKEY BLEW out a frustrated breath, dropped his pencil, and picked up the soft rubber eraser again. He rubbed away the line that had gone astray, brushed off the dust, and picked up his pencil to try again.
    He’d been going through the same process for over an hour now, trying to get the basic lines in place for a drawing to turn in for class. It didn’t need to be anything detailed or fancy—not yet, anyway, considering it was designed to be the framework for his term project. Trouble was, he didn’t have inspiration for the project yet. He’d been working on an idea for a cartoon character, a sort of mash-up of his favorites: Tigger crossed with Marvin the Martian, with a splash of Tinker Bell’s glitteriffic snarkiness tossed in. But he couldn’t get the proportions right.
    He sighed and bent his head to try again. When his phone rang a few seconds later, though, he jumped at the chance to take a break. He grabbed for it and smiled at the COCO LAMÉ on the screen.
    “Hi, Cory,” he answered.
    “Hey there, honey!” Cory sounded even more upbeat than his usual chipper self. “I’ve been holding Jimmy off from calling you for a bit. I finally decided I’d do the honors so he didn’t dive right in to a cross-examination. We were wondering how your meeting with Mr. Day went.”
    Mikey leaned back in his chair and tilted his head toward the ceiling. “It was… fine, I guess. He asked questions, and he and Quinn took a lot of notes.”
    “Quinn?”
    “His intern. Law student. He’s doing some research or something.” Mikey didn’t know much about how things like that went. Legal dramas on television probably weren’t the most accurate representations.
    Cory murmured something away from the phone, then said, “Sweetie, I’m gonna put you on speaker so I don’t have to relay everything back to Mr. Impatient here.” A moment later Jimmy’s voice came from the phone.
    “Did he say whether he’d gotten a copy of the paperwork?”
    Mikey shook his head. “He hasn’t yet. He said the same thing you said about getting served, though. Except he wants me to call him first instead of you, of course.”
    “Of course,” Jimmy agreed. “But then call me after. I’m happy to be your unofficial guide through the legal system. It’s a fucking jungle in there, that’s for sure, but I come well stocked with machetes.”
    Mikey had a mental image of Jimmy dressed like Rambo, slashing his way through piles of legal proceedings, and his brain warred between hysterical laughter and burgeoning arousal. He pushed both aside as Cory started talking again.
    “So anyway, we decided—”
    “He decided,” Jimmy cut in.
    “Oh, whatever, you love me.” A loud smack of a kiss came through the phone. “We decided since Jimmy’s in town we’d do that little pool party-slash-cookout tonight. Just a few friends, not a big to-do or anything. We’re hoping you and Riley and Evan can make it.”
    God, that sounded great. “Sure,” Mikey said. “I mean, I don’t know about Riley and Evan, but I don’t remember them saying anything about being busy tonight. Riley’s gone downtown to meet Evan for lunch, but I can text them to ask.”
    “Great!” Cory sounded genuinely excited. “Don’t you worry about bringing a thing, unless Evan wants some of that piss he calls beer.”
    “Hey, don’t knock the Corona,” Jimmy protested. “It’s a classic.”
    “Classically boring,” Cory shot back. “As I was saying