Marcus managed to drive to the end of the dirt road, weaving through the flanking trees that put him out of sight of the hardware store. Then he had to stop. He gripped the steering wheel, fighting the urge to pound on it. He wanted to destroy something inside the car, rip it apart to make it match the way he felt inside.

God, he'd wanted to just eat him alive. Eat him alive and then force him into the car, drive away from the deceptively picturesque rural scene that was tinted with the backlight of hell, because it was a prison for Thomas.

"Jesus Christ. And here comes the warden," he muttered under his breath.

Thomas' mother stopped her late model SUV behind his rental, got out and moved with purpose toward his window, a steely glint in her blue eyes. Marcus toyed with the grimly amusing idea of rolling the car forward just a few feet to see if Elaine Wilder would chase him. Instead, he pushed the window control, met her stare for stare as she squared off with him and crossed her arms.

Her face was hard and strained, unattractive in this light, showing all that had happened to her over the past year. He wasn't feeling particularly sympathetic right now though, even as he acknowledged the wear and tear.

"You can't leave well enough alone, can you?" she said. "He didn't come back into the store. Just walks away from us. Across the field, as if he'd rather be anywhere else."

"Imagine that."

Her lips tightened. "This is his home. Where he belongs. You don't know him the way you think you do. He needs roots, a home. He doesn't belong in a big city like New York."

"That's right. There are no families in New York. We're all just a bunch of wandering nomads addicted to Starbuck's."

"Don't get fresh," she snapped. "I'm not saying people can't be happy in that life.

But he can't live that way. If you care for him at all, you know it. Someone like you is not going to be happy with my son forever."

"Please tell me this is not the crap about gay men being unable to commit."

"Your unnatural sin, and the fact you've dragged my son into it, isn't the point.

You're far more sophisticated than he is. Older."

"Not by much."

"You and I both know there's a big difference between a man's mind at twenty-seven and a man's mind at forty. And you're the type of person who runs in circles most of us around here only see on TV."

"Are you saying he's not good enough for me?" He delivered it with sarcasm, knowing being a wiseass was not going to help the situation, but he wasn't in a peacemaking mood. Not even close.

"No. I'd never say that." She lifted her chin, stared him down. "I'm saying that's not what will make him happy."

Marcus had to swallow the urge to swing open the door and knock her off her sturdy and hideously ugly garden clogs, but she continued, her voice cold. "My son is special, a pure soul. But I can see your soul, Marcus Stanton. You're the kind of man who won't look past your own selfish interests to see what he really wants and needs."

"Well to borrow one of your quaint country sayings, isn't that the pot calling the kettle black?" he snapped. "Have you looked at him lately?" At her blank look, his control broke. Marcus unbuckled the seat belt and came out of the car, abruptly enough she started back. He slammed the door behind him, making the vehicle rock from the impact.

"He's dropped thirty pounds since I last saw him. He's got pits under his eyes, so he's not sleeping, and what the fuck is this nervous tic he's got going?" He took his hand, rested the heel of it on his hipbone and pressed his thumb into his abdomen above the navel area, below the rib cage. "He did this four times while I was talking to him. His stomach is bothering him."

"You don't realize what this family has been through, what - "

"We all go through shit," Marcus said bluntly. "None of it gives any of us the right to crush the dreams of the people we love."

"He's lost his father. His brother is crippled. He has a lot of responsibility - "

"All of which you've dropped on him and made him turn his back on what he was meant to be. An artist."

"His art celebrates a lifestyle damned in the eyes of God. If he has to give that up, it's the sacrifice he must make to save his soul. You dragged him into that lifestyle."

"Oh, for Christ's sake. Nothing is going to make your boy straight, Elaine. I didn't drag him into anything. But you're absolutely right. This is a battle for his soul, and while you may think I'm Lucifer, you sure as hell aren't God. This isn't about you or me. It's about the gift that defines his soul more than you or I will ever hope to do. If he doesn't have that for himself, neither of us will have anything." She opened her mouth to retort and he took another step forward, shamelessly using his height to intimidate her. To her credit, she planted her feet this time and clenched her fists, but he pressed on.

"And while we're on the whole God thing, would you like to know what an ignored ulcer is? It's a suicide."

Being a Catholic, she snapped to attention, as he expected her to. "What are you - "

"When a person who is torn between who he is and who everyone wants him to be gets an ulcer, and then ignores it, it's because some part of him hopes for the day it explodes into something that allows him to escape the frigging Prometheus' rock he's chained on."

"You're talking nonsense. He just needs to get his mind straight here, marry Daralyn..."

"What?" Marcus' eyes narrowed. Apparently his expression became cold enough to make her hesitate. "What the hell are you talking about?" The profanity snapped her spine straight. "Daralyn. He's been seeing a girl while he's down here. They've talked about being engaged."

"Really?" He lifted a brow. "Poor girl, if you actually screw up Thomas' head enough to get him to go along with that."

"Before he came to New York, he never showed any inclinations - "

"Oh, bullshit," he snarled.

Her hand flashed out, slapped his face. The sting and the shock of it reverberated between the two of him. During a long, frozen moment, something shuddered up from his gut, a primal, violent urge he hadn't unleashed in a long time. Apparently Elaine recognized it, because her voice went up an octave, becoming shrill.

"That's the last time you'll curse at me," she said.

"That's the last time you'll ever raise a hand to me, unless you want to be slapped right back. And I hit harder."

He didn't bother to modulate the menace in his tone, even took some pleasure in the paling of her expression. As if suddenly realizing how isolated she was on this part of the road with him, Thomas' mother took another step back, her eyes widening.

"Don't believe everything Rory tells you about fags," Marcus said, low. "I can assure you that most of us are not pansies. You lie to yourself all you want, but you won't lie to me. The mother is almost always the first to know. You noticed it when he was young, maybe even three or four years old. You probably weren't experienced or worldly enough to put your finger on it, but you knew your son was different somehow. Something about his makeup that set him apart from Rory or Celeste.

"It isn't always the stereotypical things," he continued, "but very often it is. You saw it, you knew it as he got older and particularly as the world changed, enough that it touched even your closely sheltered life.

"Thomas is a gifted erotic artist who focuses with absolutely unparalleled passion on the male form. He's got more talent than anyone I've ever seen, with one exception, and I think he'll match that man in time. A man who, by the way, pulls in well over a million a year now from his art."

"Money is Satan's tool."

He nodded. "It's God's tool too. Otherwise, I expect churches wouldn't have collection plates. It can keep this place going as well." Shaking her head, she backed away, this time he suspected from the threat of his words instead of his fists. Her jaw tightened, visible evidence of the wall she was between him and Thomas. Seeing the tears she was struggling not to shed in front of him, he knew she recognized everything he'd said, and didn't want to hear it. He shouldn't have taken it this far. He'd stepped hip deep into the well of blind, impotent fury goaded by her bigotry and his roused feelings about Thomas' situation.

Thomas would kill him for locking horns with his mother. But damn it, she'd tracked him down, and her timing was lousy. He was beyond rage, seeing the lost weight, the hopeless resignation in Thomas' eyes, the fucking cut on his hand from handling a fucking wood chipper, for God's sake.

Thomas lived in his right brain, where creation took place. He mislaid keys and credit cards regularly. He'd leave his car running on the street outside his pathetically small warehouse lease to go back in and get something. While he was there, he'd get an idea for a painting and start sketching it out, completely forgetting about the car or where he'd been going until Marcus stopped in and found the car had run out of gas.

And then he'd just shrug, smile that beautiful smile, his lashes sweeping down as he kept at what he was doing.

Marcus had concluded that Thomas' guardian angel had to be the one who guarded Eden with a hundred flashing swords, because while living in New York City, he'd never even had his wallet picked. His neighbors and total strangers actually took turns finding his keys, cards or other mislaid belongings and returning them.

Had the episode with the wood chipper been the same thing he'd just pointed out to Elaine? A subliminal suicide wish for his hands, so the loss of his art was no longer a choice which could eat at his soul? It made Marcus even more furious.

"Just go away and don't come back," she said, her voice breaking over the syllables.

"That's up to your son to decide. If he needs me, I'm here for him. It's between the two of us, not you."

"You're just manipulating him for your own purposes."

"Manipulating? That's a pretty big word for around here. You must be filling up your lonely evenings with extra courses at the community college." Okay, that was petty and downright cruel. Thomas was going to kill him. It was past time to get out of here.

"You think you have us all figured out, don't you?" Elaine squared her shoulders, not even swiping at the tears that had fought past her restraint and spilled onto her cheeks. "Narrow-minded, ignorant backwoods country people who pound their Bibles.

Well, I've raised children long enough to recognize one with a chip on his shoulder I didn't put there. You think twice before you use this family as the whipping post for your past, and sacrifice my son on the altar of your demons." Marcus stopped, his hand on the car door. He increased his grip, holding himself where he was instead of lashing out at her as he wished to do.

"Why is it so fucking difficult for you to love him as he is?"

"I do love my son. How dare you - "

"No, you don't." He cut across her. "You love what you want him to be, something you want so much you've convinced yourself it is him. He senses it, knows it, and so he'll spend his entire life here, trying to be everything he thinks you want him to be and nothing that he is."

"Aren't you doing the same thing?" she shot back. "Don't you love him only for what you want him to be?"

He inclined his head, flashed his teeth. "I want him to have it all, everything his talent deserves, every dream he's ever had. I want to see it happen for him." All I ever wanted was...him.

To hell with it. He shouldn't be doing and saying things she had no way of comprehending, things that would just feed her revulsion and fear of who and what he was, but he was weary of anger. He stared down at his own reflection in the window, spoke to it instead of her.

"When he was living with me, there was one night... I couldn't sleep. I got some wine, came back and leaned against the bedroom door. There he was, asleep, the moonlight on every inch of him." Every perfect naked inch.

When he turned his head, from the color in her face, he knew he'd made that clear enough, but he had no intention of stopping now.

"Those incredibly talented fingers were on my pillow. He did that whenever I got up at night, to know when I came back. I looked at him and I couldn't speak, couldn't swallow. Couldn't even move."

He made a fist, pressed it against his chest. "I wanted everything for him. I wanted to see him achieve every dream, embrace every desire. I wanted to protect him from anyone who would cause him harm or a moment's pain, tear them apart with my bare hands. Never let him out of my sight, even as I wanted him to stretch out his wings as far as they could go and soar. And at the bottom, top and middle of it all, I just wanted to stand there, just that way forever. Not disturb him. Just look at him and love him. Do nothing but simply love him for everything he is, a creation too perfect to be anything but God's gift to the rest of us."

He straightened. "You may recognize my 'chip', but you don't know what that chip made me. Don't you ever assume you fucking know who I am." Getting into the car, he slammed the door and left her standing on the side of the road. Her face was in her hands, her shoulders shaking. His gut was in a hard aching ball. No wonder Thomas was probably getting an ulcer. But even as he thought it, he couldn't ignore the way it felt, leaving her like that. He was a bastard. A selfish bastard.

Just as she said. Just as Thomas had said.

You don't know him the way you think you do...

"Want to bet?" he muttered grimly. You have no idea.