by A. J. Thomas
That didn’t mean Doug had lied to him, Christopher told himself. It was more likely that Brittney was just moving in to catch some of the excitement and publicity. Even so, Doug might still care enough about her to jump at the chance to get back together.
He slumped back on the bed and draped his arm over his eyes. He couldn’t blame Doug if he had done just that. Being straight—hell, even being able to pass for straight—would make Doug’s life easier. For years, Doug had managed to fool almost everybody in Elkin. Either way, it shouldn’t hurt this much to walk away from him.
It felt like someone was carving his heart out of his chest with a piece of broken glass.
It was his own damn fault. He got attached way too easily. It was just that Doug had the same dark hair he’d spent years drooling over, the same tan skin he’d spent years wanting to touch. How the hell had he not noticed how similar the two men in his life were? He kept telling himself it was just the dark hair and tanned skin. But if that was all there was to this fucked-up infatuation, then he could just go for a run and get over it.
He threw himself back on the bed, still in the same clothes he had worn for two days, and fell asleep. He woke up, managed to use the bathroom and make coffee, then went back to sleep again. The next day, housekeeping woke him up. He got more packets of filter-wrapped coffee grounds for the coffeepot, made more coffee, and tried to go back to sleep again. His stomach wouldn’t let him this time. He got five Snickers bars from the vending machine down the hall and went back to his room. An hour later, when another knock came, Christopher wanted to ignore it. The room was clean and paid for, so they couldn’t very well kick him out. When the knock came a second time, then grew into a loud hammering, Christopher tried to bury his head under a pillow.
Five minutes later, someone hammered on the door again. “Fine! I’m coming,” Christopher said aloud. The raspiness of his own voice startled him. He hadn’t spoken since he left Doug’s hospital room, and he’d had nothing but coffee since. He squirmed out from under the pillows and went into the bathroom to get some water.
He didn’t look into the mirror. He never did, if he could help it. The last thing he wanted was to see his own eyes and get another reminder that he and Peter were so damn alike. Doug’s fiancée might have been a raving bitch, but she was right about him. This was all his fault. If he had ever been able to find the courage to deal with his brother—if he had ever been able to stop running away—Peter would have been dead long before he ever began to groom children in this tiny corner of Montana. Doug wouldn’t be sitting in the hospital right now. Micah Donovan wouldn’t be in the morgue. After twenty years, he was still running away, just like Peter told him to. After getting another drink of water, he ran his fingers through his hair and went to answer the door.
The pounding had stopped. He opened the door and for a moment, dark hair and tanned skin tricked him. He gasped, almost reached out, and then stopped himself.
Ray Delgado was leaning against the wall in the empty corridor, tapping the screen on his phone. “Hayes, you need to turn your damn phone on,” he said bluntly. When Ray looked up from his phone and saw Christopher’s expression, he froze. “You look horrible,” Ray whispered. Sympathy and pain mixed in Ray’s eyes, but he smiled.
“What are you doing here?” Christopher asked, surprised at how genuinely happy he was to see his partner.
“Looking for you.” Ray tucked his phone into a pocket. “You look like hell.”
“I bet you say that to your coeds too,” said Christopher.
“Nah.” Ray smirked. “I’m incredibly charming with women.” Christopher glared at him. “No, no, I didn’t mean that the way you’re thinking. I don’t have enough of a track record with men to know what the hell I am with them.”
Christopher didn’t step out of the way, but Ray shoved his way inside anyway. “Come on, you need a run and a shower. You can tell me about your brother while we run.”
“I don’t feel like running.”
Ray gaped at him, obviously getting worried now. “Beer, then. Although, honestly, a shower and shave wouldn’t hurt. In a week and a half, you’ve managed to lose a brother I never knew you had, get involved in a federal investigation, and find a special guy. I want details.”
“There is no special guy,” Christopher lied.
“No fucking with me, Hayes. I must have seen that look on your face five, maybe six times. Not often, but enough to know what it means. Get your ass in the shower or I will put you in there, and I will probably molest you in the process!”
Christopher wanted to crawl back into bed, but he knew that Ray wasn’t going to leave him alone to be miserable in private. He showered but didn’t bother shaving, then slunk out of the bathroom in the same clothes he’d worn to the hospital. Ray was sitting on the bed, watching television.
“Clean clothes!” Ray shouted, when he saw him.
“I forgot to grab them.”
Ray rolled his eyes and pointed at the TV. “That him?” he asked, as a still photo of Doug, decked out in climbing gear and sporting a glare that promised there’d be hell to pay if anyone pissed him off, was posted on the television.
Christopher shut his eyes. He didn’t want to see the smug look he knew would be on Ray’s face.
“He’s a good-looking guy.”
Christopher groaned. “It’s a coincidence, all right? I like guys with dark hair,” Christopher insisted. “I like guys who are tanned and dark, I always have. It’s a fucking coincidence.”
“A coincidence? That you turned me down and then went out a week later and picked up my doppelganger? Yeah, right.”
“The fact that you both have black hair and brown skin does not make him your doppelganger. His face looks nothing like yours. And he’s at least twenty pounds heavier than you.”
“So you found a bad imitation. That’s just sad, man.”
“Delgado, I swear, I will kick your ass if you don’t let it go.”
“Like you could.” His partner grinned.
Christopher stalked toward the bed, grabbed his partner’s jacket in his left hand, and hauled him off of the bed. “Fine! Fine! You’ve got a thing for brunets, got it.”
“Asshole,” said Christopher, dropping him.
Delgado picked up the remote again and pointed it back at the TV. “Yeah, I see what you mean now. I’m way sexier.”
“Like hell, Delgado. He’s….” Christopher tried to look innocent. “He’s….”
“I don’t know.” Delgado turned his head sideways. “He’s awfully butch, isn’t he? You got to admit I’m prettier.”
“He is awfully butch,” Christopher agreed. “And he’s actually a nice guy. I don’t have to guess at how he’s going to stab me in the back every time he gets bored.”
“Ouch. I’m not that bad, am I?”
“Yes. And he’s….” Christopher could only smile.
“You’ve got it bad, Hayes. Go get dressed, dipshit.”
Christopher shucked off his clothes and pulled on clean slacks and a T-shirt, moving as fast as his shoulder would allow. “It’s your fucking fault, you know. It would have been the last thing on my mind, considering what I was coming up here for, but you just had to go bi on me. What the hell were you thinking?”
“You don’t want me to answer that,” said Ray, much too fast.
“If the word ‘threesome’ comes out of your mouth, I swear I’m going to hit you again.”
Ray shook his head and grinned, just as he always did when he saw a new girl he was determined to pick up. “I was thinking,” he said in a low voice, “that I was tired of dating you but having to find somebody else for sex.”
“We’re not dating, Delgado. We’re partners. Partners don’t date.”
“This might surprise you, Hayes, but I’ve never been able to stand hanging out with anybody from work after hours. The last four years have been weird.” Ray turned off the TV and looked at him seriously. “They’ve been great, but really fu
cking weird. I kept telling myself this is what friends do, what partners do. Since you got hurt, I realized I think of you as more than a friend. I began to realize that playing around didn’t feel right anymore.”
Christopher relaxed into a slouch once he got his pants buttoned. He pulled open the bathroom door and patted Ray on the shoulder. “You’ve come to terms with being a bastard. Good for you. I’ve heard acceptance is the first step toward recovery.”
“Ha-ha. You want know why I do it? What I realized?”
“I’m not so sure I do.”
“The two times I’ve stuck with the same person, you’ve done the same thing. You’ve asked me if things are getting serious, and then you started bailing out on me after work.”
“I figured you might want private time to actually get to know the girls. Or guys.”
“But I didn’t. I didn’t want that. The sex didn’t matter, the girls didn’t matter. The only thing that did matter was”—Ray shrugged and tried to smile—“being with you. I stuck to hooking up with girls because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t get to hang out with you after work the next day. When I saw you bleeding on that fucking sidewalk, I realized I’ve been in love with you for a long time. I realized things would be perfect if I could just switch teams. I didn’t have a clue about what sex with a guy would involve, though, and I didn’t want to fuck things up with you by asking you to fool around with me. I didn’t want you to think I was just curious, or that I just wanted to experiment and I was too embarrassed to pick up a guy. I was terrified that if I managed to get you into bed with me, then I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. I actually had a nightmare about you getting upset, thinking I was just teasing you, and then never seeing you again.”
Christopher stared at him, trying to decipher if he was serious, or if he was just being Ray Delgado. “So you used… what was his name… Ian?” Ray shrugged. “You used Ian to find out if you could get it up with a guy?”
“That makes it sound a bit harsh….”
Christopher narrowed his eyes.
“And it was. It was a shitty thing to do—to you and to him. Since then, the few times I’ve managed to sleep, I’ve had nightmares about seeing you shot again, this time as my lover. I don’t think I could stand it. Seeing you get hurt was already a nightmare, just because I was in love with you. If we were lovers and you died because I couldn’t keep up… that would be the end for me.”
Christopher took in the look of misery and exhaustion his partner hid so well. “You couldn’t have stopped the bullet, Ray. You weren’t too late. You took the suspect down before I hit the concrete.”
“I know that up here,” he said, tapping his temple hard. “If you were just some guy from work, I would remember it while I’m asleep too. But you’re not.”
“You know that’s precisely why partners don’t date? Fucking hell, I thought they made you sit through this training the last time they tried to pair you up with a female officer.”
“I know! I sure as hell didn’t mean for it to happen!”
“I’m sorry, Ray. I don’t feel the same way. If things had been different….” Christopher ran his fingers through his wet hair. “We’re partners. We’re friends. That’s all.”
“What if I quit?” Ray offered, suddenly looking hopeful.
Christopher leaned back, stunned. Homicide had been Ray’s goal from the beginning. He had worked his way up long before he had taken Christopher on as a trainee. They had both applied for the transfer to Homicide from Gang Enforcement because it was all Ray wanted out of his career. If he wanted to try a real relationship badly enough to walk away from that, he was probably being serious.
For a moment, Christopher wished he could be that serious too. Two weeks ago, he would have leaped at the chance. He would have told Ray he was taking a desk job anyway, kissed him senseless, and ripped his clothes off. Two weeks ago, he hadn’t even known Doug existed.
“And now I’m too late.” Ray laughed. “That’s just not fair.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. He worth it?”
Christopher turned away. “Yes. He is. He’s also totally in the closet, apparently engaged to the county coroner, and about as fucked up as I am. He also doesn’t want anything to do with me, because the kid my brother was fucking opened fire on him. He had to shoot the kid. And I mean kid.”
Ray stared at him, opened his mouth to say something, and just kept staring. “Wow,” he finally said aloud. “There’s a lot in that sentence that I’m having trouble wrapping my head around.”
“Come on.” Christopher slapped him on the shoulder and went to grab his shoes and wallet. “I’m starved. I’ll tell you about it over breakfast.”
“It’s six o’clock, Hayes.”
“Yeah, so?”
“In the evening, man. It’s 6:00 p.m. I think you might have missed breakfast.”
They went to the same bar where Christopher and Doug had played pool on Christopher’s first night in Elkin. Christopher needed food, so they sat in a booth and Ray just rolled his eyes as Christopher ordered enough food for five men his size. “Oh, and whatever he wants too,” Christopher said, nodding toward Ray.
Christopher snickered when Ray sent an apologetic glance at their waitress. “He’ll eat it all, he really will.”
“He was in last week, honey,” the waitress said with a smile. “I’ve seen men eat five baskets of hot wings before, but I must say, he’s the only one I’ve seen do it who still looks like he needs to eat more.”
“Oh….” Christopher flipped the menu open again. “They do good wings.”
“No! No more! Cobb salad, please,” said Ray.
While they waited for their food, Christopher began to talk about Peter. Innocuous stories about growing up, about how Peter had taught him to ride a skateboard, to read, and to swim. He didn’t gloss over how his relationship with his brother fell apart. It never did any good to try and make it sound less horrible than it really was—every time Christopher had tried in the past, he had always come across as though he were apologizing for his brother’s crimes, somehow trying to excuse them. He told Ray about how he lost track of Peter after his prison sentence was up, and about the series of events that had led to Doug Heavy Runner getting shot. He didn’t talk about the time he and Doug had spent together. Doug had friends in this bar, and Ray knew Christopher well enough to be able to fill in the blanks.
“What the hell.” Ray sat back. Their food had arrived while Christopher was talking, and Ray had nibbled on his salad and listened quietly. “Arson, officer-involved shootings, kiddy porn, and human remains…. No offense to this Doug guy, but his department is fucking incompetent.”
“Keep your voice down, moron,” Christopher whispered. “This is a cop bar.”
“Thank you for clearing that up.” Ray rolled his eyes. “I thought everyone was just wearing holsters and gun belts because this is the Old West.”
“You know,” Christopher said, laughing, “I don’t think it is! I’ve seen more cowboy hats driving through Texas than I have seen here this entire week! Doug is an actual cowboy. He grew up on a ranch, with cows and everything, and the only thing he seems to own is a lot of baseball hats. That’s got to be false advertising or something.”
Ray pressed his lips together tight and wrapped his hand around his fork to keep from dropping it.
“What?” Christopher shoved half of a cheeseburger into his mouth.
“A cowboy,” Ray groaned. “You hooked up with a Montana cowboy.”
Christopher allowed himself a huge, predatory grin when he saw the blush starting to creep up Ray’s cheeks. “A Montana cowboy. He doesn’t do that now, though. His ranch is huge, but it’s totally empty. Nothing but open land and mountains. It’s kind of creepy at first, how quiet it is.”
“So he’s just sitting on some huge empty ranch, being a stoic cowboy?”
Christopher shrugged. “He doesn’t eat meat, so holding on to the ranch and not rai
sing cattle’s kind of… absolution, I guess.”
Ray laughed and flung a crouton at him. “Seriously? A vegetarian Montana cowboy…. So the guy is a half-dozen walking contradictions. Man, I’ve got to get back home where people are a predictable kind of crazy.”
“Tell me about it. Think you could stay through Saturday?” Christopher asked.
“I’m not going to let you go through that fucker’s memorial service alone.”
“Thank you. Not that there’s likely to be a memorial service.”
Ray nodded slowly. “Yeah, I guess not. What do you want to do, then?”
“Throw the fucker’s ashes in a dumpster and go home.” Christopher finished most of the food he ordered and slumped back with a stuffed, satisfied groan. “I feel better.”
“Feel like running yet?”
“No. Not that much better.”
“Doug!” Someone shouted from the door.
Christopher looked up and saw that a dozen local police officers were filing into the bar. It was just after the seven-thirty shift change.
“Oh, sorry!” The youngest Elkin deputy, the one who hadn’t quite been able to route a phone call, came over. “You’ve got the same hair as a coworker of ours, and he was in here with him just last week. You related to Doug?”
“Ah, no. But I’ve been getting that a lot today.”
“How’s it going, Chris?”
Christopher cringed. He could just about put up with his supervisor calling him Chris. He could tolerate Doug calling him Chris. But hearing the nickname from a young pale man with blond hair and blue eyes just felt too much like stepping back in time. “It’s Hayes, Jackson. Hayes.”
