Neon Saturday Night (Low Country Lovers Book 2)

by Julia McBryant

Jax shrugs. “You didn’t know.”

  Audie feels a tug. He stands and reels, backs up, reels more, and fights for a while before pulling a Spanish mackerel up on the beach. “Guess we’ll have fish tacos for lunch,” he comments, and tosses it in the cooler.

  “Nice,” Jax says.

  “Don’t fucking trust it now,” Audie tells him, throwing out another line. He sits. A wave hits his legs and washes up to his knees.

  Jax nods. “I get that. Mind if I use some of that cut bait?”

  Audie shrugs and gestures at it.

  “Gotta make it up somehow though,” Jax says. “You can’t mistrust it forever.”

  “Sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

  Jax shrugs. “Henry and I haven’t had it easy, and that’s not Henry’s fault.”

  Audie makes a noise. “I know that fucking feeling.”

  “You ever get sick of being the goddamn drama queen? Always the fucking unstable one, you know? Always the fucked-up one. And them back there with their big cozy group of high school buddies, everyone friends since kindergarten. You get sick of the stories, you know? Who did what at whose birthday party when. You know how many friends I have from that long ago? Oh wait, I don’t need fucking fingers to count.”

  The dolphins come about half an hour later. “Oh shit,” Jax says. “Looks how close they are to shore. I’m going out. Wanna come?”

  Audie shakes his head. “You go.”

  “You sure?”

  “Shark phobia.”

  “Your loss.” Jax strips to his briefs and dives like an otter. Before long, he bobs within twenty yards of the dolphins, watching, treading water. Audie looks on enviously, then gathers his fishing gear instead of looking any more. He cleans the mackerel under the house.

  Calhoun curls on the living room couch with coffee when Audie appears. “Morning,” Calhoun says cautiously.

  “Morning,” Audie says, just as cautiously. “Don’t touch me. I’m covered in fish.”

  “You catch something, then?”

  “Fish tacos for lunch.” He sets the cleaned mackerel on a plate, covers it in plastic wrap, and sticks it in the fridge. “Going to take a shower.”

  “Want company?” Calhoun asks, sounding a little wistful.

  Audie decides to be nice, but not too nice. “I was going to use the outdoor one.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  Audie shrugs.

  Calhoun gathers some towels while Audie gets shampoo and conditioner and soap. They walk down under the house. Audie hesitates, turns his back, and then strips. He drops his clothes on the floor: might as well wash some of the fish smell off. Calhoun lays his pajama pants on the bench on the far side, with the towels. “You wanna turn the shower on?” he asks tentatively.

  Audie keeps his back turned, but flips the shower on hot, the way he and Calhoun both like it. He hears Calhoun take a low, deep breath and step next to him. Audie doesn’t move. He looks down and lets the water stream his curls over his forehead, drench his neck and run rivulets down his back.

  “Audie?” Calhouns says. He hears a hesitancy in his boyfriend’s voice and has to resist the urge to swoop in and cuddle him, to swear that everything is okay.

  Everything is not okay. Audie doesn’t look up. If he sees hurt in Calhoun’s eyes Audie will do anything to make it go away.

  “Audie, do you want me to wash your hair for you?”

  “I got it,” Audie says. He stands up straight, grabs the shampoo, pours it into his hand, and closes his eyes. He scrubs hard, digs into his scalp. “I forgot to tell you. Jax went swimming with dolphins, if you want to go out. I should’ve told you right away. Sorry.” Maybe then Calhoun will leave.

  “I’d rather be here with you,” Calhoun says.

  Fuck.

  “Audie, I feel so bad,” Calhoun tells him.

  Here it comes. And he has to swallow it. That’s what you do, and Audie doesn’t have a choice. Love means you can’t curl up and stop looking when someone hurts you. You have to take it out and stare at it and Audie hates that more than anything.

  But that doesn’t mean he has to answer.

  “I should have told you what I wanted when you asked, not just done what I thought you wanted because I thought you wanted it,” Calhoun says. “I was trying to be nice, Audie.”

  “You lied,” Audie says. If he keeps his eyes closed, he doesn’t have to look at Calhoun.

  “I didn’t lie, exactly,” Calhoun says. “I did want to do it. I wanted to do it for you.”

  Audie opens his eyes. “It’s only fun if we both like it.”

  “I didn’t dislike it.”

  “Yeah, but you pretended to like it, apparently.” Audie grabs the conditioner. “What’re you going to do next time, pretend it doesn’t hurt when I fuck you?” What if Calhoun does pretend it doesn’t hurt? What if he’s been pretending? “Have you told me when it hurts? Or have you let me just hurt you because you think it feels good for me?” Audie feels sick, nauseated. He hadn’t thought of this and now that he has it seems some monstrous shift, a terrible realization of goodness rotten on the inside.

  Calhoun’s eyes look wide as he stands under the pattering water. “Audie, I would never do that.”

  “Yeah? How the fuck do I know?” Audie rinses his hair and steps back.

  “I guess — I guess you just have to trust me,” Calhoun says in a small voice.

  Audie feels terrified and drops the mask he perfected in high school: the untouchable one, the face that says people can do anything to him and it doesn’t matter; he can watch or endure anything and remain utterly impassive. He only retreats into it at the worst times. “How am I supposed to trust you?” Audie asks. He hears his own voice: flat, emotionless.

  “Audie.” Calhoun reaches out from under the water and touches his hand. Audie neither shakes him off nor gives in; experience tells him he looks like he tolerates it as his stomach flips and he wants to run. “You have to stop this. You’re going away now.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Audie turns and begins drying himself.

  “Audie, stop it.”

  He ignores Calhoun. He has to get out. He can’t get air.

  “Honey,” Calhoun draws the word out, like he’s talking to something skittish. “Whatever is going on right now is not healthy or good and you need to stop. If you want to talk about what happened we can talk about it. But you can’t do — whatever you’re doing. I love you and you love me, and you have to remember that right now.”

  Audie does not look at him.

  Suddenly he feels Calhoun’s hands on his shoulders. “Audie,” he says, and his voice isn’t dreamy or scared. “Turn around.”

  Audie turns. “I don’t trust you,” he snaps.

  “Okay,” Calhoun tells him. He seems calm. “I understand. What can I do to help you trust me again, so you understand that I don’t pretend you aren’t hurting me during sex, or that I don’t do things just to make you happy?”

  “I don’t know.” Audie looks at the wooden shower wall to his left.

  “Audie,” Calhoun says gently. “Look at me.”

  If Audie looks at him, he will win.

  “I don’t like the way I feel,” Audie says: something so true he can’t hold it in. “I believed you always liked it and now I don’t know and I feel — I feel like I did something you didn’t want.” He still wants to run. He shivers. The water’s left him chilled, even in the rising Carolina heat.

  “No,” Calhoun says. “I made a choice every single time. I said yes every single time. And I never said yes when it hurt or I didn’t want to, Audie. Audie, look at me. Look at me.”

  Audie makes himself meet Calhoun’s eyes. Calhoun will win now. But his blue eyes aren’t wide and doe-like. They look fierce and narrowed. “I promise, Audie,” he says.

  Audie sets his jaw. He can’t argue with that and Calhoun knows it. “You promise? You promise you never told me to do it even when you hurt, not onc
e? You only did things when you wanted to?”

  “I promise,” Calhoun says. He looks angry.

  “You promise you won’t do what you did last night again?”

  “No,” Calhoun says. “I don’t promise that.”

  “Then what’s the goddamn point?” Audie starts to turn. Calhoun grabs him. Audie jumps. Calhoun never grabs him.

  “I will not say that I will never do things in bed just because I think you’ll like them. I won’t do things I actively dislike. I won’t do things that hurt. But I will sometimes do things because I think you’ll like them. I’ll do that because I love you and that’s what I did last night.”

  Audie shakes him off. “I want us both to like it.”

  “And I asked you to fuck me. It wasn’t my fault you didn’t wanna wait. C’mere and lemme dry you off. You’re shivering.”

  “No.”

  “Audie.”

  “No.”

  “Audie.” Calhoun lifts the towel and holds it out. “C’mere.”

  This is how it works: Audie will do anything for Calhoun, in the end, because he loves him. Calhoun knows that. Audie will always give him everything. So he stands shivering while Calhoun dries him and wraps him in a big beach towel, then turns the water off and dries himself. “Let’s get upstairs,” Calhoun says. “Then will you lay down with me for a little while? Not to do anything. You just need held.”

  Damn him, he always knows.

  But Jax sees them emerging from the wooden shower. Fuck. He probably heard the whole thing. He’s cleaning a mackerel even bigger than Audie’s. “Nice fish,” Audie comments.

  “You…?” He tips his head in Calhoun’s direction. Calhoun’s already most of the way up the stairs, and doesn’t see.

  Audie shrugs. “I guess.”

  Jax nods. “Good. You can’t walk around like that. It’s easier to know when you see it in someone else than when you’re in the middle of it.”

  “C’mon Audie,” Calhoun calls from the top of the wooden staircase.

  Jax gestures with the knife. Audie walks up with Calhoun.

  Audie lets Calhoun scrunch his curls dry. He lets Calhoun pull him down in bed and make them a warm nest, then spoon him. He sort of wants it and sort of doesn’t, craves the reassurance yet feels too frightened to accept it. His brain won’t turn the what-ifs off.

  “I love you,” Calhoun says quietly. “I just wanted to make you happy.”

  “I’d’ve been happy either way. I’d’ve had you, wouldn’t I?”

  “Audie, love, please stop.” Audie lets himself be petted. “You and Jax are getting along.”

  “Because we’re both fucked up.”

  “No,” Calhoun says. “That’s not it at all. You both have problems. But you’re both lonely in a way neither Henry or I have ever been.”

  There’s the truth of it. Calhoun always does this: you offer him something, and he hands you back a truth more slippery to hold. “Miss Angel, our cook?” Audie says. He hates calling her that, hates reducing her status to something that stupid. “She would call you an old soul, Calhoun.”

  Calhoun smiles against Audie’s neck. “My Gran always says that. Jax isn’t snarky with you, is he?”

  Audie shakes his head. “He doesn’t feel like he has to be, I guess.” Audie realizes suddenly what a huge leap of trust that is: an enormous self-giving. But didn’t Audie hand him the same thing in return? So strange, when two people immediately see something in each other and know: that person, right there. He will understand my secrets and he will keep them.

  Calhoun smiles again. “The wild things always love you, Audie.” He holds him tighter, and Audie starts to feel safe again, at least in some important ways. Not all of them. But some.

  Audie snorts. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “They do. The bad dogs and the hurt people. Your friend Easter, she was hurt, wasn’t she?”

  Easter. God, where to begin. “She was hurt,” Audie says carefully. “I don’t want to tell something that isn’t mine to tell. But Easter’s father hurt her. And East saw a lot of things she never should have.”

  “Like what?” Calhoun asks. “I know she was like your little sister.”

  Audie doesn’t want to betray her. He also doesn’t want to say it. He’s never told the story to anyone. Calhoun must feel it in him: something about his muscles tightening, him swallowing.

  “Audie?” Calhoun asks gently. “What happened to Easter?”

  “I don’t know if I can tell,” Audie says honestly.

  “Why not?” Calhoun strokes his hair.

  Audie almost chokes. “Because I was there.”

  “Tell me in pieces then. Can you tell me in pieces, and if it gets too bad, we can stop?”

  “I don’t know if I can trust you to —”

  “Then take this one leap and give me this while I hold you. We have a warm little nest. You can hear the ocean and after we can go walk on the beach with coffee and sit and listen to the waves, or we can sit in the shower and you can cry if you need to. We can stop if you have to, but try, Audie.”

  Audie knew one day he would have to tell. He curls up tighter. “You were there when it happened?” Calhoun asks. He arms wrap tightly around Audie.

  “Yes.”

  “Night or day?”

  “Day. The sun was in my eyes.” That sun had blinded him, out in the west near sunset, and he’d had to stare down below the treeline, head bowed.

  “Where was Easter?”

  “To my left. She was just standing there. She couldn’t run or make a sound and neither could I because if I did she would and she might get it, too. I didn’t want her to get it so I had to stay quiet.”

  “Okay, Audie,” Calhoun says. His voice sounds like he’s trying to be soothing, but it isn’t soothing at all, just an awful interrogation. Audie finally pushes him off and sits up. He stares at Calhoun.

  “This is what happened,” he says. “And I don’t remember why. I don’t know if I knew then, if I blocked it out or something, and I sure as hell don’t know now. But my father decided I needed belted. So he made me kneel down in the dirt on the edge of the pasture. I still remember thinking I’d have to wash off my knees after. I was fifteen and East was twelve. He had me take off my shirt and I heard that belt come out and oh god, Calhoun, there’s this sound —” He holds Calhoun’s eyes. He will not let him look away. “There’s this sound it makes, when it whips out of someone’s belt loops all at once. East was too scared to run because he might tell her daddy and she might get it, and she might get it if she cried, so she tried to make herself invisible. But she’d cry if I cried. From where she was standing, and this is the worst, she could see both my back and my face. I knew my daddy was wrapping that fucker around his hand and he started belting my back and it fucking hurts to get belted. The tip hurts the worst because of the centrifugal force and that’s where your skin cracks open. He beat me bloody and I couldn’t cry or make a sound because then East would start. I wondered why I could taste the blood from my back in my mouth when he all of a sudden stopped. I heard him hitch his pants, put his belt on, and walk off. Easter took one step to me and ran.

  “I hid in the barn. I realized I couldn’t taste the blood from my back. I’d bitten my lips bloody so I wouldn’t cry in front of East. When it got dark I put on my shirt and took the pickup — you know no one gives a fuck if kids drive out there in the middle of nowhere — drove to the liquor store, dropped my money on the counter and said I wanted a fifth of bourbon. No one says no to the white kid whose daddy owns 600 acres, especially when he pays double. It was the only way I could sleep and that’s when I started drinking.

  “So that was the worst among numerous fucking things that East saw, at least when I was there. But think mysterious broken arms and shit. Think black eyes because she kept running into the same goddamn door, and think you tell your daddy that’s bullshit and think you get belted for it. Sometimes it bled and sometimes it didn’t but that was the worst
one.”

  Audie turns. “Look real, real close in the bright light. You’d never notice if you weren’t looking for them and you didn’t know they were there. My skin’s too pale to see.”

  Calhoun gasps. “Audie,” he manages. And again: “Audie.”

  Calhoun doesn’t touch him. He doesn’t talk. Finally: “I knew it was bad but I didn’t know it was like that.”

  Audie turns back around. “Now you fucking know. Is that enough trust for you, Calhoun? You think I fucking trust you now?” Audie just used that story like a weapon and he doesn’t care. It’s his and it’s East’s and he will do what he wants with it.

  Calhoun looks desperate, despairing.

  “You can tell me that,” he says. “The worst thing. And you still can’t trust me to tell you if I’m hurting or not, or if I really want something or not?”

  Audie really looks at him. Wanting to believe, he searches Calhoun’s face. “I don’t know.”

  “Can I tell you?” Calhoun takes Audie in his arms. “Can I tell you this way?”

  Audie draws back. “No. That doesn’t work right now.”

  “Can I just hold you then? Because you told me something pretty scary and if you don’t need held, I need to hold you to make myself feel better.”

  Audie appreciates, at least, his honesty. “Okay,” he says. He lets Calhoun spoon him and pull the blankets back around them. They’re still naked, wrapped in towels around their waists. Getting fucked might not usually be Audie’s thing, but he likes a cock against his ass, and he can feel Calhoun’s, still soft. God, why is it that after everything, this whole big fight, everything horrible he just told Calhoun, all it’s been about, he wants Calhoun to reach forward and stroke his dick?

  Hormones. He’s twenty. He wants sex all the goddamn time.

  Calhoun’s also twenty, and he starts to harden against Audie. Dammit.

  Audie moves away a little.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” Calhoun says into his neck. “You feel good.”

  “Just saying that because my ass feels good against your cock,” Audie sulks.

  “You do feel good. And so does your ass. Turn around so I can kiss you?”

  Audie makes a noncommittal sound.