Unprotected Hearts

by Rachel Kane

  Trent watched the lawyer leave the room, then he turned back to Jace. It was a startling sight. Jace looked like he was in physical pain. It was only then that Trent noticed the cleanliness of this bedroom. How everything had been straightened and arranged, as though no one had ever stayed here before.

  “Were you leaving?” he asked Jace.

  A slow nod. “I was thinking about it.”

  “Were you going to tell me?”

  “Of course I was. I wasn't running away from you. But I didn't think I could do much good here. Now that you've decided to wreck your life further, though, it makes me want to get out of town even faster.”

  Anger flared inside Trent. He wasn't trying to wreck his life; that was already being done for him. “Is your plan to leave without me?” Trent asked.

  “I was going to ask you to come with me again. But now…”

  Here it was. One more price to pay for the sin of telling the truth about Grumman. “I don't believe this,” he said. “A time when I could really use your support, and you bail on me.”

  “You’d be easier to protect if you didn't make stupid decisions.”

  Jace seemed to know immediately he'd said something very wrong. He looked bashful and ashamed and angry.

  “Telling the truth is not a stupid decision,” said Trent.

  “That's not what I'm saying. You're posing a threat to—”

  “Do we have to go over it again? Do you honestly think I haven't thought this through? Damn it, Jace, I've thought of practically nothing else!”

  “I can tell.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?”

  Jace shook his head. “Doesn't matter.”

  “No, you meant something snarky by that.”

  Now Jace drew close to him. Any other time his being this close would have been a comfort…or a turn-on. Now it seemed threatening, a little frightening.

  “I don't do snark,” Jace said. “What I am saying is that you have been so fixated on this case that you have forgotten about us.”

  Trent was caught off-guard. He had expected angry accusations of foolishness from Jace. He had not anticipated the pained, lonely words Jace actually spoke. They were hard to hear. But they must have been untrue. Trent had thought plenty about what was going on between them, hadn't he?

  “I haven't forgotten us at all,” he said.

  “Then come with me to the mountain,” said Jace. “Forget about all this.”

  “Jace—”

  “Don't worry. It's the last time I'm offering. If you refuse this time, it's fine; I'll know exactly where we stand. I'll understand what's important to you. More than that, it'll be a good reminder to me of how sick it is to get into a relationship too soon, how much damage that can do.”

  “Why does that sound like an ultimatum?” Trent asked.

  “Because that's exactly what it is,” said Jace. ”Come with me and be free of all this danger, or stay and do it without me.”

  The fear and sorrow were getting to Trent. He could feel tears begin to prick his eyes.

  “But why?” he asked. “Why force me to make a decision? How can I choose between my feelings for you and my conscience?”

  Jace turned away from him then. He walked to the window, and separated the curtain with his hand. He stared down for a long moment, before speaking again, not looking Trent's way.

  “You need me,” he said.

  “Of course I do,” said Trent. “Now more than ever, especially if Grumman sends his—”

  “No, you need me,” Jace said. “Not want, not love. Just need. From the moment we met, everything has been about your need. Need for safety. Need for comfort. Need for sex. You're treating me like a vending machine, Trent. Just put your money in and take whatever you need.”

  “That makes it sound really one-sided,” said Trent. “You don't actually believe all that, do you? Have I not given you anything you want or need? Because it certainly seemed like you needed someone in your life right about now.”

  “I don't need anyone,” said Jace.

  “Don't do the bullshit tough guy thing in front of me,” said Trent. “I know you better than that. You're not some self-sufficient lumberjack up in the mountains. You're as broken and needy as I am. It's part of why I like you so much.”

  “Then come with me!” Jace's voice was an agonized groan.

  “If you know me, if you’ve spent any of our time together really listening to me, then you will understand why I can’t run away right now. I can’t hide. I’m done being bullied by the likes of Grumman. But I’m not going to be bullied by you, either. I’m not going to be guilted into coming with you.”

  Jace slid his hands into his pockets and turned away from the window. His back to Trent. “I’m not bullying you. I’m asking you.”

  “And I’m saying, stay here. Don’t ask me to hide in the mountains. I need to do this. I need to testify.”

  Slowly Jace turned around. He still wasn’t looking Trent in the eye. “I am afraid for you. I am afraid if you go through with this, Grumman will kill you.”

  The quiet certainty in Jace’s voice sent a chill down Trent’s spine. There it was, plain and stark. The fear that had been hanging over him for days now.

  But that fear wasn’t the only thing inside Trent. There was a quiet confidence now. Something like certainty.

  “He’s not going to kill me,” he said to Jace. “He had the chance. He’s had nothing but chances. Look. He’s scared. Why would he do this overkill with the school, if he weren’t scared? He knows my testimony will hurt him. Forget the lawyers, forget the psych history: He’s scared because I can get up on the stand and tell the truth.”

  “All the more reason for him not to stop. And then I’ll lose you.”

  “Then stay and protect me. Be my bodyguard again.”

  But a look of anger flashed over Jace. “That’s the problem? Don’t you see? That’s the need I’m talking about. I can’t be here to serve you. Not with the way I feel about you. It isn’t fair to ask me that.”

  “So you’re just going to leave?”

  Jace’s hands were in fists. His face was tight with emotion. “I don’t know what to do about all this. I want to just drag you away, because you’re making a stupid decision! Not just stupid! Life-threatening. All because you’re pissed off about your job.”

  “My job, my reputation, the fact that he can just keep coming at me the rest of my life. I mean, it’s ironic, Jace. I’m here feeling like I’m fighting for my life, with real shit going on…and you want to talk about the relationship and feelings. Like you always accuse me of.”

  “For once, a relationship and feelings seemed important to me. I guess I was wrong to let them get that important.”

  “Are you kidding me? Those things are important to me too. But this is my life, Jace. He has stolen everything from me, and this is the only way I have—”

  “Of what? Getting it back? That’s not how this works, Trent. It’s not like you get a reward for testifying! Harlan’s not going to cut you a check! If you survive long enough to testify, you’ll say your bit and then still not have a job or a place to live, and you will always be looking over your shoulder, the rest of your life, waiting on his revenge!”

  “No. What I was going to say is, this is the only way I have of getting back my self-respect. If I give in to my fear, then who am I, really? I’m everything I’ve always worried about, someone whose principles dissolve the minute they’re challenged.”

  “But at least you would be alive, if you came with me.”

  “We’re going in circles, Jace. If you’re that worried about me, stay and protect me while I do this.”

  “I can’t.” Jace walked past him toward the door.

  “Wait…wait!” said Trent. “You’re leaving?”

  “I can’t do this again,” Jace said quietly. He glanced back. Were his eyes wet? It was hard to tell for sure. “Goodbye, Trent.”

  28

  Jace had been driv
ing for half an hour. Twice now he’d gotten close to the highway that would take him back the mountains; twice now he’d made a left instead, circling back around the city. He felt gut-punched.

  He had done the right thing. He was free. Untangling himself from a dangerous situation was common sense. It’s what anyone would do. Sometimes you have to set your feelings aside and do the right thing. Wasn’t that exactly what Trent was doing, too? Can’t have everything, right? Life had taught him that.

  He was just wasting gas. No point in that. There was a block of low buildings, some stores and restaurants, so he pulled up there. Stores. He thought of Trent, calling the mountain stores shops.

  If this was the right thing, then why did it hurt so bad?

  He wandered mindlessly into a little restaurant, and ordered coffee. They gave him a menu but he found he couldn’t read it. Couldn’t focus at all.

  How come nothing worked out right? Everything he did made sense to him…but the results never did.

  He had to shake it off. No sense in delving into self-pity. He looked around. He’d been seated in the middle of the room. His bodyguard instincts always led him to sit with his back facing a wall, preferably with a full view of the room. So this was uncomfortable. But he forced himself not to care. Nobody was after him. There was nobody to protect anymore.

  They brought him coffee. He pointed at something on the menu just to make them go away. The coffee, black, was so hot it burned his lips and tongue. He swallowed anyway.

  With David, he had fought the feelings as long as he could. That had turned out to be a mistake, because it just meant he’d had that much less time with David.

  Then he’d sworn never to get involved with anyone again. That had been sensible. But he had been bitter up there all by himself. The cabin sometimes seemed claustrophobic. He could manage to turn off his own thoughts and keep busy…but that had gotten harder and harder as time went on.

  Another sip of burning coffee.

  Then when Trent had come into his life, he’d followed his instincts. That had seemed sensible too. Ridiculous, but if fighting his instincts hadn’t worked before, maybe following them would work?

  And instead here he was, fighting down the black clouds of guilt and shame that were rolling in on him.

  His phone buzzed. He didn’t realize what it was at first; it had been a while since he had carried a phone, but Harlan had forced one on him.

  And indeed, since almost no one knew the number, it could only be Harlan calling him.

  “What the hell are you doing?” his brother asked over the phone.

  “Drinking coffee. It’s pretty good now that it has cooled down.”

  “You ass, what are you doing? Trent is here in tears.”

  Jace closed his eyes, and squeezed the skin between them with his fingers. “I’m sorry, Harlan. I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Here, let me put him on—”

  “No. Don’t do that. Please don’t. I don’t want to drag this out.”

  A rustle, a change in the background noise on the phone. Harlan said, in a lower voice, “I’m out in the hall. What happened between you two?”

  “Didn’t he tell you?”

  “Of course he did. But what he couldn’t tell me is why you decided to bail at the moment he needs you the most.”

  There was no way Jace could recap everything that had gone on in his head, his heart, his relationship. “You’re never going to understand. But I’m not the bad guy here.”

  “He’s determined to testify.”

  “Then I hope to god you can protect him.”

  “And you? What are you going to do? Run back to the cabin on my land?”

  “Are you really thinking about threatening me again, to get me to protect Trent? Is that honestly where your mind is going, Harlan? I will burn the damned cabin to the ground and go live in the woods, if you make trouble for me on this.”

  “I’m not making the trouble. You are. You chose to get in a relationship with Trent; now you’re choosing to drop out of it, for reasons I can’t even understand. No, no, don’t bother trying to explain them, it was hard enough listening to you talk about it earlier.”

  The waitress brought him a spinach salad with chicken slices, cranberries and walnuts. He gazed down on it in confusion. Was this what he had ordered? She said something to him he didn’t hear, so he just nodded at her to make her go away.

  “Good,” he said. “I can’t go over this again. Ever. I’m done.”

  “You said that after David.”

  “Don’t bring David into this.”

  “Does Trent even know what happened there?”

  “He knows enough of it.”

  “God, Jace. You’ve basically strung this guy along, and cut him off—”

  “When he needs me the most. I know. Need, need, need. I’m aware of how needed I am. I’m necessary, like the air we breathe. I get it. I’m sick of being used. By him, by you.”

  “Nobody is using you.”

  “So you say. But you don’t know what this feels like, Harlan.”

  “You know, I was starting to feel a little optimistic when you came around again. I started to think, wouldn’t it be nice if my brother could be part of the family. Having you over, catching up on old times. But you’ve changed, Jace. There’s something selfish in you that didn’t used to be there. Something cold. I know you think you’re hurting, and that that’s the main thing you have to pay attention to, but you just broke up with someone whose life has exploded, and I don’t understand how a person can do that.”

  There were things Jace couldn’t say. Things you couldn’t just tell a brother who had been in and out of your life—mostly out—for years now. Things that really required a close friend to tell.

  How could he handle the pain of losing Trent forever? How could he handle the guilt, knowing that he should’ve convinced Trent to drop out, entirely and permanently, to skip the deposition and anything further to do with the case? How had he managed to put Trent in even more danger than he was in earlier?

  How could he go through all this again the way he had before?

  He didn’t have a way of explaining this to Harlan. It was weird, but he didn’t know his brother well enough. Not anymore.

  Worse, he felt like shit, because he knew he hadn’t explained it well enough to Trent, either.

  But why did he think that? Did he honestly think if he’d explained things well enough, Trent would be overjoyed to be broken up with? Is that what Jace actually thought?

  He shook his head. This whole thing was messing with his mind so bad.

  “I’m going,” he told Harlan.

  “Going where?”

  “Just leave me alone, okay?”

  “Are you going back to the mountains? Is that it? Out of cell range, so I don’t hear from you for another year?”

  Another idea had been coalescing in his mind all this time. Something he should do, that he had been avoiding for a long, long time.

  “No. Not the mountains, just yet. I need to go see David.”

  “What are you—”

  But Harlan didn’t get to finish his thought. Jace turned off the phone. He glanced down at the food that he didn’t want, and threw some money onto the table.

  29

  It was while Harlan was out of the room that doubts began to circle Trent.

  Trent could see the lawyer, pacing the hall, talking quietly but angrily to Jace. He hoped Harlan wouldn’t give the phone to him. He had nothing else to say to Jace, or about him. He just wanted to go home. Back to the little bedroom he’d had as a teenager, with the smells of his mom’s cooking rising up from the first floor.

  He wanted, for a while, not to think. That initial surge of energy when he’d decided to testify had been drained completely away by Jace leaving. This was the way his life had gone lately, like a roller-coaster, up a hill, then speeding down a steep drop. No high without the low. And it was exhausting.

  He didn’
t want to sit here and debate with himself over whether he’d done the right thing, sticking to his guns, and letting Jace walk out of his life. He didn’t want to weigh the pros and cons. He just wanted to hurt for a while.

  Harlan was still on the phone when Trent stepped into the hall. Trent slipped toward the exit, while Harlan was too busy arguing with Jace to notice.

  It had started to rain with these aggressively cold little droplets, and he wasn’t dressed for it at all. The rain soaked into his jacket. The bus stop wasn’t sheltered, it was just a sign in the sidewalk, and he leaned against the sign as though it could provide some kind of roof over his head. He felt the sting of cold water on his cheeks.

  It made him think of the mountain spring, of Jace thrusting his hands into that freezing water, washing with it.

  Don’t think about that.

  But once the picture was in his head, it was hard to stop. He’d never been with anyone like Jace before, with that sleek, rippled musculature. Physically it had been a whole new experience for Trent.

  Emotionally? Nothing but confusing.

  He rode the bus home, staring out the window, looking at buildings, at cars. What was life going to be like without Jace? Forget that sense of looking over his shoulder because of the case. Put that all aside. What was life going to be like without those two strong arms around him? Without that stubbled cheek for Trent’s lips to play over?

  What Jace didn’t understand was that the attraction hadn’t died at all for Trent. Trent hadn’t been able to explain it. There was more than need here. Trent wanted Jace badly. But there were so many things in the way. But maybe Jace was right. It was unfair to make him wait forever while Trent worked through all his life-falling-apart issues.

  The obvious solution was to declare those issues over. Enough. No more messing around in things that made him powerless and afraid. No more billionaires. No more witnessing.

  He could do that, couldn't he? As much embarrassment as it would cause him, he could go right back to Harlan and Dodi’s office and say, no more.

  They would laugh him out of there. Spineless, fearful Trent, going back on his word yet again, incapable of making a decision that lasted more than a day. But at least he could have Jace back.