Recoil

by Evelyn Drake

  How the fuck could I have figured out the lie and not him—the detective now, apparently. He didn’t want to know the truth because he didn’t care.

  In reality, it had taken several weeks of visits and convincing from Monica, his then-social worker in the mental institution before he believed Tobias was still alive. Even then, really believing it hadn’t come until after two and a half years of believing that Tobias was dead.

  “You abandoned me,” Kyle growled, the words barely discernible. “Why the fuck are you holding me responsible for something my parents did? You knew what they were like. You knew it, and you walked away. Admit it. It was easier.” He clenched and unclenched his fists as he rode the crest of a wave of emotion that threatened to drown him. Hate burned inside of him for what Tobias did to him. He’d needed him. He’d needed just one person in the world, and that person turned his back.

  “Abandoned you? I thought you were dead! I’d thought you were murdered! I tried to kill myself!”

  Kyle jerked his head back as if he’d just been hit, and Tobias’s hard jaw shut tight as if realizing he’d just said more than he’d wanted.

  The fucker wants sympathy from me? He doesn’t know shit. He doesn’t know bad.

  “You think that’s bad? You don’t know shit. You quit me easy enough, abandoned me to worse. You never gave a shit about me, it turned out. Why should I care?”

  The thick, unmoving air between them seemed to turn stale as Tobias froze. He didn’t even seem to breathe. The explosive energy that came next caught Kyle off guard, and he barely dodged the right hook that tried to dislocate his jaw.

  The two men became a flurry of motion as their early days of tangled limbs while wrestling on the floor of their shared bedroom morphed into a gladiator’s struggle.

  Kyle tried to throw Tobias off of him, but as Tobias was lifted from the floor, he hooked a foot behind Kyle’s leg and managed to bring the big man crashing down on top of him as they fell into the royal blue, vinyl covered bench seat.

  With Tobias pinned under him, Kyle used his superior strength and weight to force Tobias’s arms above his head as the smaller man’s body bucked and twisted in an attempt to gain his freedom. It took a mere shift of Kyle’s body to pin Tobias more firmly in place under him.

  There, with their faces and mouths just inches apart, both men panted their exertion. And then, the worst possible thing.

  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

  Kyle felt his body grow. That part of himself designed for women and women alone stiffened and lengthened, growing hard as it followed the path of his snug jeans down his thigh. And, when Tobias’s eyes flared wide, he knew that Tobias had felt it, too.

  Kyle shifted his position without thinking and then had to stifle a groan from the pleasure it brought him. He’d been inside women, had given them pleasure, and while his flesh had enjoyed the sensation, touching them had done nothing to heat his blood. It was an empty pleasure—even more so than thrusting into his own fist. However much his partners seemed to enjoy it, it had always felt like he was using them.

  But now, with layers of clothes between them and without a single kiss, Kyle was on fire. Everything about having Tobias under him felt right, despite the looping soundtrack in the forefront of his mind.

  To love a man was sin. It was a sin against God and his immortal soul. It would leave him burning in hell.

  Yet, he shifted again, letting his thigh—with his swollen, trapped cock wedged firmly in place—rub against Tobias. He did groan this time, his eyes fluttering up, and his hips surged again.

  Hot, demanding lips reached for his. Kyle had the power to pull away, but he was weak. The spirit was willing, but the flesh…

  No, not even that. All of him was weak. He wanted this.

  He gave into the kiss, pressing his hungry lips into Tobias’s before opening his mouth to accept Tobias’ tongue inside of him. Tobias was the only boy—now man—he’d ever kissed.

  He rarely even kissed the girls he fucked. It had always made fucking them somehow more difficult, more foreign and alien. So, he kept them turned away as he gave them what they wanted from him. Kissing Tobias was different. Kissing him could have eclipsed the moon and the stars.

  Oh God, forgive me!

  Just as violently as their tumble into each other’s arms had begun, it ended with Kyle throwing himself off. Tobias was still lying, stunned, his lips parted as he gasped for breath. His long, muscular legs were splayed open and his lips were red and slightly swollen from Kyle’s bruising kiss. He remained exactly as Kyle had left him, hands over his head and a cock that tented his pants.

  Leaning back in, Kyle backhanded Tobias. Not hard enough to leave a mark, but hard enough that he’d feel it.

  Tobias turned his face with the hit as if it had hurt, then turned his head back slowly to look straight at Kyle once more. He hadn’t even winced. His arms remained over his head.

  Fuck him.

  Kyle wanted to strike again, but he curled his fists into balls. He had to be better. He had to use his words, not his fists, or he’d be no better than them.

  Tobias spoke. “I thought you were dead. I never would have left you. Never.”

  “Fuck you. I thought you were already burning in hell. I thought I was next.”

  Tobias’s mouth dropped open and his brow furrowed. “What did they do to you?”

  “They saved me—from you.”

  3

  Tobias

  Tobias felt the world drop away from him with Kyle’s final words as he watched the big man disappear through the curtains to the club’s main floor beyond.

  He thought back to his early years of spending every Wednesday evening in youth group, every Sunday morning in Sunday school, every Sunday evening in church.

  Throwing him out of the house and putting him back into the care of the foster care system had been Kyle’s parents’ way of protecting Kyle from sin. He just hadn’t thought that Kyle would ever buy into that same belief.

  After all, it had been Kyle who had kissed him first all those years ago, and it had been Kyle who had been brave enough to share his feelings of love first. He’d always been the fearless one between them, and the rebel. He had privately rolled his eyes at his parent’s fire and brimstone beliefs even as he held Tobias tight during the late hours of the night when he couldn’t sleep from Hell nightmares. He’d been the first one to tell Tobias that they were full of shit.

  He had never imagined that Kyle would give in, and think their love had been wrong in the eyes of God. He had never imagined that a living Kyle would ever reject him.

  “What did they do to you?” he whispered to no one but himself.

  Standing, he pulled his tucked-in turtleneck out of his pants to let the hem drape over his still-swollen girth that pushed at the tight bindings of his jean’s zipper. Taking a deep breath and rolling his shoulders back, he leaned an ear to each shoulder to stretch his neck. Finally, he pulled the curtains back with a hard jerk. The scraping of the curtain’s rings sounded loud in the unnaturally quiet club.

  Standing at the far side of the club to the left of the raised dance platform, Kyle stood waiting with his hands in his pockets in front of a matte black door, designed to blend in with the wall to either side.

  Covering the distance between them with strong, sure steps, Tobias felt himself shift from Kyle’s one-time love to cop on the scene. A woman had been murdered, and there was a killer to catch.

  Without saying a word to Kyle, Tobias paused and waved a hand before him, gesturing for Kyle to lead when he reached the club’s staff area entrance. Likewise saying nothing, Kyle stepped through to the well-lit hallway beyond and Tobias followed.

  To the left of the door was a small office for a manager. The manager’s office was barred with a dutch door, the top of which was open while the bottom was closed. Taking a quick glance inside, Tobias spotted a variety of individually sized lock boxes, scheduling sheets, and a variety of paraphernalia—emergency replacem
ent fishnet stockings and lotions.

  Turning, Tobias saw that Kyle was already headed down the hallway and he followed, scanning his surroundings as he went. He took his time following, not rushing. He still felt the familiar clench in his gut when he saw Kyle stop in front of a door by which a uniformed officer already stood. Tobias knew that the officer was there to ensure that no one contaminated the scene.

  When Tobias reached the closed door, he gave an up-nod to the officer as he pulled a pair of purple latex gloves from his pocket and proceeded to put them on.

  “Sir,” the officer said as way of greeting and then opened the door with his own latex covered hand.

  With the door open, both the uniformed officer and Kyle stood well out of the way, and Tobias moved into position to stand in front of the opening. Inside, a woman lay face up, empty eyes staring at the ceiling. Her arms were bent with her hands up near her shoulders.

  Tobias pulled a three inch flashlight from his pocket and adjusted its light’s beam to a tight point. Not yet stepping into the room, he shone the light on the victim’s long, slender neck. Thread-thin scratches crisscrossed on her pale flesh.

  “What was her name?” Tobias asked. The officer next to him flipped a small notebook open but Kyle’s voice ended his effort.

  “Victoria Bergman,” Kyle answered.

  “And her stage name?”

  “Candy.”

  “And the nature of your relationship?”

  “I’m the main bouncer, so I protect the girls. And, yes, we were fucking.”

  Tobias’s full attention was pulled away from the murder scene, and he looked at Kyle. “Come again?”

  “Fucking,” Kyle said again, his expression impassive. “As in a man having straight sex with a woman.”

  The uniformed officer glanced at Tobias in confusion. His expression and the tightness of his body spoke of his desire to extricate himself from the tense situation, and Tobias had to admit that the familiarity that existed between himself and Kyle was palpable. He imagined that Kyle’s words sounded like a coded lover’s quarrel, and in fact it nearly was.

  “Did she have a boyfriend or husband?” Tobias asked, keeping his eyes on Kyle, searching for any body language that might divulge information beyond his words.

  “None that I knew of.”

  “What about you? Were you a boyfriend?”

  “No, we just fucked.”

  “Any other fuck buddies?”

  “Yes, most of the girls,” Kyle answered.

  “She was fucking most of the girls?” He could see the mental shift as Kyle adjusted to the request for clarification.

  “No.” Kyle looked down. “I don’t know if she was fucking anyone else.”

  “But you are?” Tobias felt as if he were slowly pushing a dagger into Kyle’s gut, enjoying giving it a twist. While in investigating mode, he had the upper hand, and he had no qualms about using it to get the information he wanted.

  “Yes,” Kyle answered with his gaze defiantly meeting Tobias’s.

  “Not at all stereotypical,” Tobias quipped dismissively as he knelt down and stared into the small room. The quick intake of air by the uniformed officer in reaction to Tobias’s lack of professionalism was easy to hear.

  Tobias could count the lovers he’d had on one hand. He hadn’t bounced from lover to lover like some of his friends. It wasn’t his style. He’d known love—he didn’t like to be emotionally cheap. He preferred to be consumed.

  After what they had shared together, that Kyle was willing to throw himself at all the girls he could find felt like another backhand across his face.

  I guess I never really knew him. Maybe I made it all up. Maybe it was all me and he just mirrored back what he thought I wanted to see. Tobias felt an ugly rot settling into his gut as the paint peeled off his sixteen-year-old, immortalized love, revealing it for what it had always been—gross manipulation and lies.

  Feeling unsteady, he placed his hand on the door frame. Having his childhood memories re-written so completely was a lot to take in.

  Doing his best to let it all go until a more appropriate time to work through his personal shit, Tobias refocused on the contents of the room in front of him. Metal shelves lined the walls from the floor to just a couple of feet short of the ceiling. Two of the shelves looked as if they had been swiped clean, their contents now strewn over the floor, and a third shelf looked partly empty. Untouched shelves were full, orderly and well managed, a stark contrast to the disarray on the floor at those three shelves. A faintly bleached spot on the floor seemed to follow a splash pattern. Liquid dropped on the floor.

  Pivoting on his toes and adjusting his stance, Tobias glanced at the lower half of the door. Its rough paint job looked blistered in a few spots and bleached in a few others.

  Standing up, Tobias directed the light onto Victoria’s forehead where a large knot had formed at the edge of her hairline. The impact had been hard enough to leave an abrasion on the skin, but it did not account for the large pool of blood that haloed and matted Victoria’s golden hair beneath where her head lay.

  Leaning to the side and craning just a little as he attempted to shine the light at the spot where Victoria’s head met the floor, Tobias was not able to pinpoint the exact spot out of which Victoria had bled.

  “Aren’t you going to get in there? Aren’t you going to gather clues? Somebody killed her!” Kyle threw his hands into the air.

  “No. It’s not my job and I don’t want to fuck up the crime scene. A forensic crew will be here soon. They’ll gather evidence while ensuring that no additional contaminants are introduced to their findings. Have you been in the room?”

  “No,” Kyle answered, his waning anger seeming to have deflated him. He crossed his powerful arms over his sculpted chest and scowled almost petulantly at the floor.

  Relief flooded Tobias. If Kyle was the killer, it would have been smarter for him to claim to have been in the room. Then, it would explain any contaminants that could be linked back to him.

  “Have you had sex with her within the last 24 hours?”

  Kyle’s face became thoughtful as he searched his memory, and Tobias felt an unbalancing flash of intense jealousy. I hate you. No, Tobias. What the fuck! Get over yourself! Thirty minutes ago you would have considered it the greatest miracle to find him alive. His inner voice warred with itself.

  “No,” Kyle finally answered. “I think it’s been at least 28 hours.” There was no malice. It was a statement of fact.

  I fucking hate him. I don’t care what you say, he thought, continuing to battle with himself.

  Tobias turned his face back toward the crime scene, away from any watching eyes, and willed his rabid emotions to go froth in the corners of his psyche out of the way.

  Finishing his evaluation of the crime scene, he took a few notes and then stood from his deep-kneed squat.

  “Do you know of anyone who might have had a reason to want to hurt Victoria?” he asked, confident that his expression was once more placid as he turned his attention to Kyle.

  “That dirt bag, Therman! Therman Johnson. He’s obsessed with her! He’s the guy I threw out of the club a few minutes ago. I wanted to be sure that you guys had a chance to question him but I didn’t see him out there after the boss closed everything down and everyone went outside to get their info collected by the cops. So, I went looking for him. Found him inside under one of the corner tables, curled up and sniveling. He did it. I’m telling you. There’s something not right about that guy.” As he talked, Kyle’s body became more and more tense and his soft, boyish looks grew hard as his face turned red.

  “Do you have anyone who has been in this room tonight, either before or after the attack?”

  Kyle thought for a moment and then shook his head no.

  “Okay,” Tobias said, stripping off his gloves. “Officer, close the door and don’t let anyone inside until the forensic team arrives.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tobias tur
ned and headed back down the hallway. He listened for the sound of Kyle falling into step behind him and allowed himself a small smile when he heard Kyle do just that. He might hate the guy, but he wasn’t ready to be done with him yet—not when he’d just found him again.

  Why the fuck didn’t he tell me he was alive? Tobias knew that it wasn’t a fair question, but that was how he felt. To Kyle, it was Tobias who had disappeared on him, not the other way around.

  He thinks I abandoned him. That thought made Tobias’s heart ache.

  He really had tried to kill himself after learning of Kyle’s murder. He could still remember his mother’s face as she stood in the doorway blocking his entrance to the only home Tobias could remember. She’d been his mother, too, and he had loved her. She’d made him tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches whenever he was feeling down. She’d sat with him and let him talk for hours. She’d made him feel like the center of the universe when she let him talk.

  But the second they caught Kyle wrapping his arms around him, kissing, that was it. All that love was gone.

  They’d physically thrown him out onto the street. He’d had to stand outside for four hours, alone and crying, pleading and begging, until someone from foster care had come to collect him. He’d never known such loss before that moment—until he’d returned two weeks later, only to have Kyle’s mother tell him that Kyle was dead.

  A piece of Tobias had died that day, too. But now, with Kyle alive, Tobias wondered if he could ever get that small piece of innocence that true loss had taken from him.

  He didn’t think he could. His childhood had died that day. It was a loss that could never be mended.

  4

  Kyle

  Kyle sat in his gun-metal gray Dodge Charger at the back of the parking lot behind The Derriere. From around the side of the building, he could see the glow of lights and occasional movement as the investigation continued in front. The back exit had been taped off with yellow crime scene tape in order to preserve any evidence they might be able to find there.