Recoil

by Evelyn Drake

  “You telling me Tobias isn’t human?”

  Kyle shifted uncomfortably. Tobias was human. Tobias was the morning sky on a spring day. He was the soft scent of lavender on a summer night. He was home for Kyle. Tobias was his first and only love. Tobias was all that was good and right in the world—except for the part with gut wrenching abandonment during which Kyle had been left to rot in a hell made by people who claimed that they only wanted to help.

  Kyle took a bite of the frittata. His mood had soured and he didn’t want the food to taste good, but it was damned delicious. What does she put in this? He imagined a little sack of fairy dust kept in her pocket at all times, ready to give her food that touch of magic that Kyle had never figured out how to duplicate.

  Monica’s fork hit her plate with a sharpness that pulled his attention back to her. She leaned forward to give her next words emphasis. “You telling me that Tobias likes girls now—instead of you?”

  Kyle realized with a start that he didn’t know. He had moved to Portland over eight years ago after he’d managed to track Tobias down. He’d moved there—bringing an aging Monica with him—in order to be closer to Tobias. While they could never be together, he’d just wanted to be near him. It gave him a comfort that his life was devoid of otherwise.

  In the early years, he’d worked hard to catch a glimpse of Tobias here and there—always being sure to stay out of sight himself. If Tobias didn’t want him, then he didn’t want Tobias…. He knew his logic was screwed up, but sometimes that didn’t matter.

  “I don’t know what he likes, Monica,” Kyle said before stuffing his face with some giant gulps that didn’t do the food justice. He wolfed down the remainder of what was on his plate until it was scraped clean, and then he moved to the sink to give his plate a rinse. “But it doesn’t matter. He’s a man and I’m a man, and a man was not built to lie with another man. It goes against God. So even if he likes frogs, it means nothing to me.”

  Yet the memory of Tobias’s warm, solid, swollen cock filling his hand filled Kyle’s mind. The sound of Tobias’s voice filled his ears, and Tobias’s breath on his neck still warmed his skin. Both men and women had mouths. Would it be such a bad thing to be on his knees with Tobias in his mouth? He had a tongue and lips just as a woman did. Maybe some things weren’t evil. Maybe some things weren’t against God.

  “Kyle, you don’t even go to church.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Kyle said, putting his plate in the drying rack before pulling out a storage bowl for the gravy.

  “No, no… you leave that to me. I’ll put the food up. You go to bed. You look like shit.”

  Kyle looked at Monica. She was still cussing. It wasn’t a good sign.

  Monica rolled her eyes exasperated. “If your parents weren’t already in the ground, I’d put them there myself. They went against God when they locked you up and tortured you.”

  “They were saving me—”

  “They were abusing you! They might have loved you—I’m sure they did—but they were wrong, Kyle. They did you disgustingly wrong, and I’d… I’d… well, I don’t know what the fuck I’d have done, but you would not have gone through that under my watch.” Her eyes burned with an intensity of anger and hate that Kyle only ever saw when they got on the subject of his parents.

  “Fuck a duck, Kyle,” she said, letting her fork clatter to her plate. “Give me a kiss and get your ass to bed. Those bags under your eyes get any bigger, you’ll be able to sell them as luggage.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Doing as he’d been told, he dutifully gave her a kiss and headed for his bedroom, eager for the escape from the heated discussion. She’d clearly wanted an escape, too. While Kyle was still sure his parents had wanted the best for him, Monica hated his parents with a passion that would have had her dancing on their graves if she were willing to make the trek back. Yet, with all that she had done for him, Kyle couldn’t fault Monica for her feelings. As a social worker, she’d seen more abuse victims than he could fathom. If she hated his parents, he figured she had the measuring stick worthy to judge them by. But he couldn’t bring himself to feel the same. He couldn’t bring himself to hate them. He didn’t want to ruin everything about his childhood.

  One shower later and wearing nothing but his snug boxer briefs, Kyle collapsed into bed. He willed his mind to stop churning. He willed his body to stop remembering the feel of Tobias’s lean frame pressed against him. He willed his mind to forget the sound of Tobias’s moan.

  Heavy and erect, Kyle’s cock throbbed in need of attention, but Kyle refused to touch it. His flesh was hot and hungry from the touch of a man, and that wasn’t right. He shifted his thoughts to Beverly—one of the dancers he’d fucked between her boyfriends. He bent her over the sink in the bathroom and imagined taking his time. She morphed into Tobias several times, but each time he dragged Beverly’s memory back to the forefront of his thoughts. It was hard work to hold her there, but the relief he needed soon came as his aching cock softened and his throbbing eased. Finally, his body relaxed and he let down his guard, only to have all of his senses flooded with Tobias again.

  Kyle’s phone chimed with a text from his boss. The club would be closed that night but open the next. It was all the incentive he needed to give up trying to sleep.

  Getting out of bed, Kyle dressed and headed out. I need to move forward from this. I need a way out, he told himself as he drove the distance to Therman’s house. He parked his car where he’d parked it before. He sat and he waited and he watched. It was still early morning. The house stood quiet and completely vulnerable, its large center window completely gone and its master trapped in its basement. He imagined the whole thing going up in flames, putting an end and a rest to Victoria’s killer.

  His hand twitched as if it were eager to reach for the door of the car, as if it were ready to get to work giving those flames life. But Kyle stayed where he was… watching and waiting. He was good at it. He had long given up trying to keep track of the hours he’d spent watching Tobias. But those days were long past.

  A line of cars pulled past Kyle. The lead car was unmarked, but three cars behind it were police cars.

  Kyle sat up straighter in his seat and leaned forward, eager to see what happened next. As he watched, Tobias approached the door with a paper in hand and knocked with an upraised fist, pounding hard. Kyle lowered his window a little in order to hear.

  Stepping aside, Tobias gave a nod to the uniformed policemen with him. Two men gripped the handles of a large steel battering ram. The cops looked at it, at the door, then at the missing picture window. Tobias shook his head and pointed to the door. Procedure, Kyle presumed. Safer to enter the way they knew, and get the element of surprise. They heaved the steel backward and then leaned in as the rod’s butt end drove forward into the door just below and to the side of the door’s lock. Kyle could hear the door’s wood frame crack from where he was, and a second after that, Tobias and the collection of officers on Therman’s porch disappeared inside of the house.

  Kyle didn’t have to wait long before officers reappeared, two of them dragging a sobbing and handcuffed Therman between them. He didn’t even bother to walk; he just dragged his toes over the grass as they carried him—an officer on each side of Therman’s shoulders—toward a waiting police cruiser. They had him loaded inside the car in under a minute and were pulling away from Therman’s house a minute after that.

  As he smiled at the unfolding events, Kyle’s attention shifted away from the disappearing car and he noticed Tobias standing in Therman’s front yard, staring right at him. Kyle’s smile faltered, but his chest tightened.

  Kyle’s heartbeat quickened when Tobias stepped off the curb and headed directly for him, and Kyle rolled his window down the rest of the way.

  Reaching Kyle’s car, Tobias leaned down. “Have an early lunch with me. Pizza and beer at Romeo’s.”

  Kyle’s brows went up. He had thought Tobias was about to bark at him for returning to Therman’s house.
He hadn’t expected to be asked out on… On what? A date?

  “Aren’t you on duty?”

  “Yep,” Tobias nodded, smiling.

  “Won’t you get in trouble?”

  “What? For interviewing someone from a murder scene in an environment conducive to trust and the chance of increased sharing of information?”

  Kyle smiled, nodding his head that he got it. “So… this is business.”

  Tobias nodded, his once-warm smile growing cooler. “It is.”

  “I’ll see you there,” Kyle said with a final, resolute nod.

  Tobias gave the hood of Kyle’s car a tap and then walked away… and Kyle watched him. Watched his muscles shift beneath his clothes. Watched the rise and fall of his tight ass. He watched and he licked his lips.

  “He’s going to drag me right down into hell with him.”

  7

  Tobias

  Tobias walked back to his unmarked patrol car and got behind the wheel.

  Keep it together, man. He doesn’t want you. Keep it professional.

  Tobias’s phone chimed with a text, and his heart skipped a beat. Picking the phone up but keeping its face down, Tobias stretched his neck from side to side in an attempt to release his building tension. Finally, with his eyes closed, he turned the phone face-up and then looked. Seeing it was from Officer Roberts, Tobias breathed a sigh of relief.

  ROBERTS: Got that report in on Kyle Rivers. He’s got a record. Sending it to you now.

  Tobias clicked into the report and started reading. When Roberts had said that Kyle had a record, his mind had gone to petty theft. Maybe joy riding in a car. What he saw instead chilled him to the bone as bits and pieces of the report jumped out at him.

  …Kyle Rivers… locked in basement for 6 - 8 months… electrical burns, malnourished, disoriented, paranoid, delusional…

  …Abigail Rivers (mother) dead by stabbing…

  …Frank Rivers (father) dead by stabbing…

  …Kyle Rivers… extremely violent… institutionalized… mental ward…

  Tobias pulled at his shirt collar, trying to breathe. It didn’t help.

  Mom and Dad are dead. Kyle… oh God, Kyle.

  Tobias picked up his phone.

  TOBIAS: Get me the # of the lead detective.

  ROBERTS: Will do.

  The air that moved in and out of Tobias’s lungs still did nothing for him. After wiping beads of sweat from his brow, Tobias turned the ignition key with a shaky hand as his mind played memories of him and Kyle as boys, laughing late into the night, tucked away in their shared bedroom. He could still feel the brush of Kyle’s hand on his cheek as Kyle would push away his hair from his face before leaning in for a kiss.

  “How could they do that to you?” His mind flashed to their mother dancing with them in the living room when her favorite song would come on the radio. His eyes filled with tears as he heard their shared laughter in the memory of his ears. “How could they do it?” Tears fell.

  Tobias swept an impatient hand over his cheeks and put his car into drive, all the while adjusting what he’d thought he’d known about his life, his childhood, and his parents—people whom he’d thought were good and wholesome though fixed tight to a belief that rejected him. He’d known that he was not a part of their lives anymore. And he’d imagined them heartbroken and devastated about the loss of Kyle—after their mother had told him that Kyle had been murdered. But he’d never imagined this. Not this. The truth was so much more cold, more heinous.

  “If I’d known, Kyle. I would have come back. I swear it. I would have saved you.” More tears fell. How could they have hurt him? Tobias had always felt that he’d had it worse when they’d kicked him out of the only home he could remember and turned their backs on him. He’d thought that their rejection was the worst they could do—he never imagined that their love could be worse than their hate.

  Tobias fought the urge to pound the top of his car with his fist and scream his rage. Knowing now about the past, feelings of impotence and helplessness at his inability to change what had already happened threatened to consume him. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around it in a way that gave him peace. He felt torn apart, knowing what he now knew.

  The image of his parents dead, stabbed to death, flashed in his mind, and all the rage he felt shifted to sadness. But it was not a sadness for them; it was a sadness for the possible monster they had created.

  “Kyle, did you do it? Did you kill them?”

  Get it together, man. You’re meeting him for lunch.

  Tobias decided to take the long way to Romeo’s. He’d be late but he needed the time for his body to cool off. He glanced at himself in his rearview mirror and was greeted by red eyes and ruddy cheeks.

  A full forty minutes passed by the time Tobias walked through the door of Romeo’s. The smell of fresh baked garlic bread and the rich, warm Italian smells of an eatery that could have been featured with the best family style Italian restaurants of the world greeted him. It had a homey feel to it, and it was a sensation that Tobias wrapped around him every time he came. Besides the fantastic food, the happy people good at their craft, and the comfortable decor, it was the feeling of home that made the eatery his favorite place to be.

  Stopping just inside the door, Tobias scanned the restaurant’s floor and waved off Sabrina, the hostess, when he spotted Kyle. Making his way to Kyle, Tobias appreciated how laid back the man looked. Kyle sat with his hips low and forward in the chair and had his legs splayed open. They were so long that it was like they had no other choice than to be splayed out in front of him, going on for miles.

  Tobias had managed to pull his emotions in check so that he was no longer torn by the complete undermining of everything he’d thought he’d known about his own childhood, yet there was nothing that could make him immune to seeing Kyle. He felt his heartbeat quicken and his palms tingle. His breath came faster and more shallow, and every part of him wanted to be pressed up against every part of Kyle and held so tight that he could hardly breathe.

  Kyle sat up in his chair when Tobias reached the table. He gave the waitress a hand wave and then pointed to his beer to let her know to bring another.

  “Was starting to think I’d been stood up,” Kyle said as his long fingers worked to slowly turn his beer-filled glass in one inch pivots.

  “No, no…” Tobias pulled out a seat and sat.

  “What’s wrong?” Kyle asked, sitting up in his chair and leaning forward slightly, the line between his brows becoming pinched.

  “Nothing…” Tobias cleared his throat. “How’s Mom and Dad?” He shouldn’t have asked, he knew. He was playing his hand wide and open right out on the table for Kyle to see.

  Kyle’s expression of concern slowly faded to stony blank. “Why you asking me? You’re the big man now. Why don’t you tell me.”

  Tobias felt as if he were aging ten years as an exhaustion he was normally able to hold at bay settled into his bones and made his face feel heavy. “Mom died on the stairs and Dad died in the upstairs bathroom. His blood smeared nearly every surface in there. They were stabbed multiple times and and their faces bludgeoned almost past recognizability.”

  Kyle nodded his head, his gaze unflinching.

  “Did you do it?” Tobias asked.

  “I kind of thought maybe you did.”

  Tobias’s jaw dropped and he sat back in his chair, his chin tucking into his chest as if to protect his throat from Kyle’s jugular attack. “What?”

  Kyle’s gaze was still unflinching. “You telling me you didn’t?”

  “No!” Tobias’s brows shot up. “No, I didn’t! I didn’t know they were dead!”

  “So… the big detective of homicide didn’t know his parents were dead.” Kyle did not look or sound convinced.

  What the fuck! In a million years, Tobias would not have anticipated this conversation turning around on him.

  The waitress came and went, leaving a beer behind in her wake.

  Tobias lea
ned forward and his voice dropped to a heated whisper. “They kicked me out, turned their backs on me, said I was dead to them—and then told me you were dead by murder… No. I did not know they were dead. I walked away, tried to kill myself so that I could at least be with you, and then finally put the past behind me.”

  Kyle flinched at Tobias’s final words, but then he shrugged as he leaned back in his chair. “Good to know where I stand. The past. Behind you. Done.”

  Tobias felt his jaw want to drop again but he stopped it this time. He doesn’t want me to be done with him. The revelation was nothing short of life altering as new paths to a future he’d long thought impossible opened up to him.

  He leaned back in his chair and shrugged. “I’m not sure I’d say ‘done.’ ” He let his eyes drift up and down Kyle’s Norse-god build and was rewarded by Kyle’s cheeks turning red.

  Leaning forward, Kyle said, keeping his voice low, “I’m not interested in the likes of you anymore.” Yet he licked his lips after his declaration and the heat held in his face and eyes said anything but.

  Tobias fought to keep the satisfied smile that wanted to pull at his lips from taking hold. Parents… dead… murdered, he reminded himself. He felt his body and energy shift. He felt his persona pin on his badge that swore he would protect and uphold.

  “You didn’t kill Mom and Dad?” Tobias asked again. He needed direct confirmation instead of the deflecting answer he’d gotten.

  “No,” Kyle answered flatly, shaking his head. “I…”

  Whatever it was that Kyle was going to say, he let his thoughts go unvoiced as he took a drink of beer.

  “You were locked in the basement,” Tobias said, finishing Kyle’s sentence for him.

  Kyle’s face darkened further, but this time it was clear that it was not with want. He nodded once and then let his gaze fall away to the table and his beer before looking out the restaurant’s window out onto the slowly filling parking lot. The lunch crowd was ramping up.