Jed hung his jacket by the back door. “Yeah. Sorry I woke you up when I left.”
“You didn’t. Flo did. She wanted out. Did he go in okay?”
“I guess.” Jed hovered in the doorway. Max looked like he was in the middle of something chaotic, and he’d learned from experience that getting in his way when he was feeling enterprising was counterproductive.
“Kim called. I offered to stay over there tonight, but she’s having a girlie night in with her cronies. I think she’s actually looking forward to having her mates around without Nick crashing the party.”
Jed didn’t doubt that. He’d grown up with an alcoholic and knew how isolating it could be. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d let Dan inside his childhood home.
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
Jed looked down. Max was still rummaging around in the cupboard. “Are you talking to me?”
Max glared over his shoulder. “Very funny.” He dusted off his hands and stood up. “I wanted to ask you about your… I mean, Frank. Does Nick know he’s not your dad?”
Jed should’ve figured Max wouldn’t let that one go. He hadn’t meant to blurt it out. It was a secret he’d carried for most of his adult life. Even Paul hadn’t known. “No. I figured it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t change anything for him.”
Max reached for the kettle and stuck it on the stove. “What about you? How did you even find out?”
“Biology class in high school. We were blood typing, and I came up B negative.”
Max frowned. “I don’t know much about stuff like that. Does that mean you were different from your parents?”
“Yeah. When my mom was sick she needed a lot of transfusions. Her blood type was O, and so was Frank’s. He knew because he got typed in the Navy. Type O parents can only produce O children.”
It all sounded so clinical now, but Jed remembered the day he’d found out like it was yesterday. He remembered running all the way home, pushing past a drunken Frank in the hallway of their beat-up house, and going straight to his mom’s old dresser….
He yanked open a drawer and fumbled around until he came to a thick envelope that contained all the household’s official documents: certificates of marriage, birth, and death. Thin pieces of paper that went full circle. He pulled out his own birth certificate and scrutinized it, but it didn’t make any sense. It was there in black and white. Frank Cooper was his father.
“Figured it out, have you?”
Jed whirled around. “What?”
“I knew this day would come, that you’d finally realize you’re just your momma’s bastard boy. Yeah, that’s right. Your momma was nothing but a slut when I met her. I only stuck around because she tricked me into having your brother. Count the days till you turn eighteen, boy, because mark my words, you’ll be out of here by first light the next day.”
It hadn’t quite turned out like that. Frank had forgotten his promise to throw Jed out until the day after graduation… until the day Nick had walked in on him kissing his prom date’s brother. After that, the rest was history.
“So, who is your dad? Have you met him?”
Jed laughed with little humor. “No. I have no idea who he is… was, whatever, and I don’t care.”
“You’re not even curious?”
Jed could tell by Max’s wide eyes that he didn’t understand, but that didn’t stop him from being a heartless bastard. “Dude, I’m thirty-two years old. The time for a white knight riding into my life has come and gone. I don’t give a fuck anymore.”
Max pushed a mug of tea into his hands. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You didn’t, but I haven’t thought about all that shit for a long time. Sometimes I forget how much it used to matter.”
“It still matters, Jed. You’ve just forgotten why.”
Max made no further comment and went back to whatever crackpot job he was doing, but Jed knew he understood. Max was young, vibrant, and full of life, but Jed knew there was real pain behind the absent words of wisdom he offered when Jed needed them most.
Jed took a good look at what Max was doing. There seemed to be open bags of dry food on almost every available surface. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Making granola.” Max said it as though it was the most normal thing in the world, though for him, it probably was. “What nuts do you like? I’ve got, like, six open bags.”
“I don’t eat granola.”
“Maybe you should,” Max countered. “It’s good for you.”
“So is yoga. I don’t do that either.”
Max opened his mouth, but Jed cut him off before he could suggest something really fucking stupid. He ventured further into the kitchen, slid his arms around Max’s waist and put his chin on his shoulder. He was still adapting to living in the same space as someone he’d slept with, but touching Max was addictive.
He considered the bags of nuts and wordlessly selected the peanuts and cashews. Max tipped them into his tray and pointed to a faded bag of coconut. Jed shook his head. The smell of coconut had always turned his stomach, even before nausea became his constant companion.
He released Max and left the kitchen to fetch his laptop. He came back as Max shut the oven door with a bang.
“What are you doing today?”
Jed set his laptop on the table and sat down. “Working. Why? Do you need me for something?”
“No.”
Max pulled out a chair and flopped down opposite Jed. He drummed his fingers on the table. Jed eyed him for a moment, then closed his laptop before it had even booted up. “How long will your granola take?”
“Ten minutes. Why?”
Jed pushed his chair back and stood up. “Go get your shit. Let’s go out.”
JED DROVE to Portland with Max fidgeting in the passenger seat and Flo wedged between them. He felt like he was stuck in a weird Scooby-Doo remake, but the palpable, vibrant energy coming from Max made it worthwhile.
They ditched the truck in an all-day parking lot on the outskirts of the city and walked the rest of the way. Jed noticed Max surreptitiously glancing at his leg—fueled, no doubt, by the mess he’d gotten himself into a few weeks before—but he ignored it. He felt good, better than good. Portland was a nice place to be. Its laid-back bohemian vibe suited him, and it fit Max like a glove.
“Farmer’s market is that way.” Max stopped walking and pointed to the left. “You want to come find me when you’re done in the nerdy bookstore?”
Jed rolled his eyes as he debated whether he wanted to let Max out of his sight in the bustling city. It wasn’t that he was worried about Max. He was a grown man, after all, and he had Flo with him. No. It was his own uncertain sanity that bothered him more. Crowded, jostling streets made him antsy. He wasn’t sure he could deal with not knowing Max was safe, but he wasn’t about to let his inner freak show hold Max back. “Sure. I’ll find you.”
They parted ways. Jed watched Max and Flo in her brightly colored coat disappear into the crowd. He felt a little strange when he lost sight of them, but he shook it off and made his way to the specialist bookshop hidden down a side street.
He was tempted to hide out in the musty-smelling shop. He liked bookstores, and libraries too. They had a sacred, peaceful hush, like graveyards without the shadow of death. But after searching out the book of ancient Sudanese dialects, he didn’t linger. Instead, he found himself drawn back to Max.
It didn’t take long to find him. Jed stood at the entrance to the farmer’s market and spotted him by a bread stall, talking animatedly with the vendor who had a broad smile on her face. The sight made Jed smile too. It was the first time he’d seen Max out in the real world, and it was clear he wasn’t the only one who found him enchanting.
He took a step forward. A light breeze swept through the air, rustling the trees and flapping the protective tarps around the stalls. The smell of smoke from a nearby Middle Eastern barbeque filled his senses. Suddenly, his world tilted
and his vision narrowed. He scanned the busy marketplace again, seeing it for what it was, he could even still see Max, but everything felt off, like he was somewhere else entirely.
His heart thudded and white noise filled his ears. He stumbled backward and sank onto a bench.
Max dropped down beside him and nudged him. “Jed?”
Jed jumped a mile. How had that happened? Max had been fifty feet away just seconds ago. Unnerved, he took a deep breath and tucked the paper bag from the bookstore into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Yep. What did you get?”
Max eyed him. “Rye bread and weird ass rabbit food,” he said, quoting Jed with annoying accuracy. “Are you hungry yet? It’s two o’clock.”
Jed wasn’t hungry, but then he never was. To make up for his sudden descent into madness, he got to his feet. “Sure. Let’s get you some lunch.”
A FEW hours later, Jed led Max to the foot of one of the Portland mountain trails he used to know well.
Max was suitably unimpressed. “You want to walk up a mountain?”
Jed shrugged. Put like that, he could see the idiocy in the suggestion, but the flyer sticking out of Max’s back pocket swayed him into standing his ground. He’d picked it up at a table by the pod of international food carts. It was for an open-air concert at dusk that evening. Some kind of indie crap Jed had never heard of… the kind of indie crap Max loved.
“I can’t take Flo to something like that, and the lights….”
He’d never finished the sentence, distracted as ever by food, but Jed understood. He’d said no more, and amused himself picking at a chapatti, and trying to guess how much of the superhot Bangladeshi dhal Max could eat before he admitted defeat.
It took a few hours to reach the top of the mountain trail, and by then daylight was beginning to fade. Jed knew the terrain around Portland like the back of his hand. The city had changed, but the surrounding mountains, not so much. He couldn’t fix Max’s epilepsy, or make the indie gig dog friendly, but he figured he had a compromise that might make him smile.
He wasn’t disappointed. Max stared over the ledge of the secluded forest clearing with wide eyes. “Wow. That’s the Pit down there, isn’t it?”
Jed smiled at the colloquial nickname for the hollowed-out, grass-covered concert venue. It had been a hub for local events for as long as Jed could remember. “Yeah. You can’t see the stage, but you can hear it okay. I used to come up here with Dan and watch all the shit we couldn’t afford tickets to.”
Max grinned, knowing that both Jed and Dan had grown up on the wrong side of town. “That was a lot of shit, then?”
“That it was.” Jed left Max to his staring and sat down at the foot of a large tree. The rain he’d feared hadn’t come, and the air was fresh and mild, but the arduous hike had left him sore and tired.
Max leaned further out over the rocky ledge. He was in no danger, even if he slipped and fell, but Flo growled and pulled him back with her leash. “All right, all right.”
He ambled back to Jed, and following his direction, settled between his legs with his back to his chest. “I’m not hurting you like this?”
Jed shook his head. Somehow, though he didn’t know all the tender points in his body, Max seemed to have a knack for placing his weight in the right places. Sometimes he figured Max couldn’t hurt him if he tried. “It’s fine. What about the lights? Are they too bright?”
Max leaned forward again and squinted. “Nah. I like it.”
Satisfied, Jed slid his arms around Max’s waist and rested his head between his shoulder blades. Lulled by the rustling trees and gentle tap of Max’s fingertips on his leg, it wasn’t long before he fell fast asleep.
He woke with a start sometime later to Max twisting in his arms and kissing him, gently at first, then harder as Jed responded.
Jed grinned. “Hey, there.”
Max kissed him again and smiled back. “Sorry I woke you. I didn’t realize you were asleep until I’d already jumped on you.”
Jed rubbed his face. It was the kind of awakening he could live with. He squinted at the dark skyline beyond the ledge. “What happened to the music?”
“It’s finished.”
Oops. Still, it felt good to snatch some proper, old-school outdoor sleep. All at once, Jed felt more like himself than he had in months.
He pulled Max to him again and kissed him, hard. Max kissed him back, pushing him against the tree and taking his face in his hands.
Jed slid his hands under Max’s clothes and over the smooth skin of his back. He’d discovered over the past couple of weeks that he loved it when Max took control and climbed all over him. It was wonderfully unfamiliar territory. Most of his sexual encounters, especially those in recent years, had been snatched, dominant affairs, conducted from the top. Perhaps it was because he’d already given himself over to Max in that sense, but he couldn’t recall a time he’d ever enjoyed simply kissing a man the way he did Max.
Max let go of his face and reached for the fly of his jeans. Jed raised an eyebrow but sat back to let him have his way. There was no one around for miles, and Flo would warn them if anyone approached. He lifted his hips so Max could free his cock. Max gave him a devilish grin, bent over, and took Jed deep into his mouth.
Jed hit the back of his head on the tree with an audible thud. He clenched his fists and closed his eyes. Up on the mountain, there was no one to hear his strangled moan, no one to hear Max’s low gasp when Jed pulled him up to straddle his chest and returned the favor.
Up on the mountain, it felt like they were the only two souls in the world.
Chapter Nineteen
MAX CAME awake with a jump. Startled, he raised his head and rubbed his eyes, squinting in the dark room to find Jed staring back at him. “Was that you or me?”
Jed shook his head. “I don’t know. I was asleep.”
Max frowned. That in itself was unusual. They began every night in Jed’s bed, but Jed rarely stayed the whole night, let alone actually slept. Now, though, he seemed rattled, and before Max could speak again, he slid from the bed and ghosted out of the room.
Max let him go. Jed seemed to operate fine on sporadic, snatched daytime naps, but Max needed his sleep. Without it, his defective brain was prone to malfunction.
He woke the next morning surprised to find Jed sleeping beside him again. He took a moment to stare. They had a heavy day ahead of them, and a lot to do before it even began, but the sight of Jed so soundly asleep was too captivating to pass up. Shame it didn’t last for long.
A few minutes later, Jed opened his eyes with a snap, and though he didn’t move, Max knew he was instantly wide-awake and alert.
“What time is it?”
Max inclined his head to the window. “You tell me.”
Jed’s ability to tell time by a cursory glance at the sky was a standing joke between them. Max had yet to catch him out, and this morning was no different. “Six forty-five.”
Max didn’t bother to check. Instead, he followed Jed’s silent direction and scooted across the bed into his arms. He closed his eyes, enjoying the gentle scrape of Jed’s unshaven jaw on his own close-cropped hair. For a man who could sometimes appear aloof and distant, Jed seemed to enjoy the increasingly tactile side of their undefined relationship, and Max wasn’t about to complain.
“What time do we have to be at Kim’s?”
“Ten, I think,” Max muttered, drowsy and under the spell of Jed’s touch. “I said I’d watch the girls while she got ready. Did you buy yourself a shirt?”
“Nope. Kim got me one. It’s in the truck.”
Max raised his head and met Jed’s smirk with one of his own. “Think she figured you’d turn up in your sweatpants if she didn’t?”
“Probably.”
Max put his chin on Jed’s chest, stretching out the last few minutes they had to spare before he really had to get up. It was the day of the big Valesco family wedding, and with Nick away, Jed had promised Kim an escort—an offer Max was
pretty sure was born out of some misplaced sense of guilt for Nick’s predicament, since Jed had shown little enthusiasm for the impending big day.
He had, however, found the time to help Max finish the long-neglected wedding present for Carla’s cousin. Turned out Jed had a ton of foreign poetry on his loaded bookshelves, and he’d found some ancient Spanish script to carve inside one of the dresser drawers. It was a prayer, from the days when Spain lived under Arabic rule.
Later that day, Max found himself in the irritating predicament of his sister trying to dress him. He batted Kim’s hands away from the tie she was trying to throttle him with. “Kim, it’s the Valescos. I’m not your date, Jed is. Go hassle him.”
The scowl on Kim’s face told him she’d probably already tried, and the fact that Jed was nowhere to be seen was pretty telling. No sane man would volunteer to wrangle Tess into a dress and shiny new shoes. Though, to be fair, if anyone could do it single-handed, it was Jed. A theory proved when he reappeared a little while later with a surprisingly presentable Tess in tow.
Max eyed Jed as he relinquished Tess to Kim to have her hair brushed. He was wearing jeans, boots, and a charcoal-gray shirt Kim had clearly forced him into. With his ever-growing hair and scruffy jawline, he looked….
“Max?”
“What?”
Kim poked him, hard. “Stop ogling Jed. Are you ready to go?”
She probably thought her voice was low enough to be discreet, but Jed’s suppressed smirk said otherwise. Max glared at her. “Piss off.”
Kim looked as though she might retaliate, but Jed cleared his throat. “Quit bickering, kids,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”
They walked to the tiny Catholic church downtown. Kim led them to a pew at the back. Max knew she’d learned the hard way that it was easier to keep Tess near the exit. Jed gestured for Max to go ahead of him, and Max sat down between Jed and Belle. He leaned back in the pew, feeling a little out of sorts without Flo at his feet. With Jed, Kim, and Carla all close by, he’d given her the day off and left her at the Cooper house. He’d retrieve her later, but for now, he was on his own.
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