I tugged on my own gloves and then carefully took the baby from Nolan. I motioned for him to flip the latch on the smaller door at the base of the larger door. I sent up a silent prayer and gently eased the baby into the enclosure. The mother hissed at me and backed into a corner, her baby hidden behind her. I closed the door and took Nolan’s arm and had him step back with me so we’d be out of the mother’s direct line of sight but could still see her.
I’d expected Nolan to put some space between us, but he didn’t, and I could feel his body occasionally brush mine whenever he shifted on his feet to try and get a better look. It took the mother raccoon a good five minutes to finally move so she could investigate the bundle of fur in the center of the sectioned-off part of the habitat. I studied her behavior as she neared the baby, but nearly took my eyes off the scene in front of me when I felt Nolan’s fingers wrap around my wrist. I’d missed it, but at some point, like me, he’d taken off the gloves. Heat and energy surged up my arm at the contact and I wanted desperately to look at him. I highly suspected he was fearing for the baby raccoon, and I wished there was some way I could reassure him I wouldn’t let any harm come to the animal.
Since I couldn’t tell him so, I did the only thing I could and used my free hand to cover the fingers that were clinging to my wrist. I could sense Nolan’s eyes on me, but I kept my gaze on the mother raccoon who’d started sniffing at the baby. She hissed at it several times, but the baby wisely didn’t move. It took a good ten minutes of investigating before the mother raccoon began nuzzling at the baby. When the orphan moved for the first time, the mother didn’t react other than to step back a little. A few seconds later she returned to nosing at the baby.
Nolan and I stood there for another twenty minutes as we watched the mother accept the baby.
And he held onto me the whole time.
When the two babies curled against the mother so they could nurse, Nolan let out a rough breath. “It’s okay, right?” he asked. “She’s accepted him.”
I nodded at him and he rewarded me with a huge smile. It wasn’t until that moment that he finally seemed to realize he was still holding onto me. He dropped my wrist like he’d been burned.
“Sorry,” he mumbled as he took several steps away from me. “I was just…sorry.”
We watched the mom and her babies for a few more minutes before I led Nolan back toward his car. I was both glad and disappointed that I was finally getting him out of here.
For his part, Nolan was once again quiet, and I wondered about his earlier breakdown. As we neared the building where I kept the orphaned babies, I was half-tempted to pull Nolan back into the room so I could make use of the whiteboard. But I stopped myself because it didn’t really matter. I needed Nolan gone.
He was way too much of a temptation.
And not just in the I-want-to-pin-you-to-the-wall-and-fuck-your-brains-out kind of way.
Nolan’s eyes darted around us as we made our way back to the driveway. Just before we rounded the corner, he stopped and looked at me. “Dallas, do you-”
That was as far as he got before he shook his head and began walking again.
Five steps later he stopped and turned so he was suddenly facing me. “Do you…do you by any chance need any help around here?”
The question caught me off guard.
“I mean, it’s a big place and I didn’t see any other cars out front or any people and maybe that means you do all this by yourself or maybe it means they’re just not here but if they aren’t maybe it means you need help and I could help if you need help.”
He stopped the verbal diarrhea only long enough to suck in some air. Anxiety was practically wafting off him as he jammed his hands into his jacket pockets.
“I’m a really quick learner and I’ll work hard, Dallas, I swear. I mean, I know I’ve only ever played the violin, but it doesn’t mean I can’t learn and I’ll accept whatever you’re paying and it isn’t true what you might have heard about me. I never stole that violin. Trey, he only said that so he could-”
And just like that, his tirade came to an end and his eyes went wide.
“Oh God,” he whispered. He turned on his heel and hurried toward his car.
I was still trying to catch up to everything he’d said, but my instincts had me hurrying after him. I reached him just as he was opening his car door. I put my hand on the doorframe to stop him. I ended up pressed against Nolan’s back, my body trapping him against the car, my hard cock practically nudging his ass. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dallas. Just…I’ll go, okay? Just pretend I didn’t say any of that.”
He was shaking hard, and I could hear the tremor in his voice that hinted he was on the verge of another breakdown.
What the hell had happened to him in the years since he’d left Pelican Bay? Stealing a violin? Desperate for a job? None of it made any sense. He should have had the world at his feet.
“Dallas, please,” he whispered, and I wondered if he was still begging me for the job or asking me to let him go.
Or maybe it was something else he needed so desperately.
I leaned into him and carefully wrapped my arms around him before I realized what I was doing. I heard a sob catch in his throat and then his hands were closing over the arm I had pressed against his chest. I was nuzzling the back of his neck before I could stop myself.
But for whatever reason, hiding the fact that I was gay from Nolan just didn’t seem to matter right now. Hell, what I was doing wasn’t even about sex. I just wanted to…
What?
What was it that I wanted?
I wanted to go back in time and wrap my arms around Nolan long before those assholes could pelt him with eggs. I wanted to protect him from all the cruel jokes and names that had been lobbed at him over the years. I wanted to insulate him as he went out into the real world and learned that the cruelty he’d faced as a child was only the beginning.
Remarkably, Nolan had managed to hold back the tears I sensed were a constant threat. When the tremors in his body seemed to ease, I carefully turned him around, but, predictably, he wouldn’t look at me. He wiped at his eyes.
“I’m sorry, I should go.”
His voice was still thick with emotion, but there was something else, too. Something I really, really didn’t like.
A finality of some kind.
Like he was giving up.
Yeah, that just wasn’t going to work for me. Not after I’d watched him fight all those years ago. Even if he’d never won, he’d never backed down from his tormentors. He hadn’t pretended to be something he wasn’t just to mollify them.
Not like me.
I was still using my body to keep Nolan from moving away from me. I gently grabbed his chin and forced him to look up at me. I put my hand to my ear in the universal sign for a telephone.
“No, you don’t need to call someone for me,” he murmured. “I’m okay.”
I shook my head and did the move again, then pointed to him. It took Nolan a moment to say, “You want my phone?”
I nodded, and he immediately took the phone out and unlocked it before handing it to me.
I opened the notes app and typed my message.
You need a job?
Nolan read the message and then began chewing on his upper lip. I could see he wanted to deny it, but he nodded his head instead. Humiliation flooded his eyes and he looked away and then tried to turn around, presumably to escape me.
I pinned him with my body, since I needed my hands free to type.
I knew it was a mistake – knew it deep in my belly.
But that didn’t stop me from typing my message out and it didn’t stop me from grabbing Nolan’s chin once again to force him to look at me. I held his gaze for a moment before I stepped back and then put his phone in his hand. He studied me briefly, then started to turn, probably so he could get in his car, but stopped when his eyes fell on the phon
e and the message I’d written that I knew I’d probably come to regret, but couldn’t find it in me to care.
When can you start?
Chapter Five
Nolan
“Keep it together, Nolan,” I said to myself as I drove through the gates of the center the next morning.
I still couldn’t believe it.
Any of it.
Not the way I’d spewed all that shit at Dallas the day before.
Not that he hadn’t told me to get the hell off his property.
Not that he’d actually said yes.
Not that he’d pressed his big body against mine as his lips had skimmed the back of my neck.
I knew I’d imagined the last part, but that hadn’t stopped me from clinging to the phantom sensation of those warm, firm lips pressed against my skin. Or using it as part of a bigger fantasy as I’d jerked off in the shower this morning. I still bore the slight red mark on my arm where I’d latched onto my skin to keep from screaming out at the sheer pleasure my orgasm had torn from me.
Nothing about the day before had gone as planned.
Well, that wasn’t true.
Nothing had gone as expected after I’d arrived at the center to return Dallas’s jacket. Everything before had gone exactly as expected. The towing of my mother’s car to the shop had eaten up what little cash I had left. The estimate to fix the car had caused my heart to pound frantically in my chest as I’d handed over my credit card to pay the full amount before the work had been done since Bryce, the owner of the shop, had mentioned he’d need the payment up front since he knew all about me and “the incident.”
My trip to Ashburn had ended the same way it had started.
With me feeling more helpless than I’d ever felt in my entire life. I’d been trying to figure out how to tell my mother she and my father were going to lose the house and everything else they owned when I’d spied Dallas’s jacket on the passenger seat of the car. I’d told myself Dallas would need the thing back since the temperature this week was supposed to dip below the freezing mark each day, but in truth, I’d just wanted to delay having to go home.
I hadn’t missed the irony that had come with that realization.
That I’d rather be in the company of the man who’d made me miserable in so many ways in high school than spend any more time in the company of my parents or cooped up in my childhood room.
It wasn’t that Dallas had actually been the one to torment me in the two years we were in school together – it was because he’d always seemed to be around to witness my humiliation. I’d accepted from an early age that, despite what grown-ups told you, bullies didn’t forget about you if you ignored them. It had never really made sense to someone as invisible as me that I’d still been the target of endless persecution. Even long before I’d been deemed “faggy,” it’d been the same handful of boys who’d hated me on sight for whatever folly I’d committed against them. It had begun in kindergarten when I’d been excluded from the rough games the boys had played and the girls had just looked at me like they hadn’t really known what to do with me. Accepting that I didn’t fit and I never would should have been the end of it, but my persecutors hadn’t gotten the message, because the practical jokes and name-calling had followed me until the very day I’d left Pelican Bay. My only saving grace had been that I’d never fought back in any kind of way, so I’d never been subjected to the beatdowns I’d been threatened with.
I’d become oddly complacent with the abuse over the years, but things had changed when Dallas Kent had arrived in Pelican Bay. I’d already suspected I was gay at that point, but the strapping, gorgeous sixteen-year-old baseball star had sealed the deal for me. And suddenly all the humiliation had been amplified because Dallas had, more often than not, been there to see it.
In the deepest, darkest part of my soul I’d kind of hated Dallas Kent.
It was an admission I wasn’t particularly proud of. It wasn’t that I’d expected Dallas to actually ride in on his white horse and save me – though in truth, I’d fantasized about that way too often to be considered healthy. No, my anger at Dallas had been because it had made the torment go from being just a fact of life to an endless prison of humiliation. Before Dallas had come along, I’d been able to at least dismiss the cruel taunts and painful practical jokes, because it had been easier to pretend I hadn’t cared what my tormentors and their friends thought. But when the boy I’d put on a pedestal had witnessed it all, I’d started to wonder if maybe I really was all those names I’d been called. I’d begun to question why I hadn’t tried harder to fit in when I’d been younger – maybe doing so would have meant Dallas wouldn’t have looked at me with pity all the time.
Well, he was definitely going to be looking at me with pity now, considering everything I’d said yesterday.
I’d even told him about “the incident.” Maybe not the whole story, but I sure as hell hadn’t missed the shock in his eyes as soon as I’d admitted that I’d been accused of theft.
Although theft really didn’t cover the fact that a million-dollar Stradivarius violin in my possession had gone missing.
The mere thought of what had happened three months earlier had me shoving the memory away.
However I’d gotten here, I didn’t care. If I was lucky, Dallas would stick me to work somewhere I wouldn’t have to interact with him or any of his other staff, and I could just keep my head down and earn enough money to get my parents back in the black and my butt out of Pelican Bay.
The parking area was empty as I pulled in, making me wonder if Dallas even had any other employees. I made a mental note to ask if I needed to park my car somewhere else, since that could be the reason I wasn’t seeing any other cars. Within a few seconds of getting out of the car, the wolf-dog trotted around the building like he had the day before. But this time I didn’t completely panic at the sight of the animal. He still made me nervous, but if I was going to prove to Dallas that I could handle this job, I needed to man up around the wolf…dog…wolf. Damn, I really needed to ask Dallas what exactly the animal was. It most certainly looked like a wolf, but from everything I’d seen on nature programs about the majestic creatures, I knew they couldn’t ever be considered pets. Which had me guessing the animal was at least part dog, because I doubted Dallas would risk endangering people who came to the center by letting a wolf run around unattended.
After letting the wolf-dog sniff my hand, I risked running my fingers over his head. He didn’t thump his tail like a regular dog would, but he did lick my wrist.
Dallas had told me to arrive by eight in the morning, and even though I was early, I still wanted to make a good impression and show my new boss I was taking this job seriously. So I gave the animal a final pat and then went to see if Dallas was in the office, since he hadn’t appeared when his pet had. A glance through the glass portion of the door showed the office was empty, so I followed the wolf-dog who’d wandered back the way he’d come, figuring he’d lead me to Dallas.
I found him face to face with a bear.
And not the kind of bear that you’d find in pretty much every gay club in existence.
No, this bear was covered in a thick layer of fur instead of hair, and its dark eyes were on Dallas, who was standing on the opposite side of the heavy fencing that separated the pair. There was a second fence surrounding the entire pen, so Dallas was actually standing between the two sets of fencing. The bear was sitting on its haunches, its huge paw pressed against the fence as Dallas fed the animal something through the links.
Even though I knew the animal couldn’t get to Dallas, I still felt a sliver of fear for him. Dallas was a big guy, but the bear was just huge. I didn’t know anything about bears, but my gut was telling me it was a grizzly bear.
I didn’t dare move even a muscle as I watched the two of them. The sight was both frightening and beautiful at the same time. Knowing that they were natural-born enemies, yet they’d found this moment of peace between them…
Something tightened in my throat, and for the first time I really thought about where I was.
It was at that moment that Dallas chose to turn around. His eyes met mine, and even with the distance between us, it felt like he was touching me.
He’s not gay, you idiot. Get your damn head out of the clouds.
I sent Dallas an awkward nod and then tore my eyes free and began looking around. After dinner the night before, I’d checked out the website for the wildlife center. I’d told myself it was simply research for my new job, but secretly I’d hoped to find some kind of explanation for how someone like Dallas Kent had ended up running a wildlife sanctuary and rehabilitation center. I’d secretly observed Dallas enough when I’d been a kid to know he’d never seemed overly interested in animals. It had been baseball, baseball, and baseball for the star athlete.
The website had been a disappointment, since it had only consisted of a single page with the center’s contact information and instructions to leave a message on the office’s voicemail. There was also a note to call Dr. Cleary in Pelican Bay in case of an emergency. It was a harsh reminder how difficult it must have made things for Dallas to not be able to talk. He wouldn’t have even been able to return a call to someone.
Funny how none of that had been much of an issue the day before when I’d stopped by to return the jacket and had gotten to taste one small victory when Dallas had put the baby raccoon in with its new family.
Predictably, even thinking of that moment had me remembering how I’d grabbed onto Dallas’s wrist. I needed to be more careful, or Dallas was going to kick my ass for sure. I hadn’t really hidden my sexuality when I’d been a kid – there just hadn’t been anyone to tell. Based on the names I’d been called back then, most people had figured it out, anyway. But that didn’t mean I wanted to be obvious about it, and I had enough sense not to let someone like Dallas catch me ogling him. He may not have ever outwardly attacked me as a kid, but it wasn’t unheard of for straight guys to go off the rails when they thought a gay guy was hitting on them. Something as innocent as a handshake could be interpreted wrong.
Locked in Silence_Pelican Bay [Book 1] Page 6
