Fortitude Smashed

by Taylor Brooke

  The footsteps that hit the concrete outside the Jeep weren’t as loud as Shannon’s heartbeat. Neither was Karman’s delicate two-martini laugh, nor Deputy Barrow’s booming impersonation of the bartender.

  Their muffled voices caused Shannon to hold his breath. Aiden tucked his head below the window and hid in Shannon’s shoulder.

  A truck beeped, unlocking. Two doors opened. Two doors closed.

  Shannon tried to take another breath, a longer one, but it stuttered from him when Aiden’s nose tapped Shannon’s forehead. His knees slid toward the back of the seat and pressed their torsos together.

  “Maybe you’re right, maybe it was a mistake,” Aiden’s mouth rounded each syllable. His thin lips brushed Shannon’s temple.

  Barrow’s truck coughed to life and drove away, swallowed by the fourth floor of the parking structure, down the third, the second, until the sound faded into the night. Their absence left an eerie quiet. Aiden peeled his hand away, allowing Shannon to suck in a full breath.

  Silence filled the spaces between his body and Aiden, his Rose Road, looming over him. He tried to sit up, but a wide hand on his chest held him in place. Aiden’s fingers were long and skeletal. Fairytale hands. The kind a villain had.

  “You really think our clocks malfunctioned?” Aiden licked his lips. Shannon pretended not to notice. “You really think we’re not cut from the same cloth, Detective?”

  “I don’t think it matters to you what I think.”

  He leaned, sturdy and warm against Shannon’s chest. Aiden’s elbows rested on Shannon’s shoulders. Aiden’s breath was a ghost haunting the top of his cheeks, brushing the bridge of his nose, drifting down to tickle his mouth.

  “It matters,” Aiden said. Shannon opened his mouth to disagree. Aiden kissed him. Shannon’s stomach leapt, his blood rushed fast and his head spun. He swallowed Aiden’s gasp, and the kiss escalated from the tentative brush of lips, to a face-gripping, open-mouthed, breathy mess that sent Shannon flying out of himself. Aiden’s hips flexed; his spidery fingers tangled in Shannon’s hair.

  Shannon’s resistance crumbled. He reached for Aiden as he would reach for a shot of whiskey or a too-sharp knife or a venomous snake, but he reached all the same. His hands felt good gripping Aiden’s waist beneath his shirt and running along the tattoo splayed across Aiden’s rib cage. Shannon’s back arched. One quivering breath, then another, rushed from Aiden as if he’d been punched. His breath drifted across Shannon’s mouth and then his throat and then—

  It ended.

  As quickly as Aiden had hopped into the passenger seat, slid into his lap, and locked their lips together, as quickly as he was there, in Shannon’s gravity, circling him like a predator—

  He stopped.

  Aiden’s eyes weren’t as dark brown as Shannon had thought; they were flecked with slivers of amber, a little bit like stars, a little bit like candlelight. He blinked, villain hands resting on Shannon’s throat, thumbs making paths on his jaw.

  Shannon’s tongue was useless now that it wasn’t between Aiden’s lips. It kept still through a stampede of fragmented thoughts. Aiden’s pale face was even paler, shadowed by the car that was shadowed by the night. Excitement battled with fear, and he didn’t know if it was Aiden or the enormity of the situation that caused him to tremble.

  The Clock wasn’t wrong. The Clock wasn’t wrong. The. Clock. Wasn’t. Wrong.

  Aiden’s pupils dilated. His jaw slackened, and a blotched blush started on the top of his high cheek bones and ended below his Adam’s apple. Shannon studied Aiden’s expression, bewilderment mingling with disbelief. He felt him shift; the cold was more present when Aiden swung off Shannon’s lap and closed the driver’s side door behind him.

  The fluttering in Shannon’s stomach refused to stop. Adrenaline seeped to the top of his skin and soaked him in a feeling that reminded him of fear, but wasn’t as tangible. This must be how it felt to be surveyed from above—when an animal ran for its life with a hunter’s scope on its hide. He looked right, toward the only vehicle left—a sleek black motorcycle with thick tires, a leather jacket draped over its seat, and a helmet hanging from a handlebar.

  Aiden shrugged on the jacket, flicked away a half-smoked cigarette, and straddled the bike much like he’d been straddling Shannon.

  The Clock wasn’t wrong.

  Shannon closed his eyes. Aiden’s bike roared past the still-dark Jeep, careened down the parking structure, and disappeared.

  4

  A flashing line bounced in the search box on Aiden’s computer screen. He stared, fingers hovering above the keyboard. One letter at a time, he typed Detective Wurther. Enter. The screen loaded and displayed an array of detectives that weren’t the Detective. He clicked on the search bar and added Laguna Beach. Enter. Wurther’s face appeared, and below it, listed for all to see, was link after link about the Shannon Wurther, youngest detective in Southern California.

  A cigarette nursed between his lips, Aiden rolled his eyes. Shannon. It suited him. Aiden mentally sounded it out before he tested it in his mouth.

  “Shannon,” he said.

  One click. Two clicks. An article popped open: “Shannon Wurther—Youth & Success”

  “This guy’s perfect!” he yelled, startling a seagull from its perch on his balcony wall.

  Mercy, a long-haired white cat with a flat face and beady eyes, made a disgruntled noise from the other side of the open sliding door.

  “Graduated from a private high school with a 3.9 GPA, has a perfect driving record.” Aiden laughed. “Who the fuck has a perfect driving record?”

  He moved on to the next article. “Of course. Police work runs in the family. Go figure, Mercy.”

  Mercy yawned.

  “Does he do anything wrong? Anything? One thing! That’s all I’m asking for…” Aiden narrowed his eyes. “Voted Best Study Partner by peers at San Diego State, where he received his degree in criminal law… Okay…” He clicked another link and almost tossed his laptop over the balcony. The same details were repeated. Shannon had a spotless track record. He was known only for his good nature and success as a dedicated police officer. If Google couldn’t dig up any demons, Shannon probably didn’t have any.

  Aiden clicked on a link to Shannon’s Facebook profile and rolled his eyes.

  He analyzed Shannon’s profile picture, all sun-kissed skin and priceless smile. He looked like a guy who shopped at skate shops but didn’t skate, wore expensive swim trunks, and reeked of overpriced cologne. “What a tool,” Aiden hissed.

  “Wanna go to the beach, Mercy? I think I might actually throw up if I keep doing this to myself.” Aiden was an expert at self-inflicted misery, and Internet-stalking his Rose Road definitely counted as torture.

  The cat chirped, rolled on her back, and flicked her tail against the carpet.

  It was a Thursday, the Thursday after last Thursday, October ninth. And this Thursday Aiden was at a complete loss, because last Thursday, October second, he’d kissed a man who shouldn’t have kissed him back. But as fate would have it, Shannon had kissed him back. And it hadn’t just been a kiss, no. It couldn’t have been that simple—not a chaste taste, or a gentle test. Aiden lit a fire, and Shannon doused it with gasoline. He sensed an echo of Shannon’s hands beneath his shirt whenever he thought about it.

  “C’mon, Mercy.” Aiden slipped a pale pink harness around her front legs. “Let’s go.”

  He tried not to think about it and was unsuccessful. In the time it took to step out of his apartment, walk down the cracked cement stairs, and hit the sidewalk, Aiden had imagined Shannon’s mouth in eight different ways, from its shape when Shannon’s lips tightened to the way it felt pressed against his own. He imagined Shannon’s lips gently parted and reddened, his bottom lip shaking around a gasp, his mouth smashed into a snarl or aggressively prying Aiden’s lips apart. He imagined the shock last—Shan
non’s uninhibited surprise after their kiss—open, bitten, and unequivocally beautiful. Aiden thought about all eight different ways Shannon’s mouth looked a total of three times before he and Mercy made it to the sand.

  “Here’s good, yeah?” Aiden glanced over the top of his sunglasses, and Mercy yawned up at him. She flopped in the sand and stretched her front legs out as far as they would go. “Yeah, I thought so.”

  October in Southern California meant beaches sweltering with leftover summer heat, but not as crowded as true summer days. Some tourists still rushed to the water, wading in the semi-warm Pacific, but most lay on towels and watched from afar. Living in a shitty apartment thirty feet from the sand had its perks: Aiden never needed a towel and he could bring his own food without a cooler. Today’s lunch was a peanut butter and apricot jam sandwich, accompanied by a bag of chips and a beer. The beer wasn’t usually part of his pre-dinner meals, but the thought of Shannon Wurther’s mouth had convinced him it should be.

  A couple kids trotted by, giving the normal pause-and-point to the leashed cat that lounged next to him, and then skittered off when they realized who the cat belonged to. In a leather jacket, no shirt, ripped jeans, he wasn’t the friendliest sight, but Aiden flashed a smile nonetheless. Those kids wouldn’t have run from Detective Shannon Wurther. No, they would’ve walked right up to him—a gleaming, unsullied example of humankind in its prime.

  Aiden decided that he hated Shannon.

  “Dreary skies make for dreary days.” A man with greasy clumps of string for hair and a worn, weather-beaten face peered at Aiden. He took a seat beside Mercy, paying no mind to Aiden’s privacy. His beanie was torn, his clothes were unwashed, and he had long, splintered fingernails. Grime covered his knuckles, and his shoes carried the history of all the places he’d been.

  “Makes for sunburns, too,” Aiden said.

  The man tilted his head. He seemed bird-like and hollow, a man who’d been to war with himself for a lot longer than Aiden had. “It’s not every day you see somebody walkin’ a cat.”

  “Today isn’t every day.”

  “How’s that sandwich?”

  Aiden shrugged. He held his arm out and offered it. Only half was left, but he figured it was better than nothing. “Generic. You hungry?”

  The man took it without question. Aiden examined the man’s fingerless gloves, covered in sand and dust from his travels. The homeless fellow examined Aiden as well; his gaze lingered on his bare thumbnail. Slanted eyes opened wide, deepening the shallow valleys and dry crevices along his forehead. “Looks like you’re on your path already. You’re young, too young to have to fight with fate.”

  “Who says I’m fighting?” Aiden’s top lip curled in an exaggerated scoff.

  Breathless, raspy laughter sputtered from the man and ended in a coughing fit. He hacked into his palm. A creaky, ancient thing he was, alone and forgotten on a beautiful beach with the world etched in cracked skin. “Boy, you have fighter written all over you! Danger, danger, another wild one born to eat the heart of the world.”

  Wild one. Aiden smirked. He was far from wild. Born to a mother who wasn’t ready for motherhood, given to another mother who was, and raised by two parents in a one-story house with a brother who was better, in a town five miles inland. Nightly homework sessions at Starbucks defined his early teenaged years, marking fourteen and fifteen as the time before. When he was sixteen, fate transformed the after, and continued transforming it as sixteen turned to seventeen, and seventeen turned to eighteen, and every day after.

  After, Aiden thought, was what people mistook for wild. He wasn’t wild, because that would make him brave. He was profoundly reckless. There was a difference.

  Still chomping, the man said, “You know the Clock isn’t always a knife in the back, but it isn’t always wonderful, either. Some advice for you, wild boy, let what comes, come, and let what goes, go, you understand?”

  Stagnancy made a home in this man. It filled the places that were empty with an even-greater emptiness. He waved his hand in Aiden’s direction and stared, bulged eyes crusted around the edges. He must have spent his life seeing things, but the way he looked at Aiden was unnerving, as though he’d never seen a thing like him.

  Aiden was terrified of being that empty. “Did you let what goes go?”

  He gave an enthusiastic nod whilst shoving the rest of the peanut butter and apricot sandwich into his mouth.

  “And you don’t regret it?”

  Empty Man narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “What do you think, wild boy?”

  Aiden thought the heart of the world, like fate, was buried in the sea and, despite his hunger, he would never find it. He thought he might be hungrier for Shannon’s mouth, anyway. He tossed the unopened bag of chips in Empty Man’s lap and stood, scooping Mercy up in one arm and holding his beer in the other. “You can have those,” he said. “Nice talk.”

  Empty Man didn’t say anything else, despite his question going unanswered.

  Aiden climbed the wooden stairs to a landing where a bench and two trashcans overlooked the beach. He finished his beer and glanced at Empty Man sitting in the sand alone, munching on potato chips, and staring at the ocean. Maybe Empty Man found the heart of the world, maybe he’d been the one to chew it up, and maybe he’d choked on it, too.

  Aiden didn’t believe in fate. There was no reason to be hungry for it.

  Mercy meowed. Aiden tossed his bottle into the green trashcan.

  He couldn’t help believing in Shannon, though, even if he had decided to hate him.

  5

  Shannon raised his fist. The skin stretched across his knuckles paled. He hesitated. The door two inches away was white, with a plain doorknob and a peephole that laughed at his lack of confidence. In his other hand, Shannon clutched a cardboard drink holder stuffed with two large coffee cups. His arm dropped. He leaned forward so the apartment door was cool on his forehead and cursed.

  Maybe he’s not home. He tugged at the long sleeve of his shirt. Yeah, he probably isn’t even here to answer the door. Shannon knocked. Once, twice, and on the third knock, the door swung open.

  Of course he was home.

  The handle of a toothbrush was pinched between Aiden’s lips. He quirked a brow and his mouth spread into a peculiar smile with foam bubbling around the edges.

  “What the fuck are you doin’ here?” Aiden slurred. His bare torso highlighted the massive black-flamed phoenix that covered his side. Unbuttoned jeans hung low on his hips, exposing the blue line of boxer briefs beneath. He left the door ajar and walked away, disappearing inside the shoreside apartment.

  Shannon stepped in and shut the door. The first things his eyes had fallen upon were the arc of Aiden’s hips, his naked chest, the delicate way his collarbones cast shadows along his shoulders. Now it was his back—the curve of his spine, connecting a long torso to a narrow waist—disappearing around the corner and down the hall.

  Aiden Maar’s apartment was clean, but not uncomfortably so. The layout was long and rectangular, with an open kitchen to the left and a hallway past the living room to the right. Shannon stood behind a black leather couch, and looked at the wall, which was decorated with framed paintings, evenly spaced photograph collages, and shadow-boxed sculptures.

  “Where’s your warrant, Detective?” Aiden stood in front of the sliding glass door that led to a miniscule, almost-ocean-facing balcony. He hadn’t put a shirt on. Shannon pretended not to notice. “You can’t just come barging in here without one, you know.”

  “It’s my day off.” Shannon cleared his throat. “I thought I should stop by.”

  Hooded amber eyes watched Shannon carefully. Aiden was a shark, circling and calculating; his expression was too calm to be dismissed. He tilted his head and jutted his chin toward the cups in Shannon’s hand. “You brought me coffee?” There was an edge to his voice, a playful teasing that
coaxed heat to pool in Shannon’s belly and made him want to leave. Aiden’s nostrils flared. One of his brows arched. “What happened to not even a little?”

  You happened. And it was the truth. He’d been sure his Camellia Clock had malfunctioned. He’d convinced himself that there was something they could do, a way to fix what was broken. But that wasn’t the case, and Aiden Maar had been the one to sway Shannon’s unshakable opinion. He’d been the one to change it all—a set of dark clouds on Shannon’s horizon, a thunderstorm he wanted to play in. Shannon wasn’t used to curiosity.

  Aiden stepped forward. Shannon stepped back. It was habit.

  The pink of Aiden’s palms flashed. He offered a crooked smile and sighed. “I won’t bite. Is that for me, or what?”

  “Yeah, yes. Yes, it is. Sorry, here.” Shannon handed Aiden one of the cups and averted his eyes.

  “Caramel?” Aiden licked his lips, brow furrowed. He tried to cover his grimace with a smile and chuckled.

  Shannon bristled. He rubbed the back of his neck and allowed Aiden to take the cup holder and toss it in the trashcan in the kitchen. “I didn’t know what you like,” he said. The nervous energy in the room began to relax. Blood rushed back into his hands as he uncurled his fists. “Not a fan of sweet coffee?”

  “Hazelnut,” Aiden said. One shoulder rolled. “You?”

  “Black. Three sugars.”

  Waves crashed on the beach a few yards away. Two screeching seagulls perched on the chipped balcony. He glanced over his shoulder and shooed them with a wave of his arm.

  “I’m gonna let Mercy eat you!” Aiden scowled. The birds didn’t pay him any mind. “They always fly up here and mess up my plants,” Aiden mumbled as though he was talking to an old friend. He kept his narrowed eyes fixed on the seagulls.

  Shannon kept his eyes fixed on Aiden. “Who’s Mercy?”

  A grin lit Aiden’s face. He held up his index finger, signaling Shannon to wait.

  “Mercy! Hey, fatass, come out here…” Aiden’s feet were silent against the beige carpet. Shannon took shy steps to the edge of the wall where the hallway started and looked down it. Aiden’s voice sounded from the bedroom. “There you are! Come here.”