I wrap my arm around his shoulder and pull him into me. I kiss the top of his head because it’s a beautiful dream, but that’s all it will ever be. A dream. No one would understand. Not here. And I can’t leave. So for now I decide to lie here with my best friend, with the man who represents home, and for a short time I dream about visiting all those places he talked about together. I dream of a house on a hill, and long nights where my hands get to trail his body uninterrupted, of growing old and dying side by side.
But that’s the problem with dreams. Reality always slams you back down to earth, and you wonder why you ever hoped for anything more than what you have because it’s all a lie. All the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell each other—they don’t do anyone any good.
I sit for far too long on my back patio. The house is so quiet without anyone here. Tammy came back and took all her stuff earlier today while I was at work. She left her key on the bench, which surprised me, because I didn’t know she’d had one cut. This is Red Maine; no one ever locks their doors. It makes me realise that I gave her nothing but false hope letting her move in here with me, and I feel kinda shitty about it. I mean, it’s not like I ever told her I loved her, but I guess she read into whatever I didn’t say and in her head she made us out to be something we weren’t. Along with the key, she left me a note:
North,
Rot in hell.
Tammy
She was pissed, and I don’t blame her, but she had no right to speak to Will like she did. It embarrassed me that someone I’d fucked, someone I let live under my roof had spoken about him that way in earshot, and in a lot of ways it frightened me. Is that how people will look at me if I ever come out?
Come out. Jesus, don’t you have to be gay to come out of the closet? I mean, fuck. I love fucking Will, but I can’t see myself with any other man. In fact, I can’t see myself with anyone else, period. Man or woman. I’m still not sure that makes me gay. It’d be so much fucking easier if I just liked pussy, but no pussy ever made me feel the way Will does.
I get up and pull another beer from the fridge. Twisting the top off, I fling it into the empty sink and realise that I don’t like my house. It’s too big, too quiet, and too lonely. It looks like a fucking showroom. Tam had decorated for me after I’d built it. She’d wanted to talk tables and sofas and all of that shit, and I’d just handed her my credit card and let her loose while I went to the pub. I wasn’t interested in things. I had things. Things are not important. It’s whether a house feels like home that matters. And no place ever felt more like home than Will’s shitty, untidy room above that dingy pub.
I put down the stubby and before I really even know what the hell I’m doing, I’m collecting the keys from the side table and walking out the door. I climb into my truck and fire her up. Now this baby is a thing I can get behind. Toyota Hi Rider Double-Cab—best fifty Gs I ever spent. I pull in behind the pub, where I usually park this late at night so no one will see my truck if they happen to drive past. It’s after one, and like all of the residents in the houses all over town, I should be asleep, but I couldn’t close my eyes now if you paid me to.
He must have heard me drive up because Will meets me at the back door, the same one he disappeared through earlier today after he gave me his little pep talk. He doesn’t say anything, just steps back to let me in, but I grab his face in my hands and say, “I wanna be happy.”
He nods, and I bring my lips down on his and kiss him. We’re in full view of the street. It doesn’t even occur to me that someone might see—all I care about is being with him.
Breaking the kiss, he whispers, “Let’s go make you happy.”
He closes the door with his foot and we wrestle up the hallway, clawing at one another’s clothes until we reach the internal staircase. Will goes first, and I grab his hand as he walks up the stairs. He glances down at me questioningly. There’s a million things I want to say, but I’m too chicken shit.
Will turns and leads me to the door, pushing it opened. I close and lock it the second I’m through. He unbuttons his jeans and kicks them off. His T-shirt follows and he stands naked before me, his cock jutting out proudly from his body. I sink to my knees, buried beneath the weight of my grief, over what I’m not even sure.
“Well, that’s not quite the reaction I’d hoped for,” he mutters. My face crumples. White-hot pain shoots through my chest, and I feel as if I can’t breathe. My throat tightens, tears prick the back of my eyes, and a sob, much more animal than human, escapes me.
“Hey,” Will says, dropping to his knees and enveloping me in his arms. “Shh. It’s okay.”
“What the fuck is wrong with me?” I hiss.
“Nothing.”
“This isn’t nothing, Will. This isn’t normal. I don’t want to be me anymore. I don’t know who the fuck I am. I just wanna be normal.”
“Who’s to say this isn’t normal?” he says quietly.
“This whole fucking town, for one.”
“And who are they to you?”
“Don’t.” I jerk in his arms, but he doesn’t let go.
“Don’t what? Make you question what you really want?” he says. Gone is the soothing calm from his tone. “Let it go, North. Do what you want, and fuck everybody else. Those arseholes can eat my dick. What do you want? When you lie your head on a pillow at night, what’s the last thing you think about?”
“You,” I say. It’s the truth, and if I’m being honest with myself, it’s all I’ve ever wanted. “You’re all I think about. Have been for years.”
He lets out a sigh. “Then do something about it. If I’m what you really want, then take me.”
“Just like that, huh?”
“Just like that.” Will nods. I take his chin between my fingers and lean in. He doesn’t come closer. Instead, he waits for me to press my lips to his. I kiss him, but not with my usual vigour. I kiss him slowly, like we have all the time in the world.
He pulls my shirt over my head with the same patient indolence, and I’m grateful that he doesn’t try to rush it. For maybe the first time in my entire life, I need this to be about a connection, about someone seeing me not just as a good lay, but as a worthwhile human being. No, not someone. Will. I need Will to see me that way.
I push him back on the hardwood floors, shoving at clothes and whatever else is in the way. He runs his hands over my chest and down to the button on my jeans, popping it open and unfastening the zip before sliding them down over my hips. I remove them the rest of the way and toss them aside, shifting into the space between his legs. Will pulls me down on top of him and holds me. My thundering heart does somersaults, and as much as I want to bury myself inside him, as much as I want to take my feelings and shove them as far into him as my cock will go, I can’t. Instead, I collapse against him. I give him the weight of the secrets that burden me every day, and I allow him to hold me together as I come undone.
Blinking tired eyes at the grey sky outside, I roll over and look at the clock. Shit. “Fuck. Get up,” I say, and smash my pillow over North’s head.
“Ow, what the fuck?”
“Get up. We slept in.”
He groans and swats the pillow away so that it falls onto the floor. “Crap.”
“Yeah, my delivery is gonna be here in about three damn minutes, and unless you want this thing out for all to know, you need to get outta here before then.”
“I could just stay in bed,” he says.
I scowl, wishing I didn’t have to open every day of my goddamn life. “Fuck you.”
“Alright, fine. How about I hop in the shower? I doubt very much that your delivery guy will come looking for anyone in there, and then when you’re done, you can join me.”
“Good point.”
“I’m full of those.” He winks.
“Well, no, just one really,” I say, glancing at the wood on display as he tugs the sheet down his hips. And that’s not all he’s tugging. North grabs his cock and slides a fist over the head. I gr
oan, my own dick twitching as I pull on the jeans I’d discarded on my floor last night.
North grins. Rising from the bed, he grabs my crotch and gives a gentle squeeze. We didn’t talk any more last night—we just lay on my floor for a long time, holding one another. After he’d grown silent, I pulled him toward the bed and we’d fucked, but it wasn’t the frenzied clawing at naked flesh it usually was. It wasn’t fuelled by anger or desperation. It was slow and tender, and it was fucking mind-blowing because of it. We’re both freer this morning. I see it in the way he moves, the buoyancy in his step and the light in his eyes. Even when we were kids, he’d never looked like this.
He presses a kiss to my shoulder, and when I reach for his straining erection he pulls out of my grasp. “Go get your delivery, but don’t take too long. I can’t promise I won’t start without you.”
“Arsehole,” I mutter, my gaze hungrily trailing his body as he walks to the bathroom. God, do I want to sink my teeth into that sweet arse.
I hear a banging from downstairs and I shout, “I’m coming.”
To which North chuckles and replies, “Not yet, but he will be if I have anything to say about it.”
“Get in the fucking shower, because if you keep tempting me I’m gonna miss my delivery and it’ll be your fault that the whole town is without beer for the weekend.”
“Does that mean I’d have you all to myself? Because I won’t lie—I’m liking the sound of you missing that delivery more and more.”
I shake my head and pull on a Them Crooked Vultures T-shirt as I walk to the door. The banging comes again from downstairs and I hurry so my dad doesn’t feel like he has to take the delivery in my place. He’d try, but there’s no way he could deal with lifting that many boxes. He gets tired after just one, and I know he was struggling yesterday after the incident with North’s dad. Plus, not having the full use of the right side of his body kind of makes manual labour difficult.
I close my apartment door behind me and head down the stairs to the bar. It’s still dark enough inside that it’s hard to see, but I know this place better than the back of my hand, so I only switch on the neons. The pounding comes again, and I know Doug must be getting pissed what with me keeping him so long.
“Sorry, man,” I say, as I pull back the door, but it isn’t Doug. Five men stand at my door in balaclavas. Fuck. My guess is that they’re here to deliver me something alright, but it ain’t liquor for the bar. I slam the door shut. I don’t get a chance to lock it before someone kicks it in, and because I’m leaning my weight against it, I go sprawling across the floor.
“Look boys, he rolled out the big gay welcome mat,” one of the men says. I attempt to scramble to my feet but find myself pinned by a boot against my spine. Someone kicks my side, and my ribs explode in a burst of pain. I’m winded. I can’t breathe, and the agony is everywhere. I roll to my side, and I’m met with a boot in the gut and another in the head.
“It’s a poofter piñata,” a familiar voice shouts, and they all jeer and laugh. They cheer each other on as they lay into me with steel-capped boots. I don’t even have enough time to catch my breath before another well-placed kick to the gut and another to the balls. They’re not after the safe, or the pub’s takings from the day before. They’re here for me. They’re here to teach me a lesson: that being myself isn’t good enough. Being gay is unacceptable.
And I don’t fight back, because I can’t. I can’t breathe, much less stand up and swing a punch. Fear overwhelms me when I realise that I could die here, but it’s so much worse when I think of North and my dad getting pulled into the fray in an attempt to protect me.
My fears are realised when my dad’s familiar slur becomes a roar throughout the room. “What the fuck?”
Dad staggers towards us, and he swings his useless arm at the man closest to him. A swell of foolish pride moves through me as he gets in one good hit before two more guys descend on him. They all go down in a heap of splintering furniture, fists and grunts.
I find my voice then, and considering I’m straddling a very fine line between awake and unconsciousness, my ribs are on fire, my lungs screaming for air, and my mouth is as dry as the desert even though it’s full of blood, my attacker, the brutal one who laid kick after kick into my broken body hears it—the name I call out. The one I’ve spoken in anger just as much as in pleasure. The one that causes my balls to tighten and that still feels like something beautiful and forbidden on my lips. He knows why I called that name, even if no one else in the room heard it.
“You keep your mouth shut, you little faggot, or next time I come back and kill you both,” the man above me sneers. I roll on my side and cough, spattering the floor and his boots with crimson as I choke on my own blood.
And then his boot meets my face.
I lean against the cool tiles and stare down at my cock jutting out. I sigh and slide my hand over the head, wanting to wait for Will, and also wanting to just get this shit outta the way so I can take my time fucking him when he finally does come back upstairs.
How long do these fucking deliveries take anyway? I’ve managed to wash my whole body twice over already. I’m done starving my dick of attention, so I stroke it. When Will comes back, I’m gonna force him to his knees and shove my dick in his mouth, then I’ll order him to soap up his long fingers and slip them in my arse and massage my prostate while I come down his throat.
A door slams. Will’s apartment door, I think, and I shout so that he can hear me over the stream, “Thank fuck. I was getting lonely in here without you.”
He doesn’t respond, so I open the glass door and poke my head out. “Will?”
Nothing. I rub the water from my eyes and decide that I can’t wait any longer. I know I promised him a hot shower, but we’re gonna need a fucking raincheck. I shut the water off and step from the shower recess, wrapping myself in a towel. I run my hands through slick hair and step out of the bathroom into the apartment.
The sounds of breaking bottles and laughter filter up the stairs and goosebumps break out all over me. There’s a gnawing in the pit of my stomach. I edge my way toward the door and quietly open it a fraction of an inch. I notice Trev’s apartment is wide open, and I race down the stairs faster than I knew my legs could carry me. My size gives me away though, and by the time I reach the bottom of the stairs, four men in balaclavas run out the exit where the front door used to be. The other is bent over Will, kicking the shit outta him.
I lunge forward, and his head snaps up. He’s transfixed on me. I’m still only wearing my towel, and all I can see of him are his eyes. Bile rises in my gut. My chest squeezes and the air is stolen from my lungs as if I were the one who’d been at the mercy of his boots. And I have been on many occasions. Just not this one.
I might not have been the one to bear the brunt of them now, but I was the cause. Those cold blue eyes aren’t alight with laughter or merriment, but they are smug, satisfied. He spits on Will, and the message hammers home clear: disappointment. Worthless. Shameful.
I make a move towards him, towards Will, and he feints forward. In the distance I hear sirens, and one of the others sticks his head in the door and shouts, “Let’s go. Someone called the cops.”
He stares, his eyes widen as he glances between the two of us, and then he flees. They both tear away into the early morning while I stand stock-still. My gaze darts quickly around the room while I take in the shock of what just happened here, and when it slides over Will’s inert body covered head to hip in blood, my feet move like lead as I shift toward him. A part of me doesn’t want to get closer. A part of me is afraid that he isn’t going to wake up, and that I wasn’t here … I wasn’t here to protect him. I crouch down beside his body and lean over. Bile rises in my throat when I see how much blood decorates the floor around him, and when I grasp his shoulder and roll him over, time comes to a complete standstill.
My breath comes in short, hard pants as I press a trembling hand to his cheek, slick with blood. I gently tap h
is face. “Will, come on, wake up. Will. Wake up.” He coughs. Blood sprays from his mouth. “Jesus Christ, what did they do to you?”
“Dad?” Will opens his left eye—the other is completely swollen shut—and blinks up at me in horror.
Shit. It didn’t even occur to me to look for Trev—my only concerns were Will and the arsehole that beat him.
The sound of broken glass comes from behind the bar, along with several grunts. “I’m here.”
“You okay, Trev?” I sing out.
He laughs and drags himself into view, sagging back against the corner of the bar as he takes several ragged breaths. He’s covered in blood, and several tiny shards of glass decorate his skin like shiny, razor-sharp spines. “Can’t take a hit to the head like I used to, and I got a little bit of glass in me, but I reckon the pool of alcohol I was lying in would have gone a long way to disinfecting the wounds, so I’m fucking golden.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“He’s not here.” Will coughs. “Don’t you know … God hates gays?” He attempts to laugh at his own joke, but only winds up gasping in pain. “Get out of here.”
“What?” I say. “No. I’m not leaving you.”
“Cops are on their way.” Will weakly squeezes my hand. “Go before they know you were here.”
“I’m gonna call an ambulance.”
“Put some fucking clothes on. I don’t need the paramedics …” he takes a ragged breath, “keeling over with shock when they should be putting me on a gurney.”
“You stay here, you got it?” I kiss his hand and lay it down gently. “You keep talking to your dad. No fucking dying while I’m gone.”
“Drama queen.” Will laughs. It’s a sorry sight with his face all busted up and his teeth covered in blood.
There’s glass everywhere—something I hadn’t noticed when I ran through here a few seconds earlier—and my feet are a little torn up, but I ain’t gonna cry about it. I spare a glance at Trev. He’s a little rough around the edges, removing small shards of glass from his skin, but he glances up as I pass, and he nods in response to my silent plea. I’m confident he’ll sing out if Will worsens and I need to haul arse downstairs.
Finding North Page 14
