by Clare London
“Connor, I don’t want to stay any longer. I can’t explain it well, but I feel that if I don’t go now…” He didn’t dare finish the sentence. “Look—come with me, and we can find out some more about you, perhaps. We can help you remember, if that’s what you want. Help you find peace and refuge in yourself, wherever you might be. You can be your real self with me, wherever we go! Wherever we stay.”
“My real self?”
Scot swallowed hard. “That’s a given.”
It’s what I want.
Connor shook his head. “You can’t leave.”
Scot felt desperate, miserable anger growing. His voice increased in volume. “You said you were here of your own choice. Well, so am I! And I choose to leave. If you can’t see your way to something beyond your own personal sexual empire, well that’s your loss, okay? I want to travel, and find out stuff, and do all the things that have been denied me all these years. I want to control my own life! And I want you too. Christ, Connor, I want you so bad that my whole body aches when you’re around. I want to find out everything about you—I want to take the adventures with you. I want to do it all with you!”
He touched him, then. He couldn’t resist any more. He stepped forward and grasped Connor’s arm where it hung by his side. A shock of sensation coursed through him like electricity; pain and joy of astonishing intensity flared through his mind like fireworks.
“I’ve never met a man like you, Connor. I’ve never wanted someone as much as I want you. Never wanted to share it all in this way, never thought I’d find someone I wanted to take inside me. And not just in bed!”
He saw the sudden flame in Connor’s eyes and knew his words were being listened to. But there was no positive response.
Connor’s voice was low, and carried a shiver that was so much more than seduction. “Stay with me, Scot.”
“I can’t.”
“Sleep with me. Be with me. You mustn’t leave, Scot—”
“No.” Scot shook his head, his expression twisting toward pure agony. “You just don’t understand, do you? I will leave, but you—you, Connor Maxwell—it looks like you never can! And that bothers me so very much more.” His hand fell back from Connor’s arm.
“Scot?” Connor’s voice was almost puzzled. “Stay with me, Scot.” It was like a broken record.
But Scot backed away, knowing his expression showed his feelings better than words could ever do—ones of increasing desolation and shock. He grabbed at the car door handle like a drowning man reaching for driftwood. He knew he must look like someone who’d just lost a thousand lotteries, all rolled into one. And who had personally trashed the ticket. “I can’t, Connor. So much out there I want to share with you, experience with you, but it can’t be. Holy God….”
The sound from his throat was just a sob. He wrenched open the door and flung himself in.
Connor didn’t move. “Nothing will ever be this good again, Scot!” he suddenly cried. “In all of your life! Not without me—not apart. You know that’s true!”
Like fuck I do! “Like fuck I do!” Scot shouted out of the window that was stuck permanently half-open. He turned the key and the engine shuddered and spat. He turned it again, furious with the delay, and the ignition caught. He ground it into gear and spun the wheel viciously, intending to drive it right around and out of the yard at speed.
The cloud of dust that followed his pathetic gesture wasn’t large enough to obscure the two men watching him go. He saw them through the windscreen as he turned the car; he saw them in the rear mirror as he drove away, growing steadily smaller. He saw Connor wherever he looked.
He thought he probably always would.
***
Oliver moved to stand beside Connor. They stared together at the retreating wheels of the car. When they spoke, it was in a strange half-conversation. They understood too well each other’s thoughts.
“Oliver?”
Oliver shook his head, impatiently. “Yes. I know. I feel it, too. I feel you.”
“Can it really be?”
“That you want to leave with him? I’m sure it’s true. Whether you understand what that will mean, is another thing.”
Connor’s gaze was fixed on the road away from the motel. “I understand.”
Oliver tapped his foot. “Everything will change, Connor. You will change. The pain will come back.” Oliver looked askance at him. “May come back.”
Connor nodded. “You, though…”
“For God’s sake! I’ll be fine,” Oliver sighed. “Of course.”
“And the others?”
“They’ll still have me. We are enough, together. And there’ll be others to join us, now and then. Like Jerry Harrison has.”
“I’m sorry.” Connor’s voice was so soft it could hardly be heard.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about, dammit!” Oliver calmed his voice, and smiled his cute, rueful smile. He ran one hand through his short blond locks whilst the other strayed absent-mindedly to his crotch. Jerry was stirring for the morning: he could feel the man’s sleepy desire as he woke. He could feel it very deeply, down between his thighs. And so would Vincent…
The ache needed easing. He stretched a little, unconsciously preening himself. “It’s fate, Maxwell. A true one will find another. Right? Far be it from me to stand in its way. Just…” He paused, perhaps trying to find the right words of farewell. “You’ll have to grow up fast. Just do it the best you can, okay?”
“I will. I want to.”
Connor touched his arm, and Oliver shivered. He’d miss it sorely. The attention from that man…
“What about Scot’s memories of the motel?” Connor asked.
Oliver shrugged. “Scot is a strong man, but he’ll probably only remember what you want him to. What you both want him to. His awareness will diminish, the further he is from here. Though you…? I don’t know about you, Connor. You may remember what you’ve forgotten, you may not. You have always been different, and you’ve been well protected here. I cannot anticipate you as well as I do the others. But it will be your choice. And that’s what you both want, right?”
Slowly, Connor nodded. He looked a little amazed. “How far will he be by now? The car—”
“Fucking car!” Oliver grinned, shrugging with mock despair. “Heap of junk isn’t likely to make it to the next track without stalling. He’ll be stuck there for an hour or more, I reckon, until the engine cools down again. Anyone walking out from here could be there in twenty minutes.”
His eyes met Connor’s, dark and pained and excited. “No, it’s going to be a long and slow journey before precious Scot Salvatore gets back out on the highway.”
Epilogue
The temperature was climbing higher than ever, and inside the car the summer heat was almost intolerable. The air conditioning wheezed and coughed, but provided very little air at all. A haze of hot air blew back from the engine periodically, stifling the driver and passenger. It shuddered over the rough track, spitting venom out of the exhaust. It threatened every fifteen minutes to stop and leave them wherever it damned well chose. It wasn’t hard to think of it as a living, malevolent being.
“There’s nowhere for miles,” muttered Scot, hunched up behind the wheel. He shifted on the uncomfortable car seat, his vest and shorts sticking to the vinyl covers, and slung a crumpled, half-torn map toward his passenger. “We’re going to have to stop soon, I’m exhausted. This track is like driving through lumpy treacle. My head feels like a lead weight and I can’t focus properly in this glare.”
“Keep going a little longer,” came Connor’s soft reply. He was dressed in a long sleeved shirt, one arm clutched to his side as if it hurt him sometimes to move it, but, surprisingly, he looked cooler than Scot. “We’ve had a really lucky run over the last couple of days, and I reckon we can make Vegas by tomorrow if we keep up. There’ll be cheap motels on the outskirts of town.”
Scot was still fractious. “Where did you say we had to take that turning? Have
we missed it already?”
“No.” Connor laughed. “It’s up ahead, trust me. Half a mile, then look for a track to the right. You know your left from your right, Scot Salvatore?”
Scot looked swiftly across. And grinned despite his hot, tired irritation. As always, the sight of Connor beside him brought a heady mixture of both calm and excitement. Scot thanked his lucky stars on an hourly basis that he was traveling at last with Connor; that his escape was with the very man he wanted to spend every minute with. That he adored beyond reason. That he couldn’t wait to get into a room in the city, and tumble into bed with. They’d lie in their underwear, sharing a beer and watching bright, flickering neon lights through the window. Listening to the noise and calls on the street, counting whatever change they had left in their pockets between them, and marking possible jobs in the local paper. Until one or other of them, or both, would get tired of the delay, and reach a hungry hand into that very underwear. Then they’d cling together on that bed, grabbing and gasping, and fucking without fear of—
What?
Real life?
Sometimes Scot forgot exactly what they were escaping from. It was an odd feeling. But then he’d touch Connor, and kiss him, and maybe touch the teasing bulge in his pants, and then the feelings would ease.
This journey…
He’d started it with Jerry. Another man beside him in the car—another dark head and slim body. In fact, his and Connor’s progress now had strange echoes from the original journey, when he and Jerry had arrived at the motel.
Connor rarely mentioned that time, as if he thought Scot had forgotten all about it, and how Jerry had made Maxwell’s his destination, rather than part of the journey. Connor never spoke about his scar either, or the fact he didn’t communicate with Scot’s mind now. He looked tired of traveling, and not as sure of himself as before.
But none of that mattered. Scot could wait to bring everything from the past out of the man he loved, would spend all their time now building something new. The memories were just that—times gone. They slipped away like ice through his fingers in this impossibly hot weather, and the discomfort they brought was always assuaged when he looked at his companion.
Whatever the past, Scot felt a sense of belonging and comfort when he was with Connor. When they seemed to think the same things at the same time; when he felt closer to him than anyone he’d ever known. When he felt happier than he’d ever imagined he could be.
Nothing has ever been this right. Nothing ever will be.
“We’re not lost, then?” He grinned.
“No way!” Connor grinned in reply, trust and excited anticipation in his eyes. “No way are we lost. Just take a right, Scot. We’re just about there!”
About Clare London
Clare London took her pen name from the city where she lives, loves, and writes. A lone, brave female in a frenetic, testosterone-fuelled family home, she juggles her writing with her other day job as an accountant.
She’s written in many genres and across many settings, with award-winning novels and short stories published both online and in print. She says she likes variety in her writing while friends say she’s just fickle, but as long as both theories spawn good fiction, she’s happy. Most of her work features male/male romance and drama with a healthy serving of physical passion, as she enjoys both reading and writing about strong, sympathetic, and sexy characters.
Clare currently has several novels sulking at that tricky chapter three stage and plenty of other projects in mind... she just has to find out where she left them in that frenetic, testosterone-fuelled family home.
Clare loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her here:
Website: http://www.clarelondon.com
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Also from Clare London
For an up to date list of all books please visit http://www.clarelondon.com.
Here is a selection of her novels:
