by Elle Keaton
“Yeah.” He pushed his empty glass across the bar. “Make it a double.”
The bartender smirked, grabbed the bottle off the back bar, and poured a hefty couple of fingers into Sacha’s glass. “That what you need?” Light-blue eyes lingered on Sacha for a beat longer than necessary, sending a delicious shiver down his spine.
“It’s a start.”
“Long day?”
“Day, week, last couple of years, yeah.” Sacha downed most of the contents of the glass in a single gulp this time. The burn felt good going down his throat. He was still alive, still had choices. He hadn’t left his place with the intention of getting drunk, and he wasn’t, really, but the liquor did make his tongue looser than normal.
The bartender wandered off toward the other end of the bar. Sacha watched him walk away, enjoying the confident swagger… and the view of his ass as well. He was probably in his late twenties or early thirties, dark hair clipped close to his skull. Not something Sacha normally liked, but it worked for this guy, accentuating his sharp cheekbones and deep-set eyes.
Sacha stared into space, sipping his drink and listening to the pop-country-whatever music playing in the background, his attention again caught by the couples dancing fearlessly together. Soon enough the bartender was back in his line of vision.
“I’m Derek.” He leaned against the wooden bartop. His tattoos were colorful and intricate, swirling up his arms before disappearing underneath the tight sleeves of his shirt.
“Sacha.”
“I’m off in an hour.” Derek waggled his eyebrows and winked.
An hour was almost too long. An hour gave Sacha time to reminisce, nearly drowning his desire. An hour gave him time to replay lessons taught to him as a youth. Brutal teachings about what it meant to be a man and what it meant to be slaughtered because of who a person slept with or loved. He hunched closer to the bar, allowing the alcohol he’d consumed to subdue, for now, most of those memories. Only anticipation of another man’s skin and hard body against his own kept him there.
A glittering liquor bottle appeared in his line of sight, and Derek raised his eyebrows in question. “One for the road?”
Sacha tipped his glass slightly. “One more. Thanks.”
Everything was easier in the dark. Easier to pretend he was someone else, someone who was out, comfortable with his sexuality. Easier to let himself grab Derek’s ass and pull his hips closer so their erections brushed against each other.
Derek was close to his own height, which turned him on, and not shy about what he was hungry for. Their mouths came together in a bruising kiss; they’d hardly gotten Derek’s front door shut behind them before he pushed Sacha against the entryway wall and rubbed against him, hot hands groping under his T-shirt and skimming his chest and abs. Soon enough they were both naked and making their way to Derek’s bedroom, where a king-sized bed waited.
Long after Derek faded off to sleep, murmuring something along the lines of “S’okay if you stay, man, s’late,” Sacha lay in the dark thinking about his life. About how he would like to wake up next to someone he cared about. It wasn’t going to be a hot bartender, because he couldn’t stay in Kansas City. Any change he forced onto his life would not happen in the city he had tentatively called home for a decade. Rolling over, Sacha felt around on the floor for his jeans and T-shirt and dragged them on over his tired body. He found his shoes in the living room, looked around to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind, and quietly let himself out the front door.
The next morning dawned painfully bright, the sun shining cheerfully through his bedroom windows. Sacha squeezed his eyes shut against the glare before dragging a pillow over his face. Forgetting to draw his curtains was a rookie move. The bedsheets were tangled around his waist; pushing them further away so he could sit up, he swung his legs out of bed. The mattress shifted under his weight. His bad knee twinged when he stood, reminding him, again, how old he felt. How old he was.
His mind was made up. He was retiring. Taking the first steps toward change. Shuffling over to his closet, he searched for the perfect outfit to hand in his resignation.
“I can’t change your mind?” The question was half-hearted. Sacha and Ted Tracy had a tumultuous relationship at best, and it hadn’t been improved by Sacha’s inability to keep a partner. Sacha’s old friend and boss Johnny Vallez had retired and moved to Miami while Sacha was on loan to the FBI. Johnny would have tried harder to change Sacha’s mind.
“Nope.” His lips made a popping sound. He didn’t owe Tracy any explanation. Tossing his badge and service weapon on the desk gave him a sharp stab of regret. But that was for the past, not his future. Sacha was tired of regrets.
Tracy leaned back, resting his clasped hands across his belly. “Well, it’s tough to see you go. Good men are hard to find.”
What a complete douche. Mindful of listening ears out in the bullpen, Sacha managed to keep his mouth shut. Instead, he smiled. From Tracy’s reaction, his attempt must have looked more like a grimace. That was that. Sacha quickly emptied his desk into a small cardboard box and took the elevator to the lobby, walking out of the building into the Kansas City morning sunshine.
Three
Sacha: Mid-June, Skagit
Minute particles of plaster dust poured down: a shower, a rainstorm. Sacha lay where he’d fallen, individual motes spilling from the hole in the ceiling, first quickly and then more sedately, before floating down to where he lay, covering him like snow. Or a shroud. Fucking ladders.
Curiosity overcoming the pain radiating from his hip and lower back, Sacha carefully rolled over. Groaning, he pulled himself up to hands and knees and then stood. Brushing at the dust on his clothing, he gingerly made his way back up the ladder, his body complaining each step of the way. There was a jumbo-size container of pain reliever in his future if he had any plans to sleep tonight… or move in the morning. His nearly-forty-year-old body was not meant for this.
When he regained the topmost step of the ladder, he braced himself and stretched as high as he could before sticking his hand into the dark opening above his head. His fingertips barely brushed the ceiling, but sure enough, he felt the cold answer of metal against them. Yes. There was a tin ceiling hidden behind the 1970s plaster cover job. Holy fuck. Maybe, just maybe, this wouldn’t turn out to be the worst decision he’d ever made.
The worst decision he had recently made was choosing to camp out in his newly purchased property instead of finding somewhere decent to stay. A place with amenities, like a shower and a kitchen. A person could only warm so much on a hot plate, and a hand-washing sink didn’t replace a shower. A commercial building built more than a hundred years ago did not have such niceties.
Since regardless of what his bank balance looked like, Sacha chose to live like he was down to his last penny, he’d tossed a sleeping bag and air mattress down, calling it good. The box the air mattress had arrived in displayed a well-rested blonde woman in a variety of positions on the mattress, but Sacha was not well rested. Each morning he’d woken miserable and aching on top of a flat plastic sack instead of a bed. A week in, he was ready to surrender.
Staying in the vacant building was a matter of pride as much as money. If his battered body could get up every day… He really didn’t know what he thought he was proving. That he was a stubborn bastard, he supposed. But he’d been a bastard all his life; it wasn’t going to change anytime soon.
The building was meant to be an investment. It was an investment. He was going to restore it, put it back on the market, and buy another one. Buyers were into the retro look, and Skagit had a lot of old buildings waiting to be brought back to life. The century-old Warrick Building had drawn him from the first. Located in the close-to-being-gentrified-but-not-quite business neighborhood north of downtown Skagit, the building screamed potential.
He hoped to restore it to its original glory as closely as possible. Fixtures and everything. Never mind that he had never done much of this kind of work before,
or ever. That was what the internet was for, right? There was no doubt in his mind that the structure harbored secrets—at some point a gorgeous granite exterior had been masked behind a plaster-and-wood façade to make it appear modern. The lure of the building’s hidden history had brought him this far. The tin ceiling was icing on the cake.
Today he’d woken after no more than six miserable hours of semi-sleep, again, and he was feeling… worn down, weary. The promise he’d seen, the hidden beauty of the old bank building built in 1899 from local white granite, had faded somewhat, replaced by a dull throb behind his right eye. Tin ceiling or no tin ceiling.
Coffee. He needed real coffee. He eyed the tiny single-serve machine he’d bought. It was not going to be enough to get him to noon, much less through the day. Sacha needed, like some kind of junkie, a huge iced coffee with several shots of espresso added to it. And sugar, lots of sugar. The cheap beans he’d purchased and the single eight-ounce cups his machine sputtered out left a lot to be desired.
Climbing back down the ladder, Sacha got a whiff of himself. Fuck, he needed a shower too, but coffee came first. A trip to the gym’s shower room was the sole way he would achieve true cleanliness, but no one in Skagit would mind if he was a little dusty. He brushed off as much of the plaster as he could before heading out the front door.
Sacha got a couple funny looks as he locked the door behind him. Neighbors weren’t used to seeing anyone come in or out of the building. The realtor had told him it had stood empty for years: the original bank had gone out of business during the 1940s, and a bookstore had occupied the first floor at some point during the 1970s. The time between was a mystery. After the bookstore closed, the place had been used for storage for over thirty years before falling vacant.
The morning sun bounced off the windows of the brick-and-stone buildings on the opposite side of the street and into Sacha’s eyes. Squinting against it, he wished for his sunglasses, but he wasn’t turning back now. The need for caffeine was too great.
By the time the closest coffee shop, cleverly named the Coffee Place, came into view he felt better, his sore muscles warmed up and his head clearer. The lack of sleep was taking its toll, Sacha admitted. Staring middle age right in the face and trying not to flinch.
The door of the shop swung open. Another early-morning patron slid out, a huge to-go cup in one hand. The man’s eyes widened, and he gasped. “Sir, are you okay? Has there been an accident?” Putting his coffee down on an outside table, the stranger carefully took Sacha’s arm and pulled him away from the entrance.
Sir? He wasn’t that old.
“Sit here. I’ll get help.”
“Wait. No. What are you talking about? I’m fine,” Sacha sputtered. He stopped mid-protest, taking in the stranger who had accosted him.
The man was, by anyone’s standards—although Sacha had a lifetime of practice at not overtly noticing that kind of thing—gorgeous. A flicker of attraction sparked inside his chest, catching Sacha off guard. Forget spark, Sacha practically caught on fire.
Nearly as tall as Sacha, the man was slim and graceful where Sacha was a lumbering bear. The stranger’s most striking features, though, were his kind, caramel-colored eyes filled with concern and a dash of humor. Not many people found Sacha amusing, so it caught him off guard.
He was familiar with fear or wariness, sometimes loathing, but never amusement. Sacha was ensnared by the inner light in the man’s eyes, or some bullshit thing he had no words for. He needed to do something to keep them focused on him. Instead he was standing and staring like a village idiot.
“Have you looked in the mirror? Because what I am seeing is not fine.” The man made a “Take a look for yourself” gesture toward the plate-glass window of the coffee shop, unfazed by Sacha’s larger size and snippy attitude.
It took Sacha a moment to recognize the ghostly figure reflected in the window. A dried trickle of blood lay along the side of his temple, and he was covered from head to toe with a fine layer of plaster dust… which explained the odd looks on his walk here.
Laughter took him by surprise. He doubled over, using his knees for support. Now that he knew it was there, the plaster itched like crazy against his skin, and the throb behind his right eye was a fucking headache from when he fell off the ladder and banged his head against the hardwood. He looked like a fucking zombie.
He kept trying to catch his breath to explain, but the sight of himself looking like he was a cast member from The Walking Dead would set him off again. He was wheezing; every time he tried to say something, anything, he could only squeak. After a few minutes of this, the stranger went inside, returning moments later.
“Drink this,” he commanded, shoving a glass of water under Sacha’s nose. Their fingers touched briefly, and Sacha could swear he felt an electric shock pass between them.
The glass, cold in his hand and wet with condensation, helped ground him. He gulped the water down, feeling it soothe his dry throat. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the stranger watching him.
“Who are you?” Sacha asked.
“Seth Culver. You?”
“A—uh, Sacha, Bolic.” Good fucking lord, he even sounded like an accident victim.
“Well, A-uh-Sacha, what in the hell did you do to yourself?”
Sacha looked pointedly at Seth’s coffee cup. “I need one of those.” He was not going to be dissuaded from his mission. “Please, I can’t go in there like this.”
Seth rolled his eyes but stood, waving off the cash Sacha tried to shove in his hand. He went back inside, returning with a large cup of drip coffee that matched his own. Sacha accepted the gift, cupping it with both hands and sucking in the heady aroma of roasted coffee beans. His laughing fit had passed, but he still felt odd. He’d probably hyperventilated.
They sat at one of the outdoor tables arranged along the sidewalk. Sacha took a fortifying sip of caffeine before starting his tale, the hot coffee a pleasant distraction.
“I probably hit my head when I fell off a ladder earlier.” Seth’s eyes widened, and Sacha saw a possible trip to the ER in his future. “Let me finish. I bought a building, and I’m renovating it. I was up on the ladder, and I fell… actually it was more of a slide. Obviously, I’m fine.”
A dark eyebrow raised mockingly. “Yeah, obviously. Is there a reason you didn’t shower or change your clothes?”
Sacha looked down at himself. “There’s no shower in the building?”
“You can’t go around town like that. I don’t know you, but I do know you can’t go out, more out, in public. Like that.” Seth pinned Sacha with an assessing stare. “You’re not a serial killer or a mob boss or anything, are you? My brother will kill me if I accidentally bring one of those home.”
Sacha shook his head. Explaining that he had pretended to be both a killer and a mob boss for a few years would be too much for a first meeting.
“How about we head back to your building, grab some fresh clothes, and you clean up at my place?”
The head injury must have been affecting him because, instead of doing the smart thing and declining, Sacha agreed to go to a random stranger’s house and take a shower. A stranger he found very attractive. Muttering and shaking his head, he gulped the rest of his coffee, needing the distraction of the burn as it slid down his throat.
Seth cocked his head. “What was that?”
“‘Bila ne bila.’ It’s a Russian saying: ‘Whatever happens, happens.’”
“I’m not the one who looks like I crawled out of a ditch. Or a fresh grave,” Seth remarked.
Sacha laughed again.
Four
Seth
What was he doing, offering a hulking, dark-haired stranger covered with plaster dust and blood a shower at his place? Seth had woken that morning with the intention of getting some chores done and placing flyers around town looking for homeowners needing landscape work, not bringing home a stray human. Admittedly he had a soft spot for strays, and he suspected the guy was hot und
er that layer of muck. Hot as in sexy as fuck. The spark between them had been real and scorching. Seth had seen Sacha’s eyes flicker with awareness before he’d quickly looked away.
So… three minutes after meeting Sacha Bolic, Seth was offering to help him out. It was basic human kindness to offer a shower, right? Seth couldn’t let him wander around Skagit like that. And Seth didn’t sense any weirdness, or threat, from him.
The first seven-and-a-half years of his life, Seth had lived on the streets with his con-artist, drifter mother. He had learned early to read people. His gut told him when to run, when to hide, and it had never let him down. Right now his gut was telling him this man would not harm him, and he was going to trust it.
Seth’s life had changed when his mother, Jaqueline, had been well-and-truly busted in a sting operation and sent to prison. Seth had gone to live with his aunt. She’d done what she could to tame him, but it had been a struggle. Sometimes Seth wasn’t sure she had accomplished anything beyond teaching him enough so he could pass in civilized society.
“Beautiful boy” had been Marnie’s first words to him, her soft hand caressing his cheek, touching him in a way no one ever had before, especially not his own mother. Marnie had driven all the way from her home outside Scottsdale to the foster home in Aberdeen, Washington, where Seth waited for the aunt he’d never met or even heard of. Over twenty-five years later, Seth could recall with terrifying clarity how deep his well of need had been, those words echoing repeatedly as they fell into him.
As soon as their coffee was finished, Seth led the way to his battered Jeep. After a few turns of the key and taps on the gas pedal, the engine caught. Yay, small victories.
“Good girl.” Seth patted the dashboard encouragingly. At over twenty years old and 250,000 miles, she needed all the help she could get. And Seth could not afford a new car right now.
