Finding Refuge

by J. P. Oliver

Minus Joe.

  Neither of us said that part, though. He would always be there, a ghost in our memories, but we had this. We had the present and each other. He would have wanted us to be together—to find happiness when he was gone. Deep down, outside the drinking and stubbornness, he had a good heart. He’d want the best for both of us.

  I slid my hand down Zach’s chest, undoing his belt.

  At this angle, my body wasn’t directly on top of him—maybe only my upper chest. We both had a clear angle at his groin and legs.

  I could feel his breath, hot on my cheek as it got a little deeper. I flicked open the button on his jeans.

  When I pulled his cock from his boxers, he wasn’t fully hard. The contrast was unreal almost: that we were going to do something sexual out in the woods like this, like we had to hide it (as if I didn’t have a house we could fuck all over in, whenever we wanted).

  “Hey,” he said.

  I broke my gaze away from his member, and he drew me into a kiss. It was playful and teasing, tongue brushing against mine. I moved my hand over him, crudely pumping him up to a full erection. When he groaned, it was into my mouth. I could taste the vibrations of it, and I swallowed them greedily.

  I ran a thumb over the head, playing with the underside’s ridge.

  Slowly, the sounds of me jacking him off began to overpower the sounds of the creek. My hand picked its pace up as I got lost in the heady darkness of our kiss; it was instinct, taking over. Like we were just two beings who needed this, who needed release and each other.

  Zach’s hips lifted into it, and our kiss broke on a puff of air, both of us needing a deep breath desperately.

  I surveyed his dark blue eyes before pushing off his chest. I wanted to feel the weight of him in my mouth.

  Crawling between his legs, I shoved them farther apart. He grunted, half-sexy and half-pained. I whispered an apology as Zach pushed to sit up, face red and painfully turned on. I licked my lips, coating them with saliva to make it smoother. With shallow pumps at his base, I stuck out my tongue and kitten-licked his head.

  Once. Twice. Again. Like I was licking a popsicle too cold to put in my mouth fully. His fingers flexed in the moss, and I licked a long stripe up his entire shaft, letting the head rest against my tongue for him to see.

  Zach swore, curt and harsh under his breath, and then I took him in, bottoming out in one effortless swoop.

  It ripped an animalistic noise of pleasure from him, tossing it into the echoing woods. As I bobbed my head, I found I’d broken a seal: he was making all sorts of noises now: deep, airy huffs and low grunts.

  He gripped my hair, and I moaned, my own neglected cock aching in my pants. The vibrations of my moaning wrapped around him, and his hips flexed hard into my warm, wet mouth. The tip nudged the back of my throat and I gagged, just a little.

  “Shit—” he huffed, fingers loosening. “Sorry, it was just really—”

  I didn’t mind. To show him, I took him in deep again, and his words petered off into a choked, wanton moan.

  Sliding over his spit-slicked cock got easier and easier, though my neck was starting to ache. I drew back to play at the head, dipping my tongue in to lap up the precum beading there.

  “Curtis,” he groaned, hand tracing down my jaw.

  His thumb brushed to the corner of my mouth as it popped off his tip, pressing itself inside instead. I sucked just as greedily at it, let him press it against my tongue.

  “I want to finish together,” he said, drawing his thumb from my mouth.

  I nodded, sitting up on my knees.

  Both of our hands fumbled for my zipper at once, hands knocking clumsily, and I laughed. He worked me easily from the confines of my slacks and I breathed a sigh of relief. Cool air against hot skin. I shivered as he wrapped a hand around my cock, jerking with intent.

  I took his in my hand and our lips collided.

  It was so juvenile and messy. I pistoned my hips into his hand, matching his punishingly desperate pace. So reckless. So tragically high school. For once, there was no strange omnipresent absence of space like I felt so many times: when I kissed other people and thought of Zach, when I thought of kissing Zach and remembered Joe.

  This moment was just for us.

  Zach started twisting his wrist, and I cried out, fingers tight in his shirt.

  “That’s it,” he growled.

  “Zach—”

  “Come for me, Curtis. Please….”

  I whimpered, nodding. “Why—why is it that whenever I try to spoil you, this—ahh… this always ends up….”

  Words were hard when my brain felt like it was about split open. My body tensed from head to toe. It was coming. I could feel it, heeding his request.

  Zach laughed quietly against my mouth, and he was making all sorts of noises, too. Choked breaths. Drowning groans.

  “Let me take care of you,” he said.

  “I want to take care of you,” I argued gently.

  He hummed, acknowledging—before he was pulling my head back by my hair to kiss my neck. Pain blossomed as he sucked a mark to my neck, and I came hard in his hand, a malleable mess of orgasmic matter. I would have melted through his fingers if it was possible.

  Luckily, I had just enough power to finish him off; with a few jerks and a helpful flick of my wrist, he was coming too, still clutching in my hair, burying his nose in my neck.

  When we put the horses back in their stables and walked back to the Savage house, the sky was a dim sort of indigo. The sun had set. Now it was just leftover light from it and the rising moon.

  We went back hand in hand, feeling sated. We made sure out clothes were come-free (because, as much as I loved the idea of being openly together with Zach, Beth would be merciless in her teasing if she knew what we were up to out there).

  We stopped in to grab the car keys and our phones, a pitstop on the way to the car. But, prophetically, Beth was there, waiting for us.

  “Hey,” I greeted, plucking my stuff off the counter.

  “Hey,” she said, looking over the both of us curiously. She leaned against the threshold of the door. “Zach, I was gonna ask, but you were gone: I need help with fixing the showerhead upstairs. It’s busted to hell.”

  “Oh.” Zach nodded. “Okay, yeah. You don’t mind—”

  “No,” I said. “Just walk me out?”

  “Okay.”

  He followed me out to the car. When we were out of sight, I pulled him in for a brief goodbye kiss.

  “I’ll be home later,” he promised. “I’ll take the old truck back when I’m done. It shouldn’t take long.”

  My heart jumped; home.

  “Sure,” I said, trying not to swoon. “I’ll be waiting for you at home.”

  13

  Zach

  When I got back inside after sending Curtis off, I found Beth waiting in the kitchen.

  “So, what’s this about a showerhead—”

  I paused, noticing that she was sitting at the kitchen table looking pissed off. I tried to think back but found no reason for her to be pissed at me, particularly, but, then again, it was Beth we were talking about here. She was always annoyed at one of the brothers for some reason.

  “What?”

  She lifted her hand from where it was hidden in her lap, dropping an envelope on the table. The envelope rooted me down, because I knew the address and look of it: it was a letter addressed to me, from the United States Navy.

  “You left your mail on the foyer table,” she said.

  I looked from the envelope to her and back again.

  “You went through my mail?” I asked.

  Beth pursed her lips, unhappy. It was an age-old habit of hers: thinking she had the right to answer our calls or check our emails when she knew the passwords or, in this case, open and read our mail.

  “What kind of mission is it this time?” she asked, picking it up and turning it over. “What’s so important that you need to leave again?”

  I stepped to th
e table, snatching the letter from her.

  “Were you just gonna keep this from all of us? It isn’t a new letter, Zach, it didn’t just come in today.”

  “You’re a real pain in the ass with this sort of thing,” I snapped. “And I don’t really think it’s your business—”

  “Your my brother, so it kind of is.”

  “I thought you’d grow out of this habit.”

  “What habit?” she huffed.

  “Of invading our personal privacy like this.”

  “Jesus, Zach, stop avoiding the question.”

  We stood there, sizing one another up.

  Finally, I said, “My missions are classified. Besides, it only says to report to duty when my leave is up. You knew I’d be doing that already—it’s not like I came here without a job, Beth, I had six months still before I reenlisted—”

  “Jesus, Zach, it isn’t fucking prison,” she finally snapped. “Dad’s fucking dying and you need to be here. Not just for us, but for yourself—and what about Curtis—”

  “Don’t,” I cut.

  But she was unrelenting.

  “You’re going to break his heart again.”

  It was a slap in the face, and the worst part about it was that she was right. But it was out of my control. I had obligations, duties. When I said nothing at all, she shook her head, disappointed.

  “If you leave, you know, I’ll forgive you. Mom will forgive you. Fuck, I’m sure Dad would forgive you, if he’s there the next time you come home.”

  It was a stab in the heart. I almost swayed with the force of such a deep cut.

  “But Curtis is going to be crushed,” Beth said. “And the next time you come around it won’t be as easy as it was to patch up this time.”

  “I wasn’t going to leave without telling him,” I said. “I’m not a monster, okay? I was planning on telling him—explaining how it’d work. I wasn’t going to reenlist. Not since we….”

  I trailed off.

  “Since you got back together,” she finished coldly. “Yeah. I’m sure it’s going to go really well. Six months away after ten years, with only a couple weeks in between.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “He deserves better, Zach,” Beth argued. “And so do you.”

  I turned with a huff, crushing the envelope in my hand.

  “Curtis is waiting for me,” I murmured, a pathetic parting.

  The chair ground against the wood as Beth stood up from it, yelling after me, “Zach, don’t be a dumbass. Don’t take your assignment, you’re supposed to be here with—”

  I shut the door behind me before she could finish her sentence, heading for the old, beat-up truck parked in the driveway.

  My life was with Curtis. I knew that. But I also knew that the Navy owned me for the next six months of my life, and that responsibility didn’t negate my feelings for Curtis. Maybe Beth wouldn’t understand it, but Curtis would. Just like I did. Just like Dad did.

  Or, at least, I hoped he would.

  He had to.

  14

  Curtis

  I was past cloud nine at this point. I was on cloud ten, eleven, twelve—whatever was closest to heaven—because I was undoubtedly in love.

  After a long day at the clinic, I popped out of my car with a little hop in my step and an arm full of groceries. Tonight, Zach would be coming home, and I wanted to surprise him with a romantic evening for the two of us. I cooked up our dinner—two nice cuts of steak from the grocery store, some asparagus and tomato, and a nice hearty bottle of red—and dimmed the lights. Lit a few sweet-smelling candles.

  With everything downstairs tidied and ready, I headed upstairs to change. I swapped out my work clothes for something a little more suited to a nice dinner: dark jeans and a white button-up; examining myself in the mirror, I popped open the first two buttons to let a little skin show.

  I paused at the nightstand, pushing past the supplies I kept in the drawer, and withdrawing from it a small, plush red box. Flicking it open, I took out the ring and held it in my palm.

  You can do this.

  It was a man’s style ring: a thick band of gold with a sapphire set in the center of it. It was smooth, new; I’d driven out to the jewelers to have it sized and engraved on its inside with the words ‘My love, my heart.’

  This was it. My stomach was doing double-backflips, but, dammit, tonight was going to be the night I proposed to Zach Savage. Maybe it was too soon, maybe I would be leaving myself vulnerable to him, but, God, all I wanted was to have him in my life for good. I loved him; there was no question about it anymore. By the end of the night, I’d know for sure: yes or no.

  Slipping the ring into my pants pocket, I looked at myself one more time in the mirror. Deep breaths. You can do this, I told myself with a determined nod.

  I traipsed down the stairs to take the stove off of simmer. He’d be getting here soon, and if I burnt the meat, well, that’d be a great way to kick-start the most romantic evening of my life.

  I looked good tonight. The food would be good. The mood was set. Tonight, I would propose and he would say ‘yes’ and we’d start our lives together. I had to believe it could happen. I needed to—

  “There you are.”

  I paused on the last creaking step, frozen.

  The nervous excitement in my stomach curdled, sour and wretched, because there, standing at the edge of the kitchen was Edward Morris: gas can in one hand and box of matches in the other.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but I was speechless. My brain tried to process what was happening, but it was beyond any point of logic. I’d locked my front door, and yet, here he was. All I knew was that my gut was telling me I was very clearly and very suddenly in danger.

  My eyes flickered to the door.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said. His voice was deceptively smooth, but the look on his face was unhinged. A desperate sort of anger. “It’s an easy lock to pick. You oughta think about getting a better one.”

  The gas shifted in the can with a watery thunk.

  “There are dangerous people out there,” he said.

  I swallowed, taking the last step slowly. “Edward. What are you doing here?”

  “Are you serious?” he huffed, smiling. He shook his head. “This is a nice place you got here.”

  I said nothing.

  “I’ve always wanted a nice place. This town… North Creek was supposed to be my ticket to a nice place. A nicer life—” Edward cut himself off, smile disappearing. “But you’ve made that impossible, haven’t you?”

  I shook my head. “Edward, you need to go,” I said slowly, measured. “Whatever you’re thinking of doing—it isn’t worth it.”

  “This place—this fucking place—was my meal ticket, Curtis.” I hated the way my name sounded when he said it. Vitriolic. “All I wanted was a little, little chunk of the land. Just enough for a fucking hospital, but you and your cock-sucking little boyfriend messed that up for me.”

  “There hasn’t been a final decision yet,” I said, trying to keep a calm front. Inside, though, I was shaking, taut and tense. “They haven’t even found the body—”

  “They won’t find the fucking body!”

  I flinched hard, gripping the banister as his voice echoed in the room.

  “They’re not gonna find a fucking body, because there isn’t one,” he repeated, voice audibly shaking. “You’re so stupid—all of you are so fucking stupid to believe in this. There’s no way to save your precious little town. You’ve just created a fairytale that’s been nothing but a pain in my fucking side.”

  “Edward—”

  “Do not!” He held up his hand—the one with the matches in it—shaking his head. “Don’t, Curtis. You’re in no position.”

  I tried to think: what would Zach do? What would anyone do in a situation like this? Was it better to take action, to try and get away, or talk him down?

  No, talking him down wasn’t an option; the look in his eye told m
e that there was no point in trying to reason with him. Cold, helpless dread flushed through me. It was a dead-end type of fear, the kind that squeezed my insides and kept my mind from being able to think clearly.

  “I just wanted money,” Edward rambled. “That’s all anyone wants, and you’re just delaying it. You’re just delaying the inevitable. You people make me sick with how stupid you are, you know that? Money—money is what the point of it all is, but you people—”

  Now, I told myself. Whatever you do, it has to happen now.

  Edward was still babbling on about money when I took that first pivotal step: the first motion in lunging at him. But there was enough space for him to see the shift in my body. He anticipated me coming towards him as I leapt, clutching at his disheveled shirt. We both stumbled back into the kitchen.

  He swung blindly at me as I checked him hard with my shoulder and tried to pull the gas can from his hand. Edward’s grip on it was like iron as he turned his whole body with my shirt in his grasp. We both fell, stumbling over our ankles, onto the floor.

  I changed my tactic, grabbing the wrist of the hand that held the matches. He was shouting nonsense at me as I slammed his hand hard onto the floor. Reflexively, his fingers fell open and I grabbed the matchbox; one would be rendered useless without the other. Together, matches and gas were a deadly combination, but apart they were just household items.

  I scrambled to get away from him—to take the matches far away, maybe even lead him outside the house—but in the next moment, I felt the plastic gas can slam the side of my head hard and hollow. It wasn’t enough to blind me with pain, but the shock of it threw me.

  Our bodies moved on fast-forward. With a blind punch, I felt my fist connect with some part of him hard enough to get him to let go. I stumbled to my feet with the matches and felt the adrenaline thrill of freedom.

  The backdoor. I just had to make it to the door.

  It was close—within my reach, so possible it almost ached, sweet relief in my chest—but as I made for the handle, a hot streak erupted in my body. A pain like a cramp spread everywhere, lightning fast and from the center of my back.