Page 48 of Catcher's Lock

Right. I rub uselessly at the sudden stab in my chest. Cheyenne stops about twenty feet away, politely angling the light at the ground.

“Bea is looking for you,” she says, soft and apologetic.

“Yeah,” Gem mumbles, scooping up his fallen jacket andheading back toward the tent without a backward glance. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

He slows as he passes her, lowering his voice, but I catch every word:

“Please don’t tell my mom.”

17

Clubbing

Josha

Age 24 (Now)

Ihate this whole fucking city.

The oily sheen of fog-slicked concrete and the whine of tired neon. The stink of piss and greed and desperation layered over the stagnant brine of the bay. It’s never dark, never quiet. I lasted barely three months at the tech school Shilo and Hals tried to send me to last year.

“How do you know about this place?” Gem asks as we climb the steps to the unmarked door. “Let me guess, Echo again?”

I shrug, letting him believe what he wants. The truth is way worse. Lonely and suffocating during my short stint in the city, I followed three guys from a nearby bar, not knowing what I was getting myself into.

I fled after fifteen minutes.

Fourth Base is part dive bar, part dance club, and part orgy. The bartenders are all topless—the men and the women—andthe drinks they pour are dangerously strong. Heavy music pounds from the speakers, throbbing through the mess of writhing bodies that spills off the dance floor into the dim corners of the large main room. Three hallways snake further into the shadows, leading to other rooms I wasn’t brave enough to explore.

Gem slings his arm across my shoulders when I hesitate inside the entrance.

“What are we doing here, Rocket? You can’t tell me this scene turns you on.”

“Don’t touch me,” I warn, shrugging him off and ignoring the questions. “I mean it. Two rules while we’re here: You don’t fucking touch me, and you don’t get in the way. And no drugs,” I add, because the place might as well be fucking Candyland.

“That’s three rules.”

“I’m fucking serious.”

“Okay, okay.” He raises his hands in a show of submission. “No touching, no cock-blocking, no drugs. Got it. I’ll be good.”

“I doubt that.” I lead him around the dance floor to the bar. I need at least two shots if I’m gonna go through with whatever this half-baked plan of mine is. What, exactly, am I trying to prove? That I can get laid in a place built for the quick, anonymous fuck? That Gem will save me from my desperate ego by starting a fight the minute I let another guy touch me?

Who’s calling whose bluff here?

Not to mention the whole thing is gonna backfire spectacularly if Gem figures out he broke my dick two years ago.

If I was hoping he’d pull the plug at the first sight of two guys going at it, I should have known better. Whatever else is going on with him right now, he’s never been homophobic. He leans against the bar while I order our drinks, surveying the scene with open curiosity. More than a few guys—andwomen—are checking him out, of course. With his leather and his ink and his obscenely tight jeans, he’d be a wet dream in any club in the city.

This is a mistake.

I keep my back to the crowd and my nose in my pink plastic cup as I study him surreptitiously out of the corner of my eye. It takes all of twenty seconds for the first twink with a mesh crop-top and carefully spiked hair to approach.

“Hi. I’m Benji. What are you looking for tonight?”

“Ask him.” Gem gestures to me with his chin. The boy turns to give me a slow once-over and a sultry smile.

“Ooh,” he purrs. “Yummy.”