Page 81 of Constantly Cotton
Ernie nodded and then took a deep breath, his shoulders slumping. “Sorry, Cruller.”
“Yeah, well, not your fault,” Burton said, his heart twisting a little. There had to be a joke out there about a psychic and an assassin.Did you hear about the psychic who hooked up with a hitman? The poor guy never saw it coming.Truth was, Ernie was at the mercy of his visions—he didn’t know when they were coming or how, or even what they would be about. Because he loved Burton, they often centered on him, and Burton was grateful for the times a call or text from Ernie had given him a heads-up—or even saved him from injury or worse.
But getting jerked out of his sleep in the dark of the night, heart pounding, sweat soaking his body from fear, was a hard price sometimes.
Lee put the gun back into its hole between the mattress and the box spring and crawled back into bed. “C’mere,” he rumbled.
Ernie tucked up against his body, sighing.
“Bad one?” Lee feathered fingers through Ernie’s damp hair, and Ernie nodded against his shoulder.
“Something’s brewing,” he mumbled. “Jackson, Ellery, Ace, Jai, George—it’s gonna be big.”
Oh, that wasnotgood news. “Anything I can do to prep?” Burton asked.
Ernie shook his head, his voice breaking. “Nothing. There’s never anything you can do. It’s all chaos.”
“Oh, baby.” Burton held him tighter, wishing for the release of sex, but knowing that Ernie needed hard, steady touches right now. “Not chaos. Remember that. Just by warning me, you made us ready, okay?”
“Jason,” Ernie said brokenly. “Cruller, he’s gonna need us.”
Burton frowned. “Jason?” Ernie had been trying to adopt Burton’s CO, Jason Constance, since they’d moved into their house, which sat within walking distance from Ace and Sonny’s gas station in a little forgotten suburb that only had five finished houses. Four of them sat vacant. Their isolation was Ernie’s salvation—the emptiness of the desert helped keep Ernie from overdosing on too many people, too many psychic connections, but the result was that Ernie’s strong clairvoyance focused on the people he cared about. Ace’s small family in the middle of the desert was well watched over by the powers that be.
The isolation also served to make Constance comfortable enough to… to reach out. To have friends. He’d been Burton’s handler in special ops since Burton had been recruited from the Marines. Burton trusted him, which didn’t come easy, and Constance?
The more they’d worked their current mission—Operation Dead Fish, which was to track down and bring in serial killers who had been trained by a rogue military commander—the more Burton had watched Constance become isolated. Worn. Sad.
During a recent op, Constance had admitted to Burton that he was gay. And he hadn’t had a lover in over ten years. The confession still made Burton’s heart raw; no wonder he responded so kindly to Ernie’s overt attempts to mother the full-grown badass. Constance didn’t have anybody else. Even if he had family—and he did have parents and a sister—that man or woman you poured your fears out to in the dark of night was a whole different person.
Jason Constance may have rank on Burton, but as far as Burton could see, he had the support system Constance did not.
Even if his support system consisted of one flaky baker/psychic/gas station clerk, two criminals, a psychopath, and a college student who texted them from Los Angeles at least once a week to let them know she was keeping on the straight and narrow, it was still better than the vast echoing vault filled with the voices of the people you’d failed to protect and the demons that killed them. Burton had the feeling that’s all Constance had.
So he was okay with Ernie pulling Constance in. He was hoping to pull him in a little further. Ace had made the winter holidays a thing in the past two, three years, and Burton thought his boss could use some warmth when the desert grew cool.
Unfortunately it was the end of fucking August and 120 was not uncommon in their desert. They had a kickass AC system: Burton had some money socked away, and since property values weren’t great and they’d had to do most of the power hookups themselves, he’d been able to spare the expense to keep an army cool in their house. However, the heat made asking someone to drive an hour for dinner because you were worried about them sort of an imposition.
At least Constance, knowing that Ernie was very, very off-books and probably officially dead, had allowed Burton to set up an encrypted coms system in his home office. Three days a week he drove the hour to outside of Barstow, and sometimes he got sent on ops. But he got to spend a lot of time at home, doing his own searches for one of the hundred or so trained criminals who had been turned loose on the world.
Which was good, he admitted, pulling a shivering Ernie closer into his arms. He used to wonder how Ace could live with Sonny, because Sonny was so very needy. But Ernie, who seemed as self-sufficient as the many cats he fed and cared for, seemed to need him too. Ernie wouldn’t lose his shit. Wouldn’t freak out and yell at customers and tank the gas station business or the racing gigs that kept their little family solvent—not like Sonny might, if Ace was ever gone too long from his side.
But the thought of Ernie waking up alone in this house and yelling for Burton when Burton was off chasing a bad guy squeezed Burton’s heart until it threatened to stop. So far, letting him sleep at Ace and Sonny’s when Burton was out on an op had been working, but God. Being home, being a part of someone’s life, had never seemed so very important to Lee Burton, until he’d heard Ernie Caulfield call his name in the dark.
“Cruller?” Ernie whispered, sounding hazy and dreamy, like he was about to go under.
“Yeah, baby?”
“Don’t worry. Sonny knows how to use a gun.”
Ohfuckno—like Burton was going to get any sleepnow!
“SO,” LEEasked super casually the next morning over a breakfast of granola and fruit. “What did you mean by ‘Sonny knows how to use a gun?’”
Ernie shifted from one foot to the next. He always wondered how much Lee heard when he was shot through with psychic lightning. “You know what we haven’t had in a while? Donuts. I could make cake donuts for everyone at the station. Jai’s going to see George this weekend. I’ll make some for everyone and Jai can take some to George.”
He turned his back to Burton then, which was hard, because now that they were keeping house together, Burton liked to eat breakfast in his white boxers and nothing else, and the sight of that amazingly muscled, smooth-skinned body was… well, it was a gay boy’s dream to have a lover who looked like Lee Burton, that was for sure.
But Lee was going to ask about the dream and Ernie… well, Ernie didn’t know enough to pony up, not yet.