Page 7 of Day Death (Brutes of Bristlebrook Trilogy)

“I’m fine, Lucien, I’m . . . I’m wonderful.”

A hint of a blush singes his cheeks, but his smile kicks up, cocky and warm. “Yeah. You are.”

I blink, startled, studying him as my pulse suddenly skids. He’s confident. Blatantly, shamelessly flirting with me like he has the right to. Like he’s mine .

I can’t have him, not in any living world, but... I don’t want to ruin it yet. Not when his eyes are shining and victory lights my veins. Not with his forearm flexing, tattooed and muscled and entirely too dangerous in the safe predictability of my car.

Just for a moment, I can indulge it. Just once.

“You were wonderful, too, you know,” I murmur.

And, finally, our eyes catch.

“What am I? Dog shit?” Jaykob mutters from the backseat. “I’m fine, too. Thanks for asking.”

I shift back into the passenger seat, sucking in a breath.

Composure.

I’m sure I have it somewhere.

Lucien chokes out a laugh, looking up in his mirror. “Glad you’re safe too, buddy.”

The wretched brat grins then, and his fingers dance on my wheel. “Now, please strap yourself in for the slowest getaway on record. Keep all arms and legs inside the vehicle and do try not to panic,” he mocks as I fastidiously fasten my seatbelt. “This thing is basically a mechanical roll of bubble wrap anyway.”

“You truly cannot help yourself, can you?” I mutter.

His grin widens, and he tosses me a considering look. “You ever opened this granny up to see what she can do?”

I freeze. “ No , Lucien.”

The rogue winks.

In the next instant, he’s slammed down on the accelerator and is peeling down the street, the arrow on the speedometer rising higher, higher. Higher .

I clutch at the side of the car, scrambling for purchase as he skids, screeching around a corner, laughing like he’s taken leave of his senses.

“Lucien! Stop !”

In the backseat, Jaykob snorts. “We’re barely hitting eighty.”

We barrel down the next long road, faster and faster, until Beaumont’s red truck comes into view ahead of us, Beaumont in the bed, covered in blankets.

Lucien veers sharply into the next lane, bringing us up beside the truck, and Dominic tosses me a tight, alarmed look. I glower back at him.

As if this is my fault.

“Hey, maybe you can street race with this thing after all. Reckon we can beat them there?” Lucien asks, already pulling ahead.

Dominic glares incredulously at me as we pass.

“Dom isn’t going to race you, dipshit,” Jaykob drawls.

And Lucien shrugs fatalistically. “Won’t be much of a race then.”

“Lucien! I did not survive a nuclear blast only for you to drive us into a wall!” I snap as he swerves wildly around some fallen debris.

“Jasper, Jasper, Jasper. Have some faith!”

He is far too cheery.

We roar down the street as the rain starts to come down harder, and I fantasize about all the ways I would take this out on his hide if I were to have him alone. Scalding hot wax to the soles of his feet. Safety codes lightly cut into his skin until he’s slicked with blood. His balls in a vice that would turn that smugness into the same needy, shuddering mess he became tonight, from just watching my show.

Lucien would take all of it.

He would tend my cock, let me bury myself in that perfect mouth, just to appease me.

He would?—

The heavy metal gate’s appearance at the end of the street is breathtakingly sudden.

“Lucien, the gate won’t open. Lucien, slow down,” I snap.

It’s already too close. He can’t slow in time. I curl in on myself as the thick metal wall looms too large, too near. We’re going to?—

Lucien spins my car to the side, slamming on the breaks, and we slide out to a stop... and the Volvo lightly kisses the gate.

It takes me a full minute to decide I did not, in fact, release my bowels.

Lucien cackles from the driver’s seat, and Jaykob smacks the back of my head.

“Stop whimpering. We’re here.”

Shaking, stilted, I unlock myself from my protective curl, and Lucien’s irreverent grin greets me.

“You okay?” he asks sympathetically.

Drawing in a steady breath, I adjust my clothes. “The punishment that you deserve...”

Despite the tight, ferocious threat, Lucien’s grin widens.

Perhaps even because of it.

But when I look up, I see the wide gate, still just as intimidating. “HOWARDS EVACUATION CENTER” is written above it. The blanket back over his head, Jaykob pounds on the metal.

“The other cars aren’t here,” I say.

“It’s fine. Less lines here. It’s just?—”

With a loud, electric hiss, the gate opens, and relief floods me as Jaykob ducks inside.

“The back way.” Lucien tosses me another wink as he opens his door. “It’s my favorite.”

Ceaseless brat .

I follow him out, then through the gate and into the evacuation center.

The doors close behind us, and we’re greeted by a wide, concrete atrium and multiple people in full hazmat suits who ask us to remove and discard our clothes under blinding fluorescent lights.

In only our undergarments, they direct us into a shower room where Jaykob is naked and scrubbing himself with a narrow bar of soap.

“Ooh, friends shower. Cute,” Lucien remarks, stripping off so quickly that I couldn’t have missed the toned, tanned flex of his ass if I’d tried.

There goes the next decade of sleep.

Resisting the urge to stare, I pivot, then stride over to the far end of the room to shower myself. As the water hits me, I close my eyes and force memories of the horrifying inferno back into my mind. Anything to dislodge the imprint of that perfect ass, and the cruel, lickable dimples at the base of his spine.

I refuse to sport an erection for friends shower .

Just minutes later, we’re offered towels and fresh clothes, and they hand us back our cleansed belongings. We’re taken through a medical bay for a brief assessment, given medicine that tastes like sour milk, advised that we’re required to remain for a minimum forty-eight hours for our own safety... and then we’re allowed to descend into the general bunker.

It’s enormous, deep under the earth, encasing hundreds of people in thick, impenetrable concrete. There are tunnels like rivers branching out from the main room, but most of the civilians are gathered together, checking on friends and holding loved ones. Some people are crying, sitting on their own, but few are left for long before they’re offered food, or someone simply sits beside them.

It’s a bustle of motion and the cavernous room is full to the brim with wonderful, heartfelt chatter. So many people who made it to safety. All of them alive , while only death lies above.

It’s still not enough.

This room could hold three hundred more and not feel the strain. My mind can’t stretch around how many people have died today, in this state alone. I can’t, right now, find more than a dull, tired horror at the magnitude, or bear a thought for how many more we might have rescued had we been faster, smarter, or better prepared. How many more people could be filling this room right now, had things been different. It’s not enough.

But it’s something.

The Darkside members are sitting on a stage on the far left of the room, eating packaged rations together under the glowing golden lights. The injured we rescued are safely in the medical bay, being tended by people who have the means and skills to help them, at least for now.

And as I see the mother and her daughter in the arms of a weathered-faced man, it doesn’t feel like we did something today.

It feels like we did everything.

Thick, hot emotion fills my throat, the release of tension almost enough to take me out at the knees, and then... a firm hand slips into mine.

I look down as Lucien’s fingers run over my palm, then twine between my own. My eyes snap up to his face, and he’s looking over at me with such a searching, open vulnerability that mortified heat scorches my cheeks.

That look is offensively transparent, questioning and intense, and I force my eyes from him... lest he see the same in me.

Because if we’re not, in fact, dying, then separation is very much required.

It’s the only reason I’m here at all, divorced and unemployed, packed and retreating as swiftly as possible to my summer home, Bristlebrook, all dignity long abandoned.

Then again, if I hadn’t been trying so desperately to run from this impossible, beautiful twenty-four-year-old child , I likely would have been soundly asleep in my bed, back on that very base that’s now smearing the sky.

Instead, my kind, lovely ex-wife is likely dead in her new lover’s home in Houston.

My heart aches bitterly for her loss. Soomin gave me so much understanding—for my sadism, and for the damned love she saw blooming in me, no matter how I tried to hide it. She understood me, even as she decided she deserved better for herself.

She was right.

Soomin deserved better than me.

She deserved better than to die a year later, after finally finding someone who could appreciate her for the wonderful woman she was.

And Lucien deserves better than being preyed upon by his psychologist—a man fourteen years his senior, no less.

So rather than closing my fingers around him as I so desperately want to do...

I let him go.

Stepping back, I tuck my burning hand behind my back and look over to the stage, where Thomas and the other Darkside members sit.

“We should check in with Thomas,” I say softly.

“Right,” Lucien breathes, looking away from me. He swallows, his fingers curling in.

“Right,” he repeats, more softly.

I know every flavor of pain. Every chord. So I know exactly how many strings of it I just plucked in him. I can hear the sonata ringing in that word. It rings sharply enough to cut me through and slice apart my victorious glow.

But it’s for the best.

Our kind of love is for dreams and stardust. For eternities on the wind. It doesn’t belong to the living.

There are far too many ways I would hurt him here.

Jaykob comes up beside us, tugging at his pants. “These clothes are riding up my asshole. Who did they think was surviving this shit? Tinkerbell?”

Lucien huffs a laugh, but it doesn’t sound right. It has too many notes of hurt.

He walks off, heading toward Thomas, and I follow more slowly behind, trying to regather myself.

It’s for the best. I’ll leave for Bristlebrook as soon as we’re released. We’ll be free of one another for good.

It doesn’t make me feel any better.

“What? They riding his ass too?” Jaykob mutters.

I purse my lips, choosing to ignore that, and climb the stairs to the stage. The Darkside members welcome us warmly, if tiredly, sharing food and threadbare pleasantries. Phill’s nether appendage is apparently still intact, and not shot off by his own weapon. Hallie rests quietly beside Katie, whose skin is still tender and raw under her shirt.

I scan the room, not seeing Dominic or Beaumont.

“The other entrance. To your left,” Lucien says quietly, and it’s an effort not to give him a sharp look, my heart thudding at how he watches me.

Instead, I look to my left and see Beaumont, tall and exhausted and freshly clothed in the same nauseous green sweats as we are. Jaykob whistles, and he spots us, his face relaxing.

As he walks over, Dominic comes through the doors behind him... and he’s holding an apple pie.

Everything in me aches. Beaumont’s mother was famous for her apple pie, all across base. I’m half sure even the Colonel would have handed over America’s secrets for a single slice.

And now there’s only one left in the world.

They sit down, joining us without fuss, and I lean back against the wall of the stage, looking at each one of them in turn.

Alive. We’re alive.

All of us are quiet. Exhaustion and relief and heavy thoughts don’t lend well to small talk, but I see the relief. The fear. The horror and the wonder as they look over the room at all the civilians we saved, and all of those who saved themselves.

Dominic finally lets out a long, heavy breath, his head dropping into one hand. “All these people. We have nothing. No protection. No firepower. No intel. If it’s war.. .” He shakes his head. “We’ve already lost.”

The grave, unspeakable elephant crushing the room.

“We keep them safe,” Thomas says, watching Dominic from across our circle. “Just like we did tonight. It’s what we’re built for. We just... if we do anything, we do that.” Thomas tosses a packaged ration of food over to him and smiles grimly. “I’ve got your back too, Cap. No matter what.”

Jaykob stops wrenching at his pants, and his eyes glitter fiercely. “There are other armories. The weapons cache at training camp. The excursion area. Doubt they were hit. They’ll be a bitch to get into, but there’s plenty of shit in those.”

“Ooh, count me in for B&E.” Lucien grins, some of the shadows drawing back from his face, and I ache at the sight of fresh sunshine.

In the bunker I hear dozens of voices swirling through the air. Low music. Crying and fear, but also incongruous laughter. A mess. A beautiful, lovely mess.

Beaumont almost smiles, too. “There’s medicine here, and I have some supplies. We can hit hospitals. Pharmacies. They’ll probably be as much of a bitch fight as the one tonight, but nothing we can’t handle.”

“We’ll do what we can.” Dominic considers the others grimly. “But it all means nothing without a base.”

Beaumont nudges his shoulder, throwing him a rebuking frown. “We’ll figure it out.”

We. The word sticks to me. We, as in, them and me. We as in, Lucien, me, and the others.

My plan only involves myself and my Volvo and my solitary penance at Bristlebrook. I can’t bring Lucien there, I can’t . It’s my one, final refuge.

I could never resist him. Not when it’s just him and me, alone together at the end of the world.

No, I need to give him to Dominic. Let him keep my Lucien safe, as he has done for the past four years.

“We give them hope,” Lucien says softly, looking up at Dominic. His blue eyes glow. “No matter how bad things are, people need hope. We’ll find a base, Cap. We’ll do it, and we’ll save everyone we can along the way. We’ll make it right for them.”

I can’t .

I let my head tip back as emotion takes me by the throat. He’s too hopeful, too endlessly optimistic for how this will end. I can’t do it—think about all the tomorrows and the hopeless inevitability of all of it.

“Tomorrow,” I say quietly, lifting my head. “Tomorrow you have time for plans and worries and what comes next. Today, right now, there’s no one else to save. There’s nothing else to do but rest. And to grieve.” I look at each one of them in turn, and one by one, they sober. Lucien can’t look at me at all, and it lances my heart. “We’ve all lost too much today, and we need.. . we need a moment.” My words stick. “I don’t know if we’ll get another.”

Beaumont sucks in a harsh breath, his head dropping, and Dominic brings a hand over his back. Jaykob’s jaw flexes as he looks away, folding in on himself.

When Beaumont looks up again, his face is reddened, and tears slip over his face. It’s not a pretty cry. He sniffs wetly, but he doesn’t wipe the tears away.

He picks up the pie, peeling off the wrappings. Fragrant, brilliant cinnamon pours over our group, and he forces a damp smile.

“Mama wanted me to share,” he says, then looks up, blinking. “I don’t have a knife.”

Suddenly, I’m blinking too.

Crying—for his mother, and my own, somewhere across the world in Seoul. Either with my father, frantically trying to contact me—or in danger herself.

Jaykob pulls out his pocketknife, the one that never leaves his side... and he hands it to Beaumont. Beaumont takes it, and I grimace.

“You could wash?—”

“You could shut up,” Jaykob growls, and I sigh.

Fine. Let us eat with the caveman’s stabbing stick. How delightful.

Beaumont carves up six slices and hands them out to us, his breathing shaky.

When the perfect golden triangle hits my hands, my chagrin fades. He’s given us a piece of his home, the last pieces. I can’t imagine how much this pie meant to him—and how much it means that he’s giving it to us.

Jaykob takes a shark-like bite of the pie, and I lay a hand on his arm. He stops, then glowers at it.

“To Beaumont’s mother, and to his family,” I say, lifting the pie. “May God rest their souls.”

Jaykob’s scowl dies. After a moment, he nods. Beaumont looks down for another long minute, then meets my eyes gratefully. His are red-rimmed. He lifts the pie and takes a bite, and Dominic squeezes his shoulder.

“To the Colonel,” the captain says. “My mother. And all the soldiers and their loved ones on base. They lost their lives trying to save us all. God rest their souls.”

Everyone takes a bite.

The apple is sweet and a little tart, the crust buttery and sugared. It was made with love, and it falls apart over my tongue like a fond farewell.

It aches everywhere.

Beside me, Lucien is crying too, very quietly.

I stare at the silken, silvered streaks on his face. Carve them into my brain. I want nothing more than to hold him now, to do everything in my power to ease that pain, but I won’t.

This must be part of my penance—watching Lucien hurt.

“To my folks,” Lucien says next, biting his lip hard. When he releases it, he chokes out a laugh. “Mom never got to shoot that ping pong out of her hoo-ha.”

Beaumont snorts, surprised, then laughs, and Thomas rubs the back of his neck.

“Now there’s a visual.”

I sigh through a dry, sad smile, remembering his texts. Lucien winks, but his lashes are tangled and wet.

Everyone takes another painful bite.

“To all the families everywhere we couldn’t save,” Thomas says.

“And all the people who have no one to save them from what comes next,” Jaykob adds bitterly, and the air becomes heavy and grim.

The next bite is more sour than sweet.

And then, it’s me.

I look at the pie in my hands, hurting in more ways than I ever thought, in all my years of training, that it was possible to hurt.

“To my parents. I hope they’re safe, and that the whole world hasn’t gone as mad as ours has.” My bare ring finger shouts at me, the one Lucien noticed in mere moments alone with him. The one that ignited his little spark of hope. I feel his eyes on me now, and shame coats my insides. “And to Soomin, and all the ways I failed her.”

When I eat my last bite of pie, it tastes of stinging salt.

I feel a shoulder settle against mine as Lucien moves next to me. Comforting me still, though I rejected him just minutes ago. He doesn’t do anything else, just sits there and eats his pie and cures all the world’s hurts with his presence alone.

And I know what I need to do.

I knew the moment I stepped foot inside this bunker.

There’s no escaping Lucien anymore. There’s no more running—at least not in the physical sense. I can’t go alone to Bristlebrook and leave them to fight the world’s battles for me. I can’t live knowing Lucien is elsewhere, in danger.

We all need to be safe. If we’re going to survive this, if there’s even a chance, then we’re all going to need to draw on our strength, more than we’ve ever had to summon.

Slowly, I pull my wedding ring out of my pocket. I haven’t been able to part with it, nor the fear and shame that cling to the silver.

Someone from Darkside laughs, and I look up. Hallie kisses Katie’s nose, and Katie laughs again, a blush splashing her cheeks. In the room, people are breathing, talking, living. Sharing food and comfort and love.

Today was a dark day. It’s stained with violence and terror and more death than should ever be possible.

But there was good in it too.

Dominic still has his arm on Beaumont’s shoulder, and Thomas and Jaykob are shoving one another with reckless grins. Lucien is still firmly by my side, and my despair starts to fall away.

There was courage and strength in our people today.

There was courage and strength in me today.

And it’s because of them.

Lucien is right. There is hope, and I need to believe in it. I need to believe that the good in our world will win out. That together, we can be more than we are alone.

Because if the good in our world can win out, then perhaps the good in me can win out too. Perhaps, with my friends lending me their strength, I can be the man I always should have been. One who does what’s right. Who is there for his people, for Lucien , in a way that only helps and causes no harm.

“I know a safe place we can go,” I say, and as five heads turn my way, I slide my wedding ring back on my finger.

A reminder of my broken promises, and all the reasons for them.

But also.. . it’s a reminder of today. Of the good in me winning out.

I smile softly, enjoying the thought.

“It’s my sanctuary, my comfort and peace. It’s my Eden.” I look over each of them. Dominic and Beaumont, Thomas and Jaykob... and Lucien.

Calm fills me.

It might be the end of all things, but at least now, I’ll end it with friends.

“We go to Bristlebrook.”