Page 15

FIFTEEN

EASTON

Elio and Patrick were already on the treadmills when I changed and joined them. Patrick’s golden locks were dark with sweat, and Elio’s hair flew wildly as he ran, both guys controlling their breathing and turning red with exertion.

I took the treadmill next to Patrick rather than the one on Elio’s side. We had greeted each other when I went down to the locker room, and the two were on their way up, but Elio kept his distance.

I couldn’t blame him. I would have kept my distance, too. But I couldn’t force myself to have it all out with Elio. Not when he was being pushed for the captaincy by the one coach who was supposed to be on my side. This entire mess sucked, and I tried to remember that we were friends before we were rivals, but the nature of this sport and this life was only for the most competitive of us. If you agreed to concessions, you didn’t last long in this game.

The three of us usually worked out together on weekends. Last year, we’d found a good schedule to match almost all of our workouts, but that depended on the classes each of us had. I dreaded to think what it would be like this season. If they put Elio in my place, would I ever be able to fall back into our old friendship? Or would resentment take root in my heart?

It could. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened. What Jace and I had lived through had been enough to leave deep scars of hatred in both of us. I doubted Elio and I could work out our differences in this hypothetical future the way Jace and I succeeded. Although he was beautiful, I had thankfully never been attracted to Elio. Or Patrick, for that matter. I doubted friendships could survive when there was an element of attraction in the mix.

But will this friendship survive regardless? I wondered.

Throughout the two hours that followed, I baited and dared myself yet ultimately failed to do more than chat idly with Patrick and Elio. We commented on our workouts, where we succeeded and where we failed, and avoided the talk of hockey or the Steel Saints. Patrick didn’t call me captain today, which I was both thankful for and suspicious of. Had a decision been reached without my knowledge? Would I find out on Monday?

“There’s a party at Delta Kappa Phi,” Patrick said in the locker room after the workout. “Are you guys coming?”

I sucked my teeth. “I’m busy.”

“I didn’t say when it was,” Patrick pointed out.

I snorted, hiding the embarrassment as quickly as I could. “Let me guess, it’s tonight.”

Patrick rolled his eyes. “Yeah, alright, it’s tonight.”

“Well, I’m busy tonight,” I said. I hoped to God I didn’t blush at the thought of the activities I had lined up with the Son of God I hid in my apartment.

“Busy doing what?” Patrick asked. Elio still didn’t meddle. I’d pushed him too far away, and he wasn’t coming back without me putting in the effort.

“Minding my own business,” I told Patrick, who scoffed and shook his head.

“You used to be fun, Easton.”

“I don’t remember ever being fun,” I replied. “You remember it wrong.”

That provoked something like a smile from Patrick. He was a bolt of lightning on the ice, although prone to explosive behavior when the game pushed him to it. Off the ice, he was less fiery but still not exactly a chill guy. He got into fights from time to time and seemed not just to embrace the chaos of the universe but to enjoy it.

“What about you, Elio?” Patrick asked. “Party? No party?”

Elio shook his head. “Not for me.”

“Lame,” Patrick said. “You guys are lame.” He pulled on a T-shirt over his defined torso and tossed a backpack over his shoulder. “Enjoy your cross-stitching and seven o’clock news.” He headed out. “Later, losers.” He waved as he left the locker room, leaving me alone with Elio.

“Why do you think we’re grandmas in that fantasy?” I asked.

Elio had just finished putting on his T-shirt and simply shrugged, picking up his duffel. “Dunno. He just says things.” Slowly, Elio passed by me and walked toward the exit. He didn’t rush out, but he didn’t wait for me, which was a pointed difference.

I looked at his back, then glanced at his locker, still open, then inhaled sharply. “Elio,” I called.

He stopped and turned around, his eyebrows rising as he waited to hear what I had to say. Was he hopeful? Did he expect a blessing? Cold anger uncoiled in my stomach like a venomous snake in its damned nest.

I reached into his locker. “You forgot your watch.”

His eyebrows dropped back into a flat line above his almond-shaped eyes. He nodded and crossed the locker room, took the deep blue wristwatch with dark brown leather strap, and nodded. “Thanks.” Without another word, he turned away and left me alone in the locker room.

I finished dressing and walked out alone.

Jace didn’t come back until late evening. Part of me wanted to pace around the apartment in worry. Another part was desperate to turn off the lights, touch my chest and abs and dick, and finish what I had been expecting all day. Yet another part of me, thankfully the loudest, decided to sit back and watch TV. I wasn’t going to become dependent on him so quickly. Or attached to him.

When Jace unlocked the front door and walked in, he seemed to be in a good mood. He swaggered to the living room and dropped into the armchair that still bore the evidence of our sins. “Ah, that feels good,” he proclaimed as he sank into the cushion. “How was your day?”

I shrugged. “Kind of shitty, to be honest.”

“You missed me too much,” Jace said.

I deadpanned. “I told you my captaincy is under fire.”

“And it’s stressing you out,” Jace said.

I nodded. It was all I could think about today. “It’s all but certain I’ll get replaced.”

Jace took this seriously. He leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees, and threaded his fingers together. “I’m scared to ask. Who’s the replacement?”

I shrugged deeply. “It’ll either be my worst enemy or my best friend.”

Jace let out a low whistle. “Fuck. That’s a real mess.” He hopped off the armchair and patted the seat. “Come here.”

I eyed the chair. He didn’t mean to jump right into action, did he? I needed him to set the mood a bit. Then again, a rough fuck might be just the thing I needed. No kisses, no cuddles, just a raw and sinful indulgence in my deepest, darkest desires.

But when I transported myself into the armchair, Jace circled to the back of it and put his hands on my shoulders. The first squeeze frightened me, making me tense my muscles on instinct. “Hush,” he whispered. “This will help you.”

Was there any unexpected thing that Jace didn’t know how to do? His thumbs sank deep into the tissue of my muscles, rubbing it and untying the knots that seemed to almost sting.

“This isn’t gonna be a sensual little piece of foreplay, by the way,” he said softly, his voice dropping low. “I only know how to do the anti-stress one.”

“You only know how to do it rough, you mean,” I said, moaning once when he hit the spot.

“Who’s being dirty now?” Jace asked.

He massaged my upper back with rough love, destroying the tension that gathered there. The clusters of anxiety seemed to open up and release the toxicity that had collected there over the years.

Jace’s hands moved down my back, rubbing and poking and touching the spots I didn’t know existed. He didn’t lie about it being rough, but the relief I felt some twenty minutes later was nearly as good as an orgasm. Not that having one meant I’d give up on the other. But for now, as Jace dusted his hands proudly, I straightened and decided it had helped.

“Thank you,” I said. It was an awkward thing to say to Jace, who I had never known as a Good Samaritan. We’d never practiced being grateful to one another.

Jace didn’t reply. He was just as bad at it. He sat down on the sofa and pulled out a wad of cash from his pocket. He tossed it on the table. “The breadwinner won some bread,” he said, then rummaged through his pockets and found his cigarettes. After his offhanded comment this morning, I could almost feel the heat on my face again. Seven years had passed, yet I still saw those flames when I closed my eyes. Oh, Jace…

I said nothing as he lit his cigarette. There was an ashtray on the table that had appeared one day after Jace had complained too many times about the lack of it. He solved his problems on the go, apparently.

“Should I even ask?” I wondered aloud, looking at the cash on the table.

“How I make my money?” Jace asked.

Our gazes met with sparks flying in all directions. It was a clash of wills like it almost always was. “It’s a lot of money.” I could see fifties and hundreds among tens and twenties. There wasn’t a single dollar bill or even a five.

“I didn’t steal it,” Jace said and exhaled a thick cloud of smoke.

“I never said you did.” My tone was more argumentative than I’d meant to make it. It had crossed my mind, but I hoped to God Jace wasn’t like that.

Jace was silent for a while, then told me simply, “I won it.”

“You gamble?” I asked.

He gave the slightest shake of his head. “I play cards.”

“You gamble,” I stated.

Once upon a time, when Jace did something naughty and Dad caught him in the act, Jace would avoid looking into Dad’s eyes. Unable to deny it, he would stretch his lips into an unnerving smile, as if fascinated by the prospect of feeling the consequences. The smile would come a moment before the admission, and he wore that smile now as he looked at nothing in particular. In a low voice, he said, “It’s not gambling if you know what you’re doing.”

I leaped off the chair as if he’d tasered me. “You cheated.”

“Christ, Mother, I didn’t kill anyone,” Jace said defensively. It wasn’t often that he was cornered like this, and the same childish instinct of self-righteousness flared in him after all these years.

“Couldn’t you find an honest job?” I demanded. “Be a janitor or something.”

Jace snorted. “As if being a janitor suddenly makes you honest. You should pay more attention, Easton. It’s a fucked-up world.”

“And that excuses you?” I asked in disbelief.

Jace shrugged. “I only have a limited set of skills. It was either this or worse.”

Did I want to know? I doubted it. But there was something new between us, and I couldn’t go on pretending like it didn’t matter to me what Jace was like and what he was up to. “What could be worse?”

He looked up, meeting my gaze with every bit of intensity that lived in mine. “I happen to be very good at doing the kinds of things that require discretion. But since moving all sorts of illegal products from one side of the city to the other isn’t in my sphere of interest, I fell back to the backup plan.”

“So you cheat at cards,” I said, still in disbelief.

He dismissed this with a shake of his head. “Hardly. The guys I play against aren’t worth the effort. They earn their money by settling debts and moving products. They’re the light infantry in some big shot’s little army, and they’re all dumb as logs. So, excuse me for taking advantage of that. If you lived on the streets like I did, you’d build up a basic set of skills to survive. As it stands, you probably wouldn’t last a week.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Jace,” I cried. “Why did I think you were capable of being better than that?”

He looked at me now, and I saw, perhaps for the first time in my life, that I had hurt him. I had put this thing we had in question because of something that was inherently part of Jace.

He stood up and nodded his understanding. “Easton, I am what I am. I don’t pretend to be better than the lowly scum from the bottom of the barrel. I play by my rules because that’s all that keeps me from doing worse things. Don’t think I never look in the mirror and pretend I see something other than this.” He pointed at his face. “I’m a freak. This pseudo-incest turns me on. Cheating insignificant little wannabe criminals gives me a thrill. I get high so I can fall asleep. But I know that I am a freak. Is that something you can understand? Something you can live with?”

And there it was: my free ticket out of this. If I couldn’t accept him the way he was, then I wasn’t meant to have him. We hadn’t done that much damage anyway. We had slept together once, and I spent a day dreaming up the things we could do if we had all the time in the world. I could give it all up now. It wouldn’t cost me much.

But he had said it all so earnestly, willing to level the ground between us. He was honest, even if he was a cheat. He was devoted even if he was a mess. He was quietly dependable despite being the son of chaos and storms.

No. I didn’t want to give him up, not like this.

“It doesn’t make it any better that they are criminals,” I said, resisting the chills at the thought of making some madman with a gun put a target on Jace’s back.

Jace tilted his head. “Perhaps. But if they were innocent, it would be much worse.”

I didn’t know how that logic worked, but it did. So I took two steps toward Jace and put my hands on his shoulders, sliding them to his neck and cupping his face. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

He lifted one side of his lips into a crooked smile that took my breath away. “Believe me, I don’t want to get hurt, either.”

He was far better at surviving, it was true. I kissed him on the lips, the scent of smoke oddly attractive, the fierceness of the kiss incredibly comforting. And when I pulled back and looked into his eyes, I said, “Tell me how you did it when you were on the streets. How did you survive?”

Jace wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “Boring. Play us some music, Easton.” He tossed his head toward the piano.

“I don’t want to,” I said.

“Do it. Play what you played yesterday. I liked that one.” Jace pushed me away, nudging me toward the stool.

“Beethoven,” I said.

“Yes, the big, hairy dog,” Jace agreed lightly.

It drew a contemptuous snort out of me, but I sat on the piano stool anyway. As I flicked the piano on, a shiver passed through me. “It’s not fair,” I said. “They should have let you learn, too.”

“But they let you learn,” Jace said. “So you have to play for me.”

I turned to face the piano, lowering my head all the way down and smiling to myself. “Sure. I have to obey you until you let me come.”

Jace stood behind me, his hands resting on my shoulders. “That’s one way of looking at it.”

His touch grounded me. His presence gave me strength and clarity of mind. Had I thought of giving him up just a minute ago? It seemed so impossible to imagine a life in which Jace hadn’t crashed back into it. Without him, I would probably still be lying in that alley, too broken and embarrassed to crawl out into the world.

Without another word, my fingers glided across the keyboard, and I played for him.