There's This Guy Page 11

  He was stretched too thin and overworked to the point of shattering if the slightest touch would undo him. Where he’d wanted Dallas to hold him before, Jake longed to put some distance between them, the recollection of that night creeping up on him, peeling away the walls he’d put up to nurture what little control he had left.

  “Come here,” Dallas murmured, reaching for him, then stopping when Jake shook his head. “What? You need someone, Jake. You—”

  “You touch me and I’ll… break.” The painful ember in his soul flared, eating away at him again, and Jake tasted a sourness in his mouth as his stomach rebelled, kicking up a bilious storm. He turned, pulling his legs up so he could sit facing Dallas. “I just need to get through this. To tell you. I’ve never told anyone, and fuck, I still don’t know if I can do this, say this. But I owe you, you know? At least…. God, you could have been hurt… died… because I have that damned gun here.”

  “You don’t owe me anything, Jake.” This time Dallas refused to let Jake push him away, gathering him into his arms and pulling him off-balance into an odd, awkward sideways hug. “But you owe yourself everything. Including some peace. You want to talk it out? I’m here. You just want to sit here and get drunk? I’ll do that with you too. You want to be alone? Well, okay, that you’re not getting, but the rest of it, all yours. Just… tell me what you want, what you need.”

  “I need you, and I’m fucking scared as hell,” Jake stammered out, and Dallas drew back enough to cup his face. He was crying again—still—and Dallas’s tender kiss across his forehead only made the blubbering worse. “Don’t… I can’t… I just feel like I’m about to crack open.”

  Dallas dropped his hands from Jake’s face, resting them on his shoulders. “Then tell me about the gun, J. Tell me what happened back then, and let’s figure out where to go from there.”

  Shame drowned his face in red, the sluice of humiliation and regret stinging his conscience working its way across his cheeks. His body ached from the memory of that night, the beating he’d taken from his father, then the screaming match hot on its heels. He’d run, determined to be… anything other than what he’d left behind in that house, but it’d all gone wrong. So damned wrong, and no matter how much he prayed, nothing could ever change what happened that night. But here was Dallas, asking him to probe old wounds, hoping to prick the festering blister of his memories to help him heal.

  There’d be no healing. There couldn’t be.

  Then came Dallas’s husky whisper, “Jake… please.”

  God, he’d do anything for Dallas, even if it meant slicing himself open until he bled to death. Jake knew he’d give Dallas anything he wanted, even if it meant losing him.

  “It was stupid, you know? I met a guy—a teacher—at a coffee shop near school. He was… older, and he flirted a bit. I didn’t even know what to say. I wasn’t… I’d been out to clubs a bit when I’d moved away, but after I came back home, I couldn’t risk it. But I guess I figured no one would find out; no one would know because it was so damned far away from everything. No one would know, right?

  “So we’d meet for coffee or lunch and talk about stupid things like what I was taking, because I’d transferred back to be closer to home since my dad was getting sicker. He… this guy… taught literature, nothing I was going to take. But it was nice just talking to someone who knew what I was going through.” Jake grimaced at the fumbling idiot he’d been then. “I’d talk to him on the phone sometimes. Usually at night when Mom was asleep, but he called one afternoon to ask me if I wanted to go to a party that night. And… she heard me.”

  “Did she know you were gay?” Dallas leaned in, strengthening their contact with a casual brush of his hand over Jake’s forearm.

  “She kind of knew? Maman would make these comments about how homosexuals were Satan’s creatures and how I had to fight any kind of feelings I’d have for another man. She spent a lot of time praying over me—hell, I can’t tell you how many priests she’d asked to say a blessing over me so I wouldn’t lose my way.” His nose was stuffy, and Jake’s head began to throb, but he kept going, unable to stop the torrent of words flowing from him. “She was… angry. That’s not even describing it. We fought a little bit. Then my dad came into my bedroom, and… he was still bigger than me then. I hadn’t… I was smaller, and the next thing I knew he was beating me with the buckle end of his belt. And my mother… she didn’t step in.”

  “Did she try to stop him? Before that night?” Dallas asked gently, prodding at the edges of Jake’s pain.

  “Always.” Once breached, the river of pain and sorrow seemed determined to gush out, drowning them both. “She always tried to stop him, but not then. There were so many… she couldn’t stand to look at me, Dallas. The things she said—she told me she hated me. That God hated me and I’d die alone, because men like me were sick and perverted. That she hoped I’d get sick and die because that’s what I deserved for…. God, I couldn’t listen to it anymore.”

  “She probably didn’t realize she was saying them.” He tried to reassure Jake, but his words did little to soothe the wounds left in Jake’s heart. “People say crazy things when they’re mad. She didn’t mean them. You’ve got to know that, J.”

  “See, the thing is I, won’t ever know because I left. I grabbed some of my stuff and thought I’d go over to Prescott’s place and… I don’t know, stay there? I wasn’t thinking straight. I know that now, but then, I guess I thought I was in love with him.” Jake tugged on his lower lip, dropping his eyes down before he continued. “It was late, and I was…. The party was going on, and he was so damned glad to see me. I just wanted to be kind of normal. Just once. I didn’t want to feel dirty or sick.”

  “That’s not bad, Jake. It’s not.” Dallas nodded, then murmured, “What happened after? At the party?”

  “I….” Jake couldn’t swallow any more tears. He was awash in salt and numb from the revisiting of a night he’d sooner forget. His mind recoiled, reeling from the echoes of his assaulted flesh and then the shock of discovering he meant nothing to the one person he’d stupidly believed cared for him. “I got drunk at the party, and I figured, what the hell? I was so pissed off, and I wanted to feel…. I went with Prescott into his bedroom. I knew what he wanted, and I thought I… I don’t know what exactly…. Maybe I just wanted to see what it was like. But it… he… hurt. I couldn’t get him to stop, and then there was….”

  There’d been blood. Not a lot but enough for Jake’s panic to wrap around his throat and smother him. Prescott insisted it would be okay, that the apprehension Jake felt was normal. He was nervous because it would be his first time with a man and those kinds of things always hurt in the beginning. It’d never stopped hurting, and he’d tried to get free, to push away from Prescott, but by the time Jake’d fought his way loose, it was too late.

  The screaming began nearly as soon as Jake kicked Prescott off the bed and onto the floor. His clothes were buried under the bed’s linens, and Prescott was up onto his feet, screaming about stupid virgins and teases. Jake’d tried to forget the battling run through the crowded apartment and the smug laughter he’d heard when he’d pushed past someone. They’d known what Prescott led him into that room for and mocked Jake with each step he took toward the front door. He’d fled to the one place he thought he’d be safe. Despite the anger and betrayal he’d felt toward his mother, he’d gone home to her, hoping for solace and forgiveness.

  Instead he found only an ocean of blood and a hole in his life where his mother’d been.

  “My father was killing her while Prescott… the sex we had… hurt me. She was dying while he was shoving his dick into me, not hearing me cry… not stopping when I’d begged him to. He just told me it was how things were and I’d get used to it. I’d wanted him bad enough to toss away my family and he…. Jesus I was stupid,” Jake choked out, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I should have been there. I should have stopped him, but instead I was so fucking full of mysel
f and… she died, Dallas. He took her from me because… he couldn’t stand what I was and lashed out at the one person he could. It should have been me on that kitchen floor. It should have been my head he bashed in. Not hers. She didn’t… deserve to die like that.”

  “God, Jake… no. That wasn’t your fault. None of this….” This time he let Dallas grab him up, falling into the man’s arms and clinging to Dallas’s warm body as if he would drown in his own tears if he let go. “None of what happened that night was on you. You’ve got to understand that. That asshole should have…. Oh God, baby.”

  His body rocked with his sobs, jerking quakes strong enough to rattle his bones loose and threaten to tear his spine free from its moorings. Dallas fit him into the curve of his body, molding Jake to his chest. He let go, releasing everything he’d been holding in, his skin as cold as the dried blood he’d scraped off the kitchen floor once the cops let them go back into the house. His bones were iced over, his muscles rigid when his shock at what he’d done struck him anew.

  His strangled screams tore through his sobs, and Jake clenched the couch’s soft cushions, fearful he’d strike Dallas when his emotions scuttled him, taking him back down into their redolent depths. Jake couldn’t hold anything else in, and he gasped, struggling to swallow the damning words caught under his anguish.

  “I knew as soon as I saw him… as soon as that fucker came stumbling out of the hospital room where they’d taken him… I knew he’d killed her,” Jake hiccupped, arching into Dallas’s touch when he stroked small circles across Jake’s back. “He smiles, this sick secret grin, like he’s giggling and being so fucking clever. Taunted me as the cops fussed over him like he was a weak old man. He was strong then. He had spells, but most of the time he was strong enough to hurt her… hurt me. Then a little bit later, he went… when his brain was slipping around inside of his head, he told me what he’d done, and… I wanted to take that gun of his and blow his brains out.”

  “I’d hate to visit you in prison, J.” Dallas attempted a teasing smile, but it faded before it took hold. “You said the gun was… for you, J. What—”

  “I’ve spent so much damned time waiting for him to die. He got so sick after, I thought he was going to die because of what he’d done… to Maman, but instead his mind started to go and he would talk, sometimes to me… sometimes to people who weren’t in the room, but that’s how I found out. About what he’d done.” Jake exhaled, unsteady and his skull felt too tight around his brain. “When I was a kid, she’d begged me to take care of him, if something happened to her. She was so scared of getting sick, of dying before he did because… for everything he’d done to her… to me… she loved him. Probably told him she loved him as he was killing her.

  “The gun wasn’t for him. It wasn’t. I kept it because when I picked it up, I wanted to make everything go away, and it seemed like… salvation,” Jake confessed. “I wanted to make the pain inside of me stop. I could taste the gun in my mouth, Dallas. I knew what metal tasted like, and I wanted it on my tongue like I was addicted to it. I wanted to hear the click of the trigger and then taste the gunpowder right before that bullet broke through the roof of my mouth. And I want that every day, Dal. Every single damned day I come home and want to taste that bitter, hot blood so I can let everything go. I’ve got nothing… no one… except for that fucking old man.”

  “You’ve got me, Jake,” Dallas whispered. “You’re not alone. Not now. And I’m trying really hard not to… fuck, Jake, you’re so damned gorgeous. You make me crazy, and you make me laugh, and I feel so damned empty when you’re not around. I’m trying hard to be just your friend because that’s what you need, someone to be here with you when the shit starts to swallow you up. It would fucking kill me if you weren’t here. You’re worth more than… anything. I need to feel your smiles against my soul, and I hate you can’t see that.

  “Fuck it, Jake. Punch me if you want, but I’ve got to do this,” Dallas growled, cupping Jake’s jaw with one hand, then leaned in to steal Jake’s breath away.

  The kiss was a salty mess of desperate hope and anguished longing. Their mouths were angled wrong, fumbling clumsily and sliding, more a smear of flesh than a long, lingering succulent brush of soft lips, but Jake caught Dallas’s sigh on his tongue and swallowed it, refusing to throw away the sweetest kiss he’d ever had.

  It lasted only a moment, not long enough for Jake to have more than a whispering taste of Dallas, but it was enough. The craving for the gun’s acrid kiss was gone, swept away by a more powerful longing and a pair of hooded, sensual eyes the color of a sun-drenched sky.

  “You can punch me now”—Dallas’s voice broke, crackling around his words—“if you want, but you’ve got to know, you are worth so damned much. To me. To everyone who knows you. I’m scared to death for you, but seriously, punch away.”

  “I don’t. Want to punch you, I mean,” Jake admitted softly, resting his forehead against Dallas’s, breathing in the scent of their mingled heat. His blood skipped and skidded, his thoughts tangled in on each other, and Jake struggled to find words among the screaming need coursing through his body. “I need… I don’t know what I need, Dallas. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, and I’m scared.”

  “First thing Monday morning, you are going to get on the phone,” Dallas replied, his breath ruffling Jake’s eyelashes. “And you’re going to find someone to talk to. Someone who can help you work through all of this, and I promise you this, Jacques Moore; I will be with you every step of the way. Because you’re stuck with me now. No matter what, no matter what we become, I will be here with you. Because I don’t want to live in a world without you in it. Might as well take away the fucking sun and stars, because my life will be that much darker. So fucking dark.”

  Eleven

  THERE WAS a crick in Dallas’s neck, and something hard dug in between two of his ribs, bruising the already tender muscles he’d strained reaching to strip the molding above Bombshells’ antique bar. His cock was half-awake, primed and aroused. Then Dallas felt the long stretch of warm skin and solid weight behind him and he remembered where he’d spent his last couple of hours the night before… splayed out on his back, on Jake’s bed with Jake stretched out next to him.

  And they’d talked. About everything and nothing until sleep claimed them both.

  If Dallas hadn’t been mostly in love with Jake Moore before, he definitely was smitten by the time he drifted off, ridiculously happy just to hear Jake breathing next to him.

  The hard thing in Dallas’s ribs was Jake’s elbow, and when Dallas shifted, Jake followed, his massive shoulders sliding the linens beneath him. Lying on his back with one arm thrown over his head, Jake sprawled over his side of the bed, one knee tucked up until it grazed the wall with his other leg stuck straight out, his heel nearly brushing the end of the mattress.

  Dead asleep but probably worn out from the emotional upheaval the night before, Jake was a limp, handsome sprawl, his full mouth slightly open, and his lashes swept dark shadows under his closed eyes. His rich brown hair, now a mess of licks and curls, framed his strong face, and the light picked out the delicate spray of freckles across his cheeks and nose.

  Darkened by a sparse stubble, his firm jaw and long throat begged Dallas to be bitten and kissed, Jake’s tanned skin turned to gold from the light coming from the bank of partially cranked open jalousies above them. Every line of his body rippled with movement, muscles bunching and giving with every shift Jake made, and the peek of his flat, hard stomach from his T-shirt riding up his side drove Dallas wild.

  “Okay, pee first, then food,” he mumbled, forcing himself up and off the wide bed. “Because if I don’t get out of bed now, it’s going to take twenty minutes for my dick to go down. Fucking thing is hard enough to stir coffee right now.”

  After a dash out to his car to retrieve the duffel of spare clothes he kept in the Tesla’s trunk and a hot shower where he was disgusted to find his arousal stoked to full force by the scent
of Jake’s soap, Dallas emerged clean and starving. A peek into Jake’s fridge reassured him the grocery faeries hadn’t visited in the middle of the night to fill the icebox while they’d been sleeping, but his stomach growled too loudly to be ignored.

  Jake didn’t look like he was waking up any time soon, and from what Dallas remembered of the neighborhood, there was a small market on the corner he could walk to. Eggs and bacon sounded like a great idea, but then so did biscuits and gravy. And butter. Lots of butter.

  “Okay, I’m starving. And it’s almost one.” He grabbed his wallet out of his duffel bag and debated taking Jake’s keys so he could get back into the apartment. The debate ended quickly enough with Dallas unclipping the half with the door key on it and leaving Jake a note, promising he’d be back with food. “Shit, maybe something’ll be open and I’ll just do takeout. I could eat a whole damned cow.”

  The sun was a lie, more of a watery sheet of white filtered through a low marine layer intent on fooling beachgoers to go without sunscreen. He made room on the sidewalk for a tiny, crouched-over old Korean woman, one arm slung up behind her back as she hustled by him in a power walk fast enough to rattle the overloaded wire shopping trolley she dragged behind her. Dallas caught her quick glance, an assessing, suspicious glare, and then she was off, hurrying through the gaps between the light foot traffic on the walk.

  Something sizzled on a grill nearby, the scent of marinated meat toying with Dallas’s senses. Any thought of bacon, eggs, and biscuits was wiped out when he spied a couple of food trucks doing a brisk business in a closed bank’s empty parking lot. The lines were long, nearly long enough for Dallas to have second thoughts, but an aromatic cloud of steam slapped some sense into him, and he stopped arguing with himself long enough to study the menu.