Long Time Gone (Hell or High Water )

by SE Jakes

  “So sending you in together would accomplish what? I don’t get it—did they expect you all to come out friends?”

  Tom shook his head. “Look, at the time, I didn’t know for sure. Figured maybe the sheriff told Miles and Donny to apologize, to beg Etienne to drop it. Or maybe he told them to threaten us into shutting up since we had no proof, and it turns out that was what he’d had in mind. But it didn’t matter which one it was, because sending us all in together would prove, once and for all, no matter how it turned out, that wherever I was, trouble followed. Not that the community needed proof of that. And Etienne’s parents thought it could make a man out of him.” Tom pulled his hands out of his pockets and ran them through his hair as he looked around at Etienne’s artwork on the walls. When he spoke again, his voice held a fierce edge. “Etienne was born a better man than anyone I knew. And fuck, we were fourteen—and holy shit, how can something that happened when we were fourteen haunt us for the rest of our goddamned lives?”

  “All of this was why you’d never have won the sheriff’s seat,” Prophet said as the pieces fell into place.

  “Yes,” Tom admitted.

  “But you came back here after the FBI, knowing what you were up against. And you ran. Jesus, T, it’s like . . .”

  “I’m my very own whipping boy?” he asked sardonically.

  “You thought you deserved the punishment of trying to earn everyone’s respect.”

  Tom hung his head, a silent concession to Prophet’s words. “Even Etienne told me to go the fuck away. Not because of what it did to him. But he knew what it did to me. So you were right when you called me my very own whipping boy when we first met. Pathetic, isn’t it?”

  Prophet stood then, strode over to him, and put a hand under Tom’s chin. “No. What’s pathetic is that no one but Etienne and me could see that you’ve always been stronger than any of the people who tried to hurt you, physically and mentally. Your father. The people in this town. You had one safe place to turn—Etienne—but you were trying to save him too. And look at you now. No one else could’ve taken all that abuse. No one.”

  Tom sucked in a harsh breath and stared at him, like he’d never considered the possibility.

  “Every time you came back, you just proved to them that you were so much stronger than they ever could be. Like you took strength from their hatred. Like you wouldn’t buy into their bad luck shit.”

  “But I did.”

  “You didn’t let them know that. You didn’t give in. A part of you doesn’t believe it, or you’d never have taken jobs that would force you to partner up again.”

  Tom blinked fast. Cursed. “You are so fucking good for me and so fucking bad for me at the same time.”

  “It’s not good if you don’t have the mix of both.”

  Prophet let go of his chin as Tom wound his arms around him, and Prophet held him while he said, “I don’t want to tell you the rest of it. Or maybe I just don’t want to deal with it. I sure as hell don’t want to revisit it.”

  Prophet thought about all the things he had nightmares about. He guessed Tommy got headaches instead. It made sense. “Come on, let it out, T. Let it go and then—”

  “And then it becomes your burden. And you have too many of those already.”

  He pulled back a bit. “You’re not a burden, Tommy. Never were, never will be. You understand?” He heard how fiercely the words came out of his mouth, and he cursed inwardly. Yeah, who’s the burden?

  But Tommy didn’t seem to notice. They stood together in the middle of the studio, their bodies touching, Prophet’s hands on Tom’s waist and Tom resting his hands on Prophet’s forearms. When he started speaking, his voice was barely a whisper. “I promised Etienne that nothing would happen to him in that cemetery. I swore. Because I hadn’t been there for him when he’d needed me. And at first, we separated from Miles and Donny, because Etienne didn’t want to be with them. Can you imagine how cruel that is—send a boy into the woods with the guys who raped him?”

  They’d been talking about it all along, but to hear it put so bluntly . . . fuck. “I’d have killed them,” Prophet said softly. When he realized what he’d said, he cursed. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Because I wish I’d had the guts to kill them. But saving them—having them rely on me—was the ultimate revenge. No one ever looked at them the same. I ruined their lives because, since we were forced to keep the secret, they had to be civil to me in public. Or at least they couldn’t be the assholes they normally were.”

  Prophet started. “What secret, Tommy?”

  “Can’t believe it could get worse, right? But it does, Proph,” Tom said forlornly. “And this secret . . . they were afraid I’d tell it, because I was the wild card. The bad luck. The trouble. If it was going to come from anyone, it’d be me.”

  “Not a bad thing to be feared.”

  “Better to be respected.”

  “That’s overrated.”

  “Well, now they’re dead, and I’m being framed. You think people aren’t remembering how odd it was that we came out of the woods not mortal enemies?”

  “The firing squad around here seems smaller than you remember.”

  Tom laughed and looked briefly at the ceiling before settling his gaze back on Prophet. “You have no idea, Prophet. Wait. Just wait.”

  “What? Torches and pitchforks?”

  “Keep an eye out, okay?” Tom stared out the window and then back at Prophet, as if Prophet was the only thing keeping him grounded.

  “Go ahead, T. I’m right here.”

  He nodded. “It was just after six. The sheriff drove us to right where you and I parked and marched us into the cemetery. We each had a flashlight, a canteen, and a little food. Miles and Donny took off fast. They didn’t want to be around us, and they also thought they could get someplace safe before it was pitch-black.”

  “And they couldn’t have?”

  “There is no safe place,” he said darkly. “Etienne had kind of frozen when his parents dropped him off at the meeting place with the sheriff, and even after he and I were alone, he still wasn’t talking. So I held his hand. That was the first time I’d ever done that—we’d been friends, but I’d always been attracted to him. Doing that there could’ve been the stupidest move ever, but Etienne, he told me later that he thought that might’ve saved him.”

  Prophet squeezed Tom’s hand. “That’s sweet.”

  “You’re not jealous?”

  “I’m trying not to break your hand.”

  Tom snorted. “It was over a long time ago.”

  “I know.” He stared at Tom. “Keep going.”

  Tom took a deep breath and went back into the bayou, taking Prophet with him.

  The dark came fast—Tom had known it would, out here in the graveyard with no lights, but knowing it and actually being in it at night were two different things entirely.

  Etienne’s hand was cool, even though they were both slick with sweat. It was the end of September. Muggy. They’d have been bitten alive by mosquitos if Etienne hadn’t been prepared. He used the bug spray on both of them and that helped.

  “We’ll be all right, Etienne,” Tom assured him. Tom would go to any length to make sure that was true, because his best friend had already had to endure enough shit in the past month.

  “Do you think the sheriff gave Miles a weapon?” Etienne asked finally, a small shudder rippling through his body.

  “I don’t know.” But he had a knife of his own. Wouldn’t tell Etienne that. Not yet.

  “We could turn around. Walk right back out. Refuse to do this,” Tom suggested and Etienne laughed a little.

  “You, refuse to survive? Come on, Tom—never happened.”

  “That’s what they’re trying to say about what Miles did to you. But it did. And I won’t let them win like that. I won’t let them brand you a liar.”

  “Better to brand me a rape victim? No, better to brand me a boy who gives it to anyone. I don’t know what’s worse,
” Etienne said fiercely, “the insinuation that a gay guy can’t be raped, or that I’d actually willingly let Miles fuck me.”

  He turned to Etienne then, and he kissed him. A soft, slow kiss, the kind he’d been dreaming about doing, and in the dark Etienne shook a little and returned the kiss. Threaded his arms around Tom as Tom put his hands on Etienne’s shoulders, one hand twisting through his hair.

  They kissed for at least five minutes in the dark. The only reason they stopped was that staying still in the bayou made you a target for all sorts of wildlife. And they didn’t talk about it because they were fourteen-year-old boys.

  “You’re going to be my first tattoo,” Etienne told him.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “No. Not after that kiss.”

  Etienne’s last word was cut in half by screams tearing through the heart of the swamp, turning Tom cold. Etienne simply froze and said, “That’s Miles.”

  Tom took Etienne’s hand and pulled him along behind him. They’d never been here in the pitch dark before, but they’d both been here enough that they instinctively knew the narrow path leading through the graves—made narrower by the thin beam of the flashlight Tom followed. One foot in front of the other, they followed the echoes of the screams that weren’t stopping as they moved through the damp bayou floor as quickly as they could.

  It took at least ten minutes of half walking, half running. The denseness of the bayou had never closed in on him the way it did then, but he needed to be strong for Etienne. Then the yelling that echoed around them, leading them in Miles’s direction, came to a dead halt. And they were left in the bog, surrounded by nothing and everything.

  “Tom, shit . . .”

  “It’s okay, E. Hang onto me,” he urged, sounding far more calm than he actually was. His heart raced, because he’d already smelled the metallic tang of blood. Then he nearly stumbled over something.

  Someones. He stopped short, and Etienne shone the flashlight on Miles and Donny.

  Donny was kneeling on the ground, shaking Miles, whose silence was now eerie. All Tom could focus on was the blood, all over Miles’s hands.

  “Is he hurt?” Etienne asked as Tom grabbed the flashlight from him and trailed it along the ground farther away from them, finally hitting on something about five feet from where they stood.

  “The blood’s not his,” Tom said quietly.

  Tom’s first instinct was to grab Etienne, head to the road, leaving Miles and Donny and the body behind. But he inexplicably found himself moving toward it.

  He let the light travel up from the heavily booted feet, to the chest, where the hilt of a knife stood straight up like a proud soldier. A very lucky shot for Miles. Unlucky for whomever this man was.

  Tom hesitated before bringing the light up to the man’s face. The guy’s mouth was open in surprise and his eyes . . . fuck, his eyes were open too, and appeared to be starting straight at Tom, thanks to the angle he stood at over the body.

  Tom jumped back for a second, then looked again. It was no one he recognized. And for him not to know an adult on this bayou was odd. He moved closer, a hand over the man’s mouth to feel for any breath, but there was nothing. Just an odd stillness.

  It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen death before—he and his father shot alligators for a living—but this was so different. He put his hand on the guy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said, because he was, for all of them.

  “What the—” Etienne was next to him, staring down at the body. Then he turned back and went for Donny, shoving him backwards from his kneeling position, slamming him onto the ground. “What the fuck, Donny—who’d you guys really bring that knife for?”

  Tom heard the sounds of fist hitting flesh, an all-too familiar one for it to impact him.

  “Is he dead?”

  Miles voice. He’d pushed up off the ground and now stood next to Tom shakily.

  “Yes,” Tom said, from where he was still kneeling. And even if the guy was hanging on, what could they do? There was no one to call—the nearest house was too many miles away in the dark.

  Tom pushed up and turned to the direction of Miles’s voice in the dark. Miles, who grabbed for him, smearing something all over Tom’s hands and shirt. When Tom pulled away and fumbled for his flashlight, he saw that it was blood. Then he turned the light on Miles. “What the fuck are you trying to do?”

  “Listen, Tom, we gotta stick together on this.”

  Tom jerked away from him. “You were waiting, right? You thought it was me and Etienne coming up the pathway.”

  Miles blanched, and that was enough of a confession for Tom. He’d ask why, but he knew the reasons. Knew even more when he looked down at the blood covering his hands and his shirt.

  They were all ruined now, and irreparably connected.

  Tom realized he must’ve been silent for a while after he finished the story when Prophet ran a hand along the back of his neck and shook him a little.

  “Hey, T, you with me?”

  Yes, he was. Definitely with Prophet. He stirred in the circle of Prophet’s arms. “Sorry. Yeah.”

  “So, the way I see it, Donny and Miles were murdered for what happened on that trip.”

  “Yeah,” Tom repeated, but he felt disconnected from his body. Was surprised when Prophet got up, kicking his chair back, saying, “Come on, T. Let’s get you to bed and get you drugged.”

  It was only then that the throb of migraine pain got his attention. He let Prophet guide him to the bed. “You just want to take advantage of me.”

  Prophet smiled. “For sure.” Then Prophet propped him up, put ice on his head, and gave him his meds. “They going to stay down?”

  “Maybe.” He breathed, tried to force his stomach not to rebel. Let Prophet do some pressure point therapy on his hands to help with the pain. He kept his eyes closed, felt his knees go from bent to straight as his body relaxed and his mind floated away. Woke to darkness, a raging hard-on, and his hips rocking against Prophet’s thigh.

  Prophet was watching him, his eyes heavy lidded, his hair tumbling over his forehead. Although his eyes were worried, the mask was gone.

  Times like these, Tom knew he was seeing the real Prophet. It was enough to get him through the times he couldn’t. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” Prophet slid a hand over Tom’s dick, his thumb rubbing along the piercings. “Better?”

  “I want it to be.” But his skin was hot and tight, like he had a fever. “I want to not need you so goddamned much.”

  Prophet snorted lightly. “Right back at you, Tommy.”

  Between the pain and the incoming edges of the drugs softening his resolve on everything, he wanted to believe Prophet. Needed to know that whenever Prophet stepped in to help him gain much needed control over his temper, or helped him with his migraines, or helped him deal with his past, it was because he wanted to, not just because it was an easy way to push Tom away.

  Prophet was watching him with a half grin on his face, and it took Tom a few seconds to register why. Because Tom had babbled the words out loud instead of just letting them run wild in his brain. “Shit.”

  “I’m here doing this—all of this—because I want to. Not because I have to. Not because it puts distance between us. I told you I’m done running. I think maybe you’re the one who’s still trying to escape.”

  “No. I don’t want that.”

  “Then let me, T.”

  Tom was happy to pretend he didn’t have a choice in the matter.

  “Never fail to surprise me,” Prophet murmured to him what seemed like hours later.

  “That’s good, right?” Tom asked tiredly, still collapsed over the man’s chest.

  Prophet laughed and rubbed a hand down his back. “Decent.”

  Tom laughed weakly. “Fucker.”

  “You started it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Tom realized. “How were my meds here?”

  Prophet had the grace to look sheepish. “I went through your bag. Put the
m in my pocket before we went out with Kari.”

  “In case I had a migraine down the street from my aunt’s house?”

  “Pressure changes. You never know . . .” Prophet trailed off.

  “Thank you.”

  “Not done yet,” Prophet said. Tom let Prophet practically carry him to the bathroom.

  He leaned against Prophet under the spray, murmured, “’M’too warm, Proph.”

  Prophet made the water cooler, and Tom shivered as it hit his heated skin. His head throbbed from the small exertion, and he whimpered as Prophet tucked his head against his neck and rubbed his back. Realized that the damned orgasm earlier had helped the pain immensely, if only for the moments it raced through him.

  “I’ve got you,” Prophet said roughly, and Tom wanted to ask “Who has you?” but it would take too much effort at the moment, and no doubt Prophet wouldn’t answer him anyway. Prophet was protecting him, which was what he did best, and Tommy realized the key to their partnership was just that—Prophet wanted to protect.

  Tommy would let him, because it allowed him to protect Prophet right back.

  Finally, they were both cool and far more comfortable. Prophet didn’t bother toweling them off—the warm air would dry them soon enough. Tom was agreeable, letting Prophet manhandle him, put a bag of ice on his head, give him more medicine.