Promises (Coda Book 1)

by Marie Sexton

  Grant returned, a bit breathless from his dash across the lawn. “I found a gun for you. It’s in the car. Are you ready to go?”

  Matt looked over to where his parents were standing. Joseph had his arms crossed and was staring at the sky while Lucy talked quietly to him. They didn’t seem to notice the chaos around them. “Give me one minute, Grant.”

  “Hurry.” Grant turned and went back to his car. The other cops were all back in their cars too. Some of them had left already. The ones that remained were waiting on him.

  Matt took a deep breath and walked over to his parents. His dad turned his back on him and walked away, but Lucy listened as he started to explain what was going on. Lizzy, Brian, and Mom went up the steps back into the house. I watched until they were inside and then turned back to where Matt was talking to his mom.

  That’s when I saw Dan.

  He stepped out of the dark shadows next to the garage. We were three points of a triangle—Dan on one point, me on the second, and Matt with his mom on the third. I saw his hand come up. I saw the gun. It was pointed right at Matt.

  Everything popped into slow motion. I ran toward Matt, yelling his name. He and Lucy turned to face me just as I reached them, and that was when I heard the gun go off. Something slammed into me. Matt pushed past me and ran full speed, straight at Dan. Dan squeezed off another shot, but he was obviously thrown off guard by Matt bearing down on him, because the shot went wide. Matt barreled into him in a tackle worthy of the NFL, knocking the gun out of his hand, and had him pinned on the ground in record time.

  I reeled, feeling a little wobbly and turned to find Lucy was hanging on to me. “I’m so glad I’m not the only one he can do that to.”

  For some reason, she didn’t laugh. Her eyes were wide with fear. “Jared, I think you need to sit down.”

  Except she wasn’t hanging on to me. She was trying to hold me up.

  And then I hit the ground.

  “Matt!” Lucy yelled, falling to her knees.

  The whole thing had only taken seconds. The cops were just now getting out of their cars and rushing toward us. Matt had Dan pinned to the ground. He looked over and his face went white.

  “Somebody bring me some fucking cuffs!”

  “I’m okay,” I said, although my limbs didn’t seem to be obeying my brain.

  Lucy leaned over me. Out of nowhere, I remembered she’d been a nurse, once upon a time. She was all business at the moment. “Jared, you’ve been shot. You need to be still.” She pulled the scarf from around her neck and held it against my side.

  And suddenly it hurt.

  A lot!

  “The ambulance is on its way,” somebody said. And then Matt was next to me, holding my hand and looking down into my face.

  “Hang in there, Jared.”

  “He shot me?”

  “Yes.” His eyes left mine as he glanced down to where his mom was pushing hard on my side…. “There’s a lot of blood.”

  “Rub some dirt on it.”

  “He’s delirious,” Lucy said, but Matt shook his head, a tiny hint of a smile in his eyes.

  “No. He’s not. He’s going to be fine. Right, Jared?”

  “Yeah. I feel great. What’s for dessert?” He squeezed my hand.

  Somewhere out of my line of vision, Dan was yelling, although I couldn’t tell what. Cops swarmed around us, leaning over us like trees over a running stream. And there was so much noise. I could hear Lizzy and Mom crying. And now it was really starting to hurt.

  “Stay back,” Grant said. “Give them some room.”

  “It’s just like the movies,” I said to Matt. His eyes narrowed, obviously reevaluating his denial that I was delirious. “Jesus Christ, Matt, it hurts.”

  “Hang on.”

  I felt lighter than air, like I might float up off the ground. It seemed good that Lucy was holding me down, although I wished she didn’t have to make it hurt so much. There seemed to be lights floating around that I couldn’t focus on. Lucy shook her head. “He’s going into shock.”

  “Jared.” And now Matt sounded scared. “Jared, don’t you dare die on me.”

  I tried to put my hand up to touch his face, but I couldn’t quite get it there. My vision was starting to fade. “Matt, I think I’m going to faint now.”

  “No, Jared. Stay with me.”

  I didn’t hear anything after that.

  Chapter 29

  THE FIRST few times I woke, I was heavily drugged. I was vaguely aware of a parade of faces: one gray-faced doctor and an army of nurses, all interchangeable in their blue scrubs. Lizzy. Brian, Mom. Matt. Lucy? My molasses brain caught on that one, ripples of confusion, before flowing along into oblivion. I was vaguely aware that there were often people in my room, but I never seemed to be able to open my eyes enough to see them. They talked a lot, but only random phrases stuck with me—“replace the window” and “like a nanny”—but I couldn’t make any sense of them.

  Tiny things crawled all over me, but nobody seemed to notice. I finally managed to catch one of the nurses and said, “Bugs on my skin.”

  She patted my hand and said, “It’s the Oxycodone.”

  I heard the words but had no idea what they meant. I was trying to break the sentence down. It was definitely in English.

  I fell asleep again before I got any further than that.

  THE TIME finally came when I woke up, and the world made sense again. The fog in my brain had receded and become only a cloudy blotch in my memory. I was relieved that, at that moment, the only person in the room with me was Matt. He stood leaning against the wall, looking out the window.

  “Oxycodone makes me itch,” I said. Well, maybe there was still a little bit of fog left. I wasn’t exactly sure why that was the first thing to come out of my mouth.

  His head whipped in my direction. “What?”

  “The painkiller they were giving me. It makes my skin crawl.”

  He smiled and came to sit on the bed. “That explains a lot. You kept saying ‘bugs.’”

  “Next time I get shot, tell them I want Vicodin instead.”

  “I will.” But then his face became serious. “You look like hell. How do you feel?”

  “Like I need a shower.” I glanced around and was surprised to find flowers everywhere. “Who are all those from?”

  “Mostly your students and various members of the Coda Police Department. The school. Mr. Stevens. A lot of them are from people I don’t know. You’re a hero, you know?”

  “Do I get a cape? I want red.”

  “The way the story goes, you bravely jumped in front of Mom and me in order to save our lives.” His eyes crinkled at me, and his voice was light. “You took a bullet for us.”

  “What am I, the Secret Service? I was just trying to get your attention. I wasn’t planning on getting shot.”

  He smiled. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  We didn’t talk for a minute, and I started thinking about the scene at the table, before the incident in the front yard. Matt had actually told his dad about us.

  “Why did you do it?”

  He must have been thinking about it too, because he didn’t have to ask what I was talking about.

  “That day, I just kept thinking about the choices I’d made in my life. Some of the hardest ones were decisions I knew he would hate if he knew about them. But they all turned out to be good. First, I decided not to join the military. And I think that was the right choice. Second”—he ticked them off on his fingers as he talked—“I decided a few years ago to quit dating. I’ve already told you that my life got a lot easier after that. Then I decided that your friendship was more important to me than what my coworkers were saying. And that turned out to be a good decision. And then when Cherie died, I decided to accept the fact that I wanted to fuck your brains out.”

  “And that,” I interjected, “was a very wise decision.”

  He smiled and winked at me. “It was.” His face grew serious again. “So we were
all sitting there at the table, I wanted to punch him for the things he was saying about you, but he just kept screaming. And I suddenly thought of all those decisions I’d made over the years, and how they’d brought me to this place in my life where I was really, truly happy for the first time ever, all because of you. So I asked myself, what’s the worst he can do to me? And I knew the answer right away—he could disown me. And I wasn’t really sure anymore why that seemed like a bad thing. It was like the solution was right there in front of me, and I was just too fucking stupid to see it.” He looked down at where our hands were clasped together on the bed by my side. “It’s a relief, to be honest. I don’t have to waste another second of my life trying to make him happy.”

  “You told him you’re gay, but really, I think you’re bi. Maybe you should have gone with that. Maybe that’d bother him less.”

  He shook his head. “If I said bi, he’d hear girls were still an option. He’d think there was still a chance of me settling down with a woman.”

  “And there isn’t?”

  He shook his head, crinkling his eyes at me. “Are you kidding? There’s no chance of me settling down with anybody but you.”

  I smiled. I’d known already, but it was nice to hear him say it out loud. “What about your mom?”

  He brightened a little. “Once she calmed down, she told me that she had suspected all along.” Funny how that works, I thought, remembering my conversation with Brian so many years ago. “I can’t really say that she’s happy about it, but she knows I’m happy. And that means something to her, I think.”

  “I thought she was here.”

  “She was. She delayed her flight and spent a couple of days here. Turns out with Dad gone, she and Lizzy and your mom are like three peas in a pod.”

  “She’s gone now?”

  “She is, but she’ll be back.” His eyes tightened a little, and he frowned. “She’s leaving him. She went home to get her things in order. Lizzy offered to let her live with them for a while. She said she could use help with James anyway.”

  “Like a nanny,” I said quietly to myself, as one piece fell into place.

  “Yes.” He smiled. “She’s so excited to have a surrogate grandchild. I think she’d leave my dad for James alone.”

  We fell quiet again as I thought about all that he’d said.

  “Matt, I’m so sorry. You lost your family, all because of me.”

  He looked at me with alarm. “What? No. You’ve got it all wrong.” He put his hand on my cheek. “I didn’t lose my family because of you. I have a family because of you.”

  I leaned into his touch. “I want to go home. When are they letting me go?”

  “Tuesday afternoon. I work the two-to-ten that day, but I’ll get it off.”

  “Don’t. Mom or Brian or Lizzy will give me a ride.”

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

  “I’m sure. I’ll be waiting for you when you get home.”

  “Will you be naked?” he asked with a wicked grin.

  I laughed and pushed him off the bed. “Just wait and see.”

  Chapter 30

  IT TURNED out to be Mom who took me home from the hospital. I was surprised to find the large front window covered by plywood. I’d forgotten that, prior to showing up at Lizzy and Brian’s, Dan had ransacked our house.

  “They’ve ordered the glass,” Mom told me. “I think Matt said it would be installed next week. We cleaned up inside as well as we could, but you’ll probably need to have the carpet in the living room replaced.”

  When I got inside, I found that the damage wasn’t bad at all. I also found that Matt’s bookshelf was now in the bedroom and his home gym was taking up most of the dining room. He’d apparently moved the last of his stuff into my house while I was in the hospital.

  I went to bed early, nestling happily into sheets that smelled like him. I was asleep when he got home. I woke up to him sliding into bed behind me. He carefully cuddled up to my back and wrapped himself around me, making sure not to touch the bandage on my side. I settled back against him with a sigh.

  “I’m glad you’re home,” I told him.

  “I’m glad you’re home. I missed this. The whole week my parents were here, I was sleeping at my apartment. And then this past week, you weren’t here. This bed seemed awfully big and empty.” His hands began to wander, and he kissed the back of my neck. “Did the doctors say you’re healthy enough to resume all activities?”

  “They said no sex for six months.”

  He froze until I started laughing. Then, as his lips brushed my neck again, “That’s not funny.” But I knew he was smiling.

  “They said to be careful and make sure we don’t disturb the stitches.”

  “I’ll be gentle.”

  And he was. He lined us up, the way he always liked, and stroked us off together, slow and passionate, kissing me deeply right up until the end, when he pulled back to watch me come. And although it still surprised me, it was watching me that sent him over the edge, and he said again in my ear, “God, I love to watch you.”

  Afterward, we lay tangled together in the dark.

  “Jared?” He tugged my curls.

  “Yes?” I was more than halfway asleep, perfectly warm and content, back in my own bed. With him.

  “Say it for me.”

  “You’re heavy.”

  “No.”

  “You’re a manipulative bastard.”

  He laughed. “No.”

  “You’re right.”

  He gave one hard tug on my hair. “That’s not it either.”

  “I love you?”

  He sighed contentedly. “That’s the one.”

  I lay there, his heartbeat drumming in my ear, his fingers moving through my hair, his smooth skin under my fingers, his legs entwined with mine. I couldn’t imagine anything better in the world. I smiled, although he couldn’t see it, wrapped my arms tighter around him, and said it again, only really meaning it this time. “I love you.”

  It’d been less than a year since he had first walked through the door of our shop. It was hard to believe my life had changed so much. And looking back, I had to laugh when I realized one simple thing: the whole thing started because of Lizzy’s Jeep.

  Meant to Be

  Approximately fifteen years before a cop named Matt ever went looking for a Jeep….

  IN HINDSIGHT, “I think I might be gay” probably shouldn’t have been the first words out of my mouth upon meeting my new dorm mate. I’ll never forget the look of horror on his face before he schooled it back into something cool and polite. He told me he was running downstairs to get a pop out of the machine—even asked if I wanted anything—before heading straight to the Resident Assistant’s office and asking to be reassigned.

  Maybe I should have started with my name, or told him I was from a little mountain town named Coda, only about an hour away from the Colorado State University campus. Maybe I should have eased into the discussion of my sexuality. But it’d been eating at me for the better part of four years, and now that I was about to start college, far enough away from home that no word of my activity would reach my mother’s ears, I intended to find out once and for all. After all, it was the ’90s. The twenty-first century was just around the corner. There were at least two organizations on campus for gay and lesbian students. And what was college for anyway, besides drinking, smoking weed, and experimenting with sex?

  Oh, an education? Well, yeah. I figured I’d get that too. But that’d take four years minimum. I intended to lose my virginity a hell of a lot faster than that.

  Roommate number one—I never did catch the guy’s name—came back only long enough to retrieve the box he’d been carrying when I’d blurted out my clumsy confession. Two hours later, a new man walked through the door, looking like he’d spent the entire summer on a beach in California.

  Which, it turned out, he had.

  “I’m Bryan, with a ‘y.’” He dropped his laundry basket full of cl
othes and textbooks and held out his hand. “Bryan Nantel.”

  Well, at least I’d be able to remember his name. It was the same as my brother’s, except for the “with a ‘y’” part. “Jared Thomas,” I said, shaking his hand.

  I’d learned my lesson, though. I wasn’t about to blurt out the “I think I might be gay” thing again, even if it was the only thing I’d been thinking about for ages. But how long should I wait before dropping my bombshell? When was an appropriate time to tell your roommate that your number one priority for the first week of school was finding a guy to kiss?

  Or would I have to lie to him all year, the way I’d been lying to my parents and my brother and everybody else I knew?

  Luckily, he took matters into his own hands.

  “My first roommate was all ‘born again’ and practically went into convulsions when I told him my boyfriend would be stopping by later. The RA seemed to think you’d be okay with it?”

  I laughed with relief. “Yeah,” I assured him. “I’m totally okay with it.”

  Bryan had to make a couple more trips to get all his stuff. Then he filled me in as we unpacked. He was from Houston. He and his California boyfriend had first met on the ski slopes of Vail, the previous Christmas, and had known at once they were meant to be.