Recoil

by Evelyn Drake

  Tobias was gone a moment later, exiting out the kitchen’s swinging door, and Kyle heard the front door close a moment after that. It was good that Tobias had not waited to be walked to the door. Kyle was sure he would not have been able to manage it. His legs didn’t seem to want to work.

  Sinking down to the floor to sit cross-legged, he pulled Jack’s warm, soft body into his lap and held him. Seeming to sense Kyle’s distress, the usually squirmy Jack snuggled into Kyle’s arms, giving him an outpouring of love that finally bridged the void left in his senses when Tobias had removed his love from his life.

  Sleep came hard to Kyle that night. When it did come, his sleep was fitful and full of bad dreams. Then, in the morning when he awoke, his head pounded with the headache of someone for whom sleep had come with the weight of a sandbag pressing atop his head. He was positioned to lose more than he thought he could ever have, and it was ripping him apart.

  Rolling over and picking up his cell phone, Kyle blinked the blur out of his eyes to read the text message sent out to all employees from Mary-Ann Feckle. The club was re-opening that evening. The new backstage camera system was in place, and radio blasts announcing that they would be open were scheduled to go out during the day.

  Kyle groaned as he rolled over onto his back and flopped his heavily muscled arm over his eyes, his elbow tenting over his forehead.

  “I don’t want this job anymore,” he grumbled. In fact, he realized, he didn’t want to even be a bouncer anymore. He was tired of the life. The deaths happening all around him fueled the feeling even more. But what else could he be? He’d gotten his GED in lieu of a high school diploma. It had been his only option as he’d been deemed by the hospital as unfit to attend classes. Still, what type of work could he get that wouldn’t be a simple exploitation of his size and his history of violence?

  Taking a few deep breaths, Kyle willed the oxygen to energize his body and then he swung his legs off the side of the bed and raised to a sitting position.

  “Tobias doesn’t want me,” he mumbled, sitting with his palms pressed into the edge of the mattress as he stared unseeing down at the floor. Tobias had been the reason he’d come to Portland. Just knowing that he could be nearby—that he could watch him—had given Kyle a sense of peace and belonging for years. But now with the separation between them gone, the worst had happened. “Tobias doesn’t want me,” he said again, feeling as if his heart were bleeding out.

  Taking in a deep breath through his nose, Kyle blew it out through his mouth. He did this several times, willing his mind to calm and to grow empty. Yet the sensation of his heart bleeding out remained. Finally, he supposed it was a feeling he would have to learn to live with, at least until he grew so accustomed to it that he no longer felt it anymore.

  Standing, he wondered if he could talk Monica into leaving Portland. He wouldn’t go without her, but he no longer wanted to stay… not now that he knew that Tobias didn’t want him.

  Moving into an exercise routine came slow, but the more he did, the more the energy built, and he ended his workout with a slow-paced ten mile jog. When done, his spirit felt invigorated and his mind felt more clear. He still didn’t know what his next steps in life would be, but he was ready to start giving it serious thought in preparation of taking action.

  “I’ll stay away from Tobias.”

  “I’ll go to work and do my work.”

  “I’ll get the job done, and I’ll go home.”

  “Simple…”

  Kyle managed to maintain his cool and calm mindset until he got to work that evening. But from the moment he arrived, his mind was filled with the image of Victoria laying dead on the floor, her body growing cold and turning a waxy white. Then there was poor Ginger, lying on the hard concrete, her body bent in ways that it shouldn’t be as her fingers twitched and she breathed in jagged gasps.

  Yet even with those images filling his head, Kyle’s eyes operated on their own as they scanned the floor of the club… looking for Tobias. They found Ella instead. Twisting and shimming in front of a seated customer, her anger filled eyes were on Kyle.

  I’ve got to set that right.

  He gave a head jerk in the direction opposite to Ella as he met her eyes, letting her know to come to him when her work allowed it. He didn’t have to wait long. She left the customer behind her doing double takes as she sashayed with tassel swaying hips to stand in front of Kyle. There, she planted herself with legs wide atop her platform heels and folded her arms under her voluptuous breasts. Not saying a word, she stared up at him, waiting.

  Kyle cleared his throat. He hadn’t thought he’d be confronted with her so soon, and he had to scramble to get his thoughts together.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” he finally said, slipping his hands into his front pockets as a way to say that he was forfeiting any fight she might have in mind.

  Her scowl softened and she took a deep breath. It created an image of rising and falling breasts that any red blooded man would appreciate. …who isn’t gay, he reminded himself, further evidence that regardless of how hard he had tried, he had not been able to run away from himself by throwing himself into the arms of the softer sex.

  She really is beautiful. He could see it—objectively—in the long lines, smooth curves, and sharp angles of her face. There was no denying that she was a beautiful woman just as Monet’s paintings were beautiful. But he didn’t want to have sex with them either…

  “What exactly are you sorry about?” Ella said, her eyes narrowing. “I’ve heard plenty of empty apologies, and I’m not interested in getting one from you.”

  It was Kyle’s turn to take a deep breath, letting his thoughts once more collect and shape themselves before he spoke. “I was wrong not to stay,” he finally said.

  She’d called him, scared for her life. He could have done more for her than pat her on the head and say you’ll be okay and recommend that she look for help with somebody else. When he stripped away the fluff and the excuses, he knew that that was exactly what he had done to her.

  Her eyes grew wide and her mouth opened into a small “o” as she took in his words, blinking several times with eyelashes long enough to be used as ornamental fans. It was clear that she hadn’t anticipated such a direct apology, one that struck to the heart of the matter.

  “Well,” she said, lowering her eyes a moment in a practiced, coy move, “you did say that you had some family stuff going on.”

  “I did,” Kyle said, “but that doesn’t make what I did to you right—leaving you with no one. If something had happened to you, I would have never been able to forgive myself.”

  “Really?” she asked, beaming up at him with bright eyes and a large, hopeful smile.

  “Really,” he said, smiling back.

  “So…,” she said, her expression growing uncertain, “what about that dinner?”

  Kyle’s heart skipped a beat. He’d invited Tobias to dinner and Tobias had turned him down. Kyle had to talk him into coming to dinner—because he hadn’t wanted to come. Recognizing that was like a painful slap in the face. Tobias had not wanted to be there… with him. He’d never wanted him. He was too tainted with a past too monstrous. He wasn’t good enough for Tobias. He wasn’t good enough… just the abomination his parents had said he was.

  Kyle started nodding his head, ever so slightly, before he’d consciously grown aware of the decision he’d made. He would go to dinner with Ella. He’d be there for her. If he wasn’t love-worthy, he could still give himself in service, providing his companionship for those who had use of him—if that was all he was good for. Because, it was now clear, he was not good for anything else.

  Movement across the club’s floor caught his eye. A familiar shape. A familiar shift of weight, of stance, of lift of the chin. Kyle’s heart missed more beats and a prickly, panic sweat instantly beaded his brow.

  Tobias…

  Forcing his attention back on Ella fully, he gave her an encouraging rub on her arm below her shou
lder. “Text me the details of when you want to get together,” he said, hoping she would take it as a mild and tender dismissal that would have her walking away. Relief flooded him when it worked. Something about every time Tobias was near him, he lost the ability to think clearly. His only option was to get rid of Ella quickly or disintegrate into a babbling idiot right before her eyes.

  The room disappeared along with all of the waitresses, dancers, and the customers as the blinding spotlight of Kyle’s attention focused in on Tobias as he made his way across the room. The only people who came into view did so as background blurs and then it was only those who Tobias moved near. No one else existed. No one else mattered. And soon, even the thrumming music faded away so that the only thing left for him was the sound of Kyle’s own heartbeat and the perfect, graceful movements of Tobias as he made his way across the room.

  The sound of a shrill scream pierced the veil of Kyle’s obsessive concentration and he snapped his head to each side to pinpoint the source. One of the dancers—Mae—was doing her best to push herself out of the insistent grasp of a client’s arms wrapped around her hips. Pulling back an arm, she backhanded him squarely on the cheek with rings and all, but the drink-embolden man simply laughed off the assault as he fought to keep his new treasure all to himself.

  Kyle’s feet were moving before Mae had the chance to let loose another salvo of fury against her personal prison warden. When he got to the man, Kyle reached behind the customer and unlaced his arms arms by pulling them open like a widening claw.

  Mae stumbled away, still irate but eager to keep her freedom, and instead of vaulting into an altercation, she pivoted and headed for the backstage door, glancing behind her as she went, clearly shaken. Kyle knew that two months prior, Mae would have been more likely to laugh the incident off and then get that same customer into a private room, get him more drunk, and have him pay out the nose for a dance he wouldn’t even remember in the morning. But the murders had changed things. The girls were vulnerable, and every one of them who had come to the club that night had done so with the understanding that their life was at risk.

  Kyle’s enormous hand closed like a vice around the back of the offending customer’s neck before lifting him to a standing position. Then he began the march forward for the both of them toward the club’s front doors, but along the way with a heavy thrust that he put his whole arm and shoulder into, Kyle sent the customer toppling forward to the floor hard enough to make him skid on his belly. Before the man had the chance to get his bearings and regain his feet, Kyle was on him again with his hand once more wrapped around the back of the man’s neck, lifting him to a standing position.

  He was still sneering, claiming he hadn’t done anything wrong, laughing about being back tomorrow.

  Three more times on the way to the club’s front doors, Kyle sent the man sprawling again. Everyone—the patrons, the waitresses, the dancers, Mary-Ann Feckle, and even Tobias—stood back and watched in silent inaction as Kyle dismantled the man’s ego to a belligerent and then sobbing wreck. Finally, with the front doors reached, Kyle shoved the man through onto the pavement and then stood in front of the door, his arms crossed over his massive chest, and waited until the beaten man got to his feet and slunk into the parking lot with shoulders and head bowed. Defeated in spirit as well as in body.

  Kyle wanted to hit the wall. He wanted to scream. Kyle wanted to hold the man’s throat from the front and squeeze as he slammed his granite-like fist into his face until his nose was turned into something that would take three reconstructive surgeries to fix.

  But he did none of those things. What he did do was stand and watch as the man was taken by the arm by a cabbie who frequented the club’s parking lot. Then he was loaded into the back of the waiting cab and hauled away.

  Kyle forced himself to take a deep breath. He forced the buzzing in his mind to calm, and he counted his heartbeats. Yet adrenaline and the need to hurt something still ravaged all of his senses.

  Turning around, Kyle froze to find Tobias standing behind him. “Keep away from me,” he growled and then pushed past the smaller man on his way back into the club. Everything inside had returned to normal. The customers were laughing, the dancers were flirting, and the waitresses were serving drinks.

  Kyle weaved his way through tables and chairs positioned around the dancers’ catwalk until he reached the far side of the club’s floor, where he had been before. He’d hoped that his rage would have subsided, that his need to explode would have left him. But it hadn’t. He stood at the ready, his eyes surveying the club’s floor, standing stock still until he felt like his head would explode.

  Turning, he made his way to and out the small side door that led into a small alley. There, he focused on the feel of the cool air on his skin and again counted the beats of his heart, willing and demanding it to slow as he paced back and forth.

  The side door crashed open as if someone were rushing to get through, but it was only Tobias. He stood for a moment in the door’s opening, staring at Kyle, before stepping out of the way and allowing the door to close behind him. He didn’t say a thing. He just stood and watched, like a scientist studying a caged rat.

  “That guy was alive when he left,” Kyle snarled, pointing a powerful arm toward the alley’s opening. “He was breathing with no broken bones!” When Tobias remained silent, Kyle returned to his pacing, keeping an eye on Tobias with every step.

  Kyle stopped his pacing to confront Tobias again. “I could have done a lot worse to him, you know. A lot of bouncers would have.”

  Tobias still said nothing. He just stood, watching, his expression stoic. His perpetually haunted countenance with his shadowed eyes and flawless skin made him look both terrible and beautiful at once.

  Kyle stepped up to Tobias, toe to toe. “Say what you gotta say or cop or not, I’ll be throwing you through that door.”

  “I wanted to kiss you last night.”

  Kyle angled his head, drawing his chin back against his throat, wary. “What are you playing at? What are you angling for?”

  “I should have kissed you last night.”

  “Yeah, go ahead and leave. Get out of my face.”

  “Kiss me.”

  “What’s changed? Last night I’m not good enough for you and today you want me shoving my tongue down your throat. You playing games with me, Tobias? You getting some kind of sick thrill out of messing with me? I’m past that. I’m done. I’m an abomination, I get it. I don’t need you rubbing my face in it just to humiliate me.”

  Shock registered on Tobias’s face. He shook his head. “I’m the ruined one, Kyle. I’m the one no good for you.” He shook his head. “If you left me again,” his voice broke, “I can’t handle losing you again. I lost everything when I lost you.”

  “Bullshit. You’ve had a life. You’ve been free of… of… me.”

  Tobias twisted his hands into Kyle’s shirt. “I have never been free of you. Even when I’ve wanted to be. You’ve been with me, looking over my shoulder at every boy I’ve kissed. You’ve judged them and you’ve judged me. You have left my soul in tatters. You destroyed me. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t think clearly. I almost failed out of school. I tried to kill myself…” Tobias closed his eyes, unwilling or unable to meet Kyle’s searching gaze.

  “Look at me,” Kyle said, capturing Tobias’s chin between his thumb and finger.

  Kyle shook his head no.

  “Look at me,” Kyle said again, this time with calm insistency.

  Tobias did open his eyes then, and they were filled with unshed tears.

  Leaning in, Kyle kissed the outer corner of each of Tobias’s eyes. “What would I have done if you hadn’t been here? You kept me alive in that mental hospital… knowing you were out here, knowing you had a life and that maybe someday I could be a part of it again. I’d lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering what you were doing and where you were. I never stopped loving you.”

  Tobias sucke
d in a breath.

  Kyle nodded. “It’s true. That’s never changed for me. Ever.”

  “Why did you stay away?” Tobias asked, tortured.

  “I—” He started to say that it was because he wasn’t gay. But maybe he’d stayed away because some part within himself knew that he was gay and facing that truth by looking into Tobias’s eyes wasn’t a truth he’d been ready for. Yet despite that, he hadn’t been able to stay away—not really. He’d always been near, he just hadn’t let Tobias know it. “I don’t know,” he finally whispered.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Maybe… yes.” He ran his thumb over Tobias’s plump lower lip. “I wasn’t ready to face who I am.”

  “And who are you?”

  “I’m a man in love with another man.” Tobias leaned into him and Kyle found that he had to stand in support of him. He cradled Tobias’s cheek in his palm.

  “I love you, too,” Tobias whispered.

  Kyle leaned in and took Tobias’s lips with his own in a kiss that started out soft and slow but that quickly grew fierce and passionate. With one hand on the back of Tobias’s head, he wrapped his other arm around Tobias’s back. Pulling the smaller man to him so that their forms met from toe to chest, Kyle picked Tobias up and carried him several feet deeper into the alley until he stopped with Tobias’s back pressed against the wall.

  When their kiss broke, Tobias panted into Kyle’s mouth, emphasizing his need with a nip to Kyle’s lower lip that didn’t end. Instead, Tobias staked his claim to Kyle by holding on until Kyle growled.

  Pushing Kyle away just enough, Tobias’s hands pulled at Kyle’s shirt until he had it lifted halfway up his chest. There, Tobias’s teeth went to work again, nipping and biting. This time when Kyle growled, it had no effect other than to make Tobias shiver.

  “I want you.” They were words that Kyle had not been able to say to another human being and mean in many, many years. Not since it had been the two of them, alone in the darkness in their shared bedroom at home. Hunger and desperate need welled up inside of him so violently that he thought he might come undone. “I need you!” He said, sinking his fingers into Tobias’s thick hair to pull his head back for another crushing kiss.