Up In FLames (Eternal Flame Book 2)

by Peter Styles

  Remy blinked. “I don’t know about that, Tim,” he said gently. “He couldn’t have survived that blast. I mean, you were in most of your gear, and look at you.”

  “But what if he wasn’t there?” I said. I looked at Remy, who jumped; I must have looked wild-eyed and terrifying. “He could have been gone. That’s the only thing that makes sense. He must not have been in the house!”

  “Then where is he?” Remy asked, trying to be gentle and only barely succeeding. “Don’t you think your boyfriend would be here for you in this situation?”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head, trying to clear it, but it only hurt more. “But he’s out there. I know he’s out there.”

  Remy sighed. “Okay,” he said, trying to stay patient. “If that’s the case, then we need to find him.”

  “Why?”

  “To turn him into the police.”

  I stared. “What? Why?”

  “You know how I said there was an explosion?” Remy asked. “How do you think it happened?”

  I shrugged. “No idea.”

  “Really? None at all?”

  This was starting to feel less like a conversation with a concerned friend and more like an interrogation. “No,” I said, unnerved. “I don’t. What the hell is going on?”

  Remy ran a hand over his dark hair, looking frustrated. “We found something really bad in the basement,” he said slowly. He made hard eye contact with me, frowning. “Do you have any idea what we might have found?”

  I held back a derisive snort. “I don’t know. Several thousand dollars’ worth of burned up instruments?”

  “This isn’t funny, Tim. This isn’t a fucking joke.”

  “I’m not saying it is,” I said, confused. “Remy, I have no clue what’s going on here, okay? Would you just tell me?”

  “You really don’t know what was happening in your basement?”

  “No. I’ve only been down there three or four times since we moved in. It’s Nicky’s thing.”

  “Shit.” Remy bit at his lip. “Well, then, you’re not going to like hearing this.”

  “Hearing what?” I was starting to move past annoyance and into fear.

  Remy sighed and closed his eyes. The idea that he didn’t even want to look at me when giving me this information was pretty terrifying. I’d never seen him quite so uncomfortable. Usually, if he was giving me bad news, he was doing it with a smug smile on his face; I’d never seen him look quite so serious before.

  “There was a meth lab in your basement, Tim,” he explained quietly.

  I just stared.

  Without warning, I burst into laughter. When Remy glared, I held up an apologetic hand. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but what?”

  “A meth lab,” he repeated. His glare brought my guffaws to an end. “We found a bunch of equipment we’ve only seen in labs like that. It was all glass tubes and burners and empty containers of chemicals. It looks like your boyfriend was trying to make something he could actually sell.”

  “But… but why would he do that? He’s already selling weed. He knows I’m not happy about that, so why would he do something about a thousand times worse?” I shook my head. “He doesn’t even know how to grow pot. Why would he try to make meth, for Christ’s sake?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. We tried to go and talk to Nicky’s friend Harris, the actual dealer, but it looks like he skipped town. We’re guessing he’s decided to get out of the pot business too. We haven’t gone to the police yet. We’re hoping we won’t have to.” His eyes were sympathetic. It made me somehow more upset than the information he was giving me; I didn’t need to be pitied by Remy, of all people. “I’ve been trying to convince the captain to ‘lose’ the results of the investigation, and I think he’ll probably do it. We write off Nicky as a casualty of the fire, the captain will say that the fire had an unknown cause, and we’ll move on. You can come back to work after you get out of the hospital and everything.”

  “But Nicky isn’t dead,” I said stubbornly. “We have to find him.”

  Remy leaned back and watched me for a second, almost in confused wonder. “You really love that guy, huh?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Of course I do. You know that.”

  “Well,” he said, “I hope you don’t mind if I give you a little friendly advice.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  A small smile graced his face at that. “Probably not.”

  “Fine, then. Hit me.”

  “You need to stop caring so much,” he said simply, as if there was some kind of dial in my chest that I could turn to stop loving my boyfriend. “Move on. He may not be dead, but he sure as hell is gone, and he’s been lying to you. We don’t know how long he’s been lying for, but that doesn’t matter. You deserve a better life than he can give you. You deserve to go off to school and become the best person you can be. Stop spending so much time worrying about a drug-dealing loser who did nothing but hold you back.”

  I went quiet, watching my best friend for a few seconds. Slowly, I turned away from him and closed my eyes, pretending to fall back asleep. I heard him sigh heavily and get out of the chair. His footsteps went around the foot of my bed and out the door.

  It was easy for Remy to tell me what to do. It was simple for everyone to tell me that Nicky had been bad for me and that I should just forget about him altogether.

  But they weren’t me, and they weren’t the ones with broken hearts. Even as I laid there, my eyes ached behind my lids, and a few tears managed to escape, no matter how hard I pressed my eyes closed.

  I couldn’t be happy without Nicky. I knew I couldn’t. Even if he had been lying to me, I would rather have died in the fire than live without him.

  My last thought before I fell asleep again was practically a prayer, one made out of pure desperation and to the only entity who I could imagine would care about me.

  Nicky, wherever you are, please come home. I need you.

  Chapter Seven

  Every night, whether I was asleep in Remy’s extra bedroom or in my cot at the fire house, I dreamt of Nicky. Thankfully, I rarely imagined what was happening to him at that moment. I managed to avoid too many dreams about him being abducted by his old “owner” Rousseau or him sleeping on a street corner or him being burned alive as chemicals came together in precisely the wrong way and devoured him whole.

  Instead, I dreamt a lot of the first night I realized I was in love with him.

  I saw Nicky pretty rarely around campus. When I did, he was always excited to see me. “Tim!” he’d cry, throwing his arms out and wrapping them hard around me. I was surprised he remembered me. So was he. “You’re the only person who I’ve ever remembered on the first try,” he admitted to me once.

  “Are you saying I’m special?” I teased.

  His smiled had only widened. “Yeah,” he said, completely unembarrassed. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  I blushed. If Nicky noticed, he didn’t say anything, just hooked his arm through mine and started tugging me along on a walk around campus.

  Every time we met, I became more and more entranced by him, and he seemed just as happy with me. I brought him to the university’s art museum, which was jam-packed full of pretentious pieces of student art. He took me to little cafés, bars, and delis nearby that I’d never even known about. We would occasionally go to see a movie or just hang out in my dorm.

  For all intents and purposes, we were dating. The dates were sporadic, which made sense—I gathered that it could be hard to make plans when the person you’re making plans with is a homeless drug dealer with impaired memory—but always fun, and I found myself thinking about him nearly all the time. I didn’t know if he felt the same way, exactly, but he seemed to enjoy being around me.

  Still, at the end of each date, even if we’d spent hours making out with each other, he’d disappear with no more than a kiss and a smile.

  Until one night, when I woke up to a soft tapping sound on
my window.

  I rubbed my eyes and looked out of the window, confused. I was on the second story, and there were no trees or anything else nearby that could be making that sound.

  I went to the window, finding only a black sky and a smattering of stars outside. I opened it only to be pelted with a handful of gravel.

  “Hey!” I stuck my head out the window, glaring sleepily down at the pavement, and saw Nicky standing on the sidewalk, scooping down to gather another handful of stones and looking sheepish.

  “Uh, hi!” he called up to me as quietly as he could. “Sorry about that!”

  “What are you doing out here?” was all I could say. My irritation disappeared instantly, and it was replaced by a fluttery feeling deep in my stomach.

  “I was trying to get your attention,” he said with a shrug. “See if you wanted to hang out.” He dropped the rest of the stones in his hand and wiped his palms on his jeans before shoving his hands awkwardly in his jacket pockets. “So… do you?”

  I just grinned. “Give me a minute,” I said, and I shut the window, hurrying into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.

  I crept down the hall quietly, making sure not to wake up Remy, and hustled down the stairwell of our dorm block. I walked out to see Nicky smiling, but still looking embarrassed. “Hey.” I went to give him a peck on the lips. He turned away, and I caught his cheek instead.

  I decided not to say anything, and instead offered him my hand. He took it, and we started walking through the central square of the campus.

  We didn’t talk the entire time, which was surprising for me. I hadn’t even realized he could stay quiet for any length of time, but he was silent until we reached a small alcove of dense trees surrounding a statue of a tall, bronze elk. It would have been scenic if it wasn’t littered with empty condom wrappers and beer bottles, but it was one of the few places on campus where you could be truly alone—it was only to be expected that someone would have come along and screwed it up somehow.

  Nicky sat down on the bench in front of the statue and stared up at it. I did the same.

  It was a few minutes before I said, “So, I’m assuming something’s wrong.”

  He jumped as if he’d forgotten I was there. “What? No.”

  “No?” I raised my eyebrows. “You woke me up at two thirty in the morning and brought me out here to… what? Look at a statue in complete silence?”

  Even in the moonlight, I noticed him blushing. He nibbled nervously at his bottom lip. “Okay,” he admitted, “that’s probably a little weird. I get that.”

  “It is,” I agreed. “Not that I mind.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I’m just a little worried.”

  He sighed. “That’s probably fair.” He looked up at me through his lashes, practically batting his eyes at me. I never could work out if he was doing that on purpose or not, but either way, it left me breathless. “I have… stuff I need to tell you.”

  “Oh?” I asked. Here it is, I thought. He’s seeing someone else. Or he has an STD. Or he’s going to murder me and take my wallet.

  “Yeah,” he continued. I was glad he couldn’t read my mind, because I was going through a veritable Rolodex of stupid reasons that he could have lured me out to the alcove. “I just wanted to tell you that, like…” He sighed. “Look, I really like you.”

  My stomach plummeted, but I decided to be a gentleman and said, “I really like you too.”

  “And I don’t want to mislead you,” he continued nervously. “I feel like I’ve been lying to you this whole time, and I really hate it. I feel like there are certain things you should know.”

  I just waited for the hammer to fall and shatter my happiness. I tried to arrange my face into the most neutral expression possible.

  “I…” He took a deep breath. “Six months ago, I—I ran away from my owner.”

  I blinked. That wasn’t the hammer I’d been expected him to use. “Your… owner?” I asked, thinking I must have misheard.

  Still, he nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I don’t really like to talk about him much, but he’s a guy that my stepdad sold me to. His name was Rousseau. He bought me right after I turned thirteen.”

  “What for?” I asked stupidly.

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “What do you think?”

  I blushed. “Oh. Oh.” I shook my head. “God, Nicky, that’s… that’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”

  He waved my concern away. “I’m not telling you because I want you to feel bad for me,” he clarified. “I’m really not. I just want you to know, because I like you. And not just like you, I care about you. And I don’t want to screw that up.”

  Tentatively, I put my hand over his. It was warm in spite of the cool night air. “It doesn’t,” I told him firmly. “At least, it doesn’t for me.”

  “Are you sure?” His teeth had finally drawn blood from his lip.

  Gently, I reached out and brushed my finger over his bottom lip, pushing it out of the reach of his teeth and wiping the blood away. “Of course I’m sure,” I said. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.”

  And it was true. My first reaction was confusing to me—a mix of anger and protectiveness that felt entirely new—but there was nothing bad in it that I could ever possibly aim at Nicky.

  “Is this why we’ve been so… chaste?” I asked, choosing my words carefully.

  He actually smiled at that. I imagined it was pretty rare for him to talk about sex in such a demure way, but he seemed to appreciate it. “Yeah, it is,” he admitted. “I’ve been with, um, a few people.” He blushed. “It wasn’t usually something I wanted to do, but I didn’t really have any control over it. I haven’t had control over anything for a long time. Probably ever, if I really think about it. But when I met you at that party, something… I don’t know. Something just clicked.

  “When you asked me what music I like or what things I prefer, I really didn’t know. I’d only been away from Rousseau for a couple months. I didn’t know what it meant to make my own choices, and I didn’t know how to tell what it was that I wanted. I was so used to being told what to do that I’d forgotten that I had a brain of my own. Liking you scared the hell out of me. It meant that everything was real.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” I asked quietly. “I mean, isn’t it better that this is what your life is now? I’d think you’d be happy that you can make your own decisions.”

  “I am,” he said. “But it’s hard. It’s not fun doing what you’re told to do, but sometimes it’s a lot easier than having to think for yourself. I turned eighteen right after that party where we met, and I realized that, to the rest of the world, I’m just a regular adult now. I should know things like what food I like to eat and what places I like to go to and what kind of people I want to spend my time with, but I don’t. I don’t know how to do most things.” He shook his head. “It’s like I was raised to live in a world that doesn’t exist. I feel like I wasn’t made to make decisions or have this kind of life. I don’t know where I fit in.”

  I brushed my thumb over the back of his hand. “I’m sorry,” I murmured. “But you do belong, you know? It’ll get easier. You’re working on a hell of a learning curve, but you can still do it. I know you can.”

  That made him smile. “Thanks. I’ve been kind of nervous about telling you. It’s a big thing. Most dudes would have freaked out.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t see why I should,” I said, and it was true. “You had something terrible happen to you. And now you have some things that you’re struggling with. None of that means anything for who you really are. You’re still smart and funny and handsome, and I still like you. And if you’re okay with it, I would like to keep seeing you. If we could make this work, you know, make it into something real… Well, I’d like that.”

  He grinned. The moonlight glistened off his eyes, and he pulled my hand to his lips and kissed it. “I’d like that too,” he said. “You’re a really, really great guy, Tim.”

 
“I know,” I teased him, and I pulled him in for a hug.

  That night was the first night we made love. I saw the tattoo on his waist, the one he later covered with flowers. I saw Rousseau’s name embellished there. I wanted to smudge it away, get rid of his past for him, but I didn’t; instead, I kissed it. I didn’t stare or linger—I just pressed it to my lips once. It was enough that I saw his eyes tear up, but he kissed me after with such passion that I could feel his love and appreciation seeping through my skin and radiating through me.

  I dreamt of that night almost every night after Nicky disappeared. And every morning, I woke with tears streaming down my cheeks.

  Chapter Eight

  Three months after Nicky’s disappearance, I still wasn’t right. Much to Remy’s chagrin, I spent most nights alone in my room in his apartment or huddled up on my cot. I couldn’t study anymore; I ended up missing my appointment for the GRE test. I would have to take it later.

  That was just as well. Without Nicky around cheering me on, quizzing me when we were home together, and telling me how handsome I looked with a book in my hand, it didn’t seem to matter. When I went into fires, instead of feeling that flare of adrenaline, I felt numb. If I died, I figured, it was just as well. I wasn’t living a life worth being in, anyway.

  Remy could see that I’d fallen apart. The other guys could too. They tried inviting me to watch games with them, or inviting me out for a beer after a long shift, but I always declined. I doubted that they realized it, but socializing was something I’d always done with Nicky. He was better at it than me; he was my buffer. He made me less nervous and more able to actually talk instead of sitting quietly by myself and ignoring everybody else. He made me braver, more social. Without him, I was shy again, and I wasn’t sure how to handle that, even if I’d had the energy or willpower to do so.

  The guys clearly didn’t know how to help. Remy tried to drag me along a few times with promises and threats, but nothing worked. They seemed to feel as helpless in the face of my depression as I was.