Ball & Chain (Cut & Run)

by Roux, Abigail

  Muffled laughter sent vibrations through Ty’s groin, and Zane pulled back, sucking all the way until Ty’s erection popped free and rubbed through the whiskers on his chin. “Who was it?”

  “My asshole brother,” Ty answered tightly.

  Zane bit his lip, peering up at Ty and waiting.

  “Please, Zane,” Ty begged, shameless. He slid his palm against Zane’s cheek, his fingers digging into the back of his neck. Zane nodded slightly before leaning forward, taking Ty in on his tongue. He couldn’t fit all of Ty’s erect cock into his mouth, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t teasing anymore; he was focusing on the endgame.

  Ty did his best to keep his eyes open, watching as he disappeared between Zane’s lips. He wanted nothing more than to come down Zane’s throat. It was barely a matter of minutes with the visual stimulation, and Ty was soon gasping and tugging at Zane’s hair in warning.

  Zane pulled off, wrapped his fingers around Ty to pump him hard, and leaned his forehead against Ty’s belly to kiss the warm skin.

  Ty gritted out Zane’s name as he came hard, watching lasciviously as it splattered onto Zane’s throat and chest, onto his pressed dress shirt. As if on cue, his phone began to ring again. Zane jacked him through his orgasm, obviously not caring about how damn debauched he looked.

  Ty’s hand moved to Zane’s shoulder and squeezed harder as his legs went weak and he began to sink toward the floor. Zane slid his arm around Ty’s waist, and Ty wound up on his knees, panting hard as they kissed. The phone continued to ring, ruining the afterglow with its obnoxious tune. Ty ignored it for as long as his conscience would allow. Zane hugged him close for a long moment before he nipped at his lower lip, then he reached for the phone.

  “Hello?”

  Ty grunted at him and flopped to his back on the hardwood floor, unashamed. He could hear the tinny sound of his brother’s voice through the phone. “Push the speaker button,” he said to Zane.

  Zane laughed at something Deuce said before jabbing the button and holding the phone out between them. “How’s it going, Deuce?” Zane asked warmly. He wiped at his mouth and chin with the back of one hand.

  “I hope he at least buys you dinner before you do that,” Deuce said to Zane.

  “I don’t have to bribe my bedmates,” Ty shouted at the phone. His brother laughed heartily. Ty couldn’t help but smile. He looked at Zane and winked.

  “I called to ask you a favor, Ty,” Deuce said.

  “Shoot,” Ty said lazily, still lying on the floor and enjoying the post-orgasm high.

  “I want you to be my best man.”

  Zane grinned. “You’re getting married, finally?”

  “Yep, we settled on the details.”

  Ty sat up, suddenly wishing he was wearing pants. “I better damn well be your best man,” he muttered as he crawled closer to his jeans and lay back down to slide them on.

  “Calm yourself.” Deuce sounded very pleased with himself. “Zane? I expect you to be a groomsman as well. We’re keeping the guest list small, and frankly, I don’t know that many people I like.”

  “Sounds like a circus,” Zane teased. “You know we’ll be there for whatever you need.” When Ty glanced up, Zane raised a brow in question and leaned to tug at Ty’s jeans leg, trying to dissuade him from putting them on.

  Ty narrowed his eyes in warning. “I need pants on to talk about this,” he whispered.

  “You know I can hear you, right?” Deuce said, voice wavering with laughter.

  “Then you shouldn’t call when we’re in the middle of things! When’s this thing going to be?”

  “Well . . . it’s next week.”

  “Next week?” Ty blurted. “What’s the rush, man, you already knocked her up once!”

  Zane smacked Ty in the head before he could duck.

  “We’re getting married in Scotland. And we thought, what better time to do it than Christmas?”

  “Scotland?” Zane echoed, perking up. “Does that mean Ty has to wear a kilt?”

  “Christmas in Scotland sounds . . . cold,” Ty added.

  “Get a hold of yourself,” Deuce said. “A week away, all expenses paid. I’ll email you the info.”

  Zane looked positively gleeful. He offered Ty the phone as he shifted to get up. Ty watched him walk away, then pressed the speaker button again and put the phone to his ear. “Deacon,” he said softly.

  “Beaumont,” Deuce replied in a low voice.

  “Are you happy?”

  “Very much so,” Deuce said. The answer would have been clear in his voice regardless.

  Ty smiled. “Good.”

  “I have another favor to ask you,” Deuce said quickly, his voice losing its enthusiasm.

  Ty’s brow furrowed. “Anything.”

  “Can you bring someone with you to the wedding?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “One of your Recon buddies.”

  Ty sat up, his unbuttoned jeans forgotten. “What? Why?”

  “Short version? Livi’s dad is concerned about safety. His company’s been getting threats, apparently. That’s why we’re rushing it. He’s got his own private bodyguards, but I’d feel a lot better if we had someone there who could put all his attention on the baby girl if anything goes wrong.”

  “You want a bodyguard for the baby at your wedding?” Ty frowned harder. He glanced up when Zane came back into the kitchen, shrugging at the questioning look Zane gave him, and Zane turned to head back into the living room. Ty’s eyes lingered on his ass as he walked away.

  “I know it sounds overboard, but I swear man, the way her dad talks, it makes me paranoid. And I don’t want to have to worry on my wedding day.”

  “Yeah, no,” Ty said quickly. “I got it. I’ll call someone.”

  “I’ll make him a groomsman so he’ll have access to all the crap we’re going to have to go through. Pay his way, everything. And give him a guest. It’s only fair. All on us.”

  “Got it.”

  “Thanks, bro.”

  Ty nodded, grinning. “Now, if you ever call me again while I’m getting head, I’ll kill you.”

  “Understood,” Deuce said with a laugh, and the phone clicked off in Ty’s ear.

  Ty smirked, looking down at the phone for a moment before clambering to his feet. “Garrett!”

  “What?” Zane called back.

  Ty found Zane in the bathroom, shirt off, wiping himself down with a hand towel. “I’m not done with you. We have to celebrate.”

  Zane smiled indulgently. “Celebrate Deuce’s engagement by engaging in copious amounts of hot sex?”

  Ty spread his arms and cocked his head with a grin. “Sounds like a plan, right?”

  Zane left the towel in the sink and moved until they stood chest to chest. He placed his hands on Ty’s hips, his thumbs stroking the skin bared by Ty’s unfastened jeans. “You know what that wedding means, don’t you? A whole week. The two of us. On vaca—”

  Ty tapped Zane’s lips with two fingers, shushing him. “Don’t finish that thought.”

  Zane blinked at him, smirking. “What else did he need?”

  “Later,” Ty grunted, determined to get back to business. “There was an inappropriate celebration we were getting to, remember?”

  Zane chuckled, a low rumble in his chest. “You can’t distract me that easily.”

  “Watch me,” Ty growled.

  It took Nick a long time to talk himself into climbing the front steps of the triple-decker he’d grown up in. He glanced at the upstairs window as he stood on the sidewalk. His father was laid up in bed there, dying from all the poison he’d put into his body in the last sixty or so years. He wanted to see all his children before he passed, wanted to make peace with them.

  At least, that was what Nick’s mother had told them. Nick knew there was something more going on, though. It had taken his mother two weeks to contact him after he’d returned home, and the first words from her mouth hadn’t been to say she was glad he was hom
e safe. Just that his father needed to see him.

  He climbed the front steps and knocked before he could decide against it. His mother answered the door, her smile strained and her hug stiff when she greeted him.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, voice quiet. “You look good, Nicholas. Your father’s been asking for you.”

  Nick merely nodded, resisting the urge to glance up or in the direction of his father’s study. He was closer to forty than four, but he still felt that flash of anxiety and outright fear when he thought of walking down that hallway.

  They stood in awkward silence, not really looking at each other, not really wanting to. This was the first time Nick had been in his childhood home since he’d told his parents he was bi. He hadn’t been welcome after that.

  Nick cleared his throat.

  “Katherine and Erin are here,” his mother said finally. “They’ve been waiting for you to get here before they go up to see him.”

  Nick nodded again, shrugging out of his snow-covered coat. He and Kat and Erin shared memories the younger siblings hadn’t been subjected to.

  “They’re down—”

  “I know where they are,” Nick murmured, and headed for the creaky old door to the cellar.

  The light at the top of the staircase didn’t turn anything on, but then, it hadn’t since Nick had gotten old enough to figure out how to cut the wires inside the switch. He descended in darkness, hoping his memory of the stairwell would keep him from breaking his damn neck. His footfalls were silent on the concrete steps. When he reached the bottom, a pool of weak light emitted from the corner, where old room dividers and screens and large concrete pillars partitioned off a piece of the cellar.

  His two sisters were together on an old sofa in the corner. A battered coffee table with a duct-taped leg, braced with a broken hockey stick, sat before them. A lamp on a milk crate gave off the only light. They were flipping through a photo book, both alternately sniffling and laughing.

  Nick shoved his hands into his pockets as he approached them, trying for a smile. He stood on the other side of the coffee table. “I thought I’d find you two down here.”

  Kat smiled weakly and cleared her throat. “Do you remember when he’d come home drunk and you’d gather all of us together and bring us down here?”

  Nick fought to swallow past the tightening in his throat. “I remember.”

  “You’d tell us stories and we’d play board games or listen to the Sox play until we heard him go to sleep.” Kat wiped at her eyes.

  Nick stepped around the table, and they both moved over so he could sit between them. He spread his arms on the back of the couch, and both women leaned into him.

  Kat’s voice quivered when she spoke again. “I was never afraid when we were down here. Not when you were with us.”

  “Neither was I,” Erin whispered. She hugged Nick close. “We knew you would protect us. You always did.”

  Nick closed his eyes, his arms tightening around them.

  The three of them had met for dinner the day after he’d returned to Boston, catching up after he had been gone for so long. But this was something they never talked about.

  Kat began to cry softly. She shoved the picture book away and pressed her face against Nick’s chest. “These pictures . . . we never realized how young you were. My God, Nick, you were just a baby. You were younger than Patrick is now.” Her oldest son. He’d just turned ten last week. “Who stood in front of you?”

  “It’s okay,” Nick whispered.

  They sat in silence, listening to the house creak, to their mother moving around upstairs, to the occasional voice of one of their two youngest sisters asking where the hell they were. The young ones didn’t remember the basement, didn’t remember Nick and Kat carrying them down here in bundles of blankets and setting them in stacks of pillows or beanbag chairs and singing them to sleep so they’d be safe. They didn’t remember to look for their older siblings down here when the thought of facing their father was too much for them.

  “Nicholas!” their mother called from the top of the steps. “Your father’s awake. He’s asking to see you.”

  Nick took a deep breath. The three of them shared a glance. Both his sisters looked like they wanted to hang on to him for dear life, just like they’d done when they were little.

  “Let’s go to tell him to kiss our asses,” Erin said as she stood.

  Nick stared at the rectangle of light near the bottom of the steps. He had so many memories of sitting on this couch, his arms around Kat and Erin, their baby sisters asleep on their laps, listening to the sound of their mother crying upstairs. And waiting. He remembered the terror of watching the silhouette of his father appear in that frame of light, hoping the man would try to storm down the steps Nick had booby-trapped with his sports equipment, praying he’d just trip and break his neck on the concrete floor when he landed.

  He’d never grabbed one of those sticks or bats on his way up the steps after being summoned, though. He’d always left them where they were, knowing the veritable minefield would keep his sisters safe.

  That didn’t mean he’d never dreamed about taking that hockey stick and watching it crack his father’s skull. He’d grabbed a baseball bat one time, the day before leaving for Basic. It had been the last time his father raised a hand to any of them.

  A shadow appeared on the floor, different than the one that haunted him. “Nick?”

  “Coming,” Nick called. Kat and Erin trailed behind him as he made his way up the two flights to his father’s bedroom.

  He stood in the doorway, Kat and Erin still behind him. His two youngest sisters, Alana and Nessa, sat in chairs beside the bed, where Brian O’Flaherty lay propped amongst several pillows, jaundiced and weak. All three of them looked at the doorway when they realized Nick was standing there.

  “Son,” his father said. He pushed himself up, trying to sit straighter. He didn’t quite make it.

  Nick moved toward the bed. Nessa stood and gave him a stiff hug. Nick held onto her, flooded by memories of running down the hall and gathering her out of her bassinet, wrapping her up in her blankets and hugging her to his chest as he and Kat scrambled to get down to the cellar before their father hit the front door.

  He let her go, and she and Alana moved to let him sit beside the bed. His father’s eyes stayed on him, and Nick didn’t look away. Eye contact had always been something he’d fought for. When he’d been little, it had pissed his dad off. He’d seen it as a challenge, like a fucking junkyard dog.

  It had been worth a backhand to meet the man’s eyes.

  “You’re home safe,” his dad finally said. “That’s good.”

  Nick nodded.

  “You didn’t even tell us you were leaving. We’d have come to see you off.”

  Nick snorted. “You hadn’t spoken to me in over a year. You said I was going to hell.”

  Brian’s eyes hardened. “I’m too sick to fight, Nicholas.”

  “That’s a first,” Nick said through gritted teeth.

  “Nick, he can’t handle stress right now, why don’t you try to be civil,” Alana spat. She was standing by the door, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed.

  “Why don’t you shut your mouth,” Kat snapped.

  Nick glanced over his shoulder at them, then back to his father. “I’m not here so you can say a tender good-bye. What do you want?”

  “I want to make my peace with you, son. We had a rough road. But now I’m dying. And I’m scared.”

  Nick narrowed his eyes. He knew what sort of changes the thought of impending death could bring on a person. He’d suffered through them himself. But he knew his dad, too. The man wasn’t seeking retribution or forgiveness. He wanted something, something only Nick could give him. And it wasn’t peace.

  “Cut to it. What do you want from me?”

  Brian took a deep, rattling breath. “Without a new liver, I’ll be dead in three to six months.”

  One of Nick’
s sisters sniffed. Nick didn’t look away from his father.

  “You’re close enough to my size you could be a match, son. You’re the only one who might be. You got that O blood type.”

  Nick sat back and closed his eyes.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me!” Erin shouted.

  “Erin!” their mother cried. “Your language!”

  “Stuff it, Mom!” Kat waved a hand at Nick. “How the hell can either of you ask him to do this?”

  “Dad is dying,” Nessa said, her voice small and scared. “Even you can’t be so selfish you wouldn’t help him if you could. Even Nick’s not that selfish.”

  Nick glanced over in time to recognize the warning signs of Kat and Erin about to blow a collective gasket.

  “Everybody get out,” he said softly.

  “Nick!” Kat started.

  “Kat, stay calm, okay? Give us a few minutes.”

  Kat held her breath but nodded. She ushered everyone out of the room and closed the door behind them, leaving Nick and his father alone.

  “Temperamental women,” Brian mumbled. “They run in the family. Got to keep the reins tight.”

  “The only person in this family who should be tied down is you,” Nick snapped.

  They stared at each other for several long moments, neither willing to look away. Brian swallowed hard and licked his lips. Nick hated that he enjoyed seeing his father scared. He hated the fact that he wanted revenge for all the terror and pain of his childhood. But he did. He’d have to live with the kind of person that made him.

  “I know you hate me, Nick, and you got the right. But do you think I’m such a horrible man I deserve a death sentence?”

  Nick narrowed his eyes. “You probably don’t want me to answer that.”

  “Will you consider it before you say no? For your sisters? And your mother?”

  Nick began to smile. “Tell me something, Dad. How fucking terrified were you when they told you I was the only one who could save you?”

  What little color there was drained from Brian’s face. “Nicholas,” he tried.

  “I’ve got somewhere to be,” Nick said, and stood.

  “Son, please. I’ll die without your help.”

  “Probably should have thought about that thirty-seven years and fifteen broken bones ago,” Nick said as he headed for the door.