by Peter Styles
The crude joke, coming at a time like this, somehow got through to him. A smile cracked across his face like a fault line. “No, the pepperoni wasn’t the problem. It was the guy attached to it.”
“It usually is,” Susan muttered. Judging from the look on her face, she’d been deep in the coffee pot herself.
Well, at least he wouldn’t be alone. Chris went to go get some coffee of his own.
Chapter 15
“I can’t believe you.”
I’ve been hearing those words a lot lately.
Jeremiah hugged the toilet, leaning against it to take some of the pressure off his knees. He wandered around last night before coming home and falling into bed. Sleep crashed down like a torrent of rain, surrounding him without any sort of gradual drowsiness at all. And when he woke up again in what seemed to be the morning—the light behind the curtains hinted at some hour of day—he was hit with a roiling wave of nausea that sent him stumbling toward the bathroom. The lack of a headache told him this wasn’t a hangover. It was anxiety and despair, a horrible brew of emotions all wreaking havoc on his insides.
After throwing up a few times, he had enough time to realize that Markus hadn’t been in bed with him. Jeremiah lay his cheek down against the toilet seat to rest, not entirely sure that he was done. Faint words came to him, but not faint for very long. They grew louder and louder as a one-sided conversation continued, until he could just almost make out the words from within the bathroom. Then, the conversation abruptly ended right outside the bathroom door and Markus threw himself inside.
“Jeremiah!” he had roared. His anger immediately fogged up the mirror. “You little… You… I can’t believe you.”
“Ugh,” Jeremiah groaned in response, tasting bile at the back of his nervous throat. “What?”
“You know what exactly! Running into Tyler last night… saying too much… did you even check to make sure you weren’t followed when you ran outside with that bastard Chris?” Markus slammed his hand against the wall, leaving a sizable dent. Bits of plaster clung to his dark flesh. “Apparently not, or else none of this would have happened?”
Fighting back another heave, Jeremiah whispered, “What happened?”
“My phone! I have dozens of emails and calls and texts. They were there when I woke up and there are even more of them now. It’s the press, wanting to know how I feel about my boyfriend cheating on me with my rival. It’s our friends, wanting a piece of you, wanting all the details. It’s my employees, it’s my parents… Everyone fucking knows! All you had to do was spy on Chris Finley! How the hell did you make such a mess of it?”
Suddenly, Jeremiah couldn’t stand this any longer. Vomiting be damned. In fact, Markus deserved it if Jeremiah was going to vomit on him.
The two men faced each other, one dark and angry and the other paler than usual. Jeremiah stuck one finger into his boyfriend’s chest and glared up at him. The gesture was futile, like poking a tree trunk and expecting it to be swayed. “Listen here, dammit.”
“I don’t have to listen to—”
“Shut up!” Jeremiah screamed.
Markus not only shut up but he stopped dead in his tracks. He was finally swayed, finally knocked off-balance. His mouth and throat worked but wouldn’t produce a sound.
Jeremiah took advantage of that while it lasted. His hands clenched into fists. “You asked me to do this and I wanted to do it for you because I loved you. I did spy on Chris for you. I got to know him as a man. Everything I told you was true, dammit. He isn’t doing anything shady. He’s a better businessman than you are! You treat your clients like they’re business. He treats them like they’re family!”
“They are business!” Markus snarled, but he looked almost perplexed. “That’s my job.”
“But how many clients don’t return to you because of how coldly they’re treated?” Jeremiah fired that one off without knowing whether or not there was anything to back it up. Judging by the way Markus flinched, he’d hit a sore spot. “There are tons of people like you but only one of him. But you just didn’t listen to me when I tried to tell you that.”
Suddenly, Markus laughed. He clutched his stomach and guffawed like some child’s nightmare version of Santa Claus. “You think you love him, don’t you? Well, if you love him so much, why don’t you just go run away to him?”
“I tried! I tried to break up with you for days but you never gave me a chance to talk!”
Jeremiah immediately regretted ever speaking. He regretted everything that led up to this, all the way back to their very first meeting on that crowded bus when they were forced to sit together. He regretted it all because of the clear snapping of Markus’s self-control, that huge body surging toward his and slamming him against the wall. Sour water filled his mouth as Markus held him by the wrists, glaring into his face with their eyes only inches apart.
“No one breaks up with me,” Markus hissed.
Jeremiah heaved and threw up on him. Not much, but enough to make the gigantic oak of a man squeal and jerk back from him. As Markus looked helplessly down at the front of his shirt, Jeremiah shoved past him. “We’re done,” he tossed over his shoulder.
Every part of him chose that moment to remember the fraction of the horror story that he’d started to watch with Chris. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. His vision narrowed down to pinpoints, and his spine gave that dreadful tingling. At any moment, Markus was going to come rampaging out of that bathroom to kill him. It would happen at the most cinematic moment, right as Jeremiah stepped through the door to freedom; two enormous hands would yank him back inside, and the door would close on him forever.
That didn’t happen.
Jeremiah was out the door before he even knew it, passing down the hall and riding the elevator down to the parking lot. He instinctively headed toward the car he always took, and then abruptly swerved away from it; the way things were going, he wouldn’t put it past Markus to become vengeful and report him for a vehicle theft.
Actually…
His footsteps slowed as realization set in. What did he have that didn’t belong to Markus? The very clothes on his back had been bought by his boyfriend’s—ex-boyfriend, he reminded himself—credit card. He technically didn’t even own the money in his wallet, since it was an allowance. And the wallet had been given to him by Markus. That left him with absolutely nothing in the world. And now, he had nowhere to go.
He’d started off walking again before he knew it, heading in the direction of Chris’s apartment. But, no, Chris would be at work. He adjusted slightly and started walking toward the real estate building now, knowing that he was probably not going to be welcome there. It was the only option though.
Jeremiah walked, trudging along with his head down. The morning was still new but this was NYC. Even weak sunlight was amplified a thousand times by all the reflective surfaces. Heat lapped over his skin, almost immediately threatening to give him a burn, and wavered up from the sidewalk to bake his face. Sweat gathered and trickled from his armpits and down his back, reminding him that he hadn’t showered or brushed his teeth, or changed clothes. He probably reeked.
Now I know why no one is walking near me.
They might not even let him inside the real estate office, now that he thought about it. His appearance and his disloyalty to Chris were heavy strikes against him. But he had nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. He couldn’t even afford a bus ticket to make the journey faster.
A full hour later, panting and ragged, he stumbled through the doors of Finley Real Estate. Sweat dripped from his face, soaking the front of his shirt in a wide ring. Oh, but the cool air conditioning flowing through the building felt like a blessing. Feeling his sweat dry, a little revived, Jeremiah looked around.
Every agent in their little office had their head up, looking right at him. No one smiled. No one waved. They all knew, and he had known they would. Squaring his shoulders, a little disgusted with the way that the garment clung damp and cold
to his skin, he slogged off toward the desk where the receptionist sat. It was the same petite woman as before. Jeremiah summoned her name with difficulty: Ms. Temple. This time, she wasn’t multitasking or even working. She wasn’t doing anything but staring at him, unsmiling. Waiting.
“Hello, Ms. Temple,” he said as he neared the curved desk. He didn’t touch anything. His hands were disgusting.
“Mr. Bird,” she replied, voice clipped. “Your name isn’t on the list. Please leave a message.”
Jeremiah squared his shoulders. Family or not, he was tired of being bossed around by people who thought they knew better. “I’m here to see Chris.”
“Mr. Finley isn’t in the building. Would you like to leave a message?”
The damn girl sounded like an answering machine. “Chris has to be here. Where else would he be?”
The receptionist puffed out her chest and set her shoulders, clearly mocking him. “Let me rephrase this for you so you understand better. Mr. Finley doesn’t want to see you. Any message you give me will never reach his ears. You have to leave now.”
“Ms. Temple…”
Her hand moved, sliding under the desk. He tensed up, taking a step backward. Was she armed? “If you don’t leave in five seconds, I’ll be forced to call security. I have my finger on the button.”
“Wait,” Jeremiah pleaded. His voice broke. Everything that hurt inside him came bubbling up to the surface as tears. They constricted his throat with their burning, scorched his sun-heated skin. “Please, just wait. What happened was a terrible mistake that I made and I am so, so sorry that I did. I would give anything to make it right, or even to just tell Chris face to face how sorry I am. I didn’t even get to explain.”
The receptionist crossed her little arms, but she no longer looked so sure of herself. “I don’t see what you would need to explain, Mr. Bird. It all looks pretty straightforward to me.”
Jeremiah rubbed his face with his hands and sighed into them… and decided not to do that again, because it made him smell his own breath. “Look at me. Clearly, I have something to say. I want Chris to hear it. And it can’t be in a message.”
Ms. Temple hesitated a good while longer, but she placed both hands back on top of the counter where there was no emergency button. “Jeremiah,” she began, “I think that you think you have something to say. But I don’t know if Mr. Finley—”
“Let Mr. Finley decide for himself,” Jeremiah growled. He thumped his fist lightly on top of the desk, leaving a salty smear on the polished surface. “He’s an adult.”
That last bit of logic was what seemed to break her. “You really will have to come back some other time though. He isn’t here.”
Jeremiah stopped. “Not here? For real?”
“Really.”
“Then where is he?”
The receptionist bit her lip, clearly debating with herself on whether or not to reveal that information. Then she sighed. “If I tell you, you have to do me a favor.”
“Anything.”
“For God’s sake, don’t tell him that I’m the one who told you.”
Jeremiah lifted up one hand with his pinky raised, to make a promise, but she refused to touch him. He didn’t blame her.
“Mr. Finley is at a hospital. I don’t know which one. Don’t ask.”
Her brisk tone told Jeremiah that she did in fact know which one and just wasn’t going to spill. That was fine with him. He’d heard enough. Chris was in a hospital.
He was out the door like lightning, racing down the street in the direction of the nearest one. His teeth set in a grim, determined line. Snorts of breath pulsed from his nostrils and expelled roughly. He didn’t care how long it took or how far he had to go, dammit. He was going to find Chris!
Chapter 16
There was no one else around. Chris looked this way and that, checking all up and down the hospital hallway. To his left, the emergency room’s front desk. To the right, halls that led deeper into the hospital. He was effectively alone in the waiting room, although presumably not for long because this was a large city with an impossible amount of people who were hurt every day. And thus, being alone, the respectable businessman uncapped his bottle of water and dumped a liberal amount on top of his head.
A soft little gasp pulled from his lips, hardly enough to be noticed. The water soaked into his hair, wet his scalp, dripped down his face and all over the shoulders and front of his suit. None hit the floor.
Slightly revived from the blast of cold, Chris shook his head and sent droplets flying. Thoughts cleared, he returned to the very important decision at hand. Decision made, he punched in three numbers and a package of cookies fell down from the vending machine and into the slot. He pushed his hand through the little door flap and grabbed his snack, and was about to head back to the little corner nest he’d made for himself when a sudden awareness struck him. He felt it as eyes burning into the back of his skull, watching. Waiting.
One hand gripped the cookies so hard the packaging split. The other tilted slightly toward his pocket, where he kept his knife.
A stabbing in a hospital. I bet that won’t be a first.
Then, a scent reached him. Musk, faint and sweet.
His hand fell away from his pocket as he registered the smell. His whole body slackened with relief, and then tightened into anger. Familiarity tore him in one direction, and anger in the other.
“I can’t believe you followed me here. You’re sick.”
“I probably look sick too,” came a humorless reply. “Good thing we’re here in a hospital.”
What the hell did that mean? Eyebrows furrowed, he turned around and was given the answer. Jeremiah stood there, looking as though he’d been homeless for years. His clothes were filthy, torn and greying with dirt. Mysterious stains covered his jeans. His perfect hair hadn’t been done yet, but yesterday’s gel had soured and twisted the perfect locks out at all odd angles now. There were circles beneath his eyes, and his skin was slick with sweat. Not normal sweat either. Layers of sweat, as though he’d started perspiring and never stopped.
“You look like shit,” Chris said.
Jeremiah let out a breathless laugh. “I feel like it too.”
And now Chris noticed his heaving shoulders, the obvious trembling muscles. What on earth had happened here? For a moment, concern threatened to overtake him before he found his anger again. “How the hell did you find me? I told everyone to… never mind. Go away.”
“No,” Jeremiah said. He was still catching his breath, creating a long pause between sentences. “I’m not going to go away. This is the fourth hospital I’ve been to, searching for you.”
He was searching for me?
Chris folded his arms over his chest, shaking his head. His own hair fell limply around his eyes, reminding him that he probably didn’t look in perfect shape either. “I’m supposed to be honored or something that you drove around for me?”
“I didn’t drive. I walked.”
That stopped him. He paused, biting his lip and thinking it over. Walking all across the city was a bit different than driving. A skinny guy like Jeremiah, especially in the condition he was in, would have made a good target for a mugger. Despite himself, he was glad that the other arrived safely.
“So, you walked. Big deal. How did you even know where I was?”
Jeremiah flashed a very weak smile that fell from his lips almost immediately. “You weren’t going to be at home, so you were going to be at work. And when you weren’t there, that must mean something terrible has happened.”
Chris felt that like a knife to the heart. He grimaced, turning his head to the side as tears prickled behind his eyes. “Something has. Just, not to me. You found me. Congratulations. Now I’m asking you to leave me alone again, please.”
Hurt crossed his ex-lover’s face. “I came here to explain.”
Throwing his arms out to the side, Chris struggling to control his volume. “I don’t need your explanations!”
&
nbsp; “But you do!” Jeremiah shouted back.
An admonishment came from the receptionist’s window, warning them to be quiet. Both men stared at each other as the faint echoes of the shout rang down the long hallway. Chris was abruptly aware of the cold, stifling damp of the hospital air, and the disinfectant smell. Tiredness crashed into him again and he turned his head in the other direction, still refusing to look directly at the other. “Fine. Explain.”
“Markus was always talking about you. You’re his biggest competition. He hated you. And now you’re bigger than he is and he hated that. He made up all these stories about you cheating, or lying, or hacking, and he… he wanted me to seduce you to try and find out what your secrets were.” Jeremiah closed his eyes, sagging against a nearby wall. “He said he would finally marry me if I did that. That was all I ever wanted from him. Commitment.”
Disgust made Chris’s lip curl. Markus couldn’t even treat his own boyfriend with the warmth and respect he deserved?
“I never wanted to do it, Chris. Please believe me! I hated lying to you, but all I could think about was Markus… Except I started comparing the two of you and you were everything I had been missing, everything I had wanted from Markus that he wouldn’t give me.” Jeremiah stared down at the floor, voice slowly fading away. “That was the big secret I had. And I made up my mind that I was going to break up with Markus because I… realized you were the better match for me. But he wouldn’t listen to me. He never listens. He wouldn’t even let me talk.”
“I see,” Chris said. And that was all he said. He thought now that he disliked Markus Worth even more than he already had. Holding someone’s greatest want over their head to get your own way? It was sickening. And this was probably only the very tip of the iceberg as far as manipulating people went, Jeremiah and others included. How many others, Chris shuddered to think. People like that were always looking for ways to turn attention from themselves.