by A. J. Thomas
He glanced around, looking for Gilman. “So where is your company lawyer hiding, then?”
Bruce chuckled and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m pretty sure they’re done with me. Your guard dog here saw to that,” he said, nodding at Nate. “I guess I shouldn’t blame you for… well, for doing what you’ve got to do. I didn’t think you’d take things this far, though.”
“What should I do? Drop the lawsuit, declare bankruptcy, and get a little cardboard sign to beg for money outside of Walmart?” he asked, annoyed when Bruce stepped in front of him again. “How do you think pretending I’m the one who fucked you over is going to make anything better?”
“I’m not trying to get you to do anything,” Bruce insisted. “I just wanted to know if you really thought….” He opened and closed his mouth a couple times, then shook his head. “Do you really think of me like that?”
Sean was about to ask for clarification when Nate’s less-than-innocent smile at lunch flashed through his head. He’d framed Sean and Bruce’s relationship in terms that would make most people squirm. “Definitely and explicitly?” he asked, staring up at Nate.
The sexy bastard flashed him a self-satisfied grin, set both of his hands on Sean’s shoulders, and then turned on Bruce. “Was there something else you needed, Mr. Lancaster? Because as much as I want to disparage Gilman and his buddies, I’m forced to concede that they’re right about you not confronting my client without counsel present.”
Bruce glared between them both, then turned and stomped off, but Sean hardly noticed. Nate squeezed his shoulders, his thumbs rubbing electrifying circles at the base of Sean’s neck and lingering even after Bruce was out of sight.
When Nate finally pulled his hands away, Sean was struck by the glazed look in his eyes.
“Sorry,” Nate mumbled.
“Do I want to know what you said that counts as ‘definitely and explicitly,’ or shall I assume?” Sean asked as Nate unlocked the passenger door and moved aside.
Nate’s face scrunched up. “No,” he said after a moment. “You probably don’t.”
Sean used the modified roll bar to pull himself up into the passenger seat and watched as Nate fumbled with the wheelchair. When Nate was finally settled behind the steering wheel, Sean turned to face him. “Tell me.”
Nate shut his eyes and took a deep breath. He wouldn’t look at Sean. “I told them using a man who was arguably your rapist to manipulate you could be considered a crime and I would report it if it happened again.”
He almost laughed, but his stomach sank as he realized Nate was being serious. “My what?”
“I said ‘arguably.’ It boils down to the difference between coercion and consent,” Nate said, gripping the steering wheel tight. “There are some relationships where there is such a huge power imbalance that any sexual interaction within those relationships is assumed to be nonconsensual. Even if the victim thinks it’s consensual, there’s usually so much evidence of coercion that the consent is invalid.”
He tried to wrap his head around what Nate was saying, but every part of him rebelled. What he and Bruce had together might not have been ideal, or even all that romantic, but it had been mutual. “What?” he asked again.
“Like in a relationship between a student and teacher, which you and Bruce were. Or a boss and employee, which you also were. Situations where there is a huge difference in age, affluence, or experience, which there was, combined with a relationship with a huge power imbalance, means there cannot be consent.”
“Consent? He didn’t rape me. I was there,” Sean pointed out. “I was willing, eager, and knew exactly what I was doing.”
“After talking to you about it, I believe you. I do. I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to discuss it before the meeting. But you need to consider what Bruce Lancaster being in that office means. Whether you consented or not doesn’t matter, because CPG was expecting him to be able to manipulate and control you. They think he’s capable of coercing you into damn near anything, and they brought him in to do just that. They believe he victimized you. They wanted him in that meeting to do it again, just in a different way.”
“They really think that I didn’t know what I was doing?”
“They believe Bruce Lancaster is your Achilles’ heel,” Nate said. “Whether you felt pressured, turned on, or totally in love—it was still a cheap shot. The only good news is that after being called on it, they’re less likely to try it again.”
Sean forced the turmoil raging inside of him into submission and flipped his sketchbook open to a new page. Once he had the familiar resistance of the mechanical pencil scraping over the textured page to focus on, he took a deep breath. “I appreciate that you were trying to protect me,” he said without looking up. “But right now, the only thing I’ve got that gives me a sense of myself are memories of the man I was. They might not be all sunshine and flowers and shit, but they’re mine. No matter how the rest of the world views it, this thing with me and Bruce was a big part of those memories. I can’t look at it the way you do. I won’t.”
Nate sighed and nodded. “All right. I won’t bring it up again, and if it becomes an issue, I’ll follow your lead.”
Surprised again, Sean tilted his head and stared at Nate, trying to figure out if he was for real.
“I don’t know what else I can say,” Nate said sincerely.
“What?” Sean shook himself out of his thoughts. “No, it’s fine. I was just thinking.”
“About anything in particular?”
“You’re different,” Sean admitted. “You don’t push like other people do.”
“I expect you to trust my expertise in legal matters,” Nate said, gesturing between them. “But ultimately I work for you.”
Sean wasn’t sure why he’d been expecting an argument, why he’d been so sure that Nate would gleefully charge on ahead toward victory even if it meant leaving Sean crushed and humiliated in the process. The only person in his life who’d ever been wholly on his side was Hawk, and no matter how much Sean wished that they could go back to the easy relationship they’d had before the accident, Hawk’s attempts to take care of him had leaked into most of their interactions until everything left Sean feeling bitter about being patronized. How could something as simple as being treated like an adult, interacting with someone as an equal, seem more important than the fallout from seeing Bruce again?
Sean leaned back in the seat, exhausted but smiling.
WHEN SEAN dumped himself out of his wheelchair that night and into the cot Hawk had set up in the studio storage room, he was so sore and depressed he didn’t plan on getting out of bed. He knew Bruce would never want to be with him again, but coming to terms with the idea that Bruce had set out to hurt him just to protect his job and reputation sucked. Being in pain every time he tried to move wasn’t pleasant, but it was nothing compared to how worthless and pathetic he felt.
His therapist wanted him lifting weights each day, working his right leg as much as he could, but the exercise equipment Hawk had set up seemed more like a punishment than therapy. So Sean stayed in bed in his makeshift room, his attention constantly shifting between his phone and his sketchbook. At some point the dingy yellow light worming its way through the grime-covered window above him turned to orange and began to fade, but Sean didn’t even want to get up to turn on the glaring shop light above him. He slept, dragged himself to the bathroom, and started drawing again.
He wasn’t quite sure what happened to Saturday—he just kept drawing. Thinking about Nate, he looked up pictures of octopuses, finding videos and aquarium still shots that made him laugh and left him in awe. His pencil seemed to move across the page on its own, forming raw shapes and experimenting with angles. Soon he’d drawn a dozen mock-ups of his own body with an octopus draped over his back, shoulders, arms, and what was left of his legs.
“Am I making an appointment for you on Monday?” Hawk asked, setting a huge take-out container down on the IKEA nightstand beside
the cot. There were two others beside it that he’d barely touched.
“No,” he muttered, still focused on his drawing. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
He knew Hawk was staring at him, probably glaring at him, but he didn’t care.
“If you’re in too much pain to eat, you’re going to the doctor,” Hawk said, tapping the take-out container with his finger.
“I’ll eat,” he promised, even though he knew he’d probably forget.
“It’s been two days, kid.”
“I’ve eaten a little,” he insisted.
“Finish that by lunch, or I’m sending Tonya back here to annoy you until you eat.”
With that Hawk left, letting Sean get lost in the design again. He returned sometime in the afternoon, noted the empty fried rice container, and peeked into the trash.
“Seriously?” Sean asked, not looking up at him. “I’m me, Hawk. When do I ever waste food?”
“When you get too caught up in work to notice that you’re hungry,” Hawk answered immediately. “You’ve got to get up, regardless. That friend of yours is out front. You want to come out and talk to him?”
“Don’t be mean, Hawk. You know you and Tonya are the only friends I’ve got.”
“The guy from the ship. He said his name’s Cory.”
Sean bit back a curse. “What could he possibly want?”
“How about you get up and find out?” Hawk suggested, dragging Sean’s chair closer to the cot.
Sean stared at the sketch he’d been obsessing over, set his colored pencil down, and crawled out of bed, hoisting himself into the wheelchair with a groan.
“Then you need to get your ass in the shower,” Hawk grumbled. “Days when you smell like this, it makes me feel like all my hard work getting the bathroom down here expanded has gone to waste.”
Sean sighed. “You going to tell me to get a haircut too?”
“It couldn’t hurt,” Hawk admitted. “And if you’re in too much pain to see to it yourself, I’m taking you back to the doctor.”
“I’ll figure it out,” Sean swore, pushing his way around Hawk and out into the studio.
“Sean!” Cory called, leaping up from the waiting-room couch as Sean came around the counter. He had a thick file clutched in his arms.
“Hey,” Sean said, trying to smile. “What’s up?”
“Last time I came by, things got kind of overwhelming,” Cory began. “We’re getting under way again tomorrow, so I came back hoping I could help you out.”
“Help?”
“Yes! We’re going to patent our oscillating pump system before CPG can. Bruce and I were talking about how we could help you out without having to go through the company or the courts or anything. They’ve gone through all of the in-house records about the pump and redone everything, taking your name off all of it, and Bruce agreed with me about registering the patent for our pump system ourselves.”
“Cory, I don’t—”
“I know,” Cory said with a gentle smile. “It feels underhanded, staking a claim to something that we were kind of doing for CPG. But if this whole legal fiasco has shown us anything, it’s that the company doesn’t give a damn about any of us. Let me buy you lunch and just tell you what the patent attorney had to say? Please?”
“I’m not dressed for lunch,” Sean said, gesturing down at his slept-in clothes. He could feel his hair going every direction too. “Honestly, I’m not up for deciding anything about it right now.” Contending with CPG for ownership of the pump system was already shaping up to be a pain in the ass. He didn’t want to deal with trying to hash out who among them contributed enough to profit from the damn thing.
“Your lawyer said that CPG wants you to sign a waiver saying you give up any right to patent it, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, but I got pissed about it even being included in the discussion. This fucking settlement is supposed to be about them taking responsibility for cutting corners, not a contract, but it’s all gotten convoluted, you know?”
“Exactly, and that’s why we need to move now if we’re going to protect our interests. Sean, would they care about getting you to sign their waiver if they didn’t have to? If they don’t get you to sign one before you register the patent, they’re shit out of luck.”
Sean was well aware of how much CPG wanted to patent his design, but he couldn’t see how patenting it with Cory and Bruce could put him in a better position than if he registered the patent himself. Before the accident, he wouldn’t have hesitated to give Bruce half the credit, but even then, he wouldn’t have extended the same generosity to Cory. And since he couldn’t rely on a settlement that was still only a possibility, he wasn’t about to sign away two-thirds of the only real asset he had.
“You know,” he said, trying to think of a way to be tactful, “I’m not comfortable with that. Everything’s so up in the air right now, and the patent process takes forever, so I’m going to hold off on deciding anything.”
“It does take a long time,” Cory said, nodding. “That’s why we need to act now. Do you know what happens when two parties try to patent the same thing?” he asked.
“They have a long, drawn out legal fight about who’s actually entitled to the idea?”
“Nope. Whoever files the patent application first wins. And so long as they can lull you into thinking that they’re not going to bother, they can get the ball rolling without having to worry about you challenging it.”
Sean considered that. “I doubt that. If that were true, CPG would have filed a patent application months ago and been done with it. They wouldn’t even be talking to me about it. Besides, I’m not supposed to sign anything without talking to Nate about it.”
“Nate?”
“My lawyer,” Sean reminded him, hoping he’d take the hint.
“Do you really want to spend the rest of your life taking on CPG in court? Look, if you’re worried about doing this with Bruce, I figured out a way around that. We could set up a company between us, a separate legal company just to own the idea. We could hire somebody to disburse payments so you never have to see him again. But we’ve got to do it now.”
“I’m not going to jump into something like this without talking to him about it,” Sean said, shaking his head. “Especially since it just seems to be getting more complicated. It might work for a few months, maybe even a few years, but it’ll fail. Just like the thrusters on the Sea failed,” he said, stopping cold as he realized what he was saying. “I don’t care how urgent you think it is, I’m not betting any part of my life on you or Bruce cutting corners again.” And there was no chance in hell he was going to make it easy for them to profit from his work after their negligence had nearly cost him his life.
“Are you kidding me? We’ve got the chance to make a fortune here! But you’re going to fuck us over because your payout is all but guaranteed!”
“Guaranteed?” Sean gaped at him. “Right now, the amount they’ve offered would go straight to the hospital and surgeons, and it would still leave me paying off medical bills for the next ten years!”
For a big guy, Sean was always surprised by the way Hawk could be so light on his feet. Sean didn’t even realize that Hawk was looming behind him until Cory’s gaze traveled upward, his anger wilting under Hawk’s glare.
“It’s time for you to leave,” Hawk said, his voice deceptively calm and friendly. “Sean has other priorities he needs to focus on right now, and they’re a bit more down-to-earth.”
Cory stomped away, trying to slam the door behind him on the way out. The anger on his face just multiplied when the hydraulic arm attached to the top of the door slowed down and let the glass door settle gently into place.
Sean watched Cory stalk off through the parking lot, then turned to Hawk. He wasn’t sure if he should be grateful for Hawk’s intervention or embarrassed by the reminder that he would never again be able to kick an asshole out of the studio on his own. After months of feeling helpless, of feeling coddled, he woul
d have figured that identifying one more aspect of his life that he couldn’t manage on his own wouldn’t sting.
“You up for seeing a client tomorrow?” Hawk asked, the question coming out of nowhere. “A lady named Trish called about a touch-up for some silver mermaid you did on her calf. She really wants you to be the only one to work on it.”
A memory of light blue and silver lines set against a slightly darker background of silver sea-foam brought Trish to mind. He loved clients who cherished his work, and she babied that mermaid as if it was a work of art, using sunblock and getting the easily degraded silver ink retouched every year. “Oh, hell yes,” he said, weighing the amount of strain using a foot pedal for the tattoo machine would place on his right calf muscle. “I’ll call her back to schedule something.”
Hawk grinned. “Sounds good, kid. What are you working on now? You’ve been focused for days, but you haven’t shown me a single sketch.”
“Give me a second,” Sean said, returning to his cot to get his current sketchbook. When he returned to the studio, he opened the book so Hawk could see the mock-up he was drawing of a blue and silver octopus.
“Huh. That would be something. What section are you going to draw first?”
“The back. The whole design will pivot around the head and eye, so once it’s placed right, the tentacles can go wherever they need to. It offers a lot of flexibility and a lot of coverage.”
“Does it fit, though?” Hawk asked.
Sean knew he wasn’t asking about the size of the design. “Oddly enough, it does. I didn’t like the idea at first, but Nate was right. The octopus is resilient. It tinkers with problems until it solves them, it adapts, it copes with injuries, including losing limbs. It’s a survivor.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Surviving?” Hawk asked, casting a pointed glance at the room he’d retreated to for the last two days.
“Not so much,” he admitted. “But I’m going to. I’ve been thinking about my life being over or at least on hold ever since I got out of the hospital. I’m done with that. Whatever happens, I’ve got to get my shit together. Maybe I’ll go into research and design for another company, maybe not. But I’ve been wasting time feeling broke, broken, and sorry for myself.”