by Rhys Ford
“Smelled a bit off. I couldn’t see about the dirty. It was dark, and the lights in the back of the building are woefully dim, but I understand the whole city’s like that because of the observatory.” She straightened, sitting up on the bed. “I think I startled him. It looked like he was trying to open the back door with something. I came around the corner, and I was shocked to see him there.”
“When did he attack you?” Camden asked. “Immediately after you came upon him, or did he threaten you first?”
“Immediately,” she clarified, then cocked her head. “I don’t think he meant to stab me. Not like, oh I’m going to try to kill this person. More like I scared him and he lashed out. I’d say it was mostly my fault for startling him. I should have backed away and called out instead.”
“Mom, stray cats get scared and lash out,” Dallas grumbled at her. “If you’re breaking into a building, then stab someone who approaches you, that’s a whole ’nother story.”
“I’d have to agree with your son, Mrs. Yates. You caught this man in a criminal act. He might have been motivated to kill you so you couldn’t identify him.” The detective’s phone chirped from a pocket in his jacket, and he pulled it out, glancing at the number. “Excuse me, let me take this. It’s my partner.”
The detective slipped out from the drawn curtains, leaving Dallas and his mother alone. She stared at the swaying fabric for a moment, then turned to look at him. “You didn’t have to come. I knew you and Jake—”
“Mom, what part of your right mind did you leave where you believe I’d not come to the hospital after getting told you’d been stabbed?” Dallas moved his chair closer to the bed, then lowered the railing between them in a loud clatter. “Shit, if I get yelled at for this, I’m blaming you.”
“Sure, blame the old lady—”
“Woman, the day you’re a lady, we’ll talk,” he teased, parroting a line he’d heard his father say ever since he was a baby. “And Jake understands. Shit, he drove me here because I was a fricking mess.”
“He’s a good boy,” she said, stroking the hair away from his face. “I’m glad you found him. He’ll do you a lot of good and vice versa. You’re cute together. You are together, yes?”
“Yeah, as soon as I talk to him about it. Jake needs… clear lines drawn for him. He needs to know how I feel said to him out loud.” Dallas sighed, rubbing at his eyes to relieve the tiring ache digging into them. “Mom, his family fucked him up something fierce. We just buried his father, and if I knew that man would feel it, I’d dig him back up and set him on fire for what he’s done to Jake.”
“He’s prettier than you normally go for,” his mother observed. “And more broken. The last time… with Kevin….”
“Kevin was…. God, he was a tragedy. I wish he’d found some peace.” He snorted, looking away when his mother laid a hand on his shoulder. “I hate that I couldn’t help him, Mom. I know I can’t save a drowning man intent on drinking the sea, but Kevin, he had so much to live for and couldn’t find his way out of his pain.”
“Is that Jake?” Martha’s prying was gentle, a subtle brush of words lined with sharp velvet. “Is he drowning like Kevin? Do I have to worry about you showing up on my front porch broken and hurting again? And how serious are you with him?”
“Totally different, Mom. So. Very. Different.” Dallas picked at a nub on the sheets, following the line it made in the cotton threads. “I can’t explain it. He makes me feel something inside of me. I think of Jake at the most random times in the day and something blooms in my chest. Hell, I can’t even tell you what it feels like. It’s just this brightness filling me, like Christmas, birthday cake, and fireworks all rolled into one, but softer, gentler. It’s the feeling you’re left with when you’re done with a kiss and know you’re about to get another one.
“And God, the things he sees in the world. How he sees the world. For every shitty thing that’s been done to him, he’s a good person. Flat-out decent and nice.” Dallas grinned, remembering Jake’s first encounter with Celeste. “And he looks to understand how someone feels or why they are the way they are. I think that’s when I first felt something really serious. He asked for help. No judging, just a need to fill the holes in his comprehension of the world, but at the same time, he challenges me to take another look at what’s around me because he sees beauty in places I’d write off. So yeah, Mom, it’s serious. I want a lifetime of looking at the world through his wonderment. And I want to wake up every morning to the sound of him singing while he sets things on fire to recreate the bits of his soul he wants to share. I love him. That’s what it feels like.”
“Well, then.” His mother sighed contentedly, resting back into the pillows. “Looks like you’ve gone and fallen in love, my darling son. And with an artist to boot. You’ve made me very, very happy, but one thing….”
“What’s that, Mom?” Dallas dodged another swipe of her fingers when she went for his hair again. “Stop that. What’s the one thing?”
“Can he fish?” She poked at his chest, unknowingly finding a tiny bruise left from Jake’s teeth. “Because if he does, your dad’s going to be over the moon. So, you’d best go tell him how you feel, because I’ve never seen you so happy, sweetie, and if Jake’s the reason for it, you’d be a damned idiot for letting him go.”
Eighteen
DALLAS’S FATHER was definitely not what Jake’d been expecting.
But then he also never expected to be standing in Bombshells’ main room on a Thursday afternoon listening to Brandon Yates and Evancho, who he was now supposed to call Peter, quietly discussing the merits of an Aglia Streamer versus a Timber Doodle with something else thrown into the mix Jake didn’t quite catch, but it centered mostly on feathers and wiggling plastics.
Dallas’s father now looked nothing like the man they’d picked up at the airport, his long face lined with worry and repressed grief, who’d hugged Dallas fiercely enough to make him squeak, then shot Jake a wan smile after a short introduction. Then he’d been a pale, stretched-out crane of a man with Dallas’s black hair and a wry, teasing grin, which bloomed across his sharp-edged features when Dallas pointed out he not only buttoned his shirt wrong but wore mismatched socks. The grin was still there, but the anguish and fear were gone from his eyes.
The Yateses were physical people, unafraid of showing love. Dallas’s father touched his son casually while they walked to the baggage carousel, their shoulders brushing, his hands moving when he spoke, and gentle skims across Dallas’s back and arms when they stopped. It was a subtle dance of affection, a grounding so instinctive between them. The Yateses touched one another to form anchor points in the sculpture of their familial ties, welded spots meant to hold up a seemingly impossibly dynamic piece, a moving, living organic construct of flesh, thought, and love.
Watching Dallas and his father gave Jake an ache in his chest, and he’d looked away, needing the sensation to go down so he had room to breathe.
That exact same ache flared up again when Peter caught Jake up into a bone-crushing embrace when he’d come into the club, the shorter man’s heavy Ukrainian accent clipping off the end of his mumbled welcome. And it grew when Peter took a moment before finally letting Jake go after calling him son.
“Doesn’t look like anyone can get in through here, but I can swap out the plates if you want.” Other than a few gouges on the plate, the door’s lock looked intact, and Jake flipped the deadbolt a few times to check its action. “When is the security company coming in to check on the connections? A week is a long time for them to blow it off, and the sound system goes in tomorrow, yeah?”
“Yep, not something I want to leave unprotected. The rep and I had a conversation about it about an hour ago. So first thing in the morning, I’m to expect a man named Steve to come look at the whole system, so please, swap away.” Dallas stood to his right, just beyond the threshold, and he rested his fingertips on Jake’s shoulder before turning to look down the hall toward the entrance. His father a
nd Evancho were still talking, having moved away from feathers to mirrored scales. “The rep said the preliminary system should have been triggered, but I don’t think he got in far enough to trip it. Dad suggested a guard, but I don’t know if that’s worth it for what we have in here.”
“Might be. The copper work I did on the bar is worth a lot, less if it’s melted down, but that’s what some people do. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called to a place to restore something someone’s cut off of an old statue.” He grinned, then lowered his voice. “Mostly it’s hands or parts, but I’ve made a few dicks in my life.”
“Well you certainly make mine… happy.” Dallas ghosted a kiss over Jake’s mouth, leaving him with a blush dusting his cheeks. “That was horribly bad, and I meant every last fucking word of it. And I love my parents, I am glad my mother’s okay, and it’s awesome to see my dad, but they’ve been here more than a week, and I want both of them out of my house.”
“They’re… nice,” Jake offered. “Your dad’s got to stop cooking and sending stuff over with you. There’s no more room in the fridge.”
“Hey, be glad it’s Dad. Mom’s idea of comfort food is refried beans and Fritos casserole with enchilada sauce. In theory, delicious.” He pressed a hand to his stomach and grimaced. “In reality? It’d make Mr. Creosote go on a diet.”
“Who?” There was sometimes a misstep, a piece of something Jake didn’t catch, and Dallas usually sighed heavily, then promised to show him the one true way. From the pathetic, pitying look on Dallas’s face, this was definitely one of those times. “Okay, yeah, we’ll add that to the list.”
“Seriously, did none of you alien overlords do any research before you crash-landed your spaceship?”
“No, once we got to the video of you putting ketchup on your eggs, everyone threw up and said they’d wing it,” he shot back.
“Oh, the game is afoot, Pinky.” Dallas gasped mockingly. “The game is afoot.”
“That one I know.” This time, Jake was the one who stole the kiss, a tentative touch to Dallas’s mouth. “But now you’re mingling things.”
It felt right at first, touching Dallas, kissing him in the hall’s lengthening shadows. Then the sibilant rankling began, a quick-moving fouled river eating away at his foundation. There was shame and guilt in the sweetness, mixed in with an overwhelming need to hide, to cover what they were doing. Then Dallas’s fingers circled his wrist, holding Jake in place. He hadn’t realized he’d taken a step back, ducking into the doorway leading to the changing room, until Dallas’s grip closed in tight.
“No hiding us, babe,” Dallas whispered, cupping the back of Jake’s neck, pulling him in closer. “I’m never going to hide you, never going to push you into the dark. I know it’s hard. I get it. But never let go of me, never step away.”
“It’s… fuck, I’m tired of saying it’s hard. I’m tired of choking on my own shit, Dallas.” Jake exhaled, forcing out a bit of the simmering fear lingering inside of him. “It’s stupid. I should be able to kiss you and not….”
There was a crossroads beneath his feet, paths leading off to journeys Jake couldn’t begin to imagine, and many he wouldn’t take alone. For all of the ghosts looming over him, the one wearing his mother’s face haunted him the most. Her words echoed behind every kiss he shared with Dallas, her blood flavoring every moment of happiness he found at Dallas’s side. He couldn’t live through her hatred of who he was, any more than he could thrive in the shadow of his father’s rejection.
Clearing his throat, Jake searched through the barbed tangle of emotions wrapped through him. Dallas drew closer, a faithful touchstone Jake could anchor himself to until he steadied. It didn’t take him long, not as long as it had before, and the brittle glass-threads of pain piercing him whenever he thought of his mother slipped away into the darkness he’d always hidden in.
“Maman—my mother—I think I spent so much of my life trying not to be,” he started shakily. Huffing out a breath, he tried to smile off the sour in his throat. “She always used to tell me to be quiet, be smaller. I used to hide in the cracks of everyone else’s lives because we lived in fear of my father noticing anything wrong.
“And you know, Dal, it took me so long to realize it didn’t matter what I’d done or how small I was, he’d always find something,” he whispered, refusing to let the shadows rise up between them. “It was how he kept us under his control, how he could break us with one word. He owned me, owned her, and the moment it looked like one of us was going to slip loose of his leash, he’d choke the other one.”
“The man was… I’m sorry you were born to him.” Dallas kept his voice down, stepping into Jake until their hips brushed, his thumbs hooked into Jake’s pockets. “There’s a lot of shoulds, babe. I can’t even begin to say them all, but the one thing I know for sure, someone should have loved you, and I wish to hell it’d been your parents.”
“She loved me,” Jake whispered. “She just loved him… more. More than herself, Dal. That’s what made everything so fucking sick is that it wasn’t that she didn’t love me. She didn’t love herself enough to walk away. He killed her, long before he murdered her. He’d killed everything good in my mother, strangling her… poisoning her… until the only thing living in her was him. I’m worried he killed a little bit of me.”
“Babe, you’re fine. I’m fine. We’re fine.” He cocked his head to one side, then wrinkled his nose. “Okay, we’re not fine because my parents have moved into my place and all I want to do is live in yours, but I can’t because… my parents are living in my damned apartment. You’re going to survive what your father did to you. And we are going to have a great fucking time together.”
A piqued Dallas was… cute. There was no other word Jake had to describe the slightly crazed tightness around his mouth or the frustrated growls he made while searching for words he could say without offending his mom and dad. Jake’d heard a lot of those growls, usually when Dallas opened the front door of his apartment to let Jake in.
“Your parents are great.”
“They’re getting a rental car and driving back home on Monday. Chant that with me. Monday,” Dallas griped. “It’ll be our mantra. Of course, they’re going to turn around and come right back for the grand opening, but fuck it, we’ll have at least three weeks before that.”
“We could go on that date we never went on. Maybe tomorrow night?” As suggestions went, apparently Jake hit the jackpot, because Dallas’s face lit up. “Really go somewhere. Not just… I promise, we’ll go somewhere.”
“Hey, last time… everything happening on that day was important.” Another kiss, and this time Jake leaned into the light to take it. Dallas sighed contentedly. “Besides, it ended up perfect… right up until the moment someone tried to kill my mother. Okay, Evancho wants to go over some of the billing. I think he’s undercharging me.”
“What does he think?” Jake suppressed a grin. His boss was known to squeeze a penny into copper thread, and the mere whisper of him cutting Dallas a break on artisan pieces was laughable. “Or has he told you?”
“He tells me it’s fine, but judging on what we originally contracted to do, the complicated stuff we added on doesn’t add up. I called him a liar, and he threatened to send someone else over to do the work instead of you.”
“Evancho… Peter… would never do that.” A reedy tickle of pride cut through Jake, bolstered by the nearly ten-minute bragging rant he’d gone on when they’d introduced him to Dallas’s father, Brandon. “He likes you too much.”
“Yeah, I’m not the one he calls son. Keep my dad company, will you?” Dallas hooked his finger into one of Jake’s belt loops, preventing him from moving. “Kiss me good luck. I’d ask you to tie a favor to my arm before I go in to do battle, but well, that’d be like asking you to choose between me and Evancho.”
“I don’t want to have sex with Evancho,” Jake growled through Dallas’s brief peck on his mouth. “What am I going to talk to your dad about?
I’m crappy with parents.”
“My mom loves you. Go. Find something.” A brief melancholy ghosted across Dallas’s handsome face. “Just make sure he’s okay? For me? Sometimes he can get lost in the shuffle, and I think he could use a friend. Let me go duke it out with your boss-slash-uncle person, and then we can lock up for the night. And if we’re very lucky, I can convince Celeste to keep my parents busy so we can go out.”
“If you put it that way, she’s going to want something,” Jake pointed out. “That’s how you ended up paying for her nose job, remember?”
“That was Austin’s fault. Get her to tell you the whole story.” He got in a pinch to Jake’s ass, then let go of Jake’s waistband. “Love you, Moore. Go talk to my dad about metal thingies and how awesome I am. He needs to know these things.”
“Surprised you didn’t need someone to widen the doors for that ego of yours,” he muttered, watching Dallas stalk off.
The hallway wasn’t as long as it seemed, but it stretched out in front of Jake, ending in a gladiator pit filled with alligators and piranha. If gators and steely-teethed death fish looked like a quiet, unassuming dark-haired middle-aged man with gentle eyes.
“Hello?” A woman stood silhouetted in the front door’s frame, the sun casting her into a dark shape against a corona of milky yellow. “Yates?”
“Yes?” Brandon glanced at Jake, an unspoken worried question clearly stamped in the wrinkles between his eyebrows. “Can I help you?”
The woman stepped into the building, and Jake recognized her as the cop who’d taken his father’s gun. Her expression flirted with a brief confusion. Then she spotted Jake standing next to Brandon and she became all cop. Nodding, she crossed the floor, her eyes flicking about the space, no doubt catching every detail.
“Moore, good to see you. Detective O’Byrne. Don’t know if you remember me.” Her handshake was a quick, firm grasp, and then she nodded at Brandon. “Sir.”