The Stone (Lockstone Book 1)

by Seb L. Carter

  But Liam seemed to feel it more than his friends. His hands shook, and his heart still hammered, though he did his best to hide it. The last time he’d been in an earthquake like what just happened was the night his father walked into their house with a shotgun and killed everyone but him. The shaking in the café put him back into that place, back into the corner where he crouched and waited to die. And then didn’t.

  No one else acted like there was anything to worry about. People walked on the street as if nothing had happened. There were no sirens in the distance like one might expect after a city-wide event like an earthquake.

  “You guys felt the earthquake, right?” Liam asked them.

  “Yeah,” Justin said. “Weird, huh?”

  “Super weird,” Nina said. “I’ve never been in an earthquake before. Kind of cool when you think about it.”

  “Yeah,” Liam said. “Cool.”

  At least he wasn’t losing his mind about that. He felt mildly better. He had nothing else to worry about. There was nobody with a shotgun hunting him down. He wished his heart got the memo so it would stop pounding.

  The stone was still in the palm of his hand. He wanted to hold it. It made him comfortable somehow to hold it like it was a security blanket that radiated a sense of warmth and security from his palm to the rest of his body. He went with that, focused on it so that maybe he’d calm down.

  Nina walked with her arms crossed alongside Liam, her book bag swinging back and forth over her shoulder. Justin bounded ahead with more energy. “Where we going?” he asked as he turned and walked backwards to face them both.

  They weren’t headed in the direction of campus. They were walking north along the busy Clark Street in Lincoln Park.

  “Target,” Nina said. “I need to buy some more shampoo.”

  There was something in the tone of Nina’s voice, a sudden change to the inflection that Liam picked up on, and he watched his friend as they walked. “What’s wrong?” Liam asked her.

  Nina shook her head. “That kind of shit takes me right back to high school,” she said.

  Preston and his goons. Liam reached over and put his arm around Nina. “Those guys are assholes. Don’t let the comments of some Neanderthals get to you.”

  “It does, though.” She wiped at her eyes with the palm of her hand. “I was teased so much in high school. I thought it would get better in college.”

  Nina went to a small-town school in the middle of Iowa. They’d talked about it before, and Liam had heard some of what she was talking about. Her school was mostly white and a lot red neck. She was picked on sometimes because she was black, other times because she was Asian, and still other times because she was both. She said she had a hard time fitting into either community. And if it wasn’t for her race, it was for how she looked. She said the football players at her high school used to pick on her because she was different from all the other girls, and the girls treated her like she was a threat. She couldn’t win.

  Yet she did. In a lot of ways, she did. She was a big source of strength for Liam. Picked on relentlessly, and she still had a way of maintaining an outgoing front. Nina wasn’t somebody who gave up easily, and that was one of the things that Liam respected her for.

  What did that say about him who tried to commit suicide twice?

  “Stupid is everywhere,” Liam said.

  When they reached Target, Liam started toward the personal care section of the store, but Nina continued toward the clothing section. “I thought you needed shampoo?”

  “I really don’t,” she said. “I think what I need is just some retail therapy,” Nina said.

  “Aren’t you supposed to buy something irresponsible and frivolous in order to call it retail therapy?” Liam said.

  “Who says I’m not?” Nina grinned with a shrug.

  “Well, I really do need shampoo and deodorant,” Liam said. “I’ll catch up.”

  He hadn’t planned on going shopping today, but since he was here, he might as well make it worthwhile. Besides, the idea of using shopping as a form of therapy was entirely foreign to him. Nina’s parents both worked in medical fields—he couldn’t quite remember which ones—but she usually had money to spare. He, on the other hand, wasn’t someone who came from money. He didn’t consider going into stores to browse at all the things he couldn’t afford to be all that therapeutic. He was someone who had come to understand the value of real therapy, talking to others going through similar burdens, and that served him better than spending money he didn’t have.

  He moved through a crowd of people waiting at the checkout lines, and a guy moved into Liam’s field of vision. Liam slowed.

  The guy from the café window. His heart rate rose. What he saw only confirmed what he’d seen before: the guy was smoking hot. Dark brown hair and a build that said he earned every bit the way his chest filled out the t-shirt he wore. On any given day, Liam would probably notice a guy like him. The fact that this guy was also seen at his place of work, possibly staring at him no less, only made him even more noticeable.

  But there was something else about him too, something that Liam couldn’t quite put his finger on. It was like he recognized him from somewhere else. Not just the café, but a tug from someplace in the back of his mind. He couldn’t remember where.

  This guy appeared to notice Liam too. He even smiled when he and Liam made eye contact. That smile sent a jolt of electricity through Liam along with an instant rush of heat into his face. He turned away with embarrassment and hurried past and made his way into an aisle filled with dog food, then he took the roundabout way to the personal care section of the store.

  His mind buzzed the whole way, made his limbs wiry. It was the same kind of rush he got when standing in the Skydeck section of Sear’s Tower. (Yeah, they call it Willis Tower now, but he’d been in Chicago long enough to ignore that name change along with the rest of the city. It’s like trying to change the name of Wrigley Field. You can’t. You just can’t!) That little box of glass that lets people walk out over the city 1300 feet below. A rush!

  But, he grabbed his shampoo, two large bottles that would make it so he wouldn’t have to trek all the way back to the store any time soon for more, and he carried them out, his mind distracted long enough to think maybe he should’ve gotten a basket or something. The bottles were too big to carry in one hand, and picking up deodorant would necessitate an armful of…

  The guy was right there. He stood by an end cap when Liam rounded the corner. Liam ducked quickly back into the shampoo aisle. Had he been seen? He didn’t think so. The guy appeared to be looking at a box of something that Liam didn’t stick around long enough to see what it was.

  God, this was stupid. He was just a guy.

  A really hot guy.

  A hot guy was one of his triggers. In a way. Liam was very conscious of his triggers. He never went back into the closet after that night, but he never made many moves toward other guys either. Nothing beyond looking and talking about the hot ones with Nina. And this one was definitely worthy of a long conversation with her. But he’d come to associate any possible relationships with another guy with that night. That night screwed up any chance he had of finding a normal relationship. He’d simply come to accept that as a fact. Dating wasn’t high on his list of priorities.

  In therapy, they suggested he go out and try to date again. He never listened. They said he’d come to associate letting himself feel good in that way with the pain of loss. This wall was one he was fully conscious of. Therapy did that, shined a light on what was wrong. The expectation is that he’d want to change it, and he did. He just figured there’d be a time when he’d know he was ready to push it and start taking that wall down. Right now, he didn’t think he was ready. The thought of letting himself feel that way again with another guy made him break out in a nervous sweat.

  So instead, he kept right on walking. He had a wall to maintain, a thick one, made of sturdy stone and high around his heart. That was the only way to
keep the pain away, to keep the trigger from being pulled. He turned back around into the shampoo aisle and came out the other side. They guy came into the shampoo aisle the same time Liam turned out of it. He quickly walked into another aisle several over, this one with cough and cold medication. He pretended to browse nasal decongestants and bottles of expectorant while he turned nervous glances to either side. As he struggled with the large shampoo bottles, he even held a bottle of something a bright purple in his hand like he was intensely interested in learning how this product could solve all his cold and flu problems.

  But there he was again. The guy turned down the same aisle where Liam stood, and he stopped. Liam’s hands trembled as he put the bottle of medicine back on the shelf, and dropped an oversized bottle of shampoo.

  The guy immediately bent down to pick up the shampoo.

  Liam’s heart rate sped up again so much so that he wondered if he was having a panic attack. Or a heart attack. Or both. His mouth was dry.

  As he turned to walk out the other end of the aisle, the guy said, “Wait. Please.”

  Liam stopped. He turned. Maybe the guy thought he worked there. “Did you need something?” Liam asked him.

  He held up the bottle of shampoo. “I thought maybe you might want your shampoo back.” Again, Liam was struck with that sense of recognition.

  “Oh, right.” Liam stepped forward and took the bottle from him.

  The man came closer, and Liam backed up. The man stopped. “I just saw you over there, and…” The man stopped. He let out a small laugh that… could he be nervous too? “I just wanted to say hi.”

  Liam couldn’t stop the small smile that crept onto his own face. His mind screamed no, but that apparently didn’t register in his facial muscles. An unwitting smile to give to this brown-eyed stranger. “Do I know you?” Liam asked. No. His eyes were hazel. They caught the light from above and took on a kind of light brown, almost green hue.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “I just thought maybe from school or something.”

  The man shook his head. “I don’t live here.”

  “So, you’re visiting.”

  “Indefinitely,” he said.

  Liam tilted his head with a confused grin. “Then you do live here.”

  The man laughed. He had a nice laugh and an equally nice smile. “For the time being, I guess I do.” He stuck his hand out. “Patrick.”

  Liam didn’t like to shake hands. It had happened in the past that people noticed his bracelets that he always wore. Then they noticed what the bracelets were covering up, and it led to uncomfortable conversations that Liam wasn’t quite ready to have outside of his weekly group sessions. Luckily, he had two huge bottles, one in each hand, and he held them up so that Patrick understood. “I’m Liam. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “I could help you,” Patrick said, referring to the shampoo bottles.

  “I think I’m capable of handling two bottles of hair-care products.”

  “Industrial sized. You must have a lot of hair to wash and condition.”

  Liam felt his face grow hot again, but he shrugged. “Not really,” he said quickly. “I’m not a big shopper.” He turned and started walking with a glance over his shoulder, hoping that Patrick wouldn’t follow. Also hoping a little bit that he would. At this point, even after a short conversation, he wasn’t sure what he wanted.

  Patrick followed. “Me either,” Patrick said.

  “Kind of ironic that we’re meeting in a big-box shopping store, huh?”

  Patrick smiled. “Yeah, I suppose it is.”

  Liam’s returned a smile of his own. His reaction from before felt foolish now. Silly. Talking to Patrick was kind of easy. In fact, Patrick made him feel comfortable. Something about his eyes when Liam looked into them. Definitely hazel, green flecked with gold. There was a pause where they both stood, toeing the floor of the store like it was dirt, and staring at one another.

  “You were at the café I work at too.”

  “Was I?”

  “I’m pretty sure. I thought I saw you looking into the window.”

  “Oh, right! That was you?”

  Liam felt the heat rise to his face again. “Yeah, I was working behind the counter.”

  “Yeah, I saw this hot guy behind the counter, and I almost went in to say hi to him.” Liam was sure he blushed adequately. Patrick smiled back. “But he looked pretty busy, so I decided against it.”

  “Shut up,” Liam said. He grinned. Still grinning, that is. Was this really happening? It didn’t even really occur to Liam to ask Patrick if he was gay. The fact that he approached him sort of answered that for him. So yes, this was really happening.

  “Seriously,” Patrick said.

  “Seriously?”

  Patrick him-hawed around and gave a bashful look to Liam. “Okay, I had a lot of errands to run, and I didn’t have time for coffee.” He stepped closer. Liam didn’t back away. “But I did notice you. You’re kind of hard not to notice.”

  “Laying it on a little thick there, Patrick,” Liam said. But he felt like he was his own ray of sunlight. “I mean, we only just met.”

  “I thought you said you recognized me,” Patrick said. “There’s something familiar about you too.”

  Liam turned his gaze up to meet Patrick’s. Patrick was a couple inches taller, and that suited Liam just fine. “Do you have time for coffee now?” Liam asked, shocking even himself. Maybe that wall wasn't so thick after all.

  Patrick brightened but paused long enough that Liam thought he might bow out and leave, but then he said, “I think I can make the time.”

  Yeah, the wall was pretty much toast…

  There was a coffee shop right in the store. Liam got his deodorant, and he paid for it all, then he and Patrick took a table in the café and sat staring stupidly at one another while they sipped their coffees. Liam’s purchases sat alongside his backpack on the floor. The stone was inside his backpack.

  He couldn’t get over this feeling of familiarity with Patrick, a sense that they’d been long friends, and even sitting in silence, a period when it was supposed to be tense and a little stressful (but in a good way), it wasn’t. There was a comfort there, a comfort that Liam was at a loss to explain. Maybe that’s why his wall was so easy to break down with him, that sense of chumminess that sort of came prepackaged with this guy.

  “You’re a student?” Patrick asked.

  “Yes. An English major at DePaul University.”

  “Oh, and what do you plan to do with that?”

  “What every English major does—wallow in poverty or teach. Probably both.”

  Patrick laughed. “Do you write?”

  “Yeah, I do. It’s always been a passion of mine.”

  “See? Then maybe you won’t live a life in poverty. I could be talking to the next William Faulkner or Earnest Hemingway,” Patrick said.

  Liam felt himself blush. “More like Sylvia Plath.”

  Patrick’s brow wrinkled. “Wasn’t she kind of depressing?”

  Liam waved it away. “Inside joke, I guess.” Liam sipped his coffee.

  Patrick’s eyes still twinkled, and Liam didn’t get the sense he’d lost him yet. “How about we go with JK Rowling or James Patterson.”

  Liam accepted that. “Works for me. I’ll be sure not to let fame and fortune go to my head.”

  “Something tells me you’re not one to brag about yourself too much.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Patrick shrugged. “You seem more like the self-deprecating type than someone who brags.”

  Liam considered. “Okay.”

  “It’s a compliment,” Patrick said. “Trust me. I like that you’re humble. Even if you have no need for it.”

  Again, the heat rushed to Liam’s cheeks, and he hid behind his coffee cup as he took another drink. Taking compliments wasn’t one of his strong suits, especially when he was usually the one to shoot them down. That was something else he’d
learned in therapy, that he was something of an expert at self-sabotage. “What do you do?” Liam asked Patrick in an effort to shift the subject off of him.

  “I work for the government,” Patrick said.

  “Really.”

  “Really. I’m with the Navy.”

  Liam understood then where the taut upper body came from. A military man. There was something sexy about that. He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table to rest his face in the palm of his hand. “I suppose this is where I say something about imagining how good you might look in your uniform.”

  “You could,” Patrick said. “And I think I cut a pretty nice figure in a uniform.”

  Liam laughed. “So, humble isn’t one of your qualities, I take it.”

  “I guess not,” Patrick said, joining in the laughter.

  They had strong eye contact, and Liam didn’t even feel discomforted by this. He wasn’t one to stare longingly into someone’s eyes. It usually made him nervous to do so, but Patrick’s gaze was simple, non-judgmental. He sensed the connection there down to his guts like an electric current that rode the length of his spine and sent a pleasurable shiver through his whole body, and that made it okay to stare longer than normal.

  Liam had his hand on the table, wrists down, scars beneath the bracelets, and Patrick had his there too. Between their coffee cups, they both moved their hands closer, almost to the point of touching. Liam glanced down at Patrick’s fingers that held something round between them that looked like a plastic wrapper or maybe a clear circle band aid that had come loose.

  “There you are!”

  Liam turned to find Nina fast approaching with Justin in tow. “I was going to come find you,” Liam said, bashfully.

  Nina stopped short so that Justin almost ran into her, and she sized up Patrick. “Sure you were,” she said with a glint in her eye as she moved her gaze between Patrick and Liam. “Who’s your friend?”

  With a quick and embarrassed glance to Patrick, Liam introduced his friends to Patrick. Patrick came around the table and shook hands with both Nina and Justin, then he stood close to Liam.