by Rhys Ford
“Why’d you kill your brother?” I had too many questions, and keeping Grace talking seemed to be working. Will was calming down, although he didn’t look comfortable dangling from his aunt’s arm.
“He was going to take Will away from my mother, and he was sick. He caught his perversion from Jae-Min, and it made him sick in the head. What kind of man wants other men?” She explained slowly as if I were a child. “After he was dead, that bitch downstairs was supposed to stay, but she changed her mind. Everything would have been okay if she just left things alone and stayed.”
“Maybe she wanted—”
“Our family is all she has. We give her everything, but it wasn’t good enough. She wanted to take away the only thing… the only person Umma loves.”
“Your brother didn’t need to die because you thought he was… sick,” I said quietly. “He just….”
“No! You don’t know how it is! Hyun-Shik was…. What he was doing was wrong. He shamed us… fucking men. How can we look anyone in the face knowing that he did that? With Will, everything is different. Umma can have another son… a good son this time.” She held Will close, and I took another half step, hoping her attention was focused more on the kid than me.
I must have moved in too close because she fired rapidly. The booms of the gun going off scared Will, and he howled, shrieking at the top of his lungs. I hit the floor, tasting the carpet in my mouth. I rolled over onto my back, tucking against the wall, and aimed for Grace’s thigh.
A quick pop of the Glock and she went down, yowling in pain. Will fell forward, pitched from his aunt’s arms, and I made a grab for him as Grace’s scream peaked. The Browning skipped and bounced on the carpet, and I kicked out, hoping to keep it out of her reach. It flew further, hitting the marble at the top of the stairs, and its weight carried it over the edge. The gun hit stone a few times. Then I lost the sound under the kid’s crying.
Cradling Will against my chest, I inhaled hard and gasped when a stinging pain radiated out from my collarbone. Looking down, I stared in slight amazement at the hole in my shoulder. It bled in a trickle, running down my shirt and arm. Will’s hand touched a wet spot, and I soon had toddler prints on my face as he flailed to get free.
I heard noises coming from the street outside. They grew louder, and the ringing in my ears from the gunshots was soon battling with the high-pitched whoo-whoop sound of police sirens. Hard footsteps hit the foyer, and the shouting began, announcing the arrival of the local law enforcement. Drawn by the screaming and crying, several armed uniforms arrived on the landing with their guns drawn, and I dropped the Glock to the floor.
A cop grabbed Will while another crossed over to Grace, and I whimpered when a pair of plainclothes dragged me to my feet and slammed me into the wall. This time, Lady Luck was there to save me from making any cocky, smart-ass remarks to the cops.
I passed out before they could get their cuffs on me.
Epilogue
AFTER three days, Mike took me home from the hospital. I’d been tormented and poked at by a cute but sadistic doctor who didn’t look old enough to date, much less treat a gunshot wound. One look at the bruises on my body from the bombing and he’d pegged me for someone with a brain injury and kept me hostage.
My brother helped me into the house, lecturing me to rest and eat. I told him to go home to his wife and collapsed on the couch. I didn’t want to see the emptiness in my house. It was early afternoon, and the neighborhood was alive with activity, but my place was dead silent.
Jae was gone.
And he’d taken the damned cat with him.
I knew before I came home that he’d found a place about a mile away. A friend of a friend called him about a large open space with lots of light and didn’t care if there was a cat. Jae was gone from my home before the hospital served me my first plate of watery green Jell-O.
When I’d come home, there was a large arrangement of Mylar balloons floating in my living room, colorful and hopeful messages for my recovery, and an envelope with my name on it. It held a Kwikset key, identical to the one I’d cut for Jae so he’d have a key for my front door. Very identical.
I passed on taking the painkillers the cute sadist had sent home with me and instead took care of my pain with an ice-cold beer. I made it through half of the bottle and passed out.
The living room was pitch black when I woke up and smelled like green curry.
Really good curry.
“Mike called.” Jae walked into my living room. He held a bowl of steaming food, and I almost cried with relief. “I told him you were asleep.”
Reaching for him, I pulled Jae down, grabbing the bowl and putting it on the coffee table, burning my fingers in the process. His weight on my legs hurt, but the pain felt good. More than good, because it meant he was real.
I took a small taste of his mouth, savoring the sweet of his tongue and the spice of curry lingering there. He must have tasted the stew as he cooked. His mouth moved over mine, his lips parting when I pressed in. I loved him surrendering to me. Jae moaned and slithered on my lap, parting his knees until he straddled my hips. They hurt too, but in a different way. My dick wanted into his heat, longed and begged for it.
Shifting, I tried to give my erection some room, but the sweatpants I wore had other ideas, cinching tighter as Jae writhed. Swearing, I lifted him up, straining even with his slight weight as my shoulders protested the strenuous movement.
“You’re here.” I was the king of obvious, and my cock further announced Jae’s presence with a steady throbbing as he settled against my chest. I held his face in my hands, staring up into his beautiful, dark eyes and at the sinful, full mouth I wanted to have wrapped around my dick.
“Yeah.” He leaned back, perplexed. “Where else would I be? You came home. I’m here to make sure you stay here.”
“I thought… fuck.” I grabbed at the envelope with the key still inside of it and held it up for Jae to see. “I thought you’d walked.”
“No, I found a place and moved my stuff in,” he said slowly, shifting until he was sitting on my belly. “That key is to my place. It’s yours if you want it.”
“Yeah, I want it.” My stomach was warm from his body heat, and my cheeks were flushed with embarrassment. “Trust. I need to work on that.”
“Okay,” he said with a smile. “Me too.”
“I’ll… miss you.” I could be honest about it. I’d grown used to having him nearby, and even the lack of cat was troublesome, but mostly I would hate not waking up next to him in the morning and hearing him murmur for me to turn off the sun.
“I’m not dead,” he shot back, pushing lightly at my shoulders. “I am just down the street. Mostly. Around a few blocks at least.”
“Yeah, I get that.” I grunted, placing my hands on his thighs. I worked my fingers up to the V of his body, stroking at the soft skin exposed from the gap between his shirt and his jeans. “Not staying here… it’s about your family too, huh?”
“Some,” Jae murmured and looked down, confusion and fear clouding his pretty face. “I’m not ready to have them kick me out. I can’t.”
“No, I get that too. You didn’t see your cousin’s face when she was talking about her brother. You could have squeezed her skin out and gotten about a cup of pure liquid hatred from it. Kind of made me sick.”
I did understand now. I didn’t like it, but I understood. It was hard to grasp Jae’s self-image being tied up into a larger mass. It wasn’t just about being a part of a family. His whole mindset revolved around not living for himself. That was going to take some getting used to.
“It’s hard to be Korean―being Asian―and loving a man.” He sighed. Closing his eyes tightly, he hung his head, almost turning away from me. I hated seeing the pain in his face and reached up to cup his cheek, wishing I could take the anguish away.
“I didn’t understand it, not really. I can lie here and talk to you about walking away from it all… about telling them to fuck off because y
ou don’t deserve to be treated like that, but I can’t. I know that it’s something… inside, like you’re all stitched together into this mass. If someone gets cut out, they bleed to death, but the rest of it is okay.” I started to wipe the tears falling from his eyes, wishing I wasn’t the one putting his pain into words.
“I know you think it’s stupid.” He sniffed, but he leaned into my touch, a subtle sign of trust that made my heart soar.
“It’s not. It’s just that I didn’t get it before. I think I get it now. It’s like you… you’re not just Jae Min… you’re your mother… and sisters… and that fucking worthless brother… and it doesn’t matter to them if they cut you out because they think you’re rot, but it would make you die inside. I can’t have that. I can’t ask you to take that much pain for me. I know you deserve better than that, baby. I do.”
“Grace didn’t. Aunty… doesn’t.” His words were bitter, nearly acidic with pain. “I think they’d both rather I be dead instead of hyung. Aunty told me not to come around anymore. That I’m not welcome because of what I brought the family to… like I was the one who killed Hyun-Shik. Me.”
“Yeah, well, I think that family’s got some shit for brains,” I murmured, pulling him down on top of me. I kissed his eyelashes, licking away the bitter salt I found there.
“What happens now? To Grace?” he whispered, slipping his arms around my torso. I grunted as the pain flared through my body, but I held him tight as he tried to move away. “I know she’s in lock-up. Uncle thinks he can get her out, but how? She killed so many people… Victoria….”
“With Victoria, she’s killed five people.” I shrugged, hating the hitch in Jae’s shoulders as he tensed in my arms. Rubbing at the small of his back, I soothed him as best I could. “They could get her off for crazy. I don’t know. But she is getting what she wanted. Will goes to your aunt, and everyone she wanted dead is dead. He doesn’t have any other relatives.”
“They have money,” Jae mused. “Lots of money, and Uncle knows people. From what he said, it didn’t sound like she would be too hard to defend.”
“Yeah, sad to say, that’s probably how it’s going to work out.” I sighed as I thought of my brother’s diatribe as he drove me home from the hospital. “Mike thinks your uncle’s going to fire him because I nailed Grace for the murders.”
“So you think he knew? About Grace being the killer.”
“Mike?” I glanced down at Jae, who gave me a sour face. “Oh, your uncle? Maybe. I don’t know. Does anyone really know what their kids are doing? My dad was shocked when he found out I was gay, but Mike said he knew I liked guys before I hit junior high. Maybe parents are just blind to what their kids are doing because they don’t want to know.”
“I’m pretty sure my mother knows. About me.” He rested his chin on my chest. His eyes were dark in the shadows, but the minute amber flecks in their depths shone when he kissed me. “Sometimes I wish she’d just say something. We keep circling around and pretending. I keep hoping she’ll end all of this, but she never does.”
“She might never say anything.” It was too much to hope that she would. Even with what little understanding I had of the situation, Jae seemed to be stuck between the life he wanted to lead and the obligations he had to his family. “Maybe it won’t matter one day? I don’t know, baby. This is all new to me.”
He shivered in my arms, and I lay my cheek on his hair, inhaling the sweet vanilla scent he used. There was a tiny mew from the top of the stairs, and I glanced up when his cat jumped onto the back of the couch. She settled into a puffball and began to purr, probably more from plotting to suck out my eyeballs than from actual pleasure at being back at my house.
“What are you going to do now?” I asked, kissing Jae’s mouth when he lifted his face to me.
“I thought I would feed you, then maybe get you to bed.” He shot a sour look at my now-warm beer. “Maybe get some of those drugs into you so you can sleep.”
“Sounds very romantic,” I murmured. “Will you spend the night? Here with me?”
“Do you promise not to start anything?” He eyed me when I nodded innocently.
“Promise,” I swore, holding up my hand. “Maybe. Yes.”
He slid off my body to retrieve the curry, leaving a cold spot on my torso where his heat had been. I wanted to reach for him, to pull him close and not let him go, but for now, I had to be satisfied with what he gave me. I let Jae pull me up, even allowing him to spoon some of the spicy stew into my mouth, demanding a kiss for every two mouthfuls of food.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” he murmured when I finally let him come up for air. Raking his hands through my hair, he held me steady and rested his forehead against mine, staring into my eyes. “Saranghae, agi.”
“This using another language thing on me is very unfair.” I splayed my hands on the small of his back, savoring the feel of him on my body. For the first time in years, I felt like my own skin fit, and despite the twinges reminding me to take it easy, I’d never been more comfortable… and horny. “What does that mean?”
Jae’s beautiful face stilled, and he smiled gently. Kissing me on the lips, he whispered into my open mouth, “Learn Korean.”
About the Author
RHYS FORD was born and raised in Hawai’i then wandered off to see the world. After chewing through a pile of books, a lot of odd food, and a stray boyfriend or two, Rhys eventually landed in San Diego, which is a very nice place but seriously needs more rain.
Rhys currently has a day job herding graphics pixels at an asset management company with a fantastic view of the seashore from many floors up and admits to sharing the house with three cats, a black Pomeranian puffball, a bonsai wolfhound, and a ginger cairn terrorist. Rhys is also enslaved to the upkeep a 1979 Pontiac Firebird, a Qosmio laptop, and a red Hamilton Beach coffeemaker.
Visit Rhys’s blog at http://rhysford.wordpress.com/ or e-mail Rhys at [email protected].
Suspense Romance from DREAMSPINNER PRESS
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com