by Lissa Kasey
He chuckled and made his way to the kitchen table. “If only life were that easy.”
“It can be.”
He studied me for minute. “I just feel like I have to take care of them. Growing up was hard in a big family with not a lot of money. That was one of the things I like best about Ollie. His commitment to his family.”
“Except you and Nathan hated each other.”
“Well yeah. Isn’t that like cosmically required or some shit? Big brother hates little brother’s boyfriend. Ollie bent over backward to be what Nathan wanted. Gave up big paying jobs, studied IT instead of textiles in college, all because he wanted to be there for Nathan. I offered to take Ollie on tour with me. Show him the world. But he refused because he didn’t want to leave Nathan alone that long. A few days at a time were okay, but not months. Everything Ollie did was to make Nathan proud of him, to make Nathan happy. And did it really? He still ended up dead, right? Guess he’s happy now.”
I frowned, having not thought of it from that perspective before. “Nathan only wanted what was best for Ollie.”
“Did he? ’Cause last I checked he killed himself on the day Ollie bought this pretty house to give a home to his brother’s family. How was that best for Ollie?”
“Nathan was sick.” I defended my friend, though I’d been down that path of thought before myself. Nathan’s death had almost killed Ollie too. I couldn’t imagine how messed up his head had to have been to force him to take his life that day. It made no sense to me. And the more I thought about it the more questions arose, so just like Ollie, I’d stopped trying to think about it. “I don’t think either of us have a right to judge another man’s pain.”
“We all walk our own path and that Zen bullshit? You really are in deep with Ollie.”
I shrugged. There was no reason to lie.
“Do you cook? ’Cause I don’t, and all Ollie does well is eggs with stuff in them.”
I pulled a tray of vegan gluten-free strawberry-banana muffins out of the fridge and plopped them on the table beside him, then went to refill my cup since I’d sputtered up half the precious brew. When I returned to the table, it was with a bottle of raw honey for the muffins. Jacob picked at one.
“It won’t kill you,” I promised.
He frowned at me. “It’s healthy, isn’t it?”
“It’s sort of like a PB&J sandwich, only sweeter.” I cut one in half, added a bit of honey, and took a bite. They were good. One of my favorite recipes, and one of the easiest to-go breakfasts I could force on Ollie. Full of protein, healthy fats, and lots of vitamins, but light enough not to upset his sensitive stomach.
I shifted in my seat at the thought of Ollie. My ass ached a little. Not unpleasantly, just a “hey, remember you overworked me last night” thing. Which apparently Jacob had heard. I sighed. It was too early for hard conversations, and my brain was already working overtime.
Jacob broke off a corner of a muffin and nibbled it, letting the taste process for a minute before he cut his in half and added honey—twice as much as I had—then stuffed half of it into his mouth. I watched his expression for a reaction of some kind, but he shrugged, swallowed the first half, and reached for the second.
“Don’t tell me what’s in it,” he said. “Or I won’t eat it.”
I heard the shower turn on upstairs and knew Ollie was awake.
“Don’t talk about Nathan,” I warned Jacob. “Ollie is still recovering.” He didn’t need a relapse. We’d just gotten him back to a healthy weight.
“Yeah. I get it. Totally. Emily and Joel are still that way with Josh. Bring him up and they both freak.”
“Tell me your side of that?” I asked.
“What’s to tell? I was on tour when it happened. Two cities away. They were all on tour with me that time. Joel was on backup, Erin and Jeremiah doing a ton of press setup shit, Emily schmoozing everyone and making sure the tour went smoothly. Josh had apparently gone on some bender so he stayed behind with a handful of the crew to rest and would catch up with us later. He rarely traveled with me. But he wanted to that time so I said okay. Maybe if I hadn’t, he would have been home and not freaked out. He called Emily, who in turn called me, telling me she had to leave because he needed her.”
“It didn’t make you mad that your manager was leaving in the middle of a tour?”
He shrugged. “Family emergency. I got it. Shit happens. I figured she’d take him home and put him on a watch, then come back.”
“She didn’t get to him in time?”
“No. Emily called to tell me Josh was dead in his hotel room. Overdose of a painkiller or something. I didn’t even know he was on anything for pain.”
“Just the meds for his bipolar disorder? Right?”
“He wouldn’t take those. He wouldn’t take anything really. Said it was a government conspiracy to keep him dumb and sick.”
Interesting. “So how did he get the painkiller?”
“No idea. It was just in him. No bottle or anything. No prescription in his name. The doctor suggested he’d gotten it from someone.”
Specifically for the suicide? I suppose that could happen. It wasn’t hard to find drugs under the table anymore. Hell, Ollie got most of my stuff from Canada since it was cheaper. “You know there’s been some question about Nathan’s death.”
Jacob picked at another muffin. “Yeah?”
“We found an odd note that suggested maybe he didn’t kill himself. Was there any suspicion about Joel’s death?”
“Nah. He was pretty unstable. I don’t know why anyone would have wanted to kill him. He didn’t have a lot of money, or control of anything really. We all sort of took care of him.”
“So no life insurance policies that could have come up later or anything weird like that?”
Jacob frowned. “Not that I know of. Is that why the Nathan thing is weird? Was a gun in the mouth, though, hard to fake that. I remember reading about it in the media. I tried to call. Ollie wouldn’t answer. I sent flowers and Emily to the funeral.” Jacob played with the bottle of honey.
“There was an insurance policy paid out to a woman that Nathan was supposedly married to.”
Jacob gaped at me. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
I shook my head.
“When did he get married?” Jacob said more out loud to himself than a question to me. “Fuck, that does sound off. You think someone killed him and made it look like a suicide? You check for drugs in his blood? They always do that on those crime shows.”
“It’s not that easy in real life.” I didn’t know enough about what medications Nathan had been taking before he died. There had been almost a dozen. Ollie still had the old bottles in one cupboard, a daily plastic bin still filled with the pills Nathan would never again take. I frowned at the thought. Shit, I should have checked those bottles against the report Will had forwarded. Maybe even looked at the pills. Nathan had died on a Wednesday and his holder still had Thursday through Sunday full. I added a note via my phone to the password-protected file I had created for Nathan’s death. Ollie could hack his way in any time he wanted to, but I knew he wouldn’t.
“Everything in the ME report was on point with a suicide. Gun residue on his hands. The spray….” I couldn’t finish the rest.
“Shit. Sorry, man. Don’t think about it. I shouldn’t have brought it up and now that’s all that’s gonna be in my head.” Jacob sighed. “Ollie didn’t see…?”
“No.” A fact for which I was thankful every day. Will had kept Ollie out of the scene.
“Good. Shit. I really do care about Ollie. You know that, right?”
“But you don’t want to have sex with him?” I had to know.
He laughed. “Well I wouldn’t say that. He’s hot. Those legs go on forever, and that ass….”
I sighed. “You can’t have both.”
“What do you mean?”
“His friendship, or his sex. And since his heart belongs to me, and through that his sex, your only
option is friendship. If that’s not enough for you, then once the case is over, I’ll make sure you return to the place you’ve been for the past year and a half. Alone with no access to Ollie.”
“Hard-core, Alme,” Jacob grumbled.
I put my hand over my heart. “It’s called honesty.” The shower turned off upstairs. Ollie would be down soon. I got up to turn his tea brewer on, adding his favorite green tea mix to the machine before flipping the button to let the water heat.
“Fine. Agreed. Friends. No more staring at his ass with longing.”
“Bastard,” I growled at him only to be rewarded with a grin. “It is a fine ass,” I admitted.
“Seriously. If you guys need money or help, let me know. Need someone else to look into Nathan’s death, I can find someone. Keep it quiet.”
“No,” I said firmly. “I’m trying to get him to move past this. Not linger. The more he lingers, the worse it is for him.”
He nodded. “All right, so this case, then. Anyway, I made some calls last night after it seemed like the two of you would finally finish fucking like bunnies. Put out some fires. Emily says you can see Joel today,” Jacob told me after he downed another muffin.
“Say what?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“I called her.” He shrugged. “She was worried. Convinced that you and Ollie had brainwashed me into thinking I was better off without my family. I’ve sort of known that on my own for years, but I’m nice, you know. I take care of my family. But whatever. I told her to calm the fuck down. I was fine. Resting. Grieving. Getting ready for the tour. I told her if she needs me, she just has to call. Made it clear that my time away was just to prepare and nothing personal.”
“And just like that we’re good?” It was hard to believe.
“I told her you’re really trying to fix this shit. Even told her about the blackmail.”
“Did that go over well?”
He winced. “Yeah, she screamed at me awhile. Said I was stupid for not telling her the second that shit started.”
“Did you tell her about all the other toys too?”
He nodded. “I didn’t want to. ’Cause, like, she’s my sister, and no one wants to show that nasty shit to their sister. Unless they hate her, but does anyone hate their sister? Anyway, she’s also my manager. It’s her job to take care of everything. If I’m not telling her stuff, how can she do her job? And Emily is good. She’s always been a really good manager. She’s taken my career so much higher than I could have imagined.”
“At what price?” I had to ask.
He frowned at me. “Ollie’s been talking.”
“Funny thing about that. You had to know he’d tell me. There’s very little he doesn’t tell me.”
“It’s no big deal.”
“Only it is,” I reasserted because it was. He wouldn’t still be holding on to it if it wasn’t.
He sat in silence staring into his cup for a minute, then finally said, “I looked up that word. Aromantic. It fits. But I wonder now if I was born that way or made that way. I read that sometimes events can trigger things….”
“Can an event make you gay?”
“No.”
“Bi?”
“No. Why are you being stupid?”
“I’m making a point.”
“In a roundabout way apparently,” he snapped at me.
“You are who you are. The only thing about you that can change is your reaction to things. Exercise to the point: can you recall ever feeling a romantic interest in anyone? Like maybe another kid in school?”
Jacob seemed to think about it for a minute. “I like some people. Want to be close to them. Like with Ollie. First time I saw him, I thought, I gotta tap that.”
“That’s sex, not romance.”
“Right, but when I first saw him I wanted sex.”
“Except that to get into Ollie’s pants you have to mean something to him.” It was how Ollie functioned. He would never be the party boy out with a new guy every night.
“Yeah. So I did what I had to. Wooed him, I guess.”
“Only the closer you got to him, the less interested you were in having sex with him.”
“It’s totally fucked up. I know.” Jacob cut open another muffin, slathered it with honey, and stuffed half into his mouth. After he swallowed he looked at me. “He’s gorgeous and I’d fuck him again in a heartbeat. But I don’t want to take care of him. I don’t want to take care of anyone. He should be happy. I do want him to be happy. I’ve never gotten that shit from the movies. Falling for someone that you just gotta have them or die. I either fuck people, or I care about them. There’s no overlap.”
“I get that. And he is happy. Most of the time.”
“So I’m not broken?” Jacob finally asked after a lengthy pause.
“Not any more than any of the rest of us. We all have demons. Crap in our past that pops up sometimes to try to rip our stability away.”
“Even you?”
I laughed. “Especially me.”
“But you’re pretty stable. Sane. That’s why you work for Ollie. You’re the stone wall to his blowing wind.”
“Poetic,” I teased Jacob.
“I’m a singer,” he emphasized the g in a singsong way. “But seriously, how do you do it? Stay sane? I know you had to see lots of shit overseas. Ollie said you served fifteen years? That’s a long time to be involved with anything. I couldn’t imagine how horrible it would be to live in the middle of a never-ending war.”
“It wasn’t nonstop. I came here for breaks. Watched Ollie grow up. Laughed and lived a normal life with Nathan. I lived for the time between tours. They were my home.” I shook my head, remembering those trips home instead of the many months deployed so much more clearly. “I’m not saying there’s not cracks in this wall. I have my moments of self-doubt, just like everyone else.”
Jacob made a rude noise.
“No, seriously. I do. How do I stay sane? I have Ollie. I wake up every day, look in the mirror, and remind myself I made it. No one broke me. My family tried, but I was stronger than them.” Most of the time. Every once in a while I would think back and fear would begin to unfurl in my gut. Worry that they were just biding their time, or that they would hurt Ollie to get to me. “They can’t have that power over me. I won’t let them.” I gave Jacob a tight smile.
“It’s really that easy?”
“No,” I admitted. “I came from money. I ran from everything and became a soldier. Thought being in the military was what it meant to learn to live. Only I never lived until I met Ollie. I don’t know if I’d be sane without him.”
Ollie appeared in the kitchen a moment later, Newt at his heels. He went right to the brewed pot of tea and poured himself a cup. Jacob was still demolishing the muffins. The guy could eat. I’d have to make more, after I spoke with Joel. Ollie didn’t bother sitting in another chair. Instead he plopped into my lap, careful to keep his weight off my right leg, and wrapped his arm around my back while balancing his tea over the table. It was how we often ate breakfast. Ollie was a pretty slow riser most days, but as long as he had tea in hand, I could feed him while he woke up and be ready to go by the time he really opened his eyes.
“These muffins are good,” Jacob told Ollie, shoving the plate our way. I put one together for Ollie, and held the first bite to his lips until they opened.
“I need you two to stay here today,” I told them while I fed Ollie.
Jacob frowned at me. “Dude, are you keeping me prisoner here?”
“You don’t look tied up,” I remarked.
“Kinky.”
Everything was an innuendo for him so I brushed it off. “It’s just for today. I want to talk to Joel. He knows something. Jeremiah said Joel and Kisten were together and Joel had threatened suicide when Kisten died,” I told Jacob.
“Jeremiah doesn’t know shit.”
“So Kisten and Joel weren’t a couple?”
“They were,” Jacob said. “I sort of made that
happen.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Really. Kisten wasn’t into games like me, but he wanted someone to take care of. Joel was only in the games because it had become the norm. But he’s like one in a million, a true submissive. I met too many fuck-head Doms in my time to let just anyone have him.” He played with his cup, turning it slowly as though to give himself something else to focus on. “I just nudged them a little. It was working great until the tour plans came up. Kisten was supposed to travel with me, but Joel couldn’t.”
“Why? I thought he normally worked on the crew,” I asked.
“The road wasn’t a good place for him. He needs structure. But I knew without Kisten at his side, Joel would probably fall into another drug problem. He’s been in and out of rehab a half-dozen times. Was solid for the past four months or so… with Kisten.” His voice got tight. “Kisten was helping him like you’ve been helping Ollie.”
There were so many ways I could take that. “Like counseling? Or just being there?”
“Both. But the counseling. Not just for drugs anymore. His head’s a little off. Sort of like Josh’s was. Not as extreme, but still troubled.”
Ollie picked up another muffin and bit into it without the honey. Apparently I wasn’t being a good boyfriend this morning and predicting the desires of his stomach. “Do you want some avocado toast?” I asked him.
He shook his head.
“So Joel was getting counseling for a mental disorder like depression or something else?” I prodded Jacob. “I need to know what’s safe to talk to him about.”
Jacob looked away, unwilling to meet either of our eyes. “Depression, anxiety, and stuff.”
Stuff. Like the stuff that happened to a young Jacob who refused to talk about it and barely acknowledge it happened to him? Was it someone in the industry? Was this person still around? Maybe still abusing Joel and threatening Jacob. Shit. That was it, wasn’t it? “Like the same stuff that happened to you?” I asked. “The same person? Who?” I demanded.
Jacob shrugged. “It’s in the past.”
But it wasn’t. I couldn’t stop from glaring at him, only he wouldn’t look at me. If I couldn’t get it out of him, I’d get it out of Joel. Dammit. He knew. He fucking knew who was doing this. How could he keep quiet after the bastard had killed Kisten? Pieces were starting to fall into place. “Odd how your brother died from pills in his blood when he had no prescription for them, and so did Kisten.”