Pick Up the Pieces

by Tinnean

  “Does it involve us, naked, in the shower, maybe?” His eyes were hot with sexual excitement.

  “Not right now.” For a second that image distracted me—Wills’s back, sleek, muscled, bowed, waiting, ready to bear my weight, slick with water from the shower that could almost be mistaken for beads of sweat…. I shook my head and brought myself back to the present. “I have to hide your eyes, okay?”

  “Oh? Are you up to something kinky, babe? Again?” Because, yeah, we played games. I’d blindfolded him; I’d tied him to the bed; I’d tormented his willing body with featherlight touches with feathers themselves. The one thing we didn’t do was play dress-up—we’d tried it once, and his reaction had stunned me. Who would have thought he could move that fast or with such unrestrained violence? He’d checked the movement of his fist at the last minute, turning white and backing away from me, horrified by what he had nearly done. I’d had to strip off the camo and goggles before he would let me near enough to get him calmed down.

  “You’ll see.” I put my hands over his eyes and nuzzled the back of his neck. “Just not yet.”

  “I get it! You’re trying to distract me while you take advantage of my body!”

  “That’s a good idea.” I nipped his ear. “Not what I had in mind for right now, but hold that thought, babe,” I said, picturing us christening that wide couch. I nudged him toward the room that was now his office, then whipped my hands away. “Ta-da!”

  He was quiet for so long I began to get nervous. Didn’t he like what I had done for him?

  “Wills?”

  “It’s….” He crossed to the computer desk. Vince had ordered something similar, and I’d thought it would be perfect for Wills. He ran his fingertips over the dark cherrywood. A slight pressure and a hidden compartment popped open. “Nice,” he breathed.

  “There’s room for books and software, see? And for your printer and scanner.”

  He nodded, then turned and looked at the TV, at the couch, at the paintings.

  “Look, babe, if there’s anything you don’t like, I can change it, get you something different….”

  “You don’t have to change a thing, Theo. It’s perfect.”

  “Yeah?” I blew out a relieved breath. “Cool. I’m glad you—”

  His lips cut off the rest of my words.

  WE HAD just finished programming the door chimes. Now, instead of playing “Big Spender,” it would play “Isn’t It Romantic?”.

  “Theo, would you do me a favor?”

  “Whatever you want.” I blinked. I’d said that? I wasn’t like Wills, who could promise anything so easily.

  He’d only been gay a few months, and he really hadn’t been out in the real world, not like I had been. He probably also believed that, in spite of everything, people were inherently good.

  And here he was, rubbing off on me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  “Babe?”

  “Huh? Sorry, what favor did you want?” I asked uneasily.

  “Would you change the message on your answering machine?”

  Was that all? I pulled him in for a kiss. “For you, Wills? Anything.”

  Chapter 22

  “IT’S A jungle out there, babe.” Wills leaned against the floor-to-ceiling window that opened onto one of the small balconies overlooking the tangled mass that was the backyard.

  “If you want to deal with it, be my guest.”

  “Cool. The next time I have a day off….”

  “That it isn’t raining?” June had suddenly become damp and cool.

  “Yeah, that it isn’t raining. I’ll do some work on it.”

  He was always so willing to do things around the house. He’d even helped the ladies downstairs when one of the drains had gotten clogged. Of course I’d gone with him, just to make sure the ladies knew he was off-limits. I’d been surprised when they’d simply treated him like a brother.

  “We don’t have a lawnmower.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” He grinned at me over his shoulder. “The way the grass is right now, it’ll choke anything that tries to bring it under control. I’ll need a scythe. Maybe a mulcher.” He raised an eyebrow. “Got one of those?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay. After lunch I’ll take a ride to Home Depot and pick up everything we’ll need.”

  “You don’t have to do that, you know.”

  “Sure, I do. Have to earn my keep, don’t I?”

  “You don’t need to do a damned thing to earn your keep, babe. Oh, maybe one thing.”

  “Yeah?” His mouth curled in a grin. “And what might that be?”

  “Make me happy.”

  “Do I make you happy, Theo?”

  “Yes.” More than he might ever know.

  “I’m glad. You’ve given me so much….”

  This was the first time he’d said anything about all the things I’d bought for him. I chewed on my lip. “Would you… would you rather I didn’t?”

  “Does it make you happy to give me all these things?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Then I won’t tell you to stop. On one condition.”

  “Oh?” I waited uneasily for the other shoe to drop.

  “Don’t stop loving me.”

  “Ass.” As if that was likely to happen. I joined him at the window and slid my arm around his waist. He leaned against me and kissed the hinge of my jaw.

  Suddenly it began raining. “Was this predicted?”

  “Dunno.” I didn’t subscribe to a newspaper, and I hadn’t paid attention to the Weather Channel earlier.

  “Well, I guess we won’t be going to Home Depot today.”

  We stood there, watching raindrops chase each other down the pane.

  “So. What do you feel like doing?” Wills asked.

  “Dance with me. We’ve never danced together.”

  “I don’t dance.”

  I was shocked. “What do you mean you don’t dance?”

  He shrugged as if that was the most unimportant thing in the world.

  “Everyone knows how to dance!” His family was so wonderful; how could they not have seen to it that he learned how to dance?

  He shrugged again, and I couldn’t believe how disappointed in them I was.

  “Okay. I’ll teach you! We’ll start with a waltz.” I moved the coffee table out of the way, put a CD in the player, all lush strings and woodwinds, and came to stand in front of my lover. “Now put a hand on my shoulder.”

  “Oh, what?” Wills huffed. “I get to be the woman?”

  “Wills,” I said patiently, “I have to lead to show you the steps.” I took his right hand in my left.

  “Yeah, yeah.” He rested his palm on my shoulder, and I put my right hand on his hip. “Mmm.” He seemed to like the feel of my fingers there, caressing circles in the flesh beneath his jeans.

  I slid my hand further around to draw Wills’s body closer to mine and let him feel how hard I was.

  He cleared his throat. “I thought this was supposed to be a dance lesson.”

  I frowned at him. “Pay attention.”

  “Yes, Theo,” he said meekly, and I pinched his hip. “Hey!”

  “Wiseass. Okay. I go forward with my right, you go back with your left.”

  “Um… aren’t you supposed to start with your left?”

  “Who’s teaching who here?”

  “Sorry.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. Since when was he so submissive? The second song on the CD had begun, and I decided if we didn’t get started soon, it was going to finish, so I ignored Wills’s attitude.

  “Now,” I said. “I go forward with my right, and you go back with your left.”

  Only he took a step forward the same time as I did and stepped on my foot. I grunted and frowned. What the fuck? Wills had never struck me as clumsy.

  “Your other left, William!”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Everyone does that to start with. Now, look at me, not your
feet.”

  The CD ran all the way through once and was starting the second go-round. “I just don’t understand it,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve never had any trouble teaching the other guys.”

  “Maybe I’m just not good at waltzing. Can we try something else?”

  “Sure, babe.” This sucked. I wanted to dance with my lover, and I couldn’t even teach him his left foot from his right.

  He chose another CD, and Julie London’s sultry voice came out of the speakers. She began singing about marimba rhythms and how they made her sway.

  Wills stepped closer to me and looped my arms around his neck, then put both hands on my ass. “Okay, that’s more like it.”

  Plastered up against me like that, I could feel how aroused he was. I angled my head to catch his lips and moaned as he opened to me.

  We began swaying around the room, and I realized he was an excellent dancer. “You do too know how to dance, Wills!” I growled.

  “I didn’t say I couldn’t dance. I said I didn’t.”

  “Semantics.” Had he been making fun of me?

  “I’m sorry, babe.” He ran a comforting hand up and down my spine. “I shouldn’t have teased you. The thing is, I don’t have much time for it. I haven’t gone dancing since I moved down here.”

  “We’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?” No one had danced with him. Knowing that, I could forgive him for his teasing. “How about next Saturday night? We can go dancing at the Bee’s Knees.”

  We spent the next couple of hours learning to dance together: tango, fox-trot, cha-cha, waltz, and merengue.

  “Y’know, usually I hate this kind of weather,” I murmured in his ear as we went back to swaying once again.

  “That’s right. You’re originally from Florida.”

  “How did you know?” I stopped dancing.

  “You must have mentioned something about it. Anyway, I’ve got off the second week in August. We could fly down to Key West—”

  “I never talk about where I came from, Wills. How did you know?” I asked again.

  I thought his gaze became blank, but then the corner of his mouth was lifted in the half grin that made me want to kiss him silly, and I forgot all about it. “You talk in your sleep, babe. I told you that. Remember?”

  “I remember you said I mumbled.”

  “Well, this time you were clear as a bell.”

  “Yeah? And I talked about Florida?”

  “Yeah. About Tarpon Springs, your family. Someone named Franky.”

  All thoughts of kissing my lover vanished. I felt as if I’d been kicked in the gut.

  “F-Franky?” Oh, fuck. I’d talked about him in my sleep? Even after all these years, couldn’t I get free of him?

  “Theo? What’s wrong?”

  I swallowed and licked my lips. “What did I say?”

  “About Franky?” He shrugged. “Nothing really. You just mentioned the name.”

  “I… I have to tell you something. About my past.” I walked to the other side of the room and switched off the CD player before turning to face him. “And… please, Wills. Promise me—”

  “Theo, you don’t have to tell me anything.” He came toward me, but I held my hand out to stop him.

  I did have to tell him. Sooner or later he was going to start wondering why I was willing to go to every state in the union except the state where I’d grown up and where my family lived. “Please promise me you won’t walk out the door when I’m done telling you?”

  Wills ignored my outthrust hand. “I promise.” He did it again, as easy as that, no qualifications. How could he be so trusting, especially of me? “It’s okay, Theo.” He put his arms around me, stroking the muscles of my back, which felt as if they were tied in knots. “It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.”

  There was no point in putting it off. He would stay or he would go. In a few minutes, I’d know for sure.

  “I… I can’t go back to Tarpon Springs. I did something when I was younger, and….” I couldn’t meet his eyes, his trusting eyes. I was about to squash that trust, and it was destroying me.

  The whole miserable story came pouring out—well, not the details of how easy it had been for Franky to work me, but the series of events that led to me killing him.

  “He was… he was going to sell me to… to another pimp. I… I don’t even remember sticking the knife into him. And then I ran. A trucker gave me a ride to Washington. He didn’t ask for payment, but I gave him a blow job anyway.”

  “Oh, babe.” He held me tight. “I’m sorry.”

  “I was such a stupid fucking… I thought he… I really thought Franky loved me.” A tear spilled over and ran down my cheek as I recalled the young teen I had been.

  Wills raised his hand and caught the tear. “Goddammit,” he growled. I flinched and would have pulled away, but he tightened his hold on me. “I should have ki—I should have told you. The job I was on that nearly broke us up? I had a layover in St. Pete on the flight home, so I decided while I was there to drive north to Tarpon Springs and look him up.”

  “You looked him up?” How could he do that? Franky was dead.

  “Well, I tried to look him up.”

  “Why?” I could barely get the word past lips that felt frozen in a grimace of despair.

  “I was going to kick the shit out of him for what he did to you. I found out where chicken hawks like him hang out, and I went looking for him.”

  “But you found out that he was already dead.” He’d realize the man he claimed to love was a murderer and walk out of my life.

  “Yeah, how’d you know? He’d been killed shortly before I got there.”

  “What? But… but that’s impossible!” I was so overwhelmed by confusion and uncertainty that I didn’t even ask myself how he’d been able to find Franky with just a first name.

  “No, babe.” He resumed rubbing my back. “You okay?”

  “He died this past spring?” That meant I hadn’t killed him. But how could I not have killed him? All that blood….

  I was starting to hyperventilate. Black spots dotted the edge of my field of vision, and my legs crumpled under me, but his arms were around me, and he didn’t let me fall.

  “Theo. Theo.” He ran a hand through and over my hair.

  “What….” I swallowed. Franky would only have been in his early forties. If he hadn’t died because I’d stabbed him…. “What was the cause of death?”

  “Terminal stupidity, from what I could gather. One of the boys told me another pimp—I didn’t get the name, but he was supposed to be a big guy, nasty disposition—lost patience with Franky and had him offed.”

  Haskell. It had to be Haskell. He’d pretty much run things in that section of town, and that sounded like something he would do. The man had scared me when I’d first seen him, and that had been from a distance. I couldn’t see his disposition getting any sweeter in the ensuing twelve years. I took a deep breath, then took another one and licked my lips.

  “I should have told you….” Wills was back to rubbing my back. “I was going to, but then I got that message on my answering machine and it made me so crazy everything else went right out of my head. Are you okay?”

  “I… I think so.” I tried to wrap my mind around the fact that….

  He tipped my chin up and gave me a sweet smile. “So what do you say, babe?”

  “What?”

  “The second week in August in Key West? Will you come?”

  Franky was dead, but I hadn’t killed him. I could go back to Florida and see my family. Well, I could see Acacia and Ma. I could go to Disney World.

  I could go to Key West. I looked into my lover’s eyes. “I will.”

  Chapter 23

  THE BUZZER for the outside front door sounded, and I jumped. It had been unused, except for the occasional FedEx or UPS person, pretty much since I’d closed up the business.

  I thumbed the intercom. “Yes?”

  “I’m looking for Willi
am Matheson.” The voice was sexy, a warm, mellow baritone, and my gut clenched. Was this someone who’d realized belatedly what a catch my lover was and was going to try to take him from me?

  “He’s not here.”

  “Can you tell me when he’ll be in?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Well, I’m Peter Matheson. His uncle.”

  Oh, shit. “Hold on, I’ll buzz you in. Uh… we’re on the third floor.”

  “Thanks.”

  The only one of Wills’s uncles I’d met had been Jake, his cousin Harry’s father. I knew there were two others: Pete, the Marine, and Simon, the professor who lived with his family on the West Coast.

  I ran a hand through my hair and glanced around. The apartment was as neat as it usually was. Ma had believed in keeping a tidy home, and I’d picked that up from her.

  The door chimes played “Isn’t It Romantic?”.

  I realized my hands were sweating. I dried them on my thighs and went to answer the door.

  The man who stood there was about six foot four. His sandy hair had been in a buzz cut but was growing out, and his ice-blue eyes were cool and observant. There was a strong family resemblance—in his cheekbones, the cut of his jaw, the shape of his chin.

  “Come in. I’m Theo Bascopolis.” I held out my hand. “Mr… er… Sergeant….”

  “Pete is fine.” His grip was firm but not overpowering. “My nephew isn’t here?”

  “No. He’s at work. He’ll be home in a few hours.”

  “I see.” He looked me over. I’d been sized up as a potential purchase plenty of times, but he wasn’t checking me out that way, and I wasn’t sure what to make of his scrutiny. Had Jack Matheson sent him to make sure I was a good match for his son? I thought he’d liked me, but maybe I’d read him wrong.

  “Can I… uh… get you something? Coffee or tea or….” He was a Marine. Maybe something stronger? “There’s a bottle of Absolut somewhere.” I’d replaced it after I’d made such a fool of myself with the last bottle.

  “Coffee would be good, if it’s not too much trouble.”