Murder Aforethought

by Parker St John

  Hell, he’d seen the embarrassing shit Val’s brain pulled in the middle of the night. How could he think any less of him for talking to someone? Yet the fear was there just the same.

  “I… yeah. I am. At the V.A.” He shrugged. No big deal. Just his sanity. “Reese drove me. When I wouldn’t get out of the car, he unbuckled me and shoved me out at a rolling stop.”

  Maksim’s laugh was bitter. “Thank God for Reese,” he said.

  “Yeah.” Val frowned. “What…”

  “I wish it had been me.” Maksim blurted.

  Val raised his eyebrows. “You want to push me out of a moving vehicle?”

  “I wanted to be the one to help you.”

  “Ah.” He looked down at the bottle clenched in his hand. Condensation had soaked through the label, and he picked at it with his thumbnail.

  “I guess I have an unrealized savior complex.”

  Val was silent. They were on shaky ground. He couldn’t help but feel like that admission didn’t do either of them very much credit.

  But Maksim deserved acknowledgement. The great thing about him was he gave people the space to think. He wasn’t the type to fill empty space with emptier chatter.

  Eventually, Val said, “You helped me more than you’ll ever know.” He met Maksim’s gaze. “You made me feel human again.”

  “Is that why you left without saying goodbye?”

  Val sucked in a breath. The air smelled like Maksim, goddammit. “That was necessary.”

  “For you or for me?”

  “For both of us, dammit!” Val slammed his bottle down on the counter. He dragged his hands through his hair. It was getting long. Longer than he’d ever worn it. “I needed to get my shit together, and that wasn’t ever going to happen if I was using you as a crutch! And you… you didn’t need a dead weight hanging around your neck.”

  “That’s not what you were.”

  “Yes, it was! I nearly got you killed. I nearly got Emma killed. Fuck, because of me you had to kill a man! Look what I turned you into!”

  In the space between heartbeats, Maksim had grabbed him by the shoulders. Val could have easily broken his hold, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to. His hands felt too good, even when they dug in and shook him hard.

  “Stop trying to be a martyr. You didn’t make me do a damn thing. Do you understand me?” He shook him again. “I chose to pull that trigger, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. In fact, I’m proud of it. You know why? Because it kept you and Emma alive.”

  Warmth spread through Val like the slow burn of whiskey. “But you and Emma and Miguel wouldn’t have been in that situation if I hadn’t—”

  “Your only mistake in all of this was caring so much about people that you couldn’t bear to kill them anymore… and then caring so much about your family that you agreed to kill again for their sake.” He cupped the sides of Val’s face when he tried to shake his head, yanking him close, until their noses brushed. His eyes were on Val’s mouth when he whispered, “If the world had just a fraction of your kindness, I’d be out of a job.”

  An unfamiliar sting pricked the backs of Val’s eyes. Maksim’s striking face grew blurry. He sniffed hard, and the sensation eased.

  “I’m starting back at square one. Where am I going to fit into your kind of life?” he choked.

  “Where you belong.” Maksim’s lips brushed his, so fleeting it might have been accidental. “Right beside me.”

  Need roared through him like thunder. His stomach clenched, and his hands clasped Maksim by the waist entirely of their own accord. He pulled until their hips pressed flush together and groaned at the hardness he felt through his jeans.

  “I’ve missed you,” Maksim whispered.

  “I thought you needed me to not be there,” Val moaned. He dropped his head and buried his face in Maksim’s neck. He couldn’t help nuzzling against the roughness of his five o’clock shadow. The man smelled amazing. “Intense situations can create… artificial bonds.”

  “Do you remember what I told you when you got shot?”

  Val wanted to lie. But he couldn’t. Maksim always knew when he was lying. “It was the danger. You aren’t used to maintaining the necessary distance. You can’t go quoting The Princess Bride at a man you only knew for a week. Love doesn’t work that fast.”

  “Fast?” Maksim asked incredulously. “It took me forty-two years.”

  Val laughed, but it came out cracked and wet. His arms tightened around Maksim’s waist, and he reveled in the way the other man’s body melted against his.

  Maksim Kovalenko was all sharp edges until he let his guard down. But he’d been soft with Val almost from the beginning. He wasn’t the kind of man who allowed pity to dictate his actions.

  Every moment they’d spent together suddenly came into perfect clarity.

  He drew back to see Maksim’s face and was undone by the tenderness he found there.

  “Maybe I’m smarter than I thought,” he squeezed out through a tight throat. “It only took me twenty-four.”

  The smile he got was a thing of beauty. Val cupped his face in his hands and kissed him.

  Maksim’s lips were warm and soft, and they opened instantly at his beckoning. Val moaned and pushed his tongue into the sweet recesses of his mouth. He rested a hand against Maksim’s chest, and despite everything, was astonished to feel the galloping heartbeat beneath his sweater.

  The sound that rumbled up from the back of Maksim’s throat was full of pleading. His hands sunk deep into Val’s hair, tangling there and pulling his head back to alter the angle of their kiss.

  Eventually, the need to breathe had them separating, though they couldn’t seem to stop touching each other. Maksim’s fingers were stroking through Val’s hair. Val’s lips trailed down his neck.

  “Walking away from you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Val admitted. “I just couldn’t have you feeling sorry for me. I don’t want you to save me, Maks.”

  Maksim kissed him briefly and then drew back. “What do you want?” he asked.

  “I want to fall asleep beside you every night. God, I’ve dreamed about it.” He couldn’t stop kissing him. “I want you to remember what family is like. I want to be your home.”

  Maksim’s eyes were warm, and it was like the sun had finally risen. Val wanted to bask in that warmth for the rest of his life.

  “Why do you think I’m here?” he whispered. “You already are.”

  Epilogue

  Maksim

  Six months later

  “Ha ha! You suck sooo bad. I can’t even.”

  Emma’s strident tones greeted Maksim as soon as he unlocked the front door, and he grinned.

  She’d begun spending weekends at their house a couple months ago. He had spoken at length to her parents, who had gone through the roof at first. His blood still boiled every time he remembered the disgusting accusations they’d hurled his way.

  In the end, though, Emma was a strong-willed girl, and her parents were apathetic drunks. Like thousands of neglectful parents before them, they didn’t care where she spent her time beyond firing off some scathing commentary any time she crossed them.

  She claimed it didn’t bother her. Even Val knew she was lying.

  Val had become even more protective of Emma than Maksim, something that amused him, but he found it ridiculously attractive.

  His lover was an easygoing man, by nature, but his rivers ran deep.

  Maksim never wanted him to fall back into the dark place that had him killing people to protect those he cared about… but the extent of the man’s loyalty was a beautiful thing. He’d go to the ends of the earth for the ones he loved.

  Maksim was humbled to be one of those people.

  “What’s going on in here?” he asked as he entered the living room.

  Val sat on the floor with his back resting against their couch. His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, and Maksim took a long moment to admire the corded strength of his fore
arms as he jabbed at buttons on their Xbox controller.

  “Your boy here is the worst Call of Duty player I ever met!” Emma chortled from her cross-legged pose on the couch. “He can’t hit the broad side of a barn! I think he’s lying about ever having been a Marine.”

  “I told you, this controller is broken,” Val protested.

  “Likely story,” she laughed.

  Maksim examined the simulated violence on the screen with some concern. Val still attended weekly therapy at the V.A., and his PTSD symptoms had improved enormously as his life slowly settled into a new normal.

  But he still had bad days. Maksim would never forget the night he’d discovered him hunched over on the floor of their shower, clutching his chest and heaving for breath. Thoughts of pulmonary embolisms and heart defects had streaked across his mind.

  He’d launched himself into the shower fully clothed and dragged the love of his life onto the dry floor. He’d been dialing 911 when Val grabbed the phone from his hand and tossed it aside.

  “It happens,” he’d gasped. “Just hold onto me.”

  Maksim had never felt so helpless as he wrapped his arms around the man he needed more than air, a man with the strength of a warrior and the tender heart of an innocent.

  It was the memory of Val trembling against him that prompted him to ask, “Val? Want to come with me while I get changed? We can decide on dinner.”

  Val paused the game and accepted Maksim’s offered hand, rising easily to his feet.

  Emma rolled her eyes and picked up her cell phone. “I vote for Rivetti Spaghetti,” she called after them.

  He could have let go of Val’s hand as they ascended the staircase to the master bedroom, but he didn’t. He’d always thought he was an undemonstrative man, but it wasn’t true. He’d only needed the right person.

  Once they reached the second floor, Val reached out and touched his fingers fleetingly against the two photographs hanging on the wall. He’d developed the habit of doing so every time he passed the pictures, like a good luck ritual.

  He brushed his fingers against a portrait of him and his parents. He was so damned young, fresh out of boot camp, and his parents had their arms wrapped around his waist. They looked happy. Maksim knew he preferred to remember them that way, rather than how they’d been in the end.

  The second picture Val always touched was a portrait of Maksim’s mother. Her long, dark hair tumbled over her shoulders, and her smile was brighter than the sun. Maksim didn’t feel alone when he looked at her any longer. He only felt her love.

  It touched him that Val wanted to connect with her in the same way he did his own parents.

  “Are you okay?” He asked quietly once they were behind the closed door of their bedroom. He stripped off his suit jacket and loosened his tie.

  Val didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Yeah,” he said.

  He snatched a hanger from the closet and inserted it into Maksim’s discarded jacket. “I was a little nervous at first, but I can’t take that game seriously. I know everyone says it’s realistic and all, but…” he shrugged. He didn’t seem to have anything else to say on the matter.

  “Good.” Maksim kissed him. “How was class?”

  Val rolled his eyes. “Remind me again why I have to put up with that punk of a professor?”

  “Because you’re going to be a brilliant civil engineer someday, and when you are, he’ll have no choice but to listen when you speak.”

  Val grabbed him by his open shirtfront and pulled him into a deeper, wetter kiss than before. “Your misplaced faith is appreciated.”

  “I have faith in you because I know you.”

  Maksim threaded his fingers through Val’s hair. He loved that he kept it long these days. It was the perfect length for grabbing in the heat of the moment.

  Val’s steely eyes darkened. He spread his palms flat over Maksim’s bare abdomen.

  “I love you,” Val whispered.

  “I love you, too.” Maksim kissed the tender hollow beneath Val’s ear. “I would like nothing more than to undress you right this minute. But a hungry Emma is an Emma who will be pounding on our door any second. Besides, Miguel is coming for dinner.”

  “Shit,” Val moaned as Maksim’s tongue tasted the shell of his ear. “So is Reese.”

  Maksim pulled back. “Tonight?”

  Val nodded. “He didn’t sound good. I didn’t want him to be alone.”

  Maksim had only heard the bare bones of what had happened to Reese once Val left the Marines, but he privately thought Val’s former commander could use some therapy himself.

  Maksim would tear the world apart with his bare hands just to keep Val from worrying.

  “Well,” he mused philosophically. “If anything can get Reese to smile, it will be Miguel and Emma once they get on a roll together.”

  “That reminds me,” Val laughed. “We need more beer.”

  “A grown man doing Fortnite dances with Emma in the middle of our dining room won’t look any better with beer goggles,” Maksim said dryly.

  Val laughed and pulled him close. “What would I do without your wisdom?” he asked.

  “You’ll never have to find out.”

  THE END

  Afterword

  Thanks for reading!

  Maksim and Val’s story continues in a holiday novella, The Rules of Gift Giving. You can order it HERE!

  Reese’s story can be found HERE.

  Want to read a funny, sexy little short story involving Maksim and Val missing a dinner reservation? Sign up HERE for my newsletter and get immediate access to all my exclusive fan content and news about upcoming releases!

  - Parker

  Also by Parker St. John

  Risk Assessment

  Murder Aforethought

  Other Than Honorable

  The Rules of Gift Giving:

  A Cabrini Christmas Collection

  About Parker St. John

  I’ve been a fan of LGBT romance since before ebooks were a thing. Sharing all the strong, handsome characters in my head is a dream come true. I hope that my readers feel a little less alone in the world after reading one of my books.

  In between putting words on paper, I’ve been: a paramedic, a newspaper ad copy manager, a server, and a historical actor. Out of all those professions, writing is by far the best.

  If you liked this book (and even if you didn’t) please consider leaving a review! They really help indie authors like me.

  www.parkerstjohn.com

  parker@parkerstjohn.com