A Walk Through Fire

by Felice Stevens

  His grandmother looked at him. “They mentioned you, Drew. Not by name, but said, ‘Tell your grandson and his friends to keep out of our business.’ ” She dropped her voice and fingered the edge of the sheet. “They started cursing and saying horrible things about you, darling, and Asher and Jordan.”

  Keith’s eyes turned into chips of blue ice. “Did they threaten you, Esther, or touch you?”

  After a little hesitation, she nodded. “They pushed me against the wall and said to tell Dr. Drew that things would get worse if he continued helping those kids.” She glanced up at Keith. “They used a slur, and I’m not about to say it, even for you, dear. I don’t use that kind of language.”

  Keith’s normally smiling face vanished, replaced by a stone-like mask. He patted Nana’s hand. “Don’t worry about it. I know what you mean.” He wrote for a few minutes in his notebook. “Is that all?”

  Nana thought for a moment. “Yes. They left, laughing as if it were a big joke, but not before pushing me around a little.” Her voice rose with indignation. “What kind of world are we living in with such a lack of respect for women and someone of my age? Who’s raising these hoodlums?”

  The machines kept up their steady beeping with no change, Drew noted. He turned his attention back to Keith, who continued to ask questions.

  “Esther, what did they look like, and did you hear them call each other by any names?” Keith watched her with an expectant look on his face.

  Her face scrunched up in thought for a moment. “They were both young—teenagers, I’d guess. One was tall and nice looking. He had very short hair and brown eyes, but his lips were thin. I tell you I’ve never trusted a man with thin lips. The other was shorter with that crazy hair all over his face, like they like to wear nowadays.” She shrugged. “I don’t know why they think it’s attractive.”

  Drew looked over at Keith and caught his lips twitching as if to hold back his laughter. He turned back to her. “Any names, Nana?”

  She shrugged. “No. I’m sorry. But I would definitely recognize them again if I saw them.” Her eyes brightened. “Maybe you could bring me down to the police station, and I could look through pictures.”

  Keith laughed. “Esther, I have a feeling you think this is like an episode of Law and Order.”

  “Well, I do love that show,” she grumbled. “And that’s what their witnesses to crimes always do.”

  Keith stood and went over to the bed to give her a kiss. “I’ll take you myself in a squad car with the lights on the top and let you look through pictures, but only after your doctor clears it.” He stuck out his hand. “Deal?”

  She took his hand and shook it as everyone in the room laughed. “Deal.”

  The nurse came in and shooed them out. “Mrs. Klein needs her rest. Everyone out now please, including you, Dr. Klein. No special treatment for you because you’re a doctor.” Mrs. Albright winked at him. The two of them went way back, to when he was a resident here and she was the toughest nurse, always giving the new doctors the hardest time.

  “Yes, ma’am.” They filed out of the room into the waiting area. Drew was surprised to see only Jordan and Mike. Where was Ash?

  When he posed the question to Jordan, his friend merely shrugged. “He left a long time ago. Got in the elevator and went. Forget about him, Drew. I told you a long time ago he’s a player and a bastard. He’s no friend to you.”

  Drew couldn’t believe Ash would simply up and disappear. Not after last night and the truths they’d bared to each other this morning. Without being told, he knew Ash had never revealed to anyone else the brutality and degradation he’d suffered before he reinvented himself. The scars that left, both physical and emotional were not to be taken lightly, nor were they something to slough off and bury away, as he feared Ash did to survive.

  Remembering how gentle and caring Ash had been with him the night before, Drew wasn’t about to let him withdraw back into that cold, lonely shell. Now that he’d seen the best of the man, he was ready to help him through his worst.

  “Jordan, did you say anything to him to make him leave?” Everyone turned to him, Jordan’s face a picture of astonishment.

  “Are you implying that I drove the man away? I did nothing of the sort. He walked away of his own free will.” Keith put a hand on Jordan’s shoulder, but he shook him off and advanced upon Drew. “Why do you care if he’s here, anyway? What happened to Shelly? Where’s your girlfriend?”

  Everyone now stared at Drew. Damn, the back and forth was like a tennis match. “We broke up.”

  Rachel’s mouth fell open. “Oh, Drew. I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “It was for the best. She was way too serious about the relationship. Much more into it than I was.”

  Jordan made a sound of disgust. “I’m sure your buddy Ash was happy about the breakup.”

  This was getting ridiculous. “What the hell is your problem? You’ve had a stick up your ass about Ash since we first met him. So what if he made a pass at you years ago? Shit, man, let it go.”

  Jordan persisted. “But don’t you see—”

  “What I see is you bad-mouthing someone who’s never said a bad word about you. There’s no reason for you to hate him so much.”

  “He’s a user, and you’re too nice a guy to see it. He screws people and then dumps them. That’s his MO.”

  Worried, pissed off, and tired, Drew had enough. “I’m not that nice, and I can take care of myself. And as for Ash, you’ve never given him any slack, no matter how hard he’s worked at the clinic or tried to protect Stevie. You think you have the right to judge everyone and everything, and we should let you run our lives. Who the hell are you to treat me like some fucking child who doesn’t know any better? I decide who I take to my bed, not you, Jordan.” He stopped for a moment to catch his breath. “And for the record, Ash didn’t have to try too hard to screw me, ’cause I wanted him as much as he wanted me.”

  Keith had come over to Jordan’s side but for the first time it seemed he wouldn’t be able to calm his lover down as Jordan continued to bad-mouth and rant about Ash.

  For some reason, Jordan thought he had the right to decide who Drew dated, screwed, and fell in love with. Drew always knew the man had an ego a mile wide, but this was ridiculous. “You know what, Jordan? I’m done. I thought as a friend you’d trust me to make the right decisions and stand by me.” They’d known each other since he was four years old, and this was the first test to their friendship. “I always thought I could count on you. Has that changed?”

  Jordan couldn’t hold his gaze. “I trust you. It’s him I don’t trust.”

  Drew came right up into his friend’s face. Jordan could be stubborn, arrogant, and high-handed but never deliberately mean.

  “If you trust me, then you have to understand I know exactly what I’m doing here.”

  Jordan’s mouth tightened. “It’s different. Snakes never let you know when they’re coming toward you. They slither around you, and before you know it, they’ve swallowed you whole. That’s what Ash Davis is. A snake. I’ve seen him in the courtroom. He’s got a way with words that’ll make you think black is white and up is down. Never mind silver-tongued, the man has a forked tongue.”

  Remembering where Ash’s tongue had been on him last night, heat rose in Drew’s face. Irritated with himself for getting distracted, Drew folded his arms across his chest and glared at Jordan. “It’s not the same, and you know it. You’re bordering on the irrational the way you feel about him.”

  He turned on his heel to walk away; if he didn’t leave now, he’d do or say something he’d regret. Something that might irreparably damage their lifelong friendship, and Drew wasn’t ready for that to happen. He knew everything Jordan said to him was out of love and concern, but for so many years, people had managed his life and he’d acquiesced, out of disinterest and boredom. His one act of rebellion, marrying Jackie, turned out disastrous, and that was all the fodder they needed to show him he wasn’t strong or s
mart enough to pick the right person for himself.

  No one understood him. Pathetic as it might be, Drew still felt like that scared and lonely child when his parents left for work and he’d stay home with Nana. He’d constantly needed reassurance that they’d be coming back home and hadn’t disappeared forever. Was it so wrong to want someone to hold, someone to love? He’d always been that little boy lost.

  After his parents died, he’d gone slightly crazy and thrown himself into the wildness of the college party scene. Anything to not be alone. Many a morning found him in a strange girl’s bed, with no idea how he’d gotten there. Nor did he remember the threesomes, occasionally waking up sandwiched in between two girls, or even once or twice tangled up with another girl and guy. He’d always been so drunk he couldn’t remember the sex at all. Total oblivion was what he’d been after, to wash the pain away.

  That hadn’t lasted long, as fear for his health as well as his studies overcame his irrational behavior, and he’d settled down to being the studious bookworm he’d always been. He may have opened his mind to his studies, but he’d walled off his heart to life.

  Now Ash had up and left him at a time when he needed someone to lean on the most he had in years. They might have been lovers—he’d let Ash inside his body—yet Drew still didn’t fully understand Ash.

  After last night, though, he assumed he’d have a chance to try.

  Perhaps Jordan was right, and Ash had used him. It wouldn’t surprise him as he’d had to live his whole life by his wits and quick mind. But even as those thoughts tumbled around in his muddled brain, he remembered the quiet strength of Ash’s voice as he revealed his childhood to him. The self-loathing and pain etched on his face, the halting way he disclosed his story of debasement and cruelty, scoring a path of not only pity across Drew’s heart but something fresh, unexposed to light before, as if he’d come out of the darkness from a long trip. Feelings he’d never experienced and wasn’t yet ready to face.

  When he glanced around the small room, everyone he cared about was there. They all looked at him with varying degrees of surprise, dismay, and pity to some extent. He knew they loved him, but only as a brother and a friend. Right now he needed more than that. He needed to find out if the man he’d shared his secrets with and let possess his body was merely a figment of his imagination.

  “I gotta go find out where Ash went. I’ll come back after lunch and check on Nana.” Drew kissed Rachel good-bye. “We’ll talk later, about everything.”

  “You better mean everything, you know,” she called after him as the elevator doors closed on him, and he traveled downward to the first floor. That promised to be an interesting conversation, for sure.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  By the time he got to the office, Ash’s poor mood had deteriorated to anger. Anger at Jordan for getting under his skin, anger at Drew for caring, but most of all Ash was angry with himself for revealing his pathetic life. He’d first gone home to shower before heading to his office. Now that he’d changed into a suit and tie, the outside of him reflected his normal hard veneer, a fresh suit of armor ready to deflect whatever life planned to throw at him. His insides, however, now that was a different story altogether.

  His stomach churned with anxiety, and his nerves were shot. Each time his phone rang or Laura knocked on his door with papers to sign or to escort in his next appointment, he foolishly hoped it was Drew.

  What would he say to the man anyway? He buried his head in his hands, embarrassed at his emotional outburst so early this morning—it seemed a lifetime ago. How could he have been so foolish to tell Drew everything about himself? Now the man would pity him and see him as nothing more than another one of his projects. Someone who needed saving, when that wasn’t what he wanted and needed at all. He stood at the window, gazing down at the busy avenue below.

  A knock at the door mercifully ended his self-flagellation. “Come in.” He brushed back his hair, hoping it lay properly. The least he could do was look the part of the unruffled executive. He didn’t want anyone in the office to know the turmoil he faced inside.

  Laura’s slightly confused face filled the doorway. “Mr. Davis, there’s a Dr. Klein to see you. He doesn’t have an appointment, but he said he’d wait as long as it took.” She pursed her lips. “Do you want me to send him away?”

  Ash had to smile at her protective behavior. Laura had been with Jacob Frank for almost twenty years, right out of high school. She was a tiny woman, always dressed to perfection with sky-high heels and color-coordinating purses to match her outfits. She ran the office with almost military-like precision and accepted Ash as if he were her own son.

  “No, give me a moment, then send him in.” She turned to go. “Oh, and Laura? Hold all my calls, please. If anything important comes in, direct it to Mr. Walker.”

  Her heavily made-up eyes widened enough to let him know her surprise, but all she said was, “Yes, Mr. Davis,” before she left, closing the door behind her.

  Ash gulped the coffee sitting on his desk, wincing at its lukewarm taste. It had been sitting there for quite some time, and its sourness only added to the roiling in his stomach. He knew the best thing he could do would be to send Drew on his way, give him a, Thanks for the fun night, but let’s keep it strictly professional speech. A kiss-off. After all, they worked together, and as such, they’d have to keep seeing each other at the clinic.

  Ash had no illusions about Drew eventually returning to his straight lifestyle. The man wanted to experiment, and Ash was more than willing to be his guinea pig. But Drew had home and family spelled out in bold letters across his heart, and Ash had no clue what that entailed. Caring for himself was all he knew. He had no expectations of permanency.

  Still, his pulse ratcheted up when Laura let Drew into the room. Drew’s furious face didn’t bother him; he could deal with anger.

  “How’s Esther?”

  Drew stared at him. “She’s much better, but what the hell happened to you? One minute we were there, together, and the next I looked for you and you’d disappeared. Why did you leave me?”

  The confusion and disappointment on his face pricked Ash’s conscience, but he steeled himself against the emotions beating in his chest. What he really wanted to do was come around from behind his desk, grab Drew, and hold him tight. After last night he found it impossible to forget the perfect way Drew’s slim body curved around his. The thought that it might have been both the first and last time hurt Ash more than he imagined possible.

  But like a coward, he remained standing behind the fortress of his desk, where he was safe from his impossible attraction to Drew. “You were busy with your family, and I didn’t belong there, so I went home to shower, change, and come to work.” Ash laced his fingers together, and could only hope Drew didn’t notice how they shook.

  “What the hell does that mean, you didn’t belong there? I brought you there. I wanted you with me.” Drew swallowed, and Ash heard the hurt in his voice. “I thought after last night, you wanted to be there with me too.”

  Tell him, now. This is the perfect time to tell him how you really feel about him.

  Ash could almost hear his inner conscience screaming. And God knows he wanted to. He’d kissed the guy. He’d never done that before. Spent the night holding him as they slept. Another first for him. But Ash bit down hard on his inner cheek to stifle his words. Drew was better off without him. What happened last night was something Ash would relive for years, but Drew could move on, like he had from his girlfriend.

  Ash opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything, Drew advanced on him, coming behind his desk, crowding up against him. The damp heat of Drew’s breath drifted past his neck and the top of Drew’s silky head of curls brushed his chin. Ash bit back a frustrated groan. He tried to do the right thing and stay away, but the inexplicable pull of his body toward Drew left Ash curiously weak in the knees. He might be a mass of confusion but with Drew near he could draw an easy breath for the first t
ime since they separated.

  “What are you afraid of, Ash? I let go of my fear last night when we made love.”

  Drew’s body heat encompassed him, and his knees shook. Made love? Shit. What happened to him? Usually he was the dominant one, the one who made other people give in to his demands. Now his stomach did flip-flops as he responded to Drew.

  “Uh, I’m not afraid. I don’t think—”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Don’t think.” Drew slipped an arm around Ash’s waist. “I never thought I’d want to be with a man, but when I stopped thinking with my head and let go with my heart, there wasn’t any place I wanted to be more than there with you last night.”

  Ash whispered, gasping for air. “I took advantage of you. It’s what I do. Jordan said—”

  “Forget about Jordan. He doesn’t know what I want or what I feel.” Drew’s gaze touched Ash briefly; he strode back to the office door, locked it, and returned to Ash’s side. “For years I’ve been alone, even when I was with my friends or after I got married. I never felt safe, thinking everything I had would one day be taken from me.”

  “But you deserve someone better. And you want a family, a home. I can’t give you that.” Ash shuddered as Drew’s hand brushed over the thin, tropical wool of his trousers to unbuckle his belt. “I don’t know how.”

  “I disagree.” Drew unbuttoned the top of Ash’s pants and unzipped them. They fell straight down to his ankles, leaving him only in his boxers, his cock bulging out, already wet and aching. “You showed me last night how caring and gentle you are.” Drew pushed down the boxers, exposing Ash’s stiff erection to the cool air.

  Ash grabbed hold of the chair to steady himself. His legs trembled, and his head spun. Drew was wrong. He wasn’t good or caring. Then Drew dropped to his knees, and the sight of the man kneeling at his feet blew his mind. “Drew.” He couldn’t help moaning as he reached out to touch that head of tousled curls he’d dreamed of too many nights to ever forget.

  The warm wetness of Drew’s mouth engulfed Ash’s cock. He wanted to pull away and tell Drew he should leave, but his body had other ideas as his cock swelled and his hips began to thrust a slow, steady rhythm into Drew’s mouth.