by Abigail Roux
Cameron froze in horror as Julian collapsed, and then he ran—ran across the foyer and skidded into the glass door just as Blake unlocked it. He yanked it open and tore around the corner. “Julian!” He dropped to his knees at the man’s side and reached out to touch his shoulder. “Julian?”
Julian’s head lolled to the side as Blake joined them on the ground. His eyes didn’t even flutter in response to Cameron’s voice. Blake pawed gently at his chest, his hands coming away wet with blood.
“Fuck!” he hissed as he pushed Julian’s dark suit coat aside and yanked open the shirt underneath, looking for the source. Buttons went flying and a soaked handkerchief dislodged from a spot low on Julian’s abdomen. Blood began streaming from the wound out over Julian’s exposed skin.
Cameron couldn’t catch his breath as he watched helplessly, horrified by all the blood. He bent over and pressed a soft, shaky kiss to the corner of Julian’s mouth. “Julian, please talk to me,” he begged. “Please.”
Julian groaned in response as Blake pushed up and went running back into the restaurant. Preston had disappeared.
“Cameron,” Julian whispered hoarsely.
Trying to hold back the tears that were suddenly clogging his throat, Cameron leaned to press his forehead to Julian’s. “I’m here,” he managed to get out fairly evenly.
“He got me,” Julian murmured with a shuddering gasp of air. It seemed like a silly thing to say as he lay there bleeding. It was obviously the only thing his mind could form.
“Blake’s going to help you,” Cameron promised before he choked back a soft sob. He brushed his fingers through Julian’s damp hair, searching in vain for some way to comfort him.
Blake was back just as quickly as he’d left, talking on the phone at his ear and bringing with him a stack of clean rags from behind the bar. “Where else are you hit?” he demanded of Julian in a no-nonsense tone.
“Where there’s blood,” Julian grumbled weakly as he closed his eyes again.
Blake glared at him and put the phone to his mouth again. “He’s still a jackass, if that helps.”
Cameron didn’t stop stroking Julian’s cheek, and he was trying hard to keep it together. Julian didn’t need him to fall apart right now. He could do this. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked, surprised that his voice came out fairly steady.
Neither man answered him. Julian’s eyes remained closed as Blake spoke rapidly on the phone and then tossed it away to work on Julian’s bloody abdomen. Julian reached blindly for Cameron’s hand and gripped it weakly. Cameron laced their fingers together and squeezed reassuringly.
“I’m sorry,” Julian whispered just before Blake found the wound low in his abdomen again. He pressed a cloth into it to curb the bleeding. Julian’s body curled, and he cried out in pain.
Cameron gasped for breath and clutched at Julian’s shoulder, trying to hold him still. His eyes were drawn to the ugly-looking wound. “Jesus,” he whispered, shocked by all the blood and overwhelmed by the level of agony Julian had to be in to actually cry out.
“Did you get him?” Blake demanded of Julian as he worked. Julian was panting for breath, unconsciously squeezing Cameron’s hand with the pain, and Blake leaned closer to him. “Did you kill him?” he repeated forcefully.
“I don’t know,” Julian gasped as he opened his eyes once more and stared up at the glass atrium above. “He fell into the lake,” he managed to tell them hoarsely.
“Fuck,” Blake hissed angrily as he reached under Julian to check if the bullet had gone all the way through. His hand came away bloody, and he reached for another towel to press to the exit wound. Julian cried out again and struggled to get away from the pain, kicking at the marble tile and trying to slide away and curl in on himself as he writhed.
Cameron grappled to keep him from moving too much. “Please, Julian, try to lie still,” he begged.
Julian growled softly, the sound turning into something like a wounded animal whining. His struggling slowed, though, and Cameron feared it was more from exhaustion and loss of blood than cooperation.
“I’ve got paramedics on the way, Jules,” Blake told him softly. “This is beyond me,” he explained in a pained voice. He glanced at Cameron worriedly. “He’ll be safe at the hospital,” he told him, “until we can confirm the hit. Hell, if he fell into Lake Michigan, the infections alone will kill him.”
Cameron nodded jerkily, and his entire body tingled with the knowledge that Lancaster might still be out there. Maybe not far away. Maybe coming to finish the job. His breathing got short and shallow as he looked around the foyer. They were completely unprotected, weren’t they? What would happen if the man attacked them here? Even as he asked himself the question, he realized that Preston must have left in order to cover Julian’s back. He couldn’t imagine the man would leave Julian in this state unless it was to protect him.
Cameron was doing well not to gasp for breath as he tried to remain calm. The pain Julian was in was tearing him up. “Julian,” he whispered pleadingly. “Please don’t leave me.”
Julian’s grip on Cameron’s hand was becoming painful. He tried his best not to move as Blake applied pressure to the wound, but he was still writhing and bleeding on the expensive marble as his eyes began to glaze over.
He looked up at Cameron, and his eyes caught on the battered gold and garnet necklace hanging from Cameron’s neck, swinging back and forth like a pendulum. When he looked at Cameron a few moments later, it was with clear regret and resignation. “I’m sorry,” he gasped again.
Cameron’s face crumpled as Julian apologized again, and he gently kissed Julian’s lips then his forehead as his tears fell against Julian’s cheek. “You can’t leave me,” he whispered desperately. “Who’s going to protect me from the fuzzballs?”
Julian was silent in his struggle against the pain, but he turned his face up to Cameron’s and tried to meet the gentle brushes of his lips, searching for the comfort of contact. His grip on Cameron’s hand was weakening at an alarming rate.
“Get… a cat,” he finally panted in a voice so weak it was barely audible.
Cameron gasped out a small laugh despite himself, and he shook his head and ran his free hand through Julian’s hair again.
“Hold on, kiddo,” Blake urged as he applied pressure to the bleeding wound and watched the elevators impatiently for the paramedics he’d called.
“I’m sorry,” Julian managed as his eyes closed against his will.
“Julian! Please. Oh God. Julian, please…,” Cameron begged miserably, holding Julian’s hand tight and pressing his lips to his forehead between choking breaths. Julian didn’t respond as the fingers held in Cameron’s hand finally loosened and went limp.
Cameron clung to his hand even when he wasn’t holding on anymore, whispering in his ear as Blake hovered, keeping pressure on the wound and cursing emphatically until the EMTs finally showed up and pushed them both out of the way.
Cameron crawled backward to lean against the glass doors, eyes wide and wet as he watched, struggling to get enough air in as he tried equally hard not to scream out all the terror.
The day was a beautiful one, even if it was scorching hot. The trees were green and full, and the ground steamed with waves of heat from the summer sun high in the blue sky. The world seemed calm and at ease, lethargic in the heat.
The group of mourners was small, but larger than anyone present had expected. Julian Cross’ passing had come and gone with nothing more than a whisper. No official announcement had been made. No family had been contacted. No telephone calls had been exchanged to let mutual friends know he had died. None of his acquaintances had known one another. But word had got around. There were politicians and prominent businessmen mingling solemnly with humble workmen and shady criminals, all of them thinking they’d known the man.
On the morning of the funeral, the crowd had to negotiate the beautiful and haunting ground of Forest Park, forced to stand around the variety of monuments in o
rder to get close to the grave-site.
Miri had taken Cameron shopping to get him some clothes she deemed worthy of the funeral. He ended up in all black, an ironic fact not lost on him. Black suit, black shoes, black shirt with the tiniest gray pinstripe.
Black for secrets. Black for shadows. Black for sorrow. He blended in with the rest of the crowd, but he felt absolutely and totally alone.
Blake had taken him home from the hospital that night after the doctors pronounced the time of death, and he had stayed with him all night. They’d sat in silence on the couch together, neither capable of saying anything, until they fell into fitful sleep.
Cameron had almost totally withdrawn in the three days since Julian lost all that blood just outside Tuesdays. It wasn’t something he’d be able to get over, he knew, holding his lover’s hand and watching him die. Hearing an apology as Julian’s last words, when it had been Cameron who’d needed to say it.
It had done something to Cameron. Changed him somehow. He couldn’t feel anything but the awful ache and piercing loneliness, and he wasn’t sure he ever would.
Standing here in the midst of the peaceful glen, quiet despite the crowd, it suddenly became all too real. Cameron would never see him again. He would never be able to tell Julian the things he wanted to say. That he was sorry. That he was a fool. That he’d face any danger if he could just be with him.
He staggered from where he stood with Blake and several of the other servers from Tuesdays and pushed his way out of the group to walk across the path to a marble mausoleum. Stepping behind it, he slowly slid down the wall until he sat on the ground and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, trying to stop the tears. He hadn’t cried since that night, since they’d pushed him away from Julian’s side.
Now the agony swelled so painfully that he thought it might choke him. But the exhaustion meant he couldn’t gasp, he couldn’t wail. He could only sit, quiet and heartbroken, while the tears streamed down his face.
The sun shining down on the city made the snow-covered sidewalk in the distance glitter, and the glare swirled up in shimmering trails. Downtown Chicago was a concrete and metal maze that held in all the cold like an icebox, and just like it would roast you alive in the summer if you let it, it would freeze you solid when the wind blew. The wind off the lake was the worst, its frigid gusts enough to freeze standing water in bare minutes.
Cameron walked along the street in his heavy wool coat, duffel bag over one shoulder, cell phone in his opposite hand. “No, I don’t think so,” he was saying. “I’ve been out all day, and with this cold weather, I need a damn break!”
“Well, you should come for dinner soon. Jean-Michel is afraid you don’t like his food anymore,” Blake told him over the phone.
“He should know better,” Cameron said drolly. “Okay. Thursday. How about that?”
“Sounds good. I’ll reserve a table for us,” Blake responded happily. “How’s work going?”
“Pretty good, I guess. No complaints,” Cameron answered vaguely.
“I understand. We can talk about it at dinner,” Blake offered.
“I guess I should visit the restaurant more often,” Cameron responded, his tone gone distant and flat.
“You do what you need to do, kiddo. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there. Now get back to work,” Cameron said, some smile back in his voice.
“Will do.”
Cameron closed his cell phone and slid it into his pocket. He shook his head. After nearly six months, Blake was still taking care of him. Or at least trying to. Cameron had finally started rebelling in early fall.
The first few weeks had been horrible. Cameron could barely stand to be awake, much less up and moving around, and he stayed closeted in his apartment, just trying to wrap his brain around what had happened.
Two weeks after the funeral, while feeding the dogs, he suddenly remembered Smith and Wesson. A phone call to Blake revealed that the house had been emptied and sold at auction not long after Julian’s death, bought by a man overseas who had yet to arrive and claim it. Blake himself had attempted to find the two cats, going to Julian’s house the day after his death, but he’d searched the house from end to end with no avail, and none of the staff knew anything about their whereabouts.
Preston had disappeared the night Julian was killed, and no sign of him or the cats ever surfaced. Cameron was devastated. He knew Julian had loved those cats. They were absolute monsters, so why else keep them if he didn’t love them?
He could only hope Preston had taken them with him.
After a month, Blake came and banged on his door and told him that if he refused to work at Tuesdays, then he had another job for him. With Blake’s guidance, Cameron became a relay contact. All he did was answer a cell phone, take the message—often in code he didn’t understand—and call someone else to relay the information. He was accurate, fast, and most importantly, kept his mouth shut about it.
After the first few insanely large under-the-table payments, Cameron repainted his apartment, remodeled the kitchen, and bought new furniture for the first time in his life. He bought a new, nicer wardrobe that Miri helped him pick out. She wanted him to socialize more. He decidedly didn’t, but after a couple months, he started going out with her and some friends just to get her to leave him alone about it. He found the distraction really did help sometimes.
After summer passed, he realized that he didn’t sit on his hands well, and he joined a nearby gym. Finding it another welcome distraction, he went religiously, and to his surprise, toned up his wiry muscles quite a bit. He also ran a couple miles on the treadmill each time he was there. The changes in his body made him feel like a different person, one that he liked, and when Blake suggested he take a kickboxing class, he went along amiably.
After a week of the class, he realized that his lie about Julian’s bruises coming from kickboxing had been pretty well-crafted after all.
Cameron hadn’t wanted to go back to Tuesdays. Ever. It had taken three months before Blake even got him up there. The foyer was the worst. The marble had soaked up the blood and been stained beyond any hope of cleaning. It had been replaced, but the new tiles were slightly whiter than the ones that surrounded it, and so they had created a decorative medallion on the floor instead.
It bore a remarkable resemblance to the warrior’s cross Cameron still wore around his neck, and it reminded Cameron of the tombs of knights laid to rest in churches in Europe.
Cameron could still see Julian lying there, though, and the bloody smear down the glass door. After he got past it and got inside the restaurant, things were a little better, but it still shook him so badly that he avoided the place unless Blake insisted.
Finally, after nearly half a year, Cameron felt almost like his ordinary self. He still lived alone in the remodeled condo with his four dogs, who each stood about nine inches high, fully grown. He still read a lot and listened to jazz on an Internet radio station. He still cooked for himself and watched DVDs and liked to dress sloppily and sit around the apartment.
It was only sometimes that he couldn’t handle being alone and had to call a friend for company to get his mind off what he’d lost. That friend was usually Blake, because he knew what Cameron was going through. Julian Cross had been a hard man to find and an even harder man to lose.
There was a soft knock on the door, almost drowned out by the noise inside the apartment. The only reason Cameron heard it was because the dogs suddenly careened out of the kitchen toward the door.
With a soft, inquisitive grunt, Cameron set the pork chops he’d pulled out of the fridge in the sink and headed to the door. Out of long habit he looked through the peep-hole first. There was no one in the view, but another soft knock followed as he peered out.
Cameron frowned as he pulled back from the door. He wasn’t sure he liked this. Why wouldn’t someone stand in front of the door? Sometimes he could be too paranoid, he told himself. The building had security, after
all. Shaking his head, he flipped the deadlock and opened the door a bit, standing half behind it.
“Hello, Cameron,” a soft, accented voice greeted from beside the door, its source still out of sight.
A breath caught in Cameron’s throat, and his fingers clenched on the edge of the door. That voice. It was so close to….
How could someone be so cruel? Anger flaring, Cameron threw the door open so hard it slammed against the wall as he stepped out into the hall to see who was deliberately yanking his chain. “Who the hell do you think…?”
Arlo Lancaster leaned against the wall next to the door, hands stuffed into the pockets of his pea-coat as he watched Cameron with dark eyes. He had an ugly scar along his left eye; it had to be the shot Julian had taken that he’d hoped killed him. He smiled wickedly when he met Cameron’s eyes.
Fear made Cameron go cold all over. This was a nightmare he’d tried very hard not to think about. He couldn’t even manage to protest when Arlo ushered him back inside his apartment.