by John Inman
Every once in a while, a stab of lightning lit the cabin, exploding in a blast of laser-bright light. The ensuing thunder would rumble threateningly over their heads, making them hunker down a little closer to each other, which Dilly didn’t mind at all. Aside from the racket of the rain clattering across the tin roof, he enjoyed the storm completely. It threw an air of mystery over the secluded cabin that seemed to get his pulse pumping. Not that Boz’s presence wasn’t enough to do that already.
While he didn’t know how Boz felt about the lousy weather, Dilly could tell by the glimmer in Boz’s eyes that he was just as contented to be where he was as Dilly.
Within their private bubble, tucked away inside the cacophony of the storm, they shared a quiet moment, barely breathing, lost in each other’s eyes.
“This is what love is really about, isn’t it?” Dilly quietly mused. “Simple stuff like this. Holding hands. Digesting breakfast over the Sunday paper. Sharing the funnies. Playing toesies under the table. Wishing you were nowhere else than where you already are, and with nobody else but the person you’re with already.”
“Are you really that happy with me?” Boz asked.
“You know I am.”
Boz dragged his chair around to the other side of the table. When he was as close to Dilly as he could get, he reached out and took his hand. He tugged it toward him, pressing it to his lips. With his kiss still resting in Dilly’s palm, he whispered in a sexy, throaty voice. “For me, love is anywhere you are.”
Dilly sat in stillness a moment, absorbing the words. Then he barked out a laugh. “Sugar overload! Gah!” He grabbed at his throat and doubled over. Bringing all his acting chops into play, he retched theatrically, and pantomimed heaving his guts out in Boz’s lap.
“While you’re down there…,” Boz wistfully commented.
Dilly lifted his head and offered a sexy wink. “Maybe later if you’re good.”
“I’m always good.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Dilly gazed around the one-room cabin. “Is there such a thing as an umbrella anywhere? I think we should go for a walk.”
Boz cast a doubtful glance through the nearest window. “In this deluge?”
“Yes,” Dilly answered. “In this deluge.” He pointed to a long tin bathtub hanging on a nail in the corner. “We’ll leave a pot of water to heat over the fire while we’re gone, and when we get back we’ll take a bath together in that horrible tin tub to warm up.”
Boz studied the galvanized bathtub doubtfully, emitting an exaggerated groan. “Jeez, I’m in love with a hillbilly.”
Dilly felt his laughter dwindle down to silence. He waited until Boz’s eyes found his. Only then did he say, “No one has ever loved me like this.”
Boz’s gaze softened. He pressed another kiss to Dilly’s palm. “And no one ever will. You’re stuck with me now. I’m not sharing you with anybody.”
The sweeping rain intensified, closing in. The heat of the fire washed over them. Dilly was on the verge of tossing a blanket on the floor in front of the fireplace and dragging Boz onto it naked when Boz jerked his chin across the room.
“I’ll be darned. Look at that!” he said, banging his hand on the table, startling Dilly so that he almost fell off his chair.
Dilly turned to see what Boz was talking about and spotted a weather-beaten black umbrella leaning against a chifforobe in the corner.
Before he could say a word, Boz was on his feet. “I’ll put the water on to boil,” he said.
Smiling broadly, Dilly manhandled the galvanized tub off the wall and placed it squarely in front of the fire to warm it up.
A minute later they were laughing like hyenas, traipsing through the rain and mud and jockeying for position under the battered umbrella.
Chapter Forty-Two
BOBBY DROVE through the downpour, hands gripping the wheel, tense and trembling. His gut ached with his need for another line of meth. A smear of ruby-red taillights glittered the freeway in front of him, their definition sharpening momentarily with every swipe of the wiper blades. A trail of headlights, like a river of diamonds, sparkled across the median, heading the other way. The splatter of water on the undercarriage sounded odd. San Diego, after all, was in the middle of a years-long drought, and Bobby couldn’t remember the last time it had rained this hard.
Before he could apply the brakes to his conscience, he thought of the old lady flying across the room after Bobby slapped her senseless. A tiny starburst of guilt flashed somewhere deep inside his head. There was nothing cool about popping an old lady. Nothing cool about it at all.
He tried to shake it off by concentrating on the road instead. But somehow the guilt wouldn’t let him go.
He remembered Angel, folded in upon himself, a little pile of death on the bedroom floor. Angel’s needs had been simple enough. All he had wanted was to be in love. All he had ever demanded was for Bobby to hold him, touch him, fuck him. And Bobby had killed him for it.
But that was a necessary act. Angel had shamed Bobby by going to Boz, and that Bobby could not forgive.
He wrapped sweaty fingers more tightly around the steering wheel and concentrated on the road ahead, at the same time steeling his heart and trying his damnedest to push that niggling guilt away. It was a luxury he couldn’t afford, the guilt. He had shown weakness letting the two old people live. But he wouldn’t show weakness again. Hell, after he took care of Boz and his little boyfriend, maybe Bobby would go back and correct past mistakes. Kill the old couple then. Hell, they were still hogtied, waiting back at the old man’s house for whatever he made up his mind to do. What did he have to lose?
Movement on the freeway slowed to a crawl so quickly he all but stood on the brakes to prevent hydroplaning into a semi creeping along in front of him. When the traffic began to speed up, he let memories of the last twenty-four hours roll over him, gnawing at his conscience yet again with tiny razor-sharp teeth.
His thoughts drifted. He no longer saw the sky or the rain or the dawning of the new day as it lurked behind the storm clouds on the horizon. It didn’t matter really. There was no point dwelling on any of it anyway. This would probably be the last day Bobby Mayfield ever knew. Any future he might have once had was lost to him now. If the drugs didn’t kill him, the cops would. If the cops didn’t kill him, it seemed his own guilt would eat him alive.
He fumbled in his shirt pocket and dragged out the baggie of meth that constituted the last of his stash. Carefully, he opened the bag, dipped a finger inside, and coated the tip of it with white powder. He rubbed the powder over his gums, immediately feeling the rush as the crystal was drawn into his system through tender membranes. He repeated the process a second time, and when he was finished, the baggie was empty. He carefully tore the bag open all the way, and stuffed it in his mouth, sucking away any residue of drug that might still linger on the plastic.
He could always buy more, he knew. But his connection was back in the city, and at the moment, Bobby had business in the opposite direction. Things were rolling along too quickly to be interrupted with a drug run, no matter how much he needed a fix. The police were probably already searching for him. For all he knew, they could be around the next turn in the road, waiting to pounce. And what did it really matter if they were? His life was over anyway. At this point, there was no way out of the mess he had gotten himself into. His only option was to finish what he had started.
He tried to focus on the freeway ahead. His hands, already beginning to cramp, clenched even tighter to the wheel, almost desperately hanging on. His muscles were so tense from not only the drugs in his system now, but the need for more drugs, that his body was almost screaming for another hit. Lately, it was never enough anyway, the crank. It didn’t satisfy anymore. It came nowhere close to quenching the gaping hunger the drugs left behind.
Bobby narrowed his eyes, peering ahead at the flow of traffic, listening to the whump, whump, whump of the windshield wipers sweeping the rain from his path. Hat
ing himself. Hating the world.
Hating Boz.
He reached into the glove compartment and fished around for the box cutter he knew was buried somewhere in the mess. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but aside from his fists, it was the only weapon he had. And for two faggots like Boz and his little lover, it would be more than enough.
Shaking so badly he could barely control his movements now, he lifted the sheet of notepaper from the console beside him and studied the hand-drawn map the old fart had scribbled for him, showing the location of the cabin where the two had gone.
A road sign sliding past, slick with rain, read Julian—Next Exit. Bobby carefully tapped his brakes again and slowed to prepare for the turn. The cabin wasn’t far now. Just beyond Julian into the foothills, the old man had said. Secluded, hopefully. The rain still bore down, acting as accomplice to everything Bobby was about to do. Hiding him, abetting him. He wasn’t dumb enough to think he’d get away with what he had in mind, but he was pretty sure the rain would help him accomplish what he needed to get done. At least before the cops could roll in and muck it all up.
Bobby’s back ached like there were rats inside him, chewing his spine to pieces. Sweat burned his eyes. He leaned over the wheel and squinted through the rain, his thoughts focused on what he was about to do. What he knew he had to do.
Boz shouldn’t have broken Bobby’s heart. That was the simple truth of it. Boz shouldn’t have run away and taken up with that little faggot. An all-too-familiar fury rose in Bobby. It was such an integral part of him now—that fury—that even the meth had less hold on him than the anger.
Bobby stretched his neck to peer at his reflection in the rearview mirror. He looked like shit. Deep shadows rimmed his eyes. The pupils themselves were little more than black holes stabbed into his face, dilated by the meth. His skin carried the pallor of clay. He needed a shave. His hair lay flat to his head, soaked with perspiration and rain. Most shocking of all, his very reflection was as distorted as the world on the other side of the windshield, which was made all squiggly by the rain. But there was no rain inside the car. It wasn’t raindrops twisting his features in the mirror. It was his own tears. His own fucking tears. Streaming down his face. Blurring his vision.
It took a minute, but Bobby finally connected the dots and came to the realization that he was crying.
And somehow the sight of those tears—his own tears—and the weakness they inferred, infuriated him more than anything else.
Like a beloved relic, he clutched the box cutter to his chest and punched the gas pedal harder, accelerating through the rain, weaving in and out of traffic now, needing to get where he was going. Needing to get the job done.
It was time to set things right. Boz and his little queer boyfriend needed to pay the price for their betrayal. Before the end reached out and grabbed him, Bobby needed to know he had evened the score. Made things right.
Otherwise, what the hell was the point of anything?
Chapter Forty-Three
BOZ AND Dilly chased each other through the cabin door. The umbrella had flipped inside out in the wind more than a mile out, and they were soaked. Laughing, they shook themselves off. They had been gone longer than expected. The water was boiling merrily in the pot over the fireplace flames and the cabin windows were all steamed up because of it.
When Boz stopped in front of him, taking Dilly by surprise, Dilly plowed right into him.
“What the—” Dilly sputtered, swallowing any further laughter.
Bobby Mayfield sat in the corner on a kitchen chair. The chair was tilted back against the wall. Bobby sat there watching them with cold, expressionless eyes. His shoes were wet, and his shoulders were sprinkled with rain. He couldn’t have been there long.
Boz’s hand came out and eased Dilly back. After he did, he left his hand on Dilly’s chest, as if both protecting him and keeping him from charging forward to play the hero. Dilly brushed his hand aside and stepped around him anyway.
“What are you doing here!” he demanded. He realized suddenly that he could barely see, his glasses were so wet with rain. He plucked them off and laid them on the table beside him. He pushed his wet hair out of his eyes and demanded again, his voice pitched high with indignation. “What do you want? Why have you come here? Answer me!”
Boz gently pulled him back and stepped up to stand at his side.
In a calmer voice, this one edged with restraint, Boz quietly spoke. “Answer him, Bobby. What do you want? And how did you find us?”
A sudden rush of fear surged through Dilly. He spat accusations into the steamy air. “You had to find out where we were from Puffer! What have you done to him? Tell me you didn’t hurt him!”
Bobby spoke for the first time. “He’s still alive, if that’s what you’re wondering. Him and the old lady both. I could have killed them, but I didn’t. Does that make me your new best friend?” His eyes never once left Dilly’s face. He seemed to have forgotten about Boz completely.
Bobby cocked his head to the side, studying Dilly all the closer. “What does Boz see in you, I wonder? You don’t look like much to me.”
“Shut up!” Boz snapped. “Leave Dilly out of this. Whatever battle you think you’re fighting, I’m the one you have to fight it with, not him.”
Boz tried to tug Dilly back toward the door. “Go,” he softly urged. “Wait for me outside. I’ll handle this. I’ll find out what he wants and send him on his way.”
Not only did Dilly refuse to leave, but Bobby seemed to be fairly amused by Boz thinking he could scoot Bobby out the door so easily.
“I don’t remember you fighting back much in the past,” Bobby sneered, his voice as cold as his eyes. He stroked a hand across his crotch, rubbing himself seductively. “Back then I’d bring out the big bazooka here, and you’d roll over on your belly begging for it. Remember that?”
“Shut up!” Boz screamed. “Just shut the fuck up!”
Bobby only laughed.
Dilly plucked at Boz’s sleeve, but Boz shook him off. He took a step closer to Bobby and demanded once again. “Why are you here? What do you want?”
Dilly stared at the man parked nonchalantly in the kitchen chair. He was clearly strung out on something. Boz had said he was on drugs, and now Dilly knew Boz was right. But behind the dilated pupils and the red-veined whites, there was an emptiness in Bobby Mayfield’s eyes as well. An all-new terror settled over Dilly as he wondered who else had crossed Mayfield’s path this day.
“Is Angel all right?” Dilly quietly asked. “He loves you, you know. He said so.”
Bobby slid his hand away from his crotch and dropped all four chair legs back to the floor. With a thumb, he pushed out the blade on a box cutter he’d kept concealed before, holding it up to his face and studying it like he had never seen anything quite so fascinating in his life.
“Angel doesn’t love me anymore,” Bobby said, his voice expressionless and stark.
Dilly fought to find his voice. “Why? What did you do?” It wasn’t a question, it was an accusation. And again, Boz pulled at Dilly to put some space between him and Bobby, as if he were afraid Bobby would fly out of his chair and go for him.
And suddenly that was Dilly’s fear too. His eyes remained riveted to the box cutter in Bobby’s hand. Before he could stop himself, his gaze skidded around the room, looking for a weapon of his own. Something he could use to protect himself and Boz if this crazy fucker launched an attack.
But he didn’t see a weapon. What he did see, which gave him hope, was Grace and Leon peeking out from beneath the well top at the back of the cabin. They were cowering there among the pots and pans. At least Bobby hadn’t harmed them. Dilly prayed they would stay inside the cabinet and not draw attention to themselves. Because he had no idea what Bobby Mayfield was capable of. Or being so strung out on drugs, how far out of his way he would go to inflict injury on anyone or anything that crossed his path. Tension in the cabin was building. Dilly could feel it like an electric current
charging the air around him. In the background, Dilly still heard the water bubbling in the pot over the fire. An occasional sizzle told him the boiling water had splashed out onto the flames below. His eyes settled on the pot as a horrible thought occurred to him.
A horrible, desperate thought.
Then Boz spoke, and Dilly’s attention was drawn back to the humans in the room.
Chapter Forty-Four
EVERY OUNCE of Boz’s fear radiated toward the man standing beside him. The man he loved. Dilly was in mortal danger, and Boz damn well knew it. He had seen craziness in Bobby’s eyes before. He had lived with it for months when they were together. Had felt the fists and the curses and the mocking insults enough to remember them forever. But he had never seen Bobby this ravaged by the meth he so loved to snort. Nor had Boz ever seen him this out of control.
He asked the question he really didn’t want answered. But somehow the words were there, on the tip of his tongue, unstoppable. So he released them into the room.
“Why doesn’t Angel love you anymore, Bobby? What have you done to him?”
He thought he saw a twinge of remorse cross Bobby’s face. But the words Bobby spoke belied the pain Boz imagined seeing. “Angel doesn’t concern you. Your time might be better spent if you worry about yourself instead of him.” He tilted his head in Dilly’s direction. “Yourself and your little fuck buddy here.”
“He’s not just a fuck buddy, and you know it. Don’t try to treat him like he is.”
Bobby offered only a sarcastic shrug in response. An old familiar hate ignited inside Boz. A hate he hadn’t felt since the days before he gathered the courage to run as far away from Bobby Mayfield as he could. Still, considering the circumstances, he supposed he hadn’t run far enough after all.