Long Way (Adventures INK Book 2)

by Mercy Celeste

  “Just throw everything in the washer. Check your pockets first.” Skip waited for him to look away to put the gun on the top shelf of the cupboard.

  “Sure.” Skip handed him a towel and took his clothing over to the bench on the other side of the back door where he left the first aid kit. Blood still trickled down his leg from the gash on his knee. It didn’t look that bad. Skip followed him and took out the Bactine. “Put your leg on mine.”

  Chad lifted his leg up and propped it on Skip’s thigh. He didn’t argue when Skip poured the cold liquid over the wound to clean it out. He pressed a towel to the spot and Chad held it while he opened the package of bandages and the tube of antibacterial ointment. “Thanks,” Chad said when Skip had him bandaged up. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry to take his leg down. Skip didn’t mind. He traced the faint silvery line of a scar wondering where it came from. “Fell off my bike when I was twelve, and caught it on broken fencing. Had to get a tetanus shot for that one.”

  “And the one on your side? Looks like a knife wound.” The curiosity was greater than his ability to mind his own business. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have.” Chad dropped his leg to the floor, and stood up stiffly to walk across to the washer to pull his things out of his pockets. He did Skip’s too, while Skip toweled off. Handing Skip his phone, he threw all the clothes into the washer and set it to run. He leaned against the washer looking at the floor, his arms crossed over his chest. “Happened when I was seventeen. Right after graduation, but before my birthday. A couple of days or so. She was pissed that the child support was about the run out. She threw a plate at me. It broke. She grabbed one of the shards. Because it was my fault that it broke, you know. I didn’t get out of the way fast enough. I lied to the ER and left right after they stitched it up. I haven’t been home since.”

  “Your mother?” Skip asked, he knew he sounded stunned. “I mean… she… I didn’t know.” What was he supposed to say? ‘She seemed so nice.’ He’d be lying. He knew what the woman put her husband through during the divorce. She broke Colt. “I guess, I thought… she seemed to love you so much. I didn’t think she’d… I mean… I didn’t know she… oh god. I’m sorry. I should have known.”

  “Dad didn’t know. I never told him. It wasn’t as bad as what he got from her. Like I said, it didn’t start until I was older. I stopped looking like a little boy, and she sometimes forgot who I was. Not going to say it’s fine. It wasn’t. I’ve seen worse things. I’ve had worse happen to me since then.”

  “The gunshot wound?” Skip shouldn’t have asked. He should just keep his mouth shut.

  “Got a purple heart out of it. It wasn’t enough to get a medical discharge though. I’d have been out two years ago if it had been life-threatening. Got a couple of months of light duty.” He shrugged, looking at his phone again. Skip could hear it vibrate. “She’s just going to keep calling. I’m going to turn it off. She does this when she’s on a bender. It’ll stop.”

  Skip nodded and turned his phone on. There were several missed calls. The drizzle they’d fucked in turned to a downpour outside the open back door, the sound blending with the sound of water filling the washer. The temperature plunged with the rain, and Skip shivered. “I don’t know what to say to fix it.”

  “There’s no fixing anything. She’s off her meds. She does it too often. Dad’s death was the reason this time. I don’t know why she gave a shit. They’d been divorced for thirteen years. She just wouldn’t let it go. Like she had to keep living it. Year after year. She started calling me by his name there at the end. I think she lost it. Just completely lost it when I told her he died. She left me alone for too long. I guess I should have known it would be bad when she decided to start again. That’s how she works. She levels out, but it all builds in her mind. Every slight. Every perceived fault. If you don’t say exactly what she wants to hear, or do exactly what she wants you to do, without telling you what she wants. Because you’re supposed to read her damned mind. But you know the worst part of it… I don’t hate her. And I hate her, because… I remember a different mother. I remember a mother who wasn’t cruel. I remember when she was sane. I loved that mother. I don’t know this one. The one who hurt my father… and me. And destroyed our family. That person… I hate that person.”

  There were tears in his eyes when he finally looked at Skip. His gaze darting away quickly, as if he was embarrassed to be caught feeling something. Skip stood and took the two steps that would put him toe to toe with the Marine. He didn’t say anything; he wrapped Chad in his arms, and rested his chin on Chad’s shoulder. Chad stood rigid for a long time; the washer stopped filling and started swishing, while they stood there. Chad trembled in his arms, his determination to be tough dying a painful death in Skip’s arms. He wrapped around Skip, clawing at his back, while he cried silent tears. When he was cried out, Skip let him go and stepped away. He wiped his own eyes, then Chad’s eyes. “I’m hungry. I think there’s a ton of turkey going bad in the kitchen. How about a sandwich?”

  “Sounds good,” Chad whispered, nodding. “I’m going to go put on some clothes. I’m freezing.”

  “Funny how the weather is around here. Wait ten minutes and it’ll change again,” Skip repeated the adage he’d heard since he’d found the town in a rainstorm all those years ago. The rain would stay awhile; it always did.

  * * * * *

  He changed into his old sweats. The bag of new clothes still sat on the floor where he’d left them last night. He wasn’t ready to pull out new fleece when his old stuff was just right. His knee stung every time he bent his leg. The bandage pulled at the hairs there, making him wince. Not from the pain, from the fact that he’d just sat there, letting the man fix his boo-boo for him. He dragged on a long sleeve t-shirt because the damp chill was starting to get to him, and tried to stop thinking about… everything.

  His mother, his father, his life, sex, Skip, sex with Skip, who doctored his leg and sucked his dick and… let Chad… fuck him. Because Chad was pitiful and needed a goddamned father figure. Or he had a thing for young men. Or…

  Chad threw a t-shirt across the room. It hit a lamp, knocking it over on the table. Like his mother.

  He lost his temper and started throwing things. Just. Like. Her.

  He sat down on the floor and tucked his feet under his ass, elbows on his knees. The bandage pulled and probably came off. He buried his face in his hands and tried to stop the spiral.

  He could feel it this time… the tug and pull of reality. Like watching a movie where the focus went in and out for some stupid dream sequence. He never dreamed when his focus went sideways. But it wasn’t real either. At least not now. Most of it had been completely real, a long time ago. Or not that long ago.

  The breathing techniques he used to help keep his shit together weren’t working anymore. They hadn’t for a long time. Since before his dad passed.

  Thunder rolled in the distance and Chad backed into the corner away from the doorway. He tucked his head under his hands and tried to shut it all out. It was just thunder, not artillery fire. It was just a skinned knee. Not a plate shard to the gut.

  Thunder never bothered him before the other night. But that hadn’t sounded like thunder that night. That had been so much worse than the rumbling he heard now. That night, it sounded like bombs were dropping right on that lake, and the lake was firing back. And he was trapped out in the open.

  Music blasted from somewhere. Pop music. Fast and happy and dancy. Wake me up before you Go Go. The sound was so clear it sounded like he was there in the studio. No static. No people shouting over it. No one yelling ‘turn that shit off’. No country music. “I hate country music.”

  “I don’t know, a good broken-hearted drinking song, sometimes will cure what ails a person.” The voice that answered was low, sultry… sexy. He had a rumbling tone that could make Chad shiver. He looked up to find the finest man he’d ever laid eyes on leaning against the doo
r frame. The low-slung towel he wore around his hips, leaving very little to Chad’s imagination.

  Chad didn’t have to imagine what would be beneath that towel— a nest of strawberry blond hair that spread up his abdomen and down his thighs until it thinned out over hard-muscled skin. The fine smattering of freckles covered his entire body. Chad had licked a path between the few that graced the man’s firm ass. He shivered again. Not from cold this time.

  “What’s the deal with you and George Michael?” He leaned back against the wall. He couldn’t stop the spinning feeling, but he could see what was standing in front of him, and not some image from some nightmare he couldn’t stop living.

  “Sure you want to hear it? It’s a long story that involves death and granola.” Skip pushed off the door and walked to the bed. His broad, toned shoulders seemed so out-of-place on his slender body. And Chad loved watching him walk away. He’d been a fascination even when Chad was too young to know why he found him fascinating.

  “The surfboard on the beach,” Chad remembered that day like it was yesterday. The day he’d developed a case of puppy love.

  “Pardon?” Skip looked confused. Chad didn’t blame him. He’d just dropped a serious diversion into the conversation.

  “Sorry. Watching you walk away… it’s devastating. The way you move. You have a grace that I’ve never seen in another man. I realized I’d been looking for that, for the way a man moved. I never found it.” He felt foolish, even more now than when he was cowering from thunder.

  “Okay. I get that. I think. You like the way I move. The feeling is very mutual on that score.” An almost-shy smile quirked Skip’s lips. His skin glowed a rosy shade under his freckles. “What does that have to do with a surfboard?”

  “Nothing,” Chad said, trying to figure out what he meant, that wouldn’t sound like everything his mother had accused the man of. “I remember the surfing lessons you gave all us kids on your beach. The way you balanced on the board in the sand. The way you move… it’s kind of like that. I can’t explain it. Your shoulders roll with your lower body.”

  Skip laughed then, the sound drowning out the music, and the storm. “That’s pot and kettle territory there, buddy.”

  Chad flinched at the endearment. Skip had called him that when he was a kid. “I think you’re the reason I’m gay. And maybe one of the reasons I won’t… trust someone. And maybe, you’re right, and this is wrong. I don’t know right now. Maybe it’s just… puppy love. I’ve been in puppy love with you since I was ten years old and now… This is fucked up.”

  He expected anger or silence or denial, or hell, even agreement. Skip laughed again. This time the sound was anything but happy. He was hurt. “I fell in love with George Michael when I was seventeen years old. The first music I ever bought myself was the Faith album. I was in a motel sitting in the bathtub in cold water because I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my dad blow his brains out. Over and over and over and over. My whole world was gone. If I had any family out there, I didn’t know them. The only family I had left was a bunch of old hippies and some chickens. Growing up, I didn’t have a normal life. I was tutored at home. I wore bell-bottoms when pegged leg jeans were in style. I walked out of peace, love, and homemade yogurt into the real world, and culture shock was the least of my problems. I had money. I trusted too easily. I lost every penny I took with me before the first week was up. I didn’t have a checkbook or even know where my parents did their banking. Shit like that. I ran away a scared chicken in a broken-down purple Volkswagen bug with flowers painted on the fenders, and at the end of the first week I had enough money left to buy that tape and get a cheap motel room.”

  He paused long enough to take a breath and scrub a hand over his face. “One of my mother’s friends found me and gave me money. She talked to me for a long time. She wasn’t one of us anymore. She left and went into the real world. She was a therapist. She gave me food. And we talked. She helped me find my parent’s lawyer, and helped me get out of the bathtub and sleep. George Michael’s music anchored me… It’s like, he was real to me and I loved him. I knew he wasn’t real. He was just some famous singer that I had a thing for. But he got me through the worst time in my life. He got me through the second worst time in my life a couple of years later. He was my first puppy love.”

  “It’s not the same, not the same at all. You’re a real person.” Chad didn’t want to understand what Skip was saying. “Why can’t this be real?”

  Skip bowed his head, his shoulders slumped. “Who says it isn’t real? I fell in love with my first lover. He broke my heart. His wife gave birth to my child. Love is messed up. I thought that was real. I was too young to know they were using me.”

  “You don’t love me?” He had no idea why his chest ached so very badly. Bad enough to press his fist over his left breast.

  “I do love you. I’m in love with you, Chad. Not in a George Michael way either. In a way that’s going to rip my fucking heart out when I let you go.” His voice broke and Chad could hear the anguish in his words. “I have to let you go, Baby. You have got to find where you belong in this world, or I’m going to be to you what Jimmy was to me.”

  “You’re going to send me away, now that you’ve fucked me?” He could hear the cruelty in his voice. So much anger. “You used me…”

  “And you used me; this was a mutual affair, Chad. And no, I’m not sending you away. I’m not throwing you out. I’m trying to say that I want you to get some help. You have PTSD. It’s bad. And I am honestly starting to think it’s not military related. At least not entirely. I think your father’s death dredged up something from your childhood. The war exaggerated what was already there. God, I love you. But I’m familiar and I’m safe. I want you to be in a place where you can know if this is real. I can’t tell you it’s real. It’s real for me. I’ve never felt like this in my life. Like I can’t… see a future without you in it. But you need a future that doesn’t include me. I’m giving you the time you need to find that. What do you see in your future, Chad? What is your dream? Where do you want to be? What life do you want to live? I can’t be the answer to those questions. As much as I want to be your everything, I can’t.”

  Chad wiped the corner of his eye, and tried not to let him see the tears. “I don’t know. I don’t see anything in my future. I can’t see past my own nose most days. Everything I know is a lie. You know. And I… if I allow myself to be angry, I might not stop being angry. If I allow myself to… feel anything, so I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel pleasure. Or anger. Or sad. I’m afraid I won’t stop whatever it is. I won’t stop.”

  “We’ll work through it, when you’re ready. There’s a VA in town. It’s small and underfunded, but it’s there. You can see a private therapist if you have to. Buy a car. Get the job. There’s an apartment on the top floor of the bookstore if you want to go there. I’m not kicking you out. I’m giving you an option, a place to crash and figure shit out.”

  Chad nodded and wiped his face with the palm of his hand. Skip wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. “I’d planned to go to San Diego, but it’s too close to my mother. I’d planned to…” he shrugged again. He had no idea what he’d planned. He’d never gotten farther than going to San Diego. Because that was near… Skip’s beach house. He’d been going to find Skip, all along. “I don’t know.”

  The music stopped and everything was as silent as the grave. “The CD is over and the storm has passed.”

  “And I’m still a basket case,” Chad answered, unable to look at him.

  “When you get to the point that you sit in a bathtub full of cold water for two days, let me know. We’ll compare scars. I did that. You’re dealing with grief and trauma, and it’s going to hurt. It’s going to damn near kill you. But believe me… you will get past it.” Skip was on his knees in front of Chad when he looked up. He patted Chad’s bandaged knee, concern and… love… in his eyes. “Lunch is ready. I’ll see you downstairs.”
>
  Skip stood to leave, heading out, his shoulders rolling in that way that made Chad’s blood boil. “Hey, Saffron, you’re still wearing a wet towel. You should put some clothes on that fine ass.”

  Skip’s answer was to slowly drag the towel across that ass, and toss it toward the bathroom. He left the room bare-assed naked, looking back long enough to wink playfully.

  Chad’s gut churned, the feeling almost as painful as the tight feeling in his chest. Heartbreak didn’t feel like he was dying, did it? Chad crawled off the floor to follow his naked lover, ending up in the bathroom in time to spew his breakfast into the toilet.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The sun was blinding when Skip put the pot of coffee on. He hadn’t slept much. Chad had burned with fever all night between bouts of vomiting. He held him when the fever turned to chills, and held the bowl when he threw up.

  His fever had broken around dawn, and Skip had left him to sleep it off. He’d hoped to get some work done in the first chapter of his book. He remembered sitting down in his chair and turning on the lamp. He needed coffee. Strong coffee.

  “I thought you didn’t drink coffee?” Chad said from somewhere nearby. His voice sounded weak.

  “Only when I need to stave off an attack of the walking zombies.” Skip added more grounds to the filter and checked the water reservoir. “Feeling better?”

  Chad leaned on the island, holding his head in his hands, as if he had a headache. “Did I catch your stomach bug?”

  “Looks like it, or you went back to that gas station for some of their battery acid coffee. I don’t remember where it was. Felt like food poisoning.”

  “Feels like death,” Chad mumbled and dragged a stool out to plonk his ass down. “That smells good, but I’m too afraid to drink anything.”