The Wolf at Bay (Big Bad Wolf)

by Charlie Adhara

  “I didn’t mean... I’m not saying I think your mom—”

  “Did you ever have a break-in here?” Park interrupted, and mysterious new attitude or not, Cooper was thankful.

  “A break-in? No, never.” Gabriel seemed to be losing patience with what was obviously an interrogation on Park’s end and not a friendly catch-up between old friends or whatever the hell he thought they were here for. “It’s not really that kind of neighborhood.”

  “Only murders allowed around here then,” Park said, voice tight. “What a relief.”

  “What about Rose Daugherty?” Cooper asked. “Do you remember her?”

  In his chair, Robert Bell made a sound of protest or discomfort, and Gabriel stood and fiddled with one of the machines nearby. “Stephen’s sister,” he said over his shoulder. “Your families were close, weren’t they?”

  “Sort of. Remind me, when was it that she dated Jacob?”

  Gabriel looked up, startled. “They weren’t. I mean, they didn’t.”

  “That’s weird. I swear I remember them together.”

  “You must have been confused.”

  Cooper channeled his best Sal West reptilian smile. “Maybe. It wouldn’t be the first time, right?” He wanted Gabriel to take the bait. To say something, anything about the past, about that day.

  It didn’t have the effect he was going for. Gabriel surprised him by sitting back on the couch, closer than before, and putting a hand on his knee. Cooper glanced automatically to Mr. Bell, who was back to calmly staring out the window, and then to Park watching him with an almost identical expression to the bichon at his feet, emotionless but focused and anticipatory. Cooper felt oddly stirred by it.

  Gabriel followed his gaze and seemed to notice the intensity of Park’s staring as well. He slowly removed his hand with a frown. “I guess we were both pretty stupid back then, huh?” he said lightly, vaguely, avoiding the challenge.

  It probably wasn’t what he’d meant, but it was hard not to look at Gabriel and his unwillingness to acknowledge what had happened between them even now as a grown man and not feel stupid indeed as the very last of his childish longing slipped away. “Yes, I guess we were.”

  They left shortly afterward, Cooper unwilling to wait around any longer for a chance to speak to Jacob who, despite what Gabriel insisted, was apparently not arriving any minute. Not when it meant spending more time with Gabriel, who had nothing else to say about Hardwick, flat out refused to talk about Rose Daugherty, and became increasingly interested in turning the conversation back to their childhoods, or whatever make-believe version of their childhoods he was choosing to remember, anyway.

  Cooper briefly wondered if Jacob was avoiding speaking to him purposefully, but that didn’t make any sense. How could he possibly even have known they were there? It’s not like anyone really knew they were looking into the case, and he wanted to keep it that way. The last thing he needed was the FBI agents to feel like he was stepping on their toes. At least not until he had an actual lead to give them that would get their attention off Ed. At this rate, that wasn’t happening soon.

  “Well, that was a waste of time,” Cooper said as they walked the forty feet from the Bells’ backyard to his. “We could have just waited for tonight.”

  “And miss out on these?” Park held up his “Vote Bell” button between pointer finger and thumb. Cooper noticed the plastic was now cracked and the metal pin mangled before Park stashed it back in his pocket. “The pageant embezzlement stuff was interesting. Eva Hardwick made it sound like he never covered anything high profile at all.”

  “I don’t know if there’s a motive there, though. Gabriel was right—there are easier ways to stop someone from harassing you.”

  “Unless Hardwick was onto something, and Catherine Bell did have something to hide.”

  “Maybe.” Cooper paused, standing in his backyard. Right here he was directly in between Hardwick’s house and the Bells’. He could see the second-floor window of West’s house and the now tidy back garden where the Daughertys had kept nothing but weeds. As a backdrop to it all, the pines of the forest stood, gathering darkness as the morning finally shifted to afternoon.

  He tried again to imagine himself as Hardwick. Just thirty years old, younger than Cooper was now. A bad marriage, an affair, a lawsuit, and some kind of fuckery with a young, troubled neighbor. No wonder people thought he’d run. Cooper was getting antsy himself just thinking about it.

  He looked at Park and saw that his eyes were closed and his arms were crossed, like he was hugging himself. The spidery lines at the corners of his eyes had deepened. Cooper felt a wave of guilt. Park hadn’t exactly had the most pleasant start to the day, and he’d been dragged around and forced to work ever since.

  Cooper hesitated, then asked, “Is everything okay? You seemed a little...tense back there.”

  Park’s eyes flickered open, and they were larger and a bit more golden than usual. “Your old friend’s a dick.”

  “He wasn’t my friend.”

  Park raised an eyebrow. “So he’s just someone from your childhood you talked about your hopes and dreams and favorite movies with?”

  “Know thine enemy, Park.”

  “Fine, your old nemesis is a dick.”

  “Occupational hazard. Usually I’m the only one who gets bothered by that sort of thing, though.” Park didn’t respond, so he pushed. “Do you want to tell me what’s up?”

  Park’s voice was flat. “Your old nemesis wants to fuck you.”

  Cooper couldn’t help it—he laughed. “Okay, sure.”

  Park blinked at him, then walked under the crime scene tape right up to the edge of the disturbed dirt where the gazebo had been, and examined the hole they’d pulled Hardwick out of.

  Startled, Cooper ducked under the tape to stand by him.

  “I’m getting strong traces of rotting leather, paper and rust,” Park said without looking up from the ground.

  “Is this your audition for crime scene sommelier?”

  “The unsub probably dumped that case Mrs. Hardwick was talking about in here with the body which is why it never turned up. That must be how they identified him so fast.” Park was still avoiding his eyes.

  Cooper hesitated, examining the tenseness of his shoulders and running over their conversation in his head. “You know Gabriel isn’t really, genuinely interested in me,” he said finally, startling Park into looking up at last. “He’s just fucking with me. Using flirting to get into my head so he can manipulate me later if he needs to. That’s his old MO. Seriously. I would know. I’m an expert at looking for signs of real attraction in Gabriel Bell.”

  He took a breath. The longing may have been gone but the old hurt was still there, less sharp, less threatening, but still something to avoid thinking about. More out of habit than anything else.

  Park was watching him closely now. “It’s not just mind games. He wants you. Badly.” He added, not quite under his breath, “I can smell it pouring off of him.”

  Cooper stilled. “What do you mean, smell it?”

  “Arousal, need, want, you know, the whole shebang. It changes a person’s scent.”

  “Can you do that with every emotion? Know what everyone is feeling?” Cooper could hear the worry in his own voice and from the look Park was giving him, so could he.

  “I can’t read minds.” Park tried to laugh it off awkwardly, but Cooper didn’t join him. After a moment he added, “It’s not sophisticated. More of a primitive thing evolved for, uh, mating and survival. So stuff like sex and rage are more noticeable scents.” He paused, and his face seemed to flush slightly. “Joy, if I’m very familiar with the person.”

  “We’re pretty familiar,” Cooper noted. “As far as sticking your nose in places goes, it’s hard to imagine it’s possible to get more familiar.”

  “It’s not just about
proximity,” Park mumbled, avoiding his eyes. “But yes. I know your scent...very well.”

  “And do you do that with me? Sniff out what I feel?”

  Park looked unsure, like he didn’t know what to do with this conversation. “It’s not really a conscious thing. I’m not trying to pry. It’s natural for me. Like just needing to have my eyes open to know this is bothering you.”

  “I’m not bothered,” Cooper said quickly. That was a lie. He felt intensely vulnerable right now. He amended, “I just don’t like being an open book.”

  Park laughed again, loudly and abruptly this time, like he couldn’t hold it in. “Cooper, I would need a sixth sense to even remotely consider you easy to read.”

  Cooper tried not to look so satisfied.

  “Your button man, Gabriel, on the other hand,” Park said. “Practically had ‘I want you back’ going in sky writing.”

  “There is no back.” Cooper shrugged. “He was a year older, so we didn’t hang out or anything. But he started being nice to me when my mom died. I developed a...substantial crush on him in middle school.”

  “Did he know?”

  Cooper snorted. “Yeah, he knew. He could hardly miss it. Not when I told him.”

  Park’s eyebrows shot up. “You told—? Did he have to answer three riddles first? Or was it just the usual, run-of-the-mill Scarborough Fair reenactment?”

  “You think you’re funny. But I was a lot more forthcoming back then.”

  Cooper winced. It was still one of the more humiliating experiences of his life. Funny how that worked. Logically he knew he’d embarrassed himself way worse plenty of times when he was older and thus should have known better, but it was that memory of lying in the field and rolling over to whisper into Gabriel’s shoulder that he loved him, that he’d always loved him and always would, while Gabriel pretended to be asleep, that his mind flinched away from the most.

  “Anyway. It was definitely not reciprocated.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing,” Cooper said immediately. “Well, we ‘practice kissed’ in his basement for a summer,” he said with finger quotes. “Then school started and that was it. He was...not interested in admitting he knew me. Definitely not as a boyfriend, not that we ever were, but not as a friend either.”

  “And that was it?”

  “Mmm,” Cooper said. “More or less.”

  He remembered standing on the dock, waiting for his father to finish talking shop with another boatman, and seeing Gabriel with a couple friends going into the boathouse, a huge warehouse at the marina that was half-dock and half-water inside where they stored and repaired boats. He remembered the excitement and trepidation that always came with seeing Gabriel, still painfully there, though his friend hadn’t really spoken to him in months. He remembered his father pushing him to go hang out with the other boys, to “make friends,” and his subsequent nervous approach. Things had been awkward between them since school had started again, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t still be friendly, right? This was the same boy who had hugged him when he’d tearfully admitted to being angry at his mother for dying. The same boy who had kissed him nervously between taking turns on his Gameboy.

  Except it wasn’t. Gabriel didn’t say a word while his friends laughed at Cooper. And he didn’t do a thing when they stuck him under an upside down rowboat, too heavy for a skinny fourteen-year-old to get out from on his own, and left him there, trapped in the darkness, with the smell of bay water all around him and the raw-skinned feeling of betrayal inside.

  Taking the memory out now and reexamining it, he felt something different from before, something new: rage. For better or for worse—and it was definitely for worse—Gabriel was the first person he’d admitted romantic love to, and it had turned around and done something worse than just break his heart. It had made him afraid of ever giving said heart to anyone again. Gabriel, snobby shit that he was, didn’t deserve to have that kind of lasting influence on his life.

  Cooper risked a look at Park. Not that love was necessarily what was going on here, seasickness and post-sex endorphins aside. He liked Park a hell of a lot. But they’d only known each other four months. “Known” being a distinct overstatement. It was way too soon to think like that. Right?

  Or was that the old anxiety talking, still? The fear that the person you thought you loved would inevitably leave you alone in the dark. Cooper wondered who he’d be without any of the negative experiences of his life. Was it even worth asking?

  Park made him want to find out.

  Cooper reached out and grabbed hold of his hand, and Park looked at him, startled. “Hey,” Cooper said, softly. “I...”

  Park tilted his head questioningly, expression blank, but his grip on Cooper’s hand tightened almost painfully.

  “I...think we should get ready for the party now,” Cooper said. “There isn’t much else we can do here.”

  Park stared at him for a long moment, then nodded. “Whatever you want.”

  He started to pull away, and Cooper tugged his hand toward his chest instead and felt large fingers flex in his grip, like Park was stopping himself from grabbing back. “Pa—Oliver? Thanks for doing this with me. I know it’s not exactly the weekend off you signed on for.”

  Park’s smile was pleased but also a little puzzled. “Yes it is. I’m with you, aren’t I?”

  Fuck the neighbors. Fuck creepy Mr. West and Mrs. Hardwick and especially Gabriel. Cooper surged up and kissed Park, who made a tiny noise of surprise and then happiness that got lost between their lips. For the first time since arriving in Jagger Valley, Cooper felt completely at home.

  Chapter Nine

  Cooper was struggling with getting his tie just perfect when he heard Park come back from his shower. They still had about an hour or so before Ed and Dean were due to get back and they could all head over to the venue to help set up, but Cooper wanted to get dressed now. God forbid his father see him hesitate over which shirt he was going to wear and tear into him for being fussy.

  “You look very nice,” Park said from the doorway.

  “Mmm, maybe if I could get this to lay right, that would be true. I do this all the time. You’ve seen me do this all the time, so why can’t I fucking get this tie on today?” He pulled it out to start over.

  “Nerves?”

  “What for? I’m not the one getting tied down.”

  “You think marriage is getting tied down?”

  “Oh, no. I guess not. Not for Dean anyway.” Park crossed the room behind him, and Cooper caught his reflection in the mirror and immediately fumbled the knot. “Uh, is that what you’re wearing?”

  Park looked down at his long, muscular body, naked except for a towel. “Too much?”

  “Yeah, you’re way overdressed.”

  Park smiled, then tossed his towel at him, which hit Cooper and fell at his feet. “Better?”

  “Hmm,” Cooper hummed, and watched Park’s reflection get closer, drinking in the lines and angles of him, until Park was standing right behind him. “If you’re into that sort of thing, I guess.”

  “You need help with that?”

  Park reached up and gently took the tails of the tie from him and slowly began to loop them together, his fingers so light and nimble they just barely brushed the hollow of Cooper’s throat.

  “There.” He tightened the tie then smoothed it. The palm of his hand continued to travel down Cooper’s belly, making the scars there tingle, and came to a rest on his belt buckle. “How’s that?”

  “Show-off.” Cooper let his head fall back onto Park’s shoulder, which was still wet and shower-warm. “You know, seeing you here in my old bedroom dressed like this, or undressed like this, makes me think. Teenage Cooper would have freaked.”

  Park snorted.

  “Seriously, you’re reminding me so much of an old favori
te fantasy that I’m a little worried I’m going to wake up in a minute and be sixteen, miserable, and unbearably horny all over again.”

  “Should probably make the most of it while you can then.” Park pressed his nose to Cooper’s hair and inhaled. “How’d this fantasy go?”

  He swallowed excitedly. “Oh, all the classics. Tall, dark, and handsome stranger showing up in my little suburban bedroom to seduce me in secret.”

  “Stranger?” Park started to undo Cooper’s belt slowly, almost absentmindedly. “And you just let this guy in?”

  “Well, he has this problem, you see. An overwhelming lust that only I can satisfy. I just don’t have the heart to turn him away.”

  “What a humanitarian.” Park unzipped the pants and with a nudge slid them down Cooper’s legs.

  “That’s me. Totally unselfish,” he agreed, voice hitching as Park’s fingers traced back up his thighs, across the bulge in his underwear, and hooked into the waistband.

  “So this guy shows up in your bedroom and tells you about his problem and asks for your help.”

  “No, no. He demands it. He gets rough with me. Tells me I have to do what he says or else. This lets me off the hook because I really want him to use me however he likes but don’t want to admit it.”

  In the mirror, Park met his eyes and raised an eyebrow.

  “Put that back down. I said seduced by a stranger, not deduced by Freud. Teenage Cooper had some shit to work out, okay?”

  “Huh. That doesn’t sound like you at all,” Park said easily, already moving on to kiss his neck lightly and pull his underwear slowly down to his ankles, crouching as he went.

  Cooper smiled. That was another thing that made sex with Park so nice. He understood that kink was evolving, fun, and didn’t try to pin Cooper down on why he wanted what he wanted or when. He just paid attention, read his desires, and rolled with it. As Cooper in turn happily rolled with Park’s.