“Calm the fuck down, for starters.” Mitch reached into his pocket and fished out a cigarette, lighting it before continuing. “For what it’s worth, I think the feeling is mutual.”
Randy rolled his eyes. “Ethan’s in flux. It’s you and Sam all over again. I’m going to end up doing the Ethan-Randy equivalent of driving my rig back and forth between Omaha and Chicago for months while I wait for him to figure out where his life is headed. Which will head in a direction that does not include some fuck-by-night dipshit who plays poker and fixes engines for a living.”
“Nice to see you have this all figured out already.”
“Fuck off.” Randy curled up against the door.
“Just be yourself with him. Don’t be a dipshit. Be like you are with Sam and me. Especially how you are with Sam.”
Randy thought of what Ethan had figured out how he felt about Sam, and he wondered if his little secret had ever really been a secret at all. It made him feel cold and vulnerable. Could this day get any fucking worse?
Randy stared so hard at the door handle he wondered why it didn’t melt. “I don’t want to be in love with anybody.”
Mitch grunted. “I know.”
“I don’t want to lose anybody else again.”
There was a long silence. “You talkin’ about me or your uncle?”
Good fucking question. Randy had no idea. “Both?”
Mitch’s sigh was heavy. “I’m sorry, Skeet.”
Randy shrugged. “You came back. Eventually.” But it reminded him his uncle was never going to. And it made no sense, because it was so fucking long ago. Uncle Gary had been stupid, had known better than to go out where he did when he did. Randy knew this, but the loss of Gary even now sometimes hit him like a punch in the gut all over again. Like somebody had taken a sickle and sliced a huge crescent out of him, and when he let himself remember, he knew the pain had never gone away, that it never would. He’d felt a shade of it when Mitch had left, but it had been a different hurt because Randy had been an ass and had deserved it.
Something told him the pain of both Uncle Gary and Mitch combined wouldn’t come close to what it would feel to have Slick go, and it would be eight times worse if he let him know. How? How the fuck had this happened? And in two fucking days? Two fucking days.
Mitch slowed the truck at the stop sign near the house. “I’ve circled the block twice. You want me to do another lap, or are you ready to head home?”
Randy remained fetal. “Just drive me out to the Mojave and leave me for the scorpions.”
“How about I flush your idiot head in the toilet a few hundred times?”
“Whatever.”
Randy didn’t even move when Mitch slapped his ass.
He decided, as they pulled into the driveway, he’d make Slick dinner. They’d put in a movie, something stupid and funny, and they’d all hang out in the living room. Ethan would play with his kitten, and Randy wouldn’t say anything about what was going to happen to his furniture or how the bathroom was going to smell like cat shit from this point on. If Slick perked up, they’d play some more poker, and Randy would rig it so he won but not enough that he’d figure it out. They’d have more sex, Ethan would sleep, and Randy would hold him in his arms, just as he had for the past two nights.
This night would be whatever it was. He’d enjoy it now, because it was here in front of him. Because Slick needed him. Yes, fucking hell, Randy loved him. But it would end. He’d remind himself every other fucking minute this was temporary. If he knew it was going to end, it wouldn’t be so bad.
He hoped.
He prepared himself to face a drunk, dejected Ethan, but when the door opened before he could put his hand on the knob, once a-fucking-gain nothing was remotely the way he’d expected it to be. Ethan was freshly scrubbed, upright, and dressed to kill in a black button-down and stylish blue blazer over a pair of artfully faded and torn jeans.
Randy staggered. “Ethan?”
Ethan buttoned his cuff. “You might want to get a shower. The car will be by in half an hour.”
“Car?” Randy looked more closely at Ethan—his eyes were still bloodshot, and occasionally he listed a little, but it was as if he’d forced some sort of sobriety on himself, and he was doing a good fucking job of it.
Mitch came up behind Randy. “Everything okay?”
“We’re going out,” Ethan said, his voice clear, calm, and assertive. “In half an hour.”
“Out?” Randy felt like a fucking parrot.
“Yes.” Ethan’s eyes were hard. “We are going out. On the town. I’ve hired a car. Tonight is on me.” His lips thinned. “Or Billy Herod, however you’d prefer to look at it.”
“Slick?”
Ethan leaned forward, rested a hand on his shoulder, and brushed a kiss on his ear. “Please, Randy.”
There it was—the vulnerability he’d known had to be there, shellacked under the resolve and temporary insanity that drove Ethan to hire a car and whatever else he’d been up to in the hour they were away.
Sam hurried over, half-dressed. “If one of you can redirect him, go right ahead.”
Ethan’s hand tightened on Randy’s shoulder, and his lips pressed like a prayer at Randy’s temple.
Randy closed his eyes and gave in. “All right. We’ll go out on the town. All of us.”
Ethan kissed him again and squeezed once more. Then he drew away and walked—mostly in a straight line—into the house. “Wear something sexy,” he called over his shoulder, then collapsed onto the couch, where Salomé leapt up immediately onto his lap.
SOMEHOW IT BOTH surprised Randy and it didn’t that Ethan had arranged for a babysitter for the cat. But when Mandy came out of the bathroom, Salomé curled against her chest, Randy’s jaw fell open.
Mandy shrugged. “He called the Nugget, and they called me with his number—which, incidentally, is also yours. He asked if I’d come sit with his new kitten, and I said yes.”
Randy folded his arms over his chest. “He’s still gay.”
“Yes, I know.” She smiled down at the kitten as it batted at her face. “But he agreed to take me out gambling sometime and be my stud so I can catch a handsome whale.”
Randy didn’t like this either, but Slick appeared, looking so goddamn good it made Randy’s teeth ache, and he forgot every word of the English language he’d ever learned for several seconds. Ethan seemed a lot more stable, but he still swayed a bit and constantly swilled water from a plastic bottle. He ran his eyes up and down Randy’s black jeans and black button-down shirt in approval.
Still, Randy felt self-conscious. “I’m going to grab a jacket, and that’ll make it look better. My outfit, I mean.”
“It’s fine now.” Ethan got a good grope of his ass as he slid past him into the bathroom.
Mandy’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s a winner you’ve got there, Jansen.”
Randy grunted and headed to his bedroom.
He’d be warm in his leather jacket now, but later he’d be glad for it. With and without it, though, he felt underdressed and slightly naked, and he dug around in the dish on his dresser for the silver choker and the shiny silver hoop earring that went with it. He found both, and then went fishing deeper for his leather-and-silver wristbands. He found them—and also Ethan’s keys, and his ring. He laid the latter on the center of the dresser as he put the jewelry on, and then in a perverse impulse slipped it onto his finger. It would only fit on the pinky of his right hand, but it fit.
A knock came on the doorframe, and he turned to see Sam standing there. Randy couldn’t help a wolf whistle. “Peaches, you look damn fine.”
Sam grinned and turned his profile, letting Randy get a good view of his butt. “I’m wearing your favorite jeans.”
These would be a pair Randy had picked out for him two years ago, which had artful slashes up and down the pant legs, two cut so high they required Sam to wear a thong or nothing at all. It went well with the smoky, tight-fitting gray-and-white-spackled
T-shirt he’d put on, along with a leather necklace set with rainbow beads. He looked as good as Ethan, and for a second Randy let himself feel the regret that the playing around with Mitch and Sam was apparently over, at least until Ethan moved on.
The thought sent his head reeling again, and he gave himself a mental shake. Quit being so fucking morose, you dumbass.
“Shall we go?” Sam held out his arm, and Randy accepted it, waving goodbye to Mandy as he went with him out the front door.
Ethan was outside already, and so was Mitch, having a cigarette in the driveway. A huge, tricked-out, cream-colored stretch limo sat there too.
It was either a stretch or a mini-stretch. By no means was it a party bus or even a van, but it was decidedly a vehicle which said, “VIPs are inside.” Expensive and elegant, but understated all at the same time—in short, the sort of vehicle high rollers would demand.
Sam looked devilish and proud at once. “I picked it out. It has a full bar, a phone to the driver, a sunroof, three lighting settings, and seating for eight.” He pulled his iPhone out of his pocket and waved it as he waggled his eyebrows. “And it has a sound system we control with a remote.”
It sounded fucking expensive. “How’s Slick paying for this again?”
“Says he has a million dollars from Billy Herod, and it’s the first down payment.”
“Did you point out if he spends it all in one night, he’s going to have to actually do what Billy wants or find some way to get that much money back?”
“He said he figures at this point he’s screwed no matter what he does, so he might as well have fun.” Sam shook his head. “He was scary after you left. He just sat there, something sucking him inside himself.”
“Yeah.” Randy watched Ethan pace along the edge of the driveway, weaving while Mitch chatted with the driver. “He can get that way.”
“Then he switched on again, said he wanted to go out, Las Vegas style. He had me on the ’net looking stuff up—at first I was just glad to see him animated, but then I thought, maybe this isn’t such a good idea. Holy shit, Randy. Then he almost got mean.”
Randy turned in alarm. “He didn’t hurt you?”
“Oh—God no. He just—” Sam’s blush flared, and Randy knew where the rest of this was going, because there was only one time Sam looked like this. “He was…how you get. When.”
When we’re having sex. The image of Ethan filled his head: Ethan from the bike—I want to fuck you, Randy—Ethan turning on Sam, giving him orders, giving both of them orders—
Holy fuck, where did that come from?
Randy ran a hand over his face, pretty sure he was blushing too. “I got it, Peaches.”
Sam looked guilty. “I should have said no, but it surprised me. I sort of went into a mode.”
“It’s okay, sweetheart.” Randy put his arm around Sam and drew him close, kissing him briefly on the top of his head. “So, should we go paint the town red?”
“I think we’re gonna paint it a little rainbow, but yeah.”
Ethan lingered in the driveway until the rest of them were in the car. Randy wanted to make sure he was okay, but Ethan waved him away, and Randy caught a flash of what Sam had been talking about. It was a different Ethan, a sharper Ethan.
Yeah, it was a pretty arousing Ethan, even with all things considered.
It was that Ethan, Randy acknowledged as he climbed in after Mitch, who had drawn him from the start. Even in the shell of the man he’d watched on closed-circuit TV, this iron-coated man had been in there too. Crabtree would go on about how this was because Ethan was an ace, and though Randy only tangentially subscribed to the gangster’s home-brewed philosophy, it was hard to argue against it, at least as it presented in Slick. And, yes, he was drawn to it. Like a fucking moth to a flame.
Sam explored the car, whispering fuck yeah as he discovered the mahogany-inlaid bar, the heavy crystal flutes for champagne, the mirrored walls, the fairy-dusted lights on the mirrored ceiling, the buttery leather seats, the thick carpet on the floors, and yes, the state-of-the-art sound system, complete, as the salesperson had promised Sam, with iPod/iPhone attachment. It was all done in varying but elegant shades of brown, reminding Randy a little bit of the Golden Nugget.
Ethan climbed in at last, and as Randy was only halfway into the vehicle, he leaned over his shoulder and spoke quietly into his ear. “What do you think?”
His breath still stank of alcohol, but he smelled of cologne too. The cologne was—just to fuck with Randy’s already fucked-up head—Sam’s. So he smelled of drunk man, Sam, and the spicy scent that was Ethan all at once, and it scrambled his remaining senses. “It’s good.”
Ethan chuckled and put his hand on Randy’s hip, urging him onto a seat as Kylie Minogue, Sam’s favorite artist, began to sing “I Should Be So Lucky”.
Randy forced himself to get a grip and studied Ethan as they settled in together on the long seat across from the bar. “Are you okay?” He didn’t look okay. He looked pale and wan, dancing between complete despair and crazy wild man.
Ethan reached for a pair of glasses and a bottle from the bar. “No, I’m not. But I can climb on top of it if you don’t bring it up.”
What are you doing, Slick? What are we doing? But asking that wouldn’t help either of them. So he went for the nag. “Are you sure you should be drinking?”
A wry smile played at his lips as he handed the glasses to Randy. “I’m sure I shouldn’t.” He unwrapped the foil and removed the wire cage from the cork deftly, revealing he was a man who knew his way around expensive champagne. Randy tried to think of the last time he’d indulged. He couldn’t remember the occasion, but he’d been fairly sure it had been a five-dollar bottle of André. This wasn’t Ethan’s first time with the good stuff. Which meant he’d probably had it with fucking Nick. Up in some goddamned fancy fucking cabin in the fucking romantic fucking mountains.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
He tipped the flute toward Ethan, hand shaking. “Hand me that bucket when you’re done, will you? I think I need to stick my head in it.”
“You’re nervous.” Ethan filled the glasses as Randy held them out. “Why?”
“I don’t fucking know.” Randy passed the glasses to Mitch, who grinned at Sam as he continued to enthuse over every minute detail of the limousine. When Randy reached for two more glasses, Ethan shook his head and selected only one. He poured it, handed it to Randy then pulled his bottle of water out of his pocket.
Randy gave him a quelling glance. “Oh, so I will drink and get hammered, while you sober up?”
“I’m several layovers away from sober.” Ethan worked the cap of the water off and took a careful drink. “I’m actually constantly fighting off the urge to stick my head out the door and vomit. Though it’s difficult to say if it’s nerves or alcohol. I don’t think I was half as drunk before as I was hysterical.” He tightened the lid then tightened it again. “Randy, I’m so goddamned scared.”
And it’s my fault. He put the glass down. “Ethan—”
“No. It’s—” Ethan stopped, shut his eyes, and Randy could see him fighting the nausea. “I hate Crabtree. I swear, I could kill him right now, gangster or not. Hell, I think I’m half-mob myself, after this afternoon.” He opened his eyes and stared unseeing into the glittering lights of the bar. “But the thing is, I’m scared because I think he might be right. I think I might actually need this. It’s… I don’t know. I don’t quite understand it. All I know is when I came here to Vegas, I felt like I was dead already.”
Now Randy was going to throw up. “Don’t, Slick.”
Ethan put a hand on Randy’s, but kept his eyes on the bar. “I felt like that until you. And then Crabtree messed with me, and then Billy—and I was angry. And scared.” His hand tightened on Randy’s. “And alive.”
He looked down at the water bottle, working it open with one hand, not letting go of Randy’s. He took a drink, shut the bottle again, and stared down at it.
&
nbsp; Ethan’s hand felt good in his. He liked the spark he saw in him, terrified as it made Ethan. Randy didn’t care for how prominently Billy and Crabtree played in this, but there didn’t seem to be much to do about it now. He would have apologized for his part, but Ethan seemed more focused on whether or not he was stupid for wanting to play this batshit hand.
It made Randy wonder if he would do the same, were their situations reversed. He didn’t think so. And he didn’t know what to think about that.
He should say something, but everything that came to mind felt ridiculous and syrupy. He went for the least inane and saccharine comment he could muster. “You don’t have to do this alone, you know.”
Ethan grimaced. “I think it’s ridiculous when people tell other people they need them, like it’s some sort of weight they put in someone’s lap. Nick used to say it, and it made me angry, though I suppose it’s as you said. He actually did need me. Because he needed me to be able to be himself. I don’t want to put that on anyone, because—because I don’t. I’ve always been independent. Maybe too much so, I don’t know. I have always taken care of myself. But right now—” He broke off, slightly tortured, and gripped Randy’s hand so hard it hurt.
Randy ignored the pain. “Slick, don’t be a dipshit. You can need somebody.”
“I don’t need somebody.” Ethan stared right at Randy, fierce again. “I need you.”
The words slammed into Randy, wrapping around him, lifting him up, making his heart rise ridiculously high in his chest.
Ethan gentled, relaxing his grip and turning his hand over in Randy’s. “For now.”
Another slam—this one into the wall, with a spike in it.
It must have shown on Randy’s face, goddamn it, because Ethan flushed, then captured Randy’s hand tight, even though Randy had been too stung to pull away. “I meant—”
“I know what you meant.” Randy tried to be magnanimous, but those words kept ringing in his head. For now. He downed his champagne in one go, not really tasting it.
“I meant I don’t want to burden you.”
Double Blind Page 17