“It’s okay.” The lie came out a little better this time.
Ethan didn’t say anything else. Which, actually, was another knife. Randy poured himself some more champagne, and soon he’d done some decent damage on the bottle, nursing his stupid inner drama as he sat awkwardly beside Ethan, watching Sam and Mitch enjoying each other at the other end of the car.
You knew this. You knew it was temporary. You’ve been thinking this the whole time. There’s no cause to act like a fucking drama queen.
Except I didn’t want it to be for now. I was hoping it was different, with him.
In short, betting on fucking black. He grunted, picked up the bottle, and finished it off.
When the car stopped, they were in the Fruit Loop on Paradise Boulevard, outside Firefly, which Randy knew right away was Sam’s doing. They’d gone here the last time Sam and Mitch were in town. Of course, they always went everywhere when Sam and Mitch were here.
He’d waited so long for them to come. He’d made his peace with how he’d get them once or twice a year, and it would be fine. He’d lost Mitch completely for years. Wasn’t this better, having him even just a little? Sam too? Now they were here early, and he had Ethan. His life was so fucking full it overflowed, nothing but one crisis after another—sheer chaos. Randy loved it. He knew what Slick meant about being alive. He felt alive when Sam and Mitch were here. Slick, in two days, had opened up a whole new definition of living, somehow.
For now.
He pushed past the three of them, ignored the hostess and headed straight for the bar where he peeled off a twenty and ordered two shots of whiskey. He downed one right away, then glared at the second, pouring all his crazy into it before he tipped it back too. When he slammed the glass down, the world spun nicely, and Mitch stood next to him.
“Skeet, what the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m getting drunk, Old Man.” He ordered another.
Mitch put a hand on his arm to keep him from picking up the shot. “What happened in the car, Randy?”
Randy laughed. “Nothing.”
I love him. I love him.
You. Stupid. Fuck.
Rage climbed over his sorrow. “Let go of my fucking drink.”
Mitch moved his hand, but he was pissed. Good, Randy thought. He certainly didn’t want to have this pity party by himself.
For now.
“You two are quite a fucking pair, you know that?” Mitch jerked his head toward the door. “Sam’s back there with Ethan, who, by the way, looks worse than he did when he came home from the casino.”
“I don’t care.” Except he did. Cursing under his breath, Randy waved at the bartender for another.
“What the fuck happened?”
Randy smiled a drunken, sarcastic grin. “He told me he needed me. For now.”
Mitch threw another twenty on the bar, grabbed Randy’s collar and hauled him bodily out of the restaurant, ignoring Randy’s drunken cries of outrage. When he came to Sam, who was speaking earnestly to Ethan whom he’d backed up against a wall, Mitch gently brushed his husband aside and collected Ethan with his other hand.
He dragged them both outside and stuffed them into the limo, Ethan first, Randy second. Leaning through the doorway, he glared at them both.
“You will both fucking stay in here until you sort this out.” He aimed a finger at Ethan. “You, get your head out of your ass.” He turned the finger on Randy. “You, quit being clever and fucking let him see who you really are.”
“I did,” Randy snarled. “That’s the problem—”
The door slammed shut, and the two of them were left alone.
Chapter Twelve
HOW, RANDY WONDERED, as he sat there awkwardly with Ethan, had it come to this? It had been so good, and then Slick had said “for now,” and it was over. For Randy the worst part was realizing how fucked up his thinking had become. It wasn’t about Slick but about him and what he wanted. The lump in his throat returned, starting to feel permanent.
He’d wanted this thing with Ethan to be something real. He wanted what Sam and Mitch had, and he hadn’t acknowledged it until Slick showed up. Somehow his heart was set on having Mitch and Sam’s kind of relationship with Slick. He didn’t know how to turn the feeling off. He tried to push it away, but despite the seating for eight, there wasn’t room enough in the limo, not for the loneliness he had tried so hard not to feel.
Randy had played the wrong game, gone on tilt, taken his mind off the odds and the pot. He’d imagined being with Ethan would make things okay.
God, the fucking irony. Everyone was always on him to stop being such an ass—here was Mitch, too, saying show him who you are—and he already had, and look how it had turned out. That’s why I’m fucking alone, he wanted to shout out the window.
But he didn’t want to be alone, not anymore. Even right now, in the middle of this.
He was so fucked.
Ethan shifted again. “I’m sorry, I—” His voice was rough. Every hurt, and it showed. It was hell, just looking at him. “I wanted to have a night with you… I wanted—I didn’t mean—” The tower of Ethan started to crumble. “I’m sorry, Randy, so sorry—”
“Just shut up, Slick.” Randy wearily rolled his heart over and handed Ethan the knife, because what the hell else was he supposed to do? Drive it in himself? “Stop talking and get over here.”
“This is what I meant. I don’t want to need you, don’t want to—but I can’t—”
Randy moved over to the seat beside Ethan and took him in his arms. “I know, baby. I know.”
“I didn’t mean—I don’t—I don’t—”
Randy shut him up by taking his mouth in a kiss, pushing him onto the seat, then onto the floor. He kissed him deep, and he held him, and that was all. They just lay there, mouths pressed together, alternating between kissing and breathing. Randy could smell the cleaner they’d used on the carpet, the richness of the leather, gin, and Slick. Mostly Slick.
If you put all your chips in, you might win it all.
He didn’t want to. But he started to think he’d already put himself all-in. He had to see it through to the river now. He’d been committed since the blind, which in hindsight was too fucking huge. Bad odds.
But fucking hell, what a sweet pot.
Ethan pressed his forehead against Randy’s. “I wanted to take you out. I wanted to have a night out with you, a good one where I was strong. I didn’t want to break down.”
Just lay down the cards. “I haven’t been fucking you and putting you up in my house and making myself sick worrying I’ve fucked you over by getting you involved with my stupid gangster friends because I hoped you’d stop breaking down.” He paused, then corrected himself. “Okay, I didn’t mean I want you to be upset. I mean you just do that, Slick. Being with you is like riding a tiger, but hey.”
Ethan pulled back and regarded Randy, slightly scared, as if they’d finally come to something that had been bothering him but he’d also hoped to avoid.
Randy felt a little better. This game did have a double blind, after all.
Ethan didn’t look any happier about it than he was. “Why are you doing this? Is it…” he grimaced, “…pity?”
“No.” Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. Stop talking, right now.
Ethan leaned in. “Why, then?”
Make a joke. Make a smart remark. Distract him. Kiss him. Fuck him. Just do not answer the question, do not fucking answer the question. Because that is so fucking all-in, and this is not the time for it, you idiot.
But Randy was tired. He’d had two glasses of good champagne and enough whiskey to loosen his tongue. As a compromise, he shut his eyes and said the stupid, deadly words, sick and light and beautifully free, all at once, like he was jumping off the top of the Stratosphere.
“Because I love you.”
He went sailing over the edge, and the world expanded before him, and he embraced the fleeting moment then prepared himself for the fall—
; A cool, shaking hand grabbed his chin, and when he didn’t open his eyes, a finger pulled his eyelid back forcibly, and Ethan was looking down at him, shocked and wild. “If you’re making a joke…”
Randy snorted and pulled his head down to try to free himself. But Ethan held him fast, his voice stronger as he spoke again, though he did let Randy’s eye close.
“We’ve known each other two days.”
“I think it took about two minutes.” This actually wasn’t so bad. Once you jumped, you could just keep going over the edge, no problem.
“Randy.”
Randy gave up and opened his eyes. “Look. You don’t have the corner on the market for feeling wounded.”
Ethan’s hand tightened on Randy’s chin. “But I am so fucked up.”
Randy didn’t dignify that one with a response. He waited as Slick caught up.
“You don’t pity me.” Ethan looked like he was waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under him. “You—you…”
He couldn’t finish. Randy sighed. Jesus, this bitch was work. “Love you.” He decided to take another trip over the edge, to see if he still had the bungee cord on. “And, incidentally, those feelings are probably for more than just now.”
“Shit.” Ethan went pale. “Shit.”
Randy was sadistic enough to enjoy himself, but not for too long. “It’s okay.” This time he meant it.
“I didn’t mean—I didn’t know—”
Randy touched Ethan’s face. “Shut up, Slick. You fuck it up when you talk.”
“What do we do, then?”
“Go eat dinner. Go clubbing. Go gambling. Go make you cry at the fountains again. Go home and fuck like rabbits. Then tomorrow, I guess, you go work for Billy Herod, and we wait for our shot to break Crabtree’s kneecaps.”
Ethan stroked Randy’s cheek. It was a tender gesture, but Randy could tell he was looking for a loophole, a catch, something to prove this to be the farce he knew it had to be. Can’t pull back the blind, baby.
Randy grabbed Ethan’s fingers and kissed them. “Come on. Let’s go party.”
Then Randy took the hand of the man he loved, the fucked-up, disbelieving man he loved, and led him off gently toward the restaurant.
ETHAN SPENT THE better part of dinner trying to decide if what he thought had happened in the limo on the floor with Randy actually had happened, or if he’d imagined it.
He’d gone into the restaurant in a sort of shock, feeling as he had that first night when Randy had led him to the bar at Herod’s. He couldn’t find his footing, and in lieu of any other real option, he followed the others along. Mitch and Sam had already claimed a table and were working their way through appetizers and a pitcher of sangria, and they greeted Ethan and Randy warmly, as if Mitch hadn’t hauled them both bodily out to the limo half an hour before. Mitch poured a glass of wine for Randy and water for Ethan, and Sam chatted animatedly about the appetizers.
Ethan had no real idea what he ordered—there was shrimp, he thought, but he remembered chicken too. He spent most of the time reeling quietly. Randy could not be in love with him. Not only did it not make any sense, it didn’t fit. Randy would never admit he loved him, not after the idiot he’d been so many damn times—
He kept seeing Randy’s face, eyes shut as he said the words, a man laying down his sword. Except with Randy it wouldn’t be the metaphor. He was laying down his cards.
Ethan didn’t know what he was supposed to do with them.
Randy didn’t seem nervous anymore. He talked with Mitch about trucking and asked Sam about the tour of the hospital he was due to have on Wednesday. Sam tried to include Ethan, but every conversation was a landmine, and between this and I love you still ringing in his head, he kept faltering. Randy rescued him every time, deflecting with a joke and change of subject, giving Ethan space. He put a hand on Ethan’s back when they finished and headed to the car.
“It’s really bugging you, isn’t it? God, I’m glad I said it, then. It’s about damn time you had the angst over it.”
Ethan glared at him. “You are making it up, aren’t you? You’re pulling my leg. You just said—” But he couldn’t come up with a reason why Randy would say such a thing. Ever.
Randy held up his hands. “Baby, I would not fucking joke about that.”
“But we’ve only known each other two days. This isn’t rational.”
Randy pointed at Mitch and Sam, who stood with their arms threaded around one another, Sam’s at Mitch’s neck, Mitch’s at Sam’s waist as they nuzzled noses beneath the streetlight. “When they arrived in Vegas two years ago, they had only been together two nights, since Mitch had picked Sam up on a lark in Iowa. Prior to that they’d had one fuck in the alley behind Sam’s aunt and uncle’s pharmacy and one date over Mexican food. It was more accurate to measure their relationship in hours. They were so far fucking gone by the time they got to me, it was scary. It’s not a rational subject area.”
Ethan had nothing to say to that, so he followed the others into a car. This time the music was Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”, and Sam danced on his seat as Ethan shut the door.
“We should have gotten a van.” Sam lifted his arms and moved his whole upper body to the beat. “Then we could dance while we rode around.”
Randy looked up at the ceiling and grinned as he pushed the button on the moonroof. “Come over here, Peaches.”
Sam slid up Randy’s body before they began to dance together, only half their bodies visible as they stood in the narrow square of space. Randy dipped down, his black shirt gaping open as he crouched and told Mitch to crank the music. He braced against Ethan as the car went around the corner and made up, up motions at Mitch as he turned the system up louder and louder. As Ethan thought his eardrums would surely split open, Randy gave the okay sign, and rose.
The car shifted again, though, and he gripped Ethan’s knee to catch himself from falling. He grinned and gave Ethan’s leg a quick feel before sliding to his feet to join Sam in dancing in the desert night.
Ethan saw the glint of silver on his finger.
Nick’s ring. Randy wore Nick’s ring.
It was a silver circle, but it had a specific thickness and width to it, some simple markings on the band that shimmered when they caught the light. Nick’s ring. And Randy had put it on with the rest of his outfit. As a trophy? A taunt? A warning? To himself, or to Ethan?
Randy crouched down again and looked at Ethan. He shouted to be heard over the music. “Where are we headed, Slick?”
“I don’t know.” Ethan’s gaze fell to Randy’s hand.
Randy met Ethan’s gaze, holding it. Ethan waited to see what he would say, what he would do, what excuse he would give. But he only picked up the phone that called the driver and cupped his hand around the mouthpiece as he shouted some instruction. Then he put the phone in its cradle, his gaze grazing Ethan once more as he returned to the moonroof. Seconds later his hands reappeared and his leather jacket fell in a heap on the floor. His arms rose through the hole, and he began to dance.
It could have been a Vegas attraction, sitting in a limo full of pounding music as Sam and Randy undulated through the moonroof, only their bottom halves visible, their hips swinging and thrusting in time to the beat, their laughter filtering down. Gaga sang, the music swelled. Ethan took in Sam’s slender, swaying body. Randy’s muscles were more formed, but when the pair of them stood there, you realized they were not dissimilar. Randy had a few inches in height on Sam and more hours of heavy labor and at the gym, but beyond this they were a study in masculine beauty from the waist down.
The music was raunchy and strong and proud and perfect, and it set something free inside Ethan, something dark and primal but pure too. The Ethan who managed other people’s money, waiting patiently while his lover lived another life he did not share with him—that Ethan fell away, and a new Ethan came forward. It was a man who had always been there, who liked hard sex, money, and games with gangsters. An Ethan who enjoyed men dan
cing before him, for him, in the car he had hired with money given to him by the mob. As the music banged around him, he gave in to it, to all of it.
I’m a free bitch, baby.
Mitch also enjoyed the sight his husband and friend made. Ethan hadn’t spoken much to Mitch, but he’d pegged him as a gruff, quiet man of uncomplicated pleasures. He didn’t doubt Mitch and Sam did fine in the bedroom, but Ethan hadn’t thought much about it until now. He’d assumed Mitch was a rather vanilla sort of man, as simple in his sexual tastes as he was everything else.
He wouldn’t assume that now. Even in his jeans and cream-colored button-down, Mitch looked like the highest of high rollers, the king of Crabtree’s deck of men, arms extended over the back of his seat, leg kicked up over his knee, his body open and relaxed as he watched Sam and Randy dance. He enjoyed it, a lot. His face made it clear he planned to enjoy more than just dancing, a primal sort of hunger emanating from him.
“I would rather have taught Sam to drive stick myself.” Mitch spoke loudly because of the music, and he kept his eyes on the dancing.
Ethan didn’t know what he was supposed to say to that. Then he remembered what Crabtree had said. “Why haven’t you taught him before now, then?”
Mitch drew a beer he’d rested against his thigh up to his lips and took a swig. “Because it didn’t seem like a big deal.”
“He can’t drive while you’re here in Vegas, not without knowing how to drive a stick.”
“I would have bought him a car.”
But there was a testiness about the way he said it that gave Ethan a strange window into the man, and he realized Randy was right. Poker wasn’t cards. Poker was reading people.
“How many times have you said it—that this time, while you’re here, you’ll buy a car he can drive?” He saw the truth of it in Mitch’s wince. Ethan pushed on gently. “He didn’t want a car. He just wanted to know how to drive the truck.” Like you and Randy.
Mitch flattened his lips but said nothing more, just watched his husband and his friend dance.
Sam dipped down, face flushed and hair windblown, smiling, but when he saw Mitch’s face, he paused. His smile didn’t die, but it changed, his expression soft and sultry at once. It was as if they were speaking a silent language, sliding into the roles of a game Ethan didn’t understand but was drawn to all the same.
Double Blind Page 18