Unfortunate Son (6 page)

“Here you go,” he said, holding out the bag by its handles. “Tomatoes, peaches, cheese, and even a bottle of that wonderful ginger ale. Don’t worry about the bag,” he added, waving his free hand. “I’ve got dozens. Can’t seem to resist buying them everywhere I go!”

Evan took the bag, still not sure what had just happened between them, but he smiled anyway. “Thanks for the picnic and dinner and… everything.” He took a chance and leaned in for a kiss, which Riley accepted. “See you around?”

Riley smiled again. “I’m sure you will,” he said, back to his flirtatious self. “I know I’ll be keeping an eye out, now that I’ve had a sample.”

R
ILEY
’
S
PARTING
shot helped, but Evan couldn’t shake off the lingering feeling of rejection. He’d hoped to spend a little more time with Riley, maybe get a turn at bottoming. At least Riley had seemed interested in getting together again, so Evan always could try again.

Still, his steps dragged as he trudged up Eleventh toward home, the new-penny brightness of the day tarnished as night snuck in. He thought about stopping by one of the bars he passed as he walked through the heart of Atlanta’s “gayborhood,” the pounding music and flashing lights designed to draw people in.

But he didn’t feel up to all that tonight. He didn’t much relish the idea of sitting alone with his thoughts, either, but at least it would take less energy. He still needed to pack, anyway, and his flight left at ten the next morning, so he’d need to be up no later than eight to get to the airport.

Dodging a group of twinks dressed in tight shorts, tank tops, and brightly colored sneakers, Evan turned the corner toward his apartment building. This was one of the times he was glad he’d been able to find a place cheap enough that he hadn’t been forced into having a roommate. Sure, the apartment’s “one-bedroom” description had been shaky at best, considering only a half wall separated the “bedroom” and “living room.” A glorified studio, in reality, but it worked for him.

He slipped inside the tiny entryway of the building, skipping the mailboxes and heading up the flight of stairs to his floor. The building was quiet, not unusual for a Sunday night, since it was inhabited mostly by other young gay men who were probably out getting in the last gasp of the weekend at bars like the ones he’d passed up on his walk. Evan got inside his apartment without running into anyone, locked his door, and stopped off in the kitchen to grab a beer. He popped off the lid and tossed it on the counter before wandering over to sit on the bed. He pushed a few of his collection of a half-dozen pillows up against the headboard to cushion his back and leaned back, sipping at his beer and staring at the plastic stars that glowed on the ceiling. Some previous tenant had put up constellations all over the space, the Big Dipper directly above the bed and Orion above the sofa, and the landlord hadn’t bothered to try to remove them. Evan didn’t care. There were worse things in the world than stars on your ceiling.

Unbidden, Evan’s mind wandered to a different view of the stars, on a dark night in the desert. He’d been on sentry duty, guarding his platoon mates while they slept in their tents, when his relief had arrived in the form of Lucas Chavez.

“Hey, hombre, your turn to hit the hay.” Lucas grinned at him, teeth shining in the moonlight. “I kept the cot warm for ya.”

Evan remembered the warmth, not from the bed, but from the feeling that Lucas’s smile gave him. He’d wanted to kiss the curve of those lips, but even with no one else in sight, the danger of exposure or worse was too great. Instead, he’d let his fingers brush along Lucas’s thigh as they switched positions. Lucas didn’t say a thing, but the swift intake of breath told Evan everything he needed to know.

Lying on his bed in comfort, drinking his beer, he let himself remember.

I
T
WAS
Evan’s third day at Parris Island when he first realized he was gay. He’d dated girls back home, but mostly because everyone else did, and with all his studying, he didn’t really have time for a relationship anyway.

On his third day in South Carolina, he met Lucas Chavez.

Lucas was an inch or so below Evan’s height, broader and more muscular, but still lean overall. His skin was the color of toasted sugar, a warm, rich shade of brown that made Evan want to lick him to find out if he tasted as sweet as he looked. Lucas’s smile was bright white against his skin, his hair and eyes black as night. Evan tried not to stare, but Lucas woke up parts of Evan’s mind and body he hadn’t even known existed.

He knew then exactly how much trouble he was in.

He saw Lucas only a handful of times in boot camp, though he knew he’d always carry the image of him at the ceremony marking the end of their basic training. Just as their drill sergeant had promised three and a half months earlier, they’d been transformed from children into Marines, and Lucas had looked every inch the part, all hard muscles and tight discipline from the high-and-tight haircut under his cover to the tips of his shining black boots.

Evan and Lucas had gone their separate ways after that, though Evan had carried the image of Lucas’s smile with him. He jacked off to it more than once, though he couldn’t bring himself to do any more than that, not that the desert and the Marine Corps left him much time for even the acceptable forms of R&R.

It was on the way to his second deployment in Afghanistan a year later that Evan was astonished to find himself on the same flight as none other than Lucas Chavez. Lucas hadn’t changed much, just a bit more honing and bulk to his already perfect body, as much from adding another year of age as from the hard, physical work of being a Marine in a combat zone. Lucas grinned when he saw Evan.

“Hey, hombre. How you manage out there in the desert without goin’ up in flames? All that lily-white skin.”

Evan didn’t know if he should be amused or offended, but Lucas’s crooked smile and the wink he gave made Evan smile and relax. Lucas, he learned, was on his first trip to Afghanistan, after a deployment in Kuwait.

“Crazy country, hombre.” Lucas shook his head and leaned in closer, lowering his voice so the people around them didn’t hear. (Evan tried to ignore the looks they got at the airport, two men in desert-drab fatigues. Everyone stared.) “You know they pay, like, ten cents a liter for gas? Get a couple gallons for a buck. Sure makes me wish I had a couple oil rigs back home in Texas like some folks do. ’Course, then I wouldn’t need to be sweatin’ in the desert for a livin’.”

Evan could have listened to—okay, watched—Lucas talk for the entire trip halfway around the world. Layovers and all, Atlanta to London to Landstuhl, ten-plus hours in the air and nearly fourteen in transit by the time they landed in Germany. There they stopped, still a good eight hours out of Kabul, stranded by a freak early October snowstorm that grounded their flight overnight. Lucas turned on the charm at the USO office and managed to get them rebooked on a flight late the next morning and nabbed a room at the hotel nearest the airport.

When they got to their room, Evan didn’t expect anything more than some conversation and a decent night’s sleep. He was shocked when, after locking the door firmly behind them, Lucas dropped his duffel on the floor, took Evan’s face in both of his rough hands, and kissed him like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Because it was.

That night, Evan learned who he really was for the first time. Lucas taught him everything he knew, even though he admitted readily it was just the tip of the iceberg. But when Lucas slid his fingertips firmly across that spot inside Evan’s ass and sucked Evan’s dick hard, Evan swore he’d found all the answers he’d ever need. Nothing had ever felt so good, and when Lucas jerked himself off until he spurted across Evan’s stomach and chest, Evan just wanted to stay locked up in that tiny room forever.

Forever lasted only ten hours.

H
E
LURCHED
into chaos. Someone grabbed his arm, and he looked up to see a young female medic looking into his face. Her mouth moved, but he couldn’t hear a thing.
Concussion deafness
, his mind supplied, and he shook his head at her, dazed. She ran her gaze over him, a hand down his arm, and he winced when her fingers pressed against his elbow. She reached for his other arm, saying something again that he couldn’t hear, but he pulled away and turned back toward the men, desperate, looking for the only person he cared about in that moment.

The men at the transport had pulled the body away from the flames, and one of them looked up in time to meet Evan’s eyes. The way the man’s eyes widened, followed by the slow shake of his head, didn’t register with Evan at first. When it did, Evan’s knees buckled.

No
. He didn’t know if he was making any sound; he still couldn’t hear, not even inside his own head. But he could feel his throat searing, and as he staggered closer, he could see Lucas’s face, eyes wide open, staring up at him, a mask of death.

Evan fell to the sand, arms reaching out, wrapping around his best friend, his lover, the man he’d never be able to hold again.

E
VAN
TORE
himself out of the dream, jolting upright in his bed at the images seared onto his brain. Lucas had bled out into the Afghan sand, body singed and charred by the fire, and Evan couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. His arms ached as if he still held his lover’s body, still screamed out denials into the arid air.

He’d thought losing his brother to an Iraqi IED the worst moment of his life, until another bomb in another desert proved him wrong.

Skin clammy with sweat and remembered horror, Evan dragged himself up and into the bathroom. He turned the shower on as hot as he could stand and stripped off his damp clothes before throwing them into the hamper in the corner. He pushed the shower curtain back, stepped into the tub, and moved under the spray, letting it pound down on his body and wash away the physical evidence of his nightmare.

If only he could shower away his memories.

Determined to shake it off, as usual, Evan reached for the shampoo and went through the lather, rinse, repeat process on autopilot. He followed that with body wash, scrubbing away the last remnants of sweat on his skin, and then he stood under the spray again, letting the heat loosen the tight muscles in his back and shoulders.

When the water started to cool, he forced himself to shut it off. After drying off from head to toe and brushing his teeth thoroughly, he grabbed his toiletry bag and checked it for the necessities—travel shampoo and shave gel, razor and blades, toothbrush and toothpaste, condoms and lube—before heading into the bedroom.

Another week, another city
, he thought, tossing his carry-on onto the bed to pack for his trip.

T
HE
FLIGHT
to Fort Lauderdale left on time, arrived early, and didn’t bounce around a lot in between, which was better than average. The whole trip—via sidewalk, MARTA, “plane train,” and 737—took just under three hours, not counting the waits in the security line and at the gate. Evan had made the trip so many times he could almost do it blindfolded, though he imagined the TSA agents wouldn’t find it funny.

The cab line was nonexistent, so in minutes Evan was headed to the studio-slash-house for his shoot. Manclub kept a steady stream of models flowing in and out of their sprawling oceanfront location, which had setups for everything from poolside shoots on the patio to a dungeon playroom in the basement. Two large bedrooms with en suite bathrooms handled the bulk of the work, though, and smaller bedrooms at the end of the house served as sleeping space for the models. It was all very efficiently run, and Evan had never had a problem during the shoots there, but he’d never been interested in the exclusive contracts some of the models had, either. He’d had an agent for a few years at the start of his career, but now he handled his own bookings. He preferred to keep as much control as he could.

It took only about twenty minutes to get to the house, and Evan paid the cabbie a little extra because he’d actually made an effort to help with Evan’s suitcase, even though he hadn’t needed it. The three-day shoot would pay well, and with everything else covered for the trip, he could afford to be generous.

As he walked toward the front door, Evan forced himself to make the mental shift into Trevor Hardball. He didn’t have to put on a completely different persona like some porn models did, but he’d need to remember to answer to—and use—the right name for the next few days. By the time the door opened in response to the doorbell, he’d settled into the switch.

Rod Zane, the studio’s second-in-command—which meant he was the one who really kept things running—greeted Trevor with his trademark lopsided smile and one-armed hug. “Hey, Trev, glad you’re here. Come on in. Good to see you, as always!”