Crash: M/M Straight to Gay First Time Romance (14 page)

              “Don’t leave me. I just found you,” I beg, driving the evidence of my need into his body. His eyes meet mine and he doesn’t look away. His look scorches my face and consumes me.

              I balance my weight on my elbows and grind against his body with slow, forceful movements. He cries out beneath me, letting tears trickle down the side of his face as he climaxes. I follow him into oblivion a few minutes later and fall asleep with Liam wrapped in my arms, his head pressed against my beating heart.

              I didn’t think that after all of that, he would still want to leave.

Liam

              I wanted to sleep in. It is Saturday after all. But some lunatic keeps pounding on the front door and my so-called husband hasn’t lifted a finger to make it stop. The fear that maybe he didn’t make it home last night peels my eyelids back off of my eyes, and I sit up. I grab the first shirt I see and slip it over my head as I get my sore, stiff limbs moving.

              My feet tangle up in the discarded shirt on the floor. Out of reflex, I pick it up and bring it along with me. When I open the door, a very angry, red-faced, proto-pixie is standing there waiting for me.

              “Darlene?”

              She doesn’t say anything, just stands there panting and seething.

              “Reid isn’t in. I think he went for a run,” I explain.

              “Let me in,” she orders. Normally, this is the moment when I turn on my “charm” and tell her to take a long walk off of a short plank, but this isn’t technically my house. This isn’t technically my sister. And we aren’t really married. So I have to play nice. I step to the side and let the irate woman into the warmth of the house.

I follow her into the living room where she wheels around and swings at my head. Lucky for us both I am not so groggy that I can’t see the blow coming. I step out of the line of her fire and grab her wrist, twisting it sharply so that her arm becomes a painful lever that I use to manipulate her into a chair.

              “Sit, talk, explain,” I say.

              “What are you doing here?”

              “Sleeping. At least I was until you showed up.” I am miffed, and I don’t mind letting it show. Little miss kung-fu pants rolls her eyes and sits back in her chair.

              “Are you ever going to tell him who you are?”

              “And who am I?”

              “Liam Hasker,” she says calmly. The smile on her face tells me she thinks she has me over a barrel.

              “Ooh, look at you. You must have been busy as a bee to get that name,” I snarl.

              “It took me a while, but I finally got it. What I don't get is why you are here? Why didn’t you just tell him who you are? Now that you have money you think you can just fuck with people’s lives at will?”

              “I am here because I fell off a fucking mountain. Even rich bastards don’t throw themselves off of mountains to make other people’s lives more difficult.” I lick my lips before proceeding. “I didn’t know he was here, and I was just as surprised as you when I woke up and found out that Reid was the one who pulled me out of the wreckage.”

              “So, you decided to lie to him! You moved into his house and let this charade go on for months. MONTHS! Why? Why would you do that? All he ever wanted to do was to help you.”

              “It wasn’t my plan. Well, that’s a lie. It was my plan in the beginning. I just never thought that he and I would end up here. And now I don’t think who I am matters very much to him. It certainly doesn’t mean much to me,” I say.

              “So why not just tell him?”

              “Because I have bigger fish to fry, and he never asked,” I say. That sounds stupid. I can hear how stupid and flimsy my excuse is even as I say it, and yet it is the truth.

              “Bigger fish?”

              “A cousin who wants to destroy Reid’s life to make me angry. And
he
is the type who likes to fuck with people’s life just because he can,” I say. Darlene covers her mouth with her hands, and I know the truth instantly.

              “So you know Ruairi already. That makes sense. It’s unlikely that you would be able to put all of the pieces together on your own. So what did he promise you? Or did he just wind you up and send you over here to do as much damage as you can?”

              “Why would he hurt Reid? Reid is nothing to you guys,” she says.

              “I suspect it's because he knows that Reid is not nothing to me.”

              She cocks her head to the side and wrinkles her brows with confusion. Her confusion is so raw it is almost comical.

              “Oh come on now, Darlene. We are both adults here. You mean to tell me you never suspected?”

              “You…and Reid,” she says, her face turning an interesting shade of green. Without any effort, it would match her hair perfectly.

              “Don’t be too upset. He is an amazing lover. I should know, I have had quite a few. And between you and me,” I lean forward in my chair for emphasis. “I usually don’t bottom, but for Reid, I am willing to make huge exceptions.”

              She blinks rapidly as her brain processes everything that I am implying. Her discomfort is amusing. It is the only amusing thing about this whole fucking situation. I watch her with grim satisfaction, knowing that nothing this morning has gone according to her plan.

              “Liam,” she says, recovering from her shock. “Do you know that Reid thinks you are dead?”

              “Yes.”

              “Do you know that he thinks it is his fault you’re dead?”

              “Ooh, spoilers,” I say. Now it's my turn to be curious.

              “That night, when you had your accident. Reid saw you. He saw the car flip and spin. He says he even spoke to you. “

              “That’s all true,” I say bitterly. I don’t like to remember that night or his breathtaking failure to assist me in my darkest hour. “But he ran away. He was high, so I don’t think he was thinking clearly. Maybe he got paranoid, afraid the cops would know he was high and ruin his life. I don’t know.”

              “What are you talking about?”

              “He offered to call 911, but instead he ran away. I saw him,” I repeat myself through clenched teeth.

              “No, he didn’t. He called. His phone was dead, so he flagged down a car passing by and had the driver call for him. He doesn’t remember anything after that, but he is sure he asked somebody to call.”

              “Don’t bullshit me. He ran away, and he never came back,” I say because I am not ready to hear this. This alternative version of history is too much for me. I am good at bad news; I can understand it if he ran off and spent the night getting blowjobs from college girls. I can’t seem to wrap my head around Reid being responsible for the 911 call that saved my life.

              “He’s not a savage,” Darlene growls, offended by my disbelief.

              “Okay, so what?”

              “So, when he sobered up and realized you were gone…he lost it. He fell apart. He mourned. He grieved. He started using more. His addiction just got worse, and he started mixing street drugs with prescription drugs.”

              “So this was my fault?”

              She takes a deep breath and looks at me like I am the dumbest person she has ever met.

              “I don’t know what was between you two at the time. But if you are what you say you are-“

              “Gay.”

              “Yes that, and he is with you that way, then maybe he liked you then. And your disappearing act hurt him more than anything else. Even when our parents finally announced their divorce, he took it rather well. But, when he heard you were gone, he crumbled. So if you are here to exact some sort of revenge on him, don’t. He has suffered enough. Believe me. There hasn’t been a day that has gone by in the last ten years that he hasn’t thought about you. Tell him the truth and let him go. Let him move on with his life,” she says with tears in her eyes.

              “I’ll think about it,” I say, mostly because I am trying to be a dick. “What does Ruairi say?”

“He says if you leave he will call off ‘the bitch’ threatening to pull the plug. He said you would know what he meant,” she said using air quotes.

We have wandered into that emotional space that makes me uncomfortable. I just want her to leave and give me a moment to process everything.

              She seems to take the hint and gets up to leave.

              “I’ll give you a week to tell him,” she says before turning and leaving.

              I look out the window as she leaves. The sun is so bright and pretty. Despite the cold, it looks like a beautiful day; just the kind of day made for fresh beginnings and new starts. I was going to have to leave here anyway, I tell myself. I have to fix things with MCM, I have to put an end to Ruairi, and I have a movie to finish. My life and all of its complications and ugliness is bound to leak into his if I stay with him. I know that. I think I have always known that.

              It doesn’t make it hurt any less.

              I pour myself a cup of water and sit at the table to wait. How do I let him go? How do I make it possible for him to move on even if I can’t? I think I have spent my whole life trying to master words. At first, I just wanted to be able to say them smoothly, even if they weren’t particularly brilliant. Then I learned to weave them into complicated ropes of narration and prose. And no, I am praying that I can find the right words to say to a man who, his whole life, has done nothing but love me.

              I hear the door open, and I see Reid walk in, looking sexy and worried and genuinely happy to see me. My heart skips a beat, and I grip my cup so hard I am pretty sure it will crack. He sits down in the seat opposite me, and I think of all of the moments I have had with him. All of the tiny kindnesses that have made our story what it is today. The days he ignored my attitude and held my hand as my body screamed for mercy. The times he would look over his shoulder at me while I sat behind him in homeroom. His kisses. His smile, the one that is just mine alone. His smell. I lift my head and open my lungs.

              “Do you remember…”

****

              Being a GM sucks. Anybody who tells you otherwise is a clueless twit. I suppose it would suck less if my company wasn’t stuffed full of sycophants and narcissists, lapping at the corporate teat. Then again, what else could I expect? Most of them are Ruairi’s people. Chosen by him and strategically placed in order to garner the loyalty of their families.

              My first order of business was to start moving them out of the central headquarters and put them in charge of semi-independent projects. I just need them out of my hair so that I can put people who deserve the spot in their places. It ruffled a few feathers, but believe me when I tell you I don’t give a fuck. They soon took heed and started looking for ways that they could be useful to me instead of letting me ship them out to Kazakhstan for a mineral extraction project. They didn’t like it, but there was precious little they could do about it. I have the votes and the shares. Ruairi stepped down and couldn’t help them against me even if he was inclined to try. And he wasn’t.

              As for Ruairi, he took his fall quite well. In fact, he had been planning for it for months. He didn’t want to be the general manager, but his father wouldn’t dream of letting him quit. In the end, he used me to get what he wanted.
Out
. I can’t say I blame him. Since he left, our stock has gone up, and our public image is on the mend. He was a shit employee and lacks people skill.

              Like every night for the last year, I drag my body back to the penthouse apartment that comes with my new position. I had it redecorated, replacing all of the gaudy, overpriced crap with simple furniture and clean lines. Sprinkled throughout the apartment there are Zen touches I think Reid would like it if he was here. In my bedroom are two large portraits, one of Reid and the other of my mother. They remind me why I endure. My mother left this life to give me all of the good things that money can’t buy. I am going to stay here to make sure that Reid can keep them.

              When I round the corner into the living room, I am greeted by Ruairi, sitting on my sofa, holding a glass that should be full of rum but is probably filled with juice or tea since that is the only thing I have in the house. When he sees me, he hooks one denim-clad leg over the other and smiles. I don’t think I have ever seen him wear denim or shirts without collars.

              “Why are you here?”

              “To see you, little cousin. I wanted to make sure you were doing well under the strain of being GM. We both know how lonely it can be trapped here in your ivory tower,” he says, smirking as he sips from his glass.

              “Cut the crap Ruairi; I have things to do.” I loosen my tie and remove my cufflinks.

              “I wanted to thank you for taking my spot. I thought I would never get out, but you managed to prove everyone wrong. Even my father had to acknowledge that forcing me to be the GM was a bad move.”

              “Not that you tried all that hard,” I snap.

His eyes slide over my face sadly. “Oh but I did, at first. I tried very hard, but no matter how hard I tried I could never measure up to the great Liam McClehllan. Do you know how mortifying it is to train your whole life to be the successor of a powerful man, only to find yourself outclassed by a little nobody from some tiny town in New Jersey?”

              “If you tried being less of an entitled shit you might have been able to sway his opinion more readily.”