Strong Signal (Cyberlove #1) (24 page)

Garrett slid down the door and dropped onto his ass. He stared at me, breathing hard, before stretching out beside me. I turned my head and met his lips in a slow wet kiss.

“I really do love you, Kai.” He searched my face as if trying to ensure that I understood. That I believed him. “Maybe it seems sudden or whatever, but to me it’s not. I fell for you months ago. And I don’t fucking care if no one gets it.”

“What do you mean?” I furrowed my brow. “Gets it?”

“Yeah…” Garrett touched my chin. “I’ll be honest and say I used to be skeptical of online relationships. I didn’t trust shit like OKCupid or Tinder. But now…I don’t know. I don’t think this would have happened any other way. We’re both too introverted, and I’m hostile on top of it.”

Smirking, I wrapped my arm around his waist. “Introverted is a really tame way of describing what I am.”

“You know what I mean.” He shrugged. “I’m just saying…I don’t give a damn if people think it’s weird that we met on a video game. I don’t give a damn about anyone. We don’t need other people. Well, except for my family. They have to spend time with us no matter how disgusting we are.”

He said it in such a flat, serious tone that I couldn’t hold back my laughter.

“What?”

“Nothing! Nothing.” I pulled him closer, drawing him into another kiss. “I’m perfectly fine with it remaining just the two of us for as long as we can pull that off.”

I thought he’d grin, but his mood had visibly dampened.

“Hey,” I said softly. “You okay?”

“Just thinking about stuff back home. You wanna eat?”

I turned to the kitchen, but the tension rolling off of him was making me uneasy. It was impossible to tell if his moods affected me so much because it’d been so long since I’d had to read another person’s body language, or because I’d never shared a space with someone. At least cooking would give me something to do with my hands.

Garrett’s preoccupation didn’t go away though. He picked at his dinner and zoned out with a pensive frown. I could tell he was trying his best to stay focused, and be as chipper as he could ever get, but this was nothing like his previous homecoming from Rickston.

It seemed like our honeymoon period was over.

Garrett

“Are you sure about this?”

Kai slid his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, and rocked on the balls of his heels. He was staring at the door like there was a zombie horde from
Apocalypse
waiting to devour us on the other side. For him, agreeing to go to a crowded location was just as terrifying.

“I can go by myself,” I said for the fifth time. “Seriously. It’s not a big deal.”

“No.” The word was firm and sharper than usual. “If you want to go, I want to go. I can do this.” Kai nodded. “I can.”

“It’s just the grocery store. It’s not a big—”

“It
is
a big deal!” Kai swung his gaze from the door to me. A flush had risen up his neck and to his cheeks—the first sign that his anxiety was triggering and this could end very poorly. “I want to be able to go to the fucking grocery store with my boyfriend and pick out apples and frozen pizzas and whatever else stupid shit you didn’t get to do while you were stuck on that base for nine months.”

As concerned as I was about him forcing himself to take this step, my heart swelled in response to the statement. I hadn’t told him why I’d insisted on going to the grocery store myself. I’d never gone into detail about how trivial things like doing my own shopping, and changing my mind on the fly about what I wanted to eat, was one of the things I’d always missed while on deployment.

He ripped a hand through his hair, took a deep breath, and squared his shoulders. I ruined the effect by kissing him. The air whooshed out of him as he laughed against my lips. There were times when he looked up at me with such obvious affection that I couldn’t believe the connection we shared was real. I couldn’t believe he wanted me, out of all the guys who’d tried to pursue him online, and out of all the guys who’d tried wooing him for the years he’d been on Twitch. It was me he’d responded to. It was me he’d chatted with. It was me he’d fallen for.

And now I was going to potentially crush that for a job.

The glow of warmth seeped out of me until I was hollow again.

“Let’s go,” I said, grabbing his hand. “It’s not too far away, right?”

Kai shook his head and adopted his warrior expression again. I could almost hear his internal mantra.
I can do this. No one will bother me. No one will get too close. I can be brave.

“If this sucks, it doesn’t mean anything. You’re not a failure and you’re not a coward. You can’t help the way you are, and I’m not trying to change you.”

“Well, maybe I’m trying to change me.”

I bit my tongue, and together we headed outside.

We’d decided on going to the market in the middle of the day because it was less likely to be packed with most people still at work, but the day was sweltering. The sun was so intense that I could see the air shimmering before us as we hit the pavement, but I barely reacted to the heat. After months in the desert it was nothing even if the humidity sucked. Kai on the other hand flinched away from the light and slapped on a pair of Ray-Bans.

I had no idea where the market was and it became apparent that he didn’t either. We wound up standing on the corner as I opened the GPS on my phone with people passing all around us. Kai practically pressed to my side as I navigated, and his fear seeped into me before morphing into tension. All of a sudden, I regretted telling him that I wanted to pick out my own food. I should have known it would lead to him feeling guilty and offering to come.

My worry increased each time the crowd around us grew too thick. By the time we got to the market, I was just as on edge as he was and trying not to growl at anyone who stepped too close. If anyone had something to say about Kai clinging to me, they kept it to themselves. I was in the mood to break someone in half, and the grim set to my face probably made it all too apparent to the people around us.

“We’ll make it fast, all right?” I grabbed a black basket and moved through the automatic doors. Cold air immediately whooshed out and enveloped us. “It’s pretty empty, so it shouldn’t take long.”

Kai didn’t respond. Not too surprising. I was being a huge pain in the ass by continuously talking about how uncomfortable he might be.

“I want a feast of frozen pizzas. All of the good shit.”

“We could order.” Kai slid his hands into his pockets. His eyes darted around before following me toward the frozen food aisles. “There are much better pizzerias in Philly than in Rickston.”

“I will admit that I have a weakness for frozen pizza. It was our version of pizza night when I was a kid. My ma would cook a couple of Totino’s pizzas and we’d act like it was delicious. I hated it after a while but now I keep going back to it.”

“Isn’t Totino’s the dollar one?”

“Yeah, but that’s not what I’m here for today.”

Kai snickered at how serious I was taking this mission. He slid his arm through mine. “Did you do go shopping with your parents when you were a kid?”

“No.” I surveyed the aisle. The array of choices in the long lane of refrigerators was almost overwhelming, but I knew exactly what I wanted. Red Baron. Definitely not the high end of the frozen pizza spectrum, but it was my fucking jam. “My mom worked late, my dad was worthless and thought grocery shopping wasn’t his job, so I did it alone. I used to push this little shopping cart for blocks like an old person.”

Kai watched me toss a few pizzas into the shopping cart. “I like to picture you as a kid. All chubby cheeks and curly dark hair.”

The cart squeaked as I pushed it away from the refrigerators. “That’s not too far from the truth. Maybe you’ll see pictures one day. My mom would love to embarrass the hell out of me by showing you the evidence that I used to have acne.”

“Oh my God, were you an awkward teen?”

“Yup.” I snagged our grocery list from Kai’s back pocket. “Puberty was kind to me.”

“Fuck yes, it was.” Kai sidled up to me and patted my ass. “I’m loving puberty right now. I’ll worship at the altar of the puberty god every night.”

“Your time will be spent worshipping something else.”

He elbowed me with a smirk.

“What were you like as a kid?”

Kai shrugged, and for a minute, I didn’t think he’d answer. Then he sighed. “I was scrawny and weird-looking. Like all eyes, you know?”

I nodded. “Like a gremlin.”

He smacked me, but he was smiling. “I totally did look like a gremlin. Anyway, I was told I looked like my mom but the only family I had was my dad’s side. And they were all huge, like, you. Football players and shit. I was buying dance clothes, and they were trying out new cleats.” He grabbed a box of oatmeal, and threw it in the cart. “Maple sugar, okay?”

I was continually impressed with how Kai grew up with zero support and managed to accomplish what he had. “Maple sugar’s fine, babe.”

Kai smiled easily, and for a moment I thought things would be okay. We’d collected a number of other items—wine, beer, cookies, popcorn, Monster, and enough vegetables for a salad—before the gates of humanity seemed to open. Everyone and their dog flooded into the store, including what appeared to be two stations worth of firefighters.

Beside me, Kai went stiff. He paled and his eyes darted around.

“I guess that means you prefer dudes in fatigues to suspenders,” I said, failing completely at a joke. “Good news for me.”

Kai forced a chuckle, but his hands had curled into white knuckled fists. “Did you get everything? Are we done?”

A quick glance at the list showed we were nowhere near done.

“Yeah, we’re good.”

“No.” Kai rubbed his hands over his shirt. “No, we’re not. It’s okay. I’m fine.”

He wasn’t.

I aborted this mission a few minutes later, steered us to checkout, and broke into a sweat at the sheer glut of people who’d amassed at the registers. The need to get Kai away and out of a situation that was clearly stressing him became my focal point, but I tried to hide my impatience. I pointed to the shelf next to us. “Hey, check out that magazine.”

“What?” Kai was gnawing on his thumbnail and trying to squeeze himself between me and the rack of candy to my left. “What are you talking about?”

“There’s an article on
Fable Legends.
Can you read it to me while I unload? I’ve been dreaming about that game for two years.”

Kai grabbed the magazine and zeroed in on it with single-minded focus. His hands were too rough on the pages, wrinkling and nearly tearing as he hurriedly flipped through to find the article. The impatience I was trying to hide seemed to have been absorbed by him, until he found the article and began to read.

The article was three pages long, and after a while, the strained quality left Kai’s voice, and he inserted his own opinions and commentary between each sentence. His body was still wound tight, and his face was still drained of color, but he seemed to have traded awareness of the people around us for the words and pictures in the glossy pages.

“How’d you know that would help me?” Kai asked as we left the store with way more bags than we could carry comfortably. “Are you, like, sexy soldier slash secret psychiatrist?”

“No. I just felt like a dick for putting you in this situation, and I was desperate for something to distract you. I’m glad it worked.”

“Me too.” We paused outside the store with the shopping cart still containing our bags. Kai looked up at me, his smile bigger than it’d been since we’d left the house. “You know, it fucking sucks that I’m like this, but it’s sort of awesome that you get it. That you get me. And that you try to help.”

“Try,” I scoffed. “Trying isn’t succeeding.”

“But you did succeed.” Kai gestured at himself with a dry laugh. “I’m a hot mess but I didn’t have a panic attack. It may not seem like enough to you but it means a hell of a lot to know that…you’re paying attention, and you get it, and you can help me to feel safe.”

It was the most perfect thing he could have ever said to me, and it still cut through my heart like a knife. “Kai, I—” Could I really do this? Was I really going to do this? “Kai, when we get home we need to talk, okay?”

“Um.” Kai searched my face. “That doesn’t sound—”

“Well, look here. It’s the pedophile.”

My head snapped up, and Kai didn’t even have to identify the guy in front of me. Somehow I just knew the corny-looking motherfucker was Travis.

“What the fuck did you say?” Travis had been so focused on Kai that he’d somehow failed to notice me on the other side of the cart. When he did, some of the bravado fled his expression, but not quite. I stepped moved closer. “You wanna repeat that?”

“Garrett—” Kai’s words choked off. “Let’s just—”

“What’s this? Your boyfriend?” Travis directed the words to Kai, but he hadn’t taken his eyes off me. “Maybe you should tell your boyfriend how you like to spend time with little boys.”

The first shove sent Travis stumbling, but it didn’t wipe the twisted smirk from his face. There was a glaze in his eyes, a glaze familiar to the one my father had had when he got mean, which told a story that started and ended with booze.

“Shawn’s almost as big as me,” I said, my voice a low growl. “You’re just a scumbag who thinks all queers are sickos.”

“Heh.” Travis jerked his chin at me. “Aren’t you?”

Just like with Costigan, I didn’t plan to raise my hands, but it happened. My fist cracked against his jaw and he fell onto his ass, stunned. I took another step toward him, fully prepared to put his lights out, but Kai wrapped his hands around my upper arm and jerked me back.

“Don’t! He’ll call the cops or something!”

“No he won’t,” I growled, jerking away. “He won’t want to admit he got the shit kicked out of him by a faggot.”

“Garrett,
stop.”
Kai’s voice was authoritative, but I could hear a hint of panic as well.

It hit me then that if I fought Travis, or kicked his ass, we’d be subjected to a growing crowd, and potentially police. Police who would corner and question us, and I wouldn’t put it past them to be dickbags about the fact that Kai and I were a couple. And I wouldn’t be able to put a hurting on a cop if they got homophobic.